I looked at the square post at the top of the railing and the short, thick candle still burning on top of it. I didn’t want to touch it; I wanted to be able to say that I hadn’t touched anything at all, except to feel for a heartbeat that wasn’t there. Yet I couldn’t leave the candle burning, either; it might set the house afire if it fell over, as Smith hadn’t anchored it down with molten wax but had merely stood it on its base.
I compromised by blowing it out but not touching it otherwise.
My flashlight showed me there was nothing or no one on the stairs leading down to the second floor and that the door at the bottom of them was still closed, as we had left it. Before I started down them I took one last look around the attic with my flash. The shadows jumped as the beam swept around the walls, and then, for some reason, I brought the circle of light to rest on Yehudi Smith’s body lying sprawled there on the floor, eyes wide open and still staring unseeingly at the rafters overhead, his face still frozen in the grimace of that horrible, if brief, pain in which he’d died.
I hated to leave him alone there in the dark. Silly and sentimental as the thought was. I couldn’t help feeling that way. He’d been such a nice little guy. Who the hell had killed him, and why, and why in such a bizarre manner, and what was it all about? And he’d said it was dangerous to come here tonight, and he was dead right, as far as he himself was concerned. And I——?
With that thought, I was afraid again. I wasn’t out of here yet. Was someone or something waiting downstairs?
The attic stairs were uncarpeted and they squeaked so loudly that I gave up trying to walk quietly and hurried. The attic door creaked, too, but nothing was waiting for me on the other side of it. Or downstairs, I flashed my light into the big living room as I passed the doorway and got a momentary fright as I thought something white was coming toward me—but it was only the sheeted table and it had only seemed to move.
The porch and down the porch steps.
The car was still there on the driveway beside the house. It was a coupé, I noticed now, and the same make and model as mine. My feet crunched gravel as I walked to it; I was still scared but I didn’t dare let myself run. I wondered if Smith had left the key in the car, and hoped frantically that he had. I should have thought of it while I was still in the attic and could have felt in his pockets. I wouldn’t go back up there now, I realized, for anything in the world. I’d walk back to town first.
At least the car door wasn’t locked. I slid in under the wheel, and flashed my light on the dashboard. Yes, the ignition key was in the lock. I slammed the door behind me and felt a little more secure inside the closed car.
I turned the key and stepped on the starter and the engine started the first try. I shifted into low gear and then, before I let out the clutch, I carefully shifted back into neutral again and sat there with the motor idling.
This wasn’t the car in which Yehudi Smith had driven me here. The gear shift knob was hard rubber with a ridge around it, not the smooth onyx ball I’d noticed on the gear shift lever of his car. It was like the one on my car, which was back home in the garage with two flat tyres that I hadn’t got around to fixing.
I turned on the dome light, although by then I didn’t really have to. I knew already from the feel of the controls in starting and in shifting, from the sound of the engine, from a dozen little things.
This was my car.
It was so impossible that I forgot to be afraid, that I was in such a hurry to get away from the house. Oh, there was a little logic in my lack of fear, too; if anybody had been laying for me, the house would have been the place. He wouldn’t have let me get this far and he wouldn’t have left the ignition key in the car so I could get away in it.
I got out of the car and looked, with the flashlight, at the two tyres which had been flat this morning. They weren’t flat now. Either someone had fixed them, or someone had simply let the air out of them last night and had subsequently pumped them up again with the hand pump I keep in my luggage compartment. The second idea seemed more likely; now that I thought of it, it was strange that two tyres—both in good shape and with good tubes in them—should have gone flat, completely flat, at the same time and while the car was standing in my garage.
I walked all the way around the car, looking at it, and there wasn’t anything wrong with it that I could see. I got back in under the wheel and sat there a minute with the engine running, wondering if it was even remotely possible that Yehudi Smith had driven me here in my own car.
