by Conrad Aiken
“No, I didn’t.”
“You mean to say you didn’t notice that?”
“What sort of questions?”
“Oh, he was very cagey, your friend Paul was. He wanted to know all sorts of things. I’m afraid Jim is a little naïve, he fell for it. Questions about his profession, questions about his technique.”
“His technique?”
“Sure, his technique. What you and I do with a camel’s hair brush, and Jim does with legerdemain. Do you get me? The technique of redistribution. Oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy—do I amuse myself to death! Am I burned alive! And you sure had him fascinated, Jim—Yeah, he was all hopped up with the idea that at last he was seeing life in the raw. You’d have thought he was entertaining a couple of Apaches. I think, Mister Kane, he was even a little frightened. And that reminds me—don’t you sometimes feel a little out of your element with us, a little out of your depth? You Bostonians are so godawful refined—”
“Don’t be a damned fool, Karl. Why in hell should I feel out of my element? I always take my own element with me!”
“Ah, very neat, very neat. But a little unconvincing?”
“Not at all.”
“Yes, I’ve occasionally felt that you were just a shade self-conscious with us, just a shade uncomfortable. I’ve noticed it when you were in New York. How is it you Bostonians keep so exquisitely innocent. Or is it a refined kind of hypocrisy, Mister Kane, and are you keeping things up your sleeve? Maybe that’s it. Maybe we’d be surprised if we really knew you.”
“Maybe you would. Maybe you will.”
“But don’t let’s be unpleasant.”
“Were you being unpleasant?”
“Ah, perhaps I wasn’t. Sometimes I don’t know my own subtlety.”
“Yeah. I prefer your subtlety when it’s on canvas! It isn’t quite so ignoble.”
“Ignoble! Ouch! I led with my chin, that time. Yeah—you should never lead with your chin—or with your heart. Never lead with the heart! Well, I guess I’ll go up and see if I can calm Kitty down—why don’t you tell Mister Kane about your technique, Jim. It might amuse him!”
He got up slowly, indifferently, the dirty raincoat still held shroudlike over his shoulders, blinked the lashless blue eyes, smiling, with an affectation of cynicism which couldn’t wholly conceal the essential beauty—though a wasted beauty—of the pallid ascetic face, and then went quietly, the raincoat rustling, across the room and up the unpainted pine stairs.
“Karl gets my goat when he talks like that.”
“I think this place and Kitty have got on his nerves. He’s been crabbing everybody and everything. Don’t pay any attention to him, kid. When he sees you don’t mind, he quits.”
“Yes, I know. If only he weren’t such a damned good painter—”
“You think he is, don’t you?”
“Brilliant, yes—a real poetic genius for it. Too soon to say what’ll he do, of course, and he certainly ought to work a lot harder—”
“Yes, Kitty spoils him, of course—”
The piano paused in the next room, they heard Lorna coughing, and Jim half turned his head—across the front windows of the house, the long room, a gust of fine rain flew with quick needle-sound from window to window, stinging and darkening them—the soft sound then lost in the sudden resumption of the music. This time it was Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue—played languishingly, sentimentally, heavily, the rubatos hanging and dripping like sirup, like treacle. Jim’s eyes, hooded and solemn under the cap visor, looked toward the open door, he was listening intently, listening proudly.
“She sure can play, can’t she?” he said.
“Yes, she sure can. What was this about your technique, Jim?”
“Oh, that. I guess that wouldn’t interest you much, would it, kid? I always thought it wouldn’t interest you much.”
“Sure it would. I never asked you, because I thought maybe it was something you didn’t want to talk about.”
“Not at all. As you know, Tip, I’ve always tried to be the reverse of secretive about it, about every aspect of it. That was very important!”
“Yes, I know.”
“The same with this. It’s better to be frank about it, isn’t it? But it might interest you, at that. I think it’s pretty good.”
He smiled, and there was evident relish in the way he spoke of it—evident enjoyment. Was this the weak spot in his “case,” perhaps—in the case he made out for himself? Was it perhaps, after all, a kind of compulsion, and the anarchistic theory merely a delayed rationalization? Perhaps the stealing came first?
