tantaliz

by Isaac Asimov ed.

  Beaver had just finished with the drinks when a knock sounded at the door. "See who it is, Scuttle."

  Dixie Dormley and Harry Vare stood on the threshold.

  Leith, on his feet, ushered them into the room, seated the actress, indicated a chair for Vare, and said: Two more highballs, Scuttle."

  Vare said haltingly: Tm sorry, Mr. Leith. The way the thing was put up to me, I couldn't have done any differently."

  Leith dismissed the matter with a gesture.

  Dixie Dormley said: "After you left, a Captain Carmichael came in. He seemed terribly upset, and was pretty angry at Sergeant Ackley. It seems that two of the people who had been standing there were friends of Captain Carmichael, and they telephoned in to him about the brutality of the police."

  Leith smiled. "Is that so," he commented idly. "What happened?"

  Dixie Dormley said: "Well, Sergeant Ackley had just let Lamont go—figured he didn't have any case against him. Captain Carmichael listened to what Ackley had to report, and was furious. He issued an order to have Lamont picked up again, and a radio car got him within a dozen blocks of the police station.

  They brought him back and Carmichael went to work on him, and in no time had a confession out of him. It seems he'd agreed to open one of the steel shutters for some Hindu priests. They'd paid him for the job. Then he got the idea of double crossing them, opened the safe, lifted the ruby, and hid it "He had it with him tonight when he was arrested. He swore the plainclothesman must have taken it from his pocket when they were scuffling. The plainclothesman denied it, and then they thought of this man who had first grabbed Lamont.

  "So then they figured he was the man they wanted, and it turned out the police had not only let him go, but given him a couple of courtesy cards. Well, you should have heard Captain Carmichaell. Such language!"

  Leith turned to Vare.

  "There you are, Vare," he said. "A complete education in the detection of crime by the case method. Just observe Sergeant Ackley, do the exact opposite of what he does, and you're bound to be a success."

  And the police spy, resuming his mixing of the drinks, could be seen to nod, unconsciously but perceptibly.

  Barry Perowne

  "Barry Perowne" (1908- ) is the pen name of British writer Philip Atkey. One of the very few writers who built a successful career on the revival of a character first developed by another author, Perowne has published some twenty-one novels and story collections featuring Raffles, a crook-with-class first created by E. W. Hornung in 1899. Under his own name, Perowne has written three good mystery novels: Blue Water Murder (1935), Heirs of Merlin (1945), and Juniper Rock (1953). He also did the screenplay for the film Walk a Crooked Path (1970).

  THE BLIND SPOT

  Annixter loved the little man like a brother. He put an arm around the little man's shoulders, partly from affection and partly to prevent himself from falling.

  He had been drinking earnestly since seven o'clock the previous evening. It was now nudging midnight, and things were a bit hazy. The lobby was full of the thump of hot music; down two steps, there were a lot of tables, a lot of people, a lot of noise. Annixter had no idea what this place was called, or how he had got here, or when. He had been in so many places since seven o'clock the previous evening.

  In a nutshell," confided Annixter, leaning heavily on the little man, "a woman fetches you a kick in the face, or fate fetches you a kick in the face. Same thing, really—a woman and fate. So what? So you think it's the finish, an' you go out and get plastered. You get good an' plastered," said Annixter, "an' you brood.

  "You sit there an' you drink an' you brood—an' in the end you find you've brooded up just about the best idea you ever had in your life! 'At's the way it goes," said Annixter, "an' 'at's my philosophy—the harder you kick a playwright, the better he works!"

  He gestured with such vehemence that he would have collapsed if the little man hadn't steadied him. The little man was poker-backed, his grip was firm. His mouth was firm, too—a straight line, almost colorless. He wore hexagonal rimless spectacles, a black hard-felt hat, a neat pepper-and-salt suit He looked pale and prim beside the flushed, rumpled Annixter.

  From her counter, the hat-check girl watched them indifferently.

