I See You

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “What is the trouble?”

  “Freddy’s little dog is dead of poison. I’m afraid Freddy is in a bad state. There is no one to help him. His folks are away. The woman taking care of him,” Mike’s careful explanatory sentences burst into indignation, “has no more sympathetic imagination than a broken clothes-pole.” He heard a little gasp. “I’d like to help him, Miss Dana, but I’m a man and a stranger, and the Judge …” He paused.

  “… is old,” said the Judge in his chair.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” the voice on the phone said slowly. “Freddy’s a wonderful boy.”

  “You are his friend?”

  “Yes, we are friends.”

  “Then, could you come? You see, we’ve got to get a terrible idea out of his head. He thinks a man across the street poisoned his dog on purpose. Miss Dana, he has no doubt! And he doesn’t cry.” She gasped again. “Greenwood Lane,” he said, “and Hannibal Street—the southeast corner.”

  She said, “I’ll come. I have a car. I’ll come as soon as I can.”

  Russell turned and caught the Judge biting his lips. “Am I making too much of this, sir?” he inquired humbly.

  “I don’t like the boy’s stubborn conviction.” The Judge’s voice was dry and clear. “Any more than you do. I agree that he must be brought to understand. But …” the old man shifted in the chair. “Of course, the man Matlin is a fool, Mike. There is something solemn and silly about him that makes him fair game. He’s unfortunate. He married a widow with a crippled child, and no sooner were they married than she collapsed. And he’s not well off. He’s encumbered with that enormous house.”

  “What does he do, sir?”

  “He’s a photographer. Oh, he struggles, tries his best and all that. But with such tension, Mike. That poor misshapen girl over there tries to keep house, devoted to her mother. Matlin works hard, is devoted, too. And yet the sum comes out in petty strife, nerves, quarrels, uproar. And certainly it cannot be necessary to feud with children.”

  “The kids have done their share of that, I’ll bet,” mused Mike. “The kids are delighted—a neighborhood ogre, to add the fine flavor of menace. A focus for mischief. An enemy.”

  “True enough.” The Judge sighed.

  “So the myth is made. No rumor about ole Matlin loses anything in the telling. I can see it’s been built up. You don’t knock it down in a day.”

  “No,” said the Judge uneasily. He got up from the chair.

  The young man rubbed his dark head. “I don’t like it, sir. We don’t know what’s in the kids’ minds, or who their heroes are. There is only the gang. What do you suppose it advises?”

  “What could it advise, after all?” said the Judge crisply. “This isn’t the slums, whatever Matlin says.” He went nervously to the window. He fiddled with the shade pull. He said, suddenly, “From my little summerhouse in the backyard you can overhear the gang. They congregate under that oak. Go and eavesdrop, Mike.”

  The young man snapped to attention. “Yes, sir.”

  “I … think we had better know,” said the Judge, a trifle sheepishly.

  The kids sat under the oak, in a grassy hollow. Freddy was the core. His face was tight. His eyes never left off watching the house of the enemy. The others watched him, or hung their heads, or watched their own brown hands play with the grass.

  They were not chattering. There hung about them a heavy, sullen silence, heavy with a sense of tragedy, sullen with a sense of wrong, and from time to time one voice or another would fling out a pronouncement, which would sink into the silence, thickening its ugliness …

  The Judge looked up from his paper. “Could you …”

  “I could hear,” said Mike in a quiet voice. “They are condemning the law, sir. They call it corrupt. They are quite certain that Matlin killed the dog. They see themselves as Robin Hoods, vigilantes, defending the weak, the wronged, the dog. They think they are discussing justice. They are waiting for dark. They speak of weapons, sir—the only ones they have. B.B. guns, after dark.”

  “Great heavens!”

  “Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to stop it.”

  Mrs. Somers was cooking supper when he tapped on the screen. “Oh, it’s you. What do you want?”

  “I want your help, Mrs. Somers. For Freddy.”

  “Freddy,” she interrupted loudly, with her nose high, “is going to have his supper and go to bed his regular time, and that’s all about Freddy. Now, what did you want?”

  He said, “I want you to let me take the boy to my apartment for the night.”

  “I couldn’t do that!” She was scandalized.