“I’d like very much to hear about it.”
“It’s really quite simple, but of course it took some working out. I made some mistakes. But now it’s pretty nearly foolproof. You know I always specialize in furs?”
“Yes, I knew that. Karl told me.”
“That was the first step, you see. I got to know everything I could about furs—quite a lot. Well, now, suppose I’m going to start out on an expedition. I’d pick out two or three big cities—only big cities, Chicago and St. Louis one time, Cleveland and Detroit the next—and go to just those two or three. All right, and suppose I go to Boston, say.”
“Did you ever actually try Boston?”
“As a matter of fact, kid, I did, and I could tell you the name of the store, but I won’t, because that might make you a kind of accessory, see? All right now, suppose I go to Boston. I spend the first two or three days just going round to the big department stores, and looking over the layout—finding out where the fur department is, and the other departments, all the arrangements, the stairs, the lavatories, everything like that—and what time they open in the morning and what time they close at night.”
“Yes, I see.”
“Okay. Well, I pick out what seems to be the best one, and get to know it pretty well. And then I go in some afternoon just a little before closing time. I’m wearing a cap—like this—and inside my coat, buttoned up, I’ve got a couple of big paper bags, folded small—just ordinary coarse paper bags. Well, I go to the men’s lavatory, in the basement, into a w.c., and stay there quietly till maybe half an hour after the store is closed. Then I come out—but first I take my cap off, see, and put it inside my coat, or in a pocket—you get the idea?”
“No?”
“That’s so I’ll look like some sort of employee. If I meet anybody I’ll look like an employee; and I can just say I’m a furniture polisher going up to the furniture department to do some polishing.”
“Sounds simple enough!”
“It is. There’s hardly ever any trouble about that. Well, then, I go upstairs, without trying to hide myself at all, and maybe in this store we’re talking about the fur department is on the way to the furniture department—which makes it easier. I go to the fur department, and by this time, with any luck, it’s deserted. If it’s not, I keep on going, of course, and come back later. But if it’s deserted, and no one around, then I pick out a couple of small but good furs—small, see, because they’re easier to handle. And that’s where the paper bags come in. I put them into the paper bags, and tie them up with heavy string, so as to make them sort of clumsy-looking parcels, the sort nobody would think was of any value—just ordinary bundles. But I don’t take them out with me. No. Oh, no.”
“What do you do?”
“This is where the real technique comes in, kid—I think it’s pretty good! What I do is this. I take the two bundles into the furniture department, and that’s deserted, too, if I’m lucky—and then I go to a chiffonier or chest of drawers, probably one I’ve picked out beforehand, because it’s a little out of the way, in a corner, or behind other stuff—you’ll see why in a minute. All right, I open one of the drawers, and put in the bundles—but I don’t quite shut the drawer again. I leave it about a half an inch open—just so that the edge of the drawer is sticking out a little—and then I take a broken match, a very small piece of broken match, and put it on the edge.”
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br /> “Good lord, Jim.”
“Yeah. And that’s all. Then I go downstairs again and go out. The watchman is at the door, of course, but that’s easy. I’ve got nothing on me, and if he asks any questions, well, I’m just a new furniture polisher; and so there’s usually no trouble, he lets me out.… Well, that’s the first stage. The second comes next day. This is a little more ticklish—and now is where the broken match comes in. What I do is wait till the rush hour is on—say, about twelve o’clock, see?”
“Yeah.”