  "Don't you think," the little man said to Annixter, "you ought to go home now? I've been honored you should tell me the scenario of your play, but—"

  "I had to tell someone," said Annixter, "or blow my top! Oh, boy, what a play, what a play! What a murder, eh? That climax—"

  The full, dazzling perfection of it struck him again. He stood frowning, considering, swaying a little—then nodded abruptly, groped for the little man's hand, warmly pumphandled it.

  "Sorry I can't stick around," said Annixter. "I got work to do."

  He crammed his hat on shapelessly, headed on a slightly elliptical course across the lobby, thrust the double doors open with both hands, lurched out into the night.

  It was, to his inflamed imagination, full of rights, winking and tilting across the dark. Sealed Room by James Annixter. No. Room Reserved by James—No, no. Blue Room. Room Blue. Room Blue by James Annixter—

  He stepped, oblivious, off the curb, and a taxi, swinging in toward the place he had just left, skidded with suddenly locked, squealing wheels on the wet road.

  Something hit Annixter violently in the chest, and all the lights he had been seeing exploded in his face.

  Then there weren't any lights.

  Mr. James Annixter, the playwright, was knocked down by a taxi late last night then leaving the Casa Havana. After hospital treatment for shock and saaluerficial injuries, he returned to his home.

  The lobby of the Casa Havana was full of the thump of music; down two steps there were a lot of tables, a lot of people, a lot of noise. The hat-check girl looked wonderingly at Annixter—at the plaster on his forehead, the black sling which supported his left arm.

  "My," said the hat-check girl, "I certainly didn't expect to see you again so soon!"

  "You remember me, then?" said Annixter, smiling.

  "I ought to," said the hat-check girl. "You cost me a night's sleep! I heard those brakes squeal right after you went out the door that night—and there was a sort of a thud!" She shuddered. "I kept hearing it all night long. I can still hear it now—a week after! Horrible!"

  "You're sensitive," said Annixter.

  "I got too much imagination," the hat-check girl admitted. "Fer instance, I just knew it was you even before I run to the door and see you lying there. That man you was with was standing just outside. 'My heavens', I says to him, 'it's your friend'!"

  "What did he say?" Annixter asked.

  "He says, He's not my friend. He's just someone I met' Funny, eh?"

  Annixter moistened his lips.

  "How d you mean," he said carefully, "funny? I was just someone he'd met"

  "Yes, but—man you been drinking with," said the hat-check girl, Tolled before your eyes. Because he must have seen it; he went out right after you. You'd think he'd'a'been interested, at least But when the taxi driver starts shouting for witnesses it wasn't his fault, I looks around for that man—an' he's gone!"

  Annixter exchanged a glance with Ransome, his producer, who was with him. It was a slightly puzzled, slightly anxious glance. But he smiled, then, at the hat-check girl.

  "Not quite lolled before his eyes'," said Annixter. "Just shaken up a bit, that's all."

  There was no need to explain to her how curious, how eccentric, had been the effect of that "shaking up" upon his mind.

  "If you could 'a' seen yourself lying there with the taxi's lights shining on you—"

  "Ah, there's that imagination of yours!" said Annixter.

  He hesitated for just an instant, then asked the question he had come to ask—the question which had assumed so profound an importance for him.

  He asked, "That man I was with—who was he?"

  The hat-check girl looked from one to the other. She shook her head.
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  "I never saw him before," she said, "and I haven't seen him since."

  Annixter felt as though she had struck him in the face. He had hoped, hoped desperately, for a different answer; he had counted on it.

  Ransome put a hand on his arm, restrainingly.

  "Anyway," said Ransome, "as we're here, let's have a drink."

  They went down the two steps into the room where the band thumped. A waiter led them to a table, and Ransome gave him an order.

  "There was no point in pressing that girl," Ransome said to Annixter. "She doesn't know the man, and that's that My advice to you, James, is: Don't worry. Get your mind on to something else. Give yourself a chance. After all, it's barely a week since—"

  "A week!" Annixter said. "Hell, look what I've done in that week! The whole of the first two acts, and the third act right up to that crucial point—the climax of the whole thing: the solution: the scene that the play stands or falls on! It would have been done, Bill —the whole play, the best thing I ever did in my life—it would have been finished two days ago if it hadn't been for this—" he knuckled his forehead— "this extraordinary blind spot, this damnable little trick of memory!"