  “The Judge will vouch …”

  “Now, see here, Mr. what’syourname—Russell. This isn’t my house and Freddy’s not my boy. I’m responsible to Mr. and Mrs. Titus. You’re a stranger to me. As far as I can see, Freddy is no business of yours whatsoever.”

  “Which is his room?” asked Mike sharply.

  “Why do you want to know?” She was hostile and suspicious.

  “Where does he keep his B.B. gun?”

  She was startled to an answer. “In the shed out back. Why?”

  He told her.

  “Kid’s talk,” she scoffed. “You don’t know much about kids, do you, young man? Freddy will go to sleep. First thing he’ll know, it’s morning. That’s about the size of it.”

  “You may be right. I hope so.”

  Mrs. Somers slapped potatoes into the pan. Her lips quivered indignantly. She felt annoyed because she was a little shaken. The strange young man really had hoped so.

  Russell scanned the street, went across to Matlin’s house. The man himself answered the bell. The air in this house was stale, and bore the faint smell of old grease. There was over everything an atmosphere of struggle and despair. Many things ought to have been repaired and had not been repaired. The place was too big. There wasn’t enough money, or strength. It was too much.

  Mrs. Matlin could not walk. Otherwise, one saw, she struggled and did the best she could. She had a lost look, as if some anxiety, ever present, took about nine-tenths of her attention. May Matlin limped in and sat down, lumpishly.

  Russell began earnestly, “Mr. Matlin, I don’t know how this situation between you and the boys began. I can guess that the kids are much to blame. I imagine they enjoy it.” He smiled. He wanted to be sympathetic toward this man.

  “Of course they enjoy it.” Matlin looked triumphant.

  “They call me The Witch,” the girl said. “Pretend they’re scared of me. The devils. I’m scared of them.”

  Matlin flicked a nervous eye at the woman in the wheelchair. “The truth is, Mr. Russell,” he said in his high whine, “they’re vicious.”

  “It’s too bad,” said his wife in a low voice. “I think it’s dangerous.”

  “Mama, you mustn’t worry,” said the girl in an entirely new tone. “I won’t let them hurt you. Nobody will hurt you.”

  “Be quiet,” said Matlin. “You’ll upset her. Of course nobody will hurt her.”

  “Yes, it is dangerous, Mrs. Matlin,” said Russell quietly. “That’s why I came over.”

  Matlin goggled. “What? What’s this?”

  “Could I possibly persuade you, sir, to spend the night away from this neighborhood … and depart noisily?”

  “No,” said Matlin, raring up, his ego bristling, “no, you cannot! I will under no circumstances be driven away from my own home.” His voice rose. “Furthermore, I certainly will not leave my wife and stepdaughter.”

  “We could manage, dear,” said Mrs. Matlin anxiously.

  Russell told them about the talk under the oak, the B.B. guns.

  “Devils,” said May Matlin, “absolutely …”

  “Oh, Earl,” trembled Mrs. Matlin, “maybe we had all better go away.”

  Matlin, red-necked, furious, said, “We own this property. We pay our taxes. We hav
e our rights. Let them! Let them try something like that! Then, I think, the law would have something to say. This is outrageous! I did not harm that animal. Therefore, I defy …” He looked solemn and silly, as the Judge had said, with his face crimson, his weak eyes rolling.

  Russell rose. “I thought I ought to make the suggestion,” he said mildly, “because it would be the safest thing to do. But don’t worry, Mrs. Matlin, because I …”

  “A B.B. gun can blind,” she said tensely.

  “Or even worse,” Mike agreed. “But I am thinking of the—”

  “Just a minute,” Matlin roared. “You can’t come in here and terrify my wife! She is not strong. You have no right.” He drew himself up with his feet at a right angle, his pudgy arm extended, his plump jowls quivering. “Get out!” he cried. He looked ridiculous.

  Whether the young man and the bewildered woman in the chair might have understood each other was not to be known. Russell, of course, got out. May Matlin hobbled to the door and as Russell went through it, she said, “Well, you warned us, anyhow.” And her lips came together sharply.