“And then I go in and go straight up to the furniture department. This time, of course, I’m just an ordinary shopper; just somebody looking at furniture; sort of sauntering round. Well, I don’t want to go too close, in case there’s been a slip-up, or the bundles have been discovered—that happened to me once—and maybe I pretend I’m looking at something else, walking slowly by, but I manage to take a look at that drawer, from a little way off, to see if that small piece of broken match is still there. It has to be pretty small, of course—about a quarter of an inch, so as not to be too conspicuous, and put kind of at one side, too—otherwise one of the salesmen might spot it, and look in. All right, I take a quick look, and see it’s there, or not there. If it’s not there, I don’t take any chances—I go while the going is good. It means that drawer has probably been opened. But if it’s there, and in exactly the same place, which I can easily tell, then the chances are fifty to one it’s okay—and of course, too, if the drawer, and the other drawers, are all just the way I left them. You can notice those things—there was once, in New York, when at first it looked all right to me, but there was just a little something that made me hesitate—it just didn’t seem quite right to me, god knows what it was—so I hung round a little way off and waited, pretending to be looking at things; and pretty soon along came a guy with my two bundles in his hands and put them back in that drawer—”
“Good lord, setting a trap!”
“Setting a trap. So, of course, I beat it. But suppose it’s all right—well, then, it’s pretty easy. All I do is wait till there’s nobody much round there, or everybody busy, and just quickly take out the two bundles—and that’s all there is to it. Once I’ve got them in my hands, I’m safe as a church. Everybody else in a store has bundles—so what’s the difference, see? I walk out with maybe a thousand dollars’ worth of furs, and that’s that—it’s as easy as rolling off a log.”
“Well, I’m damned.”
“Yes, kid. Now you know. I think it’s pretty good.”
“It’s the most extraordinary thing I ever heard. My god, I should think it must be terrifying! Was it your own idea, Jim? How’d you ever think of it?”
“Yes, I just sort of worked it out. I started with the idea of the second day, you see, coming out with the bundles—and then just worked back. It was really very simple. You could have done it yourself, kid.”
“Not me, by god. I wouldn’t have the nerve.”
“Oh, it doesn’t take any nerve.”
“Oh, no! Of course not! I can see that!”
“No. It’s just sort of exciting.”
“Exciting! Good god, I should think it would be like a nightmare. I wouldn’t be able to move hand or foot.”
Exciting—yes. Again there was that evident relish in the way he spoke of the excitement, a distinct gleam, a distinct glee—it was as obvious, wasn’t it?—that he intensely enjoyed the whole thing as that he was extremely proud of its ingenuity. Yes, but was it fair to assume from this that the whole thing was nothing but a compulsion, as Paul maintained it was? After all, the use to which he put his profits, the idealistic use, even if sometimes misguided—as witness Bucholtz—was good; and granted that his premise was tenable, and that property should be at the free disposal of all, and not used for private gain, it was difficult to find any flaw in it. It all came down to the question of motive, of course, and of priority of motive. If the mere pleasure in stealing came first—but did even that make any difference? There could be no question, anyway—none at all—of his honesty: his sincerity was unmistakable. The circle of logic was complete.
Jim had stooped to fling a couple of broken boxboards on the fire, kicked some cigarette butts over the hearth towards the bed of ashes, then straightened up, smiling, with a kind of melancholy amusement.
“Of course, kid, your friend Paul—”
“Yeah. What about his friend Paul!”
Karl was coming down the stairs, walking slowly, the raincoat still over his shoulders—Kitty preceded him, almost at a run, as if in fact she were running from him. She rushed straight across the room, walking jerkily, and flung herself in her chair again. Her eyes were squeezed almost shut, one cheek had been powdered roughly, but not the other, one side only of her mouth had been lipsticked—evidently she had been interrupted in her attempt to repair the ravages of crying. She picked up the pencil and began rapidly drawing with it, or writing, on the sheet of paper. In the next room, Lorna paused to cough, then started the Rhapsody in Blue all over again.
“Won’t she ever stop? Has she got to sit in there in that damned dressing gown and play all day?”
“She’s practicing. Let her practice, Kitty, it’s what she came here for.”
“Yeah. And what about Mister Kane’s snotty friend Paul?”
“Nothing, Karl, nothing. I was just telling Tip about my technique.”
“Your technique! So we’ve got to hear all about that again!”
“You haven’t got to hear anything at all, Kitty. I was just telling Tip about it, that’s all.”