  "You had a very rough shaking-up—"

  "That?" Annixter said contemptuously. He glanced down at the sling on his arm. "I never even felt it; it didn't bother me. I woke up in the ambulance with my play as vivid in my mind as the moment the taxi hit me—more so, maybe, because I was stone cold sober then, and knew what I had. A winner—a thing that just couldn't miss!"

  "If you'd rested," Ransome said, "as the doc told you, instead of sitting up in bed there scribbling night and day—"

  "I had to get it on paper. Rest?" said Annixter, and laughed harshly. "You don't rest when you've got a thing like that. That's what you five for—if you're a playwright That is living! I've lived eight whole lifetimes, in those eight characters, during the past five days. I've lived so utterly in them, Bill, that it wasn't till I actually came to write that last scene that I realized what I'd lost! Only my whole play, that's all! How was Cynthia stabbed in that windowless room into which she had locked and bolted herself? How did the killer get to her? How was it done?

  "Hell," Annixter said, "scores of writers, better men than I am, have tried to put that sealed room murder over—and never quite done it convincingly: never quite got away with it: been over elaborate, phonyl I had it—heaven help me, I had itl Simple, perfect, glaringly obvious when you've once seen it! And it's my whole play —the curtain rises on that sealed room and falls on it! That was my revelation—how it was done! That was what I got, by way of playwright's compensation, because a woman I thought I loved kicked me in the face—I brooded up the answer to the sealed room! And a taxi knocked it out of my head!" He drew a long breath,

  "I've spent two days and two nights, Bill, trying to get that idea back—how it was done! It won't come. I'm a competent playwright; I know my job; I could finish my play, but it'd be like all those others—not quite right, phony! It wouldn't be my play! But there's a little man walking around this city somewhere—a little man with hexagonal glasses—who's got my idea in his head! He's got it because I told it to him. I'm going to find that little man, and get back what belongs to me! I've got to! Don't you see that, Bill? I've got to!"

  If the gentleman who, at the Casa Havana on the night of January 27th so patiently listened to a playwrights outlining of an idea for a drama will communicate with the Box No. below, he will hear of something to his advantage.

  A little man who had said, "He's not my friend. He's just someone I met—"

  A little man who'd seen an accident but hadn't waited to give evidence—

  The hat-check girl had been right. There was something a little queer about that. A little queer?

  During the next few days, when the advertisements he'd inserted failed to bring any reply, it began to seem to Annixter very queer indeed.

  His arm was out of its sling now, but he couldn't work. Time and again, he sat down before his almost completed manuscript, read it through with close, grim attention, thinking, "It's bound to come back this time!"—only to find himself up against that blind spot again, that blank wall, that maddening hiatus in his memory.

  He left his work and prowled the streets; he haunted bars and saloons; he rode for miles on buses and subway, especially at the rush hours. He saw a million faces, but the face of the little man with hexagonal glasses he did not see.

  The thought of him obsessed Annixter. It was infuriating, it was unjust, it was torture to think that a little, ordinary, chance-met citizen was walking blandly around somewhere with the last link of his, the celebrated James Annixter's play—the best thing he'd ever done—locked away in his head. And with no idea of what he had: without the imagination, probably, to appreciate what he had! And certainly with no idea of what it meant to Annixter!

  Or had he some idea? Was he, perhaps, not quite so ordinary as he'd seemed? Had he seen those advertisements, drawn from them tortuous inferences of his own? Was he holding back with some scheme for shaking Annixter down for a packet?

  The more Annixter thought about it, the more he felt that the hat-check girl had been right, that there was something very queer indeed about the way the little man had behaved after the accident

  Annixter's imagination played around the man he was seeking, tried to probe into his mind, conceived reasons for his fading away after the accident, for his failure to reply to the advertisements.