  Russell plodded across the pavement again. Long, enchanting shadows from the lowering sun struck aslant through the golden air and all the old houses were gilded and softened in their green setting. He moved toward the big oak. He hunkered down. The sun struck its golden shafts deep under the boughs. “How’s it going?” he asked.

  Freddy Titus looked frozen and still. “O.K.,” said Phil Bourchard with elaborate ease. Light on his owlish glasses hid the eyes.

  Mike opened his lips, hesitated. Suppertime struck on the neighborhood clock. Calls, like chimes, were sounding.

  “… ’s my mom,” said Ernie Allen. “See you after.”

  “See you after, Freddy.”

  “O.K.”

  “O.K.”

  Mrs. Somers’ hoot had chimed with the rest and now Freddy got up, stiffly.

  “O.K.?” said Mike Russell. The useful syllables that take any meaning at all in American mouths asked, “Are you feeling less bitter, boy? Are you any easier?”

  “O.K.,” said Freddy. The same syllables shut the man out.

  Mike opened his lips. Closed them. Freddy went across the lawn to his kitchen door. There was a brown crockery bowl on the back stoop. His sneaker, rigid on the ankle, stepped over it. Mike Russell watched, and then, with a movement of his arms, almost as if he would wring his hands, he went up the Judge’s steps.

  “Well?” The Judge opened his door. “Did you talk to the boy?”

  Russell didn’t answer. He sat down.

  The Judge stood over him. “The boy … The enormity of this whole idea must be explained to him.”

  “I can’t explain,” Mike said. “I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.”

  “Perhaps I had better …”

  “What are you going to say, sir?”

  “Why, give him the facts,” the Judge cried.

  “The facts are … the dog is dead.”

  “There are no facts that point to Matlin.”

  “There are no facts that point to a tramp, either. That’s too sloppy, sir.”

  “What are you driving at?”

  “Judge, the boy is more rightfully suspicious than we are.”

  “Nonsense,” said the Judge. “The girl saw the dog’s body before Matlin came …”

  “There is no alibi for poison,” Mike said sadly.

  “Are you saying the man is a liar?”

  “Liars.” Mike sighed. “Truth and lies. How are those kids going to understand, sir? To that Mrs. Page, to the lot of them, Truth is only a subjective intention. ‘I am no liar,’ sez she, sez he. ‘I intend to be truthful. So do not insult me.’ Lord, when will we begin? It’s what we were talking about at lunch, sir. What you and I believe. What the race has been told, and told in such agony, in a million years of bitter lesson. Error, we were saying. Error is the enemy.”

  He flung out of the chair. “We know that to tell the truth is not merely a good intention. It’s a damned difficult thing to do. It’s a skill, to be practiced. It’s a technique. It’s an effort. It takes brains. It takes watching. It takes humility and self-examination. It’s a science and an art …

  “Why don’t we tell the kids these things? Why is everyone locked up in anger, shouting liar at the other side? Why don’t they automatically know how easy it is to be, not wicked, but mistaken? Why is there this notion of violence? Because Freddy doesn’t think to himself, Wait a minute. I might be wrong. The habit isn’t there. Instead, there are the heroes—the big-muscled, noble-hearted, gun-toting heroes, blind in a righteousness totally arranged by the author. Excuse me, sir.”

  “All that may be,” said the Judge grimly, “and I agree. But the police know the lesson. They—”

  “They don’t care.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t care enough, sir. None of us cares enough—about the dog.”

  “I see,” said the Judge. “Yes, I see. We haven’t the least idea what happened to the dog.” He touched his pince-nez.

  Mike rubbed his head wearily. “Don’t know what to do except sit under his window the night through. Hardly seems good enough.”

  The Judge said, simply, “Why don’t you find out what happened to the dog?”

  The young man’s face changed. “What we need, sir,” said Mike slowly, “is to teach Freddy how to ask for it. Just to ask for it. Just to want it.” The old man and the young man looked at each other. Past and future telescoped. “Now,” Mike said. “Before dark.”

  Suppertime, for the kids, was only twenty minutes long. When the girl in the brown dress with the bare blond head got out of the shabby coupé, the gang was gathered again in its hollow under the oak. She went to them and sank down on the ground. “Ah, Freddy, was it Bones? Your dear little dog you wrote about in the essay?”