“Well, for gard’s sake, why don’t you tell the police about it, and be done with it! I’m sick of this suspense. I’m sick of it!”
“Hold your horses. I’ll tell the police when I’m ready to tell them, and not before.”
“Maybe Mister Kane’s dear friend George will save you the trouble, Jim. Maybe Enid will.”
“I think we ought to get out of here. I want to get out of here. And so does Lorna, you ask her! The whole thing’s crazy. Buying that expensive camping outfit, too, tents and everything, and all for one night in the woods, freezing to death and getting bitten by mosquitoes—”
“Oh, baby, was that funny!”
“I think we ought to accept Mrs. Murphy’s offer.”
“What offer was that? I never heard about any offer.”
“You did too! I told you. But of course you never listen to anything I say!”
“All right, spill it, bird-brain, spill it—what offer?”
“She said if we didn’t want it any more she’d take it for her kids, and give us vegetables for it—”
“Vegetables! Well, for crying out loud—”
“Yes, vegetables. And what’s funny in that. It’s no good to us, is it? The idea of you trying to camp out, trying to paint in a tent! You did look like a fool. We might as well take what we can get for it. If we’ve got any sense we’ll fill those suitcases with vegetables and go right back to New York.”
“Okay, okay. What’s stopping you? Go on, take your carrots and get out of here. It’ll be a lot better than listening to you shooting off your face—”
“Shut up!”
“I won’t shut up.”
“Oh, for god’s sake, Kitty and Karl—”
“For god’s sake, yes, for god’s sake—and you’re supposed to be the god!”
“Pipe down, Kitty.”
“Yes, the little tin god.”
“Now is that a nice way to speak to Jim? After all he’s done for us? I ask you. You poor dumb dope, you don’t know what’s good for you!”
“Oh, don’t I?”
“No, you don’t.”
“Cut it, you two, will you? Quarreling isn’t going to do you any good. Tip didn’t come over here just to listen to you two fighting.”
“Yeah? Well, what did Tip come over for. Spying, I suppose, Mister Kane?”
“I don’t think that’s very nice of you, Karl. I thought we were better friends
than that. But just the same I’m glad you asked the question, for as a matter of fact I came over for a damned unpleasant reason.”
Kitty turned sharply in her chair. She was suddenly rigid, rigid with apprehension—her mouth was a little open, she had sucked in her breath quickly, the terrified eyes looked at him as if begging him to deny their terror. She sat quite still, continuing to stare, while Karl, with a labored assumption of sardonic indifference, once more stretched himself out on the wicker couch.
“There’s rats in them words,” he said. “I smell rats in them words. What did I tell you?”
“What is it, kid? What’s on your mind?”
“I’ve never hated doing anything so much in my life, Jim—”
“We’ll pass that up, Mister Kane!”
“—but I’m afraid it can’t be helped. It’s Enid. To put it briefly, she’s threatened to leave me, if I don’t stop seeing you while you’re here. She means it too. She said she’d go tomorrow if I didn’t come over and tell you. We’ve been having a row about it ever since yesterday, and I’ve argued the whole thing backwards and forwards, but it’s no use, she’s got me in a hole, and she knows it. I’m sorry.”
“I see. I’m sorry too, kid.”
“They’re both sorry. That makes two.”
“I wish to god it hadn’t happened. You know I haven’t got any feelings about it, one way or the other—”
“Of course not, kid. But don’t you worry, it’ll be all right. Enid’s got a right to her own opinion, hasn’t she?”
“Sure, anybody can be a Judas, can’t they?”
“Oh, gard, oh, gard, oh, gard, what’s going to happen now—I knew something like this would happen.”
“Yeah. Mrs. Exquisite Blueblood Kane. A knife in the back from Mrs. Exquisite Blueblood Kane. Just as I expected. That’s what you get for mixing with the upper classes, a knife in the back.”
“Sorry, Karl. I assure you I don’t like it any more than you do. Of course, this’ll only be temporary, I hope. We can meet in New York later on, and I hope without hard feelings—”