  Annixter's was an active and dramatic imagination. The little man who had seemed so ordinary began to take on a sinister shape in Annixter's mind-But the moment he actually saw the little man again, he realized how absurd that was. It was so absurd that it was laughable. The little man was so respectable; his shoulders were so straight; his pepper-and-salt suit was so neat; his black hard-felt hat was set so squarely on his head—

  The doors of the subway train were just closing when Annixter saw him, standing on the platform with a briefcase in one hand, a folded evening paper under his other arm. Light from the train shone on his prim, pale face; his hexagonal spectacles flashed. He turned toward the exit as Annixter lunged for the closing doors of the train, squeezed between them on to the platform.

  Craning his head to see above the crowd, Annixter elbowed his way through, ran up the stairs two at a time, put a hand on the little man s shoulder. "Just a minute," Annixter said. "I've been looking for you."

  The little man checked instantly, at the touch of Annixter's hand. Then he turned his head and looked at Annixter. His eyes were pale behind the hexagonal, rimless glasses—a pale grey. His mouth was a straight line, almost colorless.

  Annixter loved the little man like a brother. Merely finding the little man was a relief so great that it was like the lifting of a black cloud from his spirits. He patted the little man s shoulder affectionately.

  "I've got to talk to you," said Annixter. It won t take a minute. Let's go somewhere."

  The little man said, "I can't imagine what you want to talk to me about"

  He moved slightly to one side, to let a woman pass. The crowd from the train had thinned, but there were still people going up and down the stairs. The little man looked, politely inquiring, at Annixter.

  Annixter said, "Of course you can't, it's so damned silly! But it's about that play—"

  "Play?"

  Annixter felt a faint anxiety.

  "Look," he said, "I was drunk that night—I was very, very drunk! But looking back, my impression is that you were dead sober. You were weren't you?"

  "I've never been drunk in my life."

  Thank heaven for that!" said Annixter. Then you won't have any difficulty in remembering the little point I want you to remember." He grinned, shook his head. "You had me going there, for a minute. I thought—"

  "I don't know what you thought," the little man said. "But I'm quite sure you're mistaking me for somebody else. I haven't any idea what you're talking about I never saw you bef
ore in my life. I'm sorry. Good night."

  He turned and started up the stairs. Annixter stared after him. He couldn't believe his ears. He stared blankly after the little man for an instant, then a rush of anger and suspicion swept away his bewilderment He raced up the stairs, caught the little man by the arm.

  "Just a minute," said Annixter. "I may have been drunk, but—"

  "That," the little man said, "seems evident. Do you mind taking your hand off me?"

  Annixter controlled himself. "I'm sorry," he said. "Let me get this right, though. You say you've never seen me before. Then you weren't at the Casa Havana on the 27th—somewhere between ten' o'clock and midnight? You didn't have a drink or two with me, and listen to an idea for a play that had just come into my mind?"

  The little man looked steadily at Annixter.

  I've told you," the little man said. I've never set eyes on you before."

  "You didn't see me get hit by a taxi?" Annixter pursued, tensely. "You didn't say to the hat-check girl, 'He's not my friend. He's just someone I met'?"

  I don't know what you're talking about," the little man said sharply.

  He made to turn away, but Annixter gripped his arm again.

  I don't know," Annixter said, between his teeth, "anything about your private affairs, and I don't want to. You may have had some good reason for wanting to duck giving evidence as a witness of that taxi accident You may have some good reason for this act you're pulling on me, now. I don't know and I don't care. But it is an actl You are the man I told my play to!

  I want you to tell that story back to me as I told it to you; I have my reasons—personal reasons, of concern to me and me only. I want you to tell the story back to me—that's all I want! I don't want to know who you are, or anything about you. I just want you to tell me that story!"

  "You ask," the little man said, "an impossibility, since I never heard it."

  Annixter kept an iron hold on himself.

  He said, "Is it money? Is this some sort of a hold-up? Tell me what you want; I'll give it to you. Lord help me, I'd go so far as to give you a share in the play! That'll mean real money. I know, because I know my business. And maybe—maybe," said Annixter, struck by a sudden thought, "you know it, too! Eh?"