  “Yes, Miss Dana.” Freddy’s voice was shrill and hostile. I won’t be touched! it cried to her. So she said no more, but sat there on the ground, and presently she began to cry. There was contagion. The simplest thing in the world. First, one of the smaller ones, whimpering. Finally, Freddy Titus, bending over. Her arm guided his head, and then he lay weeping in her lap.

  Russell, up in the summerhouse, closed his eyes and praised the Lord. In a little while he swung his legs over the railing and slid down the bank. “How do? I’m Mike Russell.”

  “I’m Lillian Dana.” She was quick and intelligent, and her tears were real.

  “Fellows,” said Mike briskly, “you know what’s got to be done, don’t you? We’ve got to solve this case.”

  They turned their woeful faces.

  He said, deliberately, “It’s just the same as a murder. It is a murder.”

  “Yeah,” said Freddy and sat up, tears drying. “And it was ole Matlin.”

  “Then we have to prove it.”

  Miss Lillian Dana saw the boy’s face lock. He didn’t need to prove anything, the look proclaimed. He knew. She leaned over a little and said, “But we can’t make an ugly mistake and put it on Bones’s account. Bones was a fine dog. Oh, that would be a terrible monument.” Freddy’s eyes turned, startled.

  “It’s up to us,” said Mike gratefully, “to go after the real facts, with real detective work. For Bones’s sake.”

  “It’s the least we can do for him,” said Miss Dana, calmly and decisively.

  Freddy’s face lifted.

  “Trouble is,” Russell went on quickly, “people get things wrong. Sometimes they don’t remember straight. They make mistakes.”

  “Ole Matlin tells lies,” said Freddy.

  “If he does,” said Russell cheerfully, “then we’ve got to prove that he does. Now, I’ve figured out a plan, if Miss Dana will help us. You pick a couple of the fellows, Fred. Have to go to all the houses around and ask some questions. Better pick the smartest ones. To find out the truth is very hard,” he challenged.

  “And then?” said Miss Dana in a fluttery voice.

  “The
n they, and you, if you will …”

  “Me?” She straightened. “I am a schoolteacher, Mr. Russell. Won’t the police …”

  “Not before dark.”

  “What are you going to be doing?”

  “Dirtier work.”

  She bit her lip. “It’s nosy. It’s … not done.”

  “No,” he agreed. “You may lose your job.”

  She wasn’t a bad-looking young woman. Her eyes were fine. Her brow was serious, but there was the ghost of a dimple in her cheek. Her hands moved. “Oh well, I can always take up beauty culture or something. What are the questions?” She had a pad of paper and a pencil half out of her purse, and looked alert and efficient.

  Now, as the gang huddled, there was a warm sense of conspiracy growing. “Going to be the dickens of a job,” Russell warned them. And he outlined some questions. “Now, don’t let anybody fool you into taking a sloppy answer,” he concluded. “Ask how they know. Get real evidence. But don’t go to Matlin’s—I’ll go there.”

  “I’m not afraid of him.” Freddy’s nostrils flared.

  “I think I stand a better chance of getting the answers,” said Russell coolly. “Aren’t we after the answers?”

  Freddy swallowed. “And if it turns out …”

  “It turns out the way it turns out,” said Russell, rumpling the tow head. “Choose your henchmen. Tough, remember.”

  “Phil. Ernie.” The kids who were left out wailed as the three small boys and their teacher, who wasn’t a lot bigger, rose from the ground.

  “It’ll be tough, Mr. Russell,” Miss Dana said grimly. “Whoever you are, thank you for getting me into this.”

  “I’m just a stranger,” he said gently, looking down at her face. “But you are a friend and a teacher.” Pain crossed her eyes. “You’ll be teaching now, you know.”

  Her chin went up. “O.K., kids. I’ll keep the paper and pencil. Freddy, wipe your face. Stick your shirt in, Phil. Now, let’s organize.”

  It was nearly nine o’clock when the boys and the teacher, looking rather exhausted, came back to the Judge’s house. Russell, whose face was grave, reached for the papers in her hands.

  “Just a minute,” said Miss Dana. “Judge, we have some questions.”