No, I decided, not remotely. I hadn’t noticed his car at all except for three things, but those three things were plenty to make me sure. Beside the gear shift knob, I remembered that push-button radio with the button for WBBM pushed in—and my car has no radio at all—and there was the fact that his engine was noisy and mine is quiet. Right then, with it idling, I could barely hear it.
Unless I was crazy——
Could I have imagined that other car? For that matter, could I have imagined Yehudi Smith? Could I have driven out here by myself in my own car, gone up to the attic alone——?
It’s a horrible thing to suspect yourself suddenly of complete insanity, equipped with hallucinations.
I realized I’d better quit thinking along those lines, here alone in a car, alone in the night, parked beside a haunted house. I might drive myself nutty, if I wasn’t already.
I took a long drink out of the bottle that was now on the seat beside me, and then drove out to the highway and back to town. I didn’t drive fast, partly because I was a little drunk—physically anyway. The horrible thing that had happened up in the attic, the fantastic, incredible death of Yehudi Smith, had shocked me sober, mentally.
I couldn’t have imagined——
But at the edge of town the doubts came back, then the answer to them. I pulled to the side of the road and turned on the dome light. I had the card and the key and the flashlight, those three souvenirs of my experience. I took the flashlight out of my coat pocket and looked at it. Just a dime-store flashlight; it meant nothing except that it wasn’t mine. The card was the thing. I hunted in several pockets, getting worried as hell, before I found it in the pocket of my shirt. Yes, I had it, and it still read Yehudi Smith. I felt a little better as I put it back in my pocket. While I was at it, I looked at the key, too. The key that had been with the “DRINK ME” bottle on the glass-topped table.
It was still there in the pocket Smith had dropped it into; I’d not touched it or looked at it closely. It was, of course, the wrong kind of key, but I’d noticed that at first glance when I’d seen it on the table in the attic; that had been part of my source of amusement when I’d laughed. It was a Yale key, and it should have been a small gold key, the one Alice used to open the fifteen-inch-high door into the lovely garden.
Come to think of it, all three of those props in the attic had been wrong, one way or another. The table had been a glass-topped one, but it should have been an all-glass table; the wooden legs were wrong. The key shouldn’t have been a nickel-plated Yale, and the “DRINK ME” should not have contained poison. (It had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffy, and hot buttered toast – according to Alice.) It couldn’t have tasted anything like that to Smith.
I started driving again, slowly. Now that I was back in town I had to make up my mind whether I was going to the sheriffs office or going to call the state police. Reluctantly I decided I’d better go right to the sheriff. Definitely this case was in his department, unless he called on the state police for help. They’d dump it in his lap anyway, even if I called them. And he hated my guts enough as it was, without my making it any worse by by-passing him in reporting a major crime. Not that I didn’t hate his guts just as much, but tonight he was in a better position to make trouble for me than I was for him.
So I parked my coupé across the street from the courthouse and took one more swig from the bottle to give me courage to tell Kates the story I was going to have t
o tell him. Then I marched myself across the street and up the courthouse stairs to the sheriffs office on the second floor. If I was lucky, I thought, Kates might be out and his deputy, Hank Ganzer, might be there.
I wasn’t lucky. Hank wasn’t there at all, and Kates was talking on the phone. He glared at me when I came in and then went back to his call.
“Hell, I could have done it on the phone from here. Go see the guy. Wake him up and be sure he’s awake enough to remember any little thing that might have been said. Yeah, then call me again before you start back.”
He put the receiver down and his swivel chair squeaked shrilly as he swung about to face me. He yelled, “There isn’t any story on it yet.” Rance Kates always yells; I’ve never heard him say anything in a quiet tone, or even a normal one. His voice matches his red face, which always looks angry. I’ve often wondered if he looks like that even when he’s in bed. Wondered, but had no inclination to find out.
What he’d just yelled at me, though, made so little sense that I just looked at him.
I said, “I’ve come to report a murder, Kates.”
“Huh?” He looked interested. “You mean you found either Miles or Bonney?”
For a minute neither name registered at all. I said, “The man’s name is Smith.” I thought I’d better sneak up on the Yehudi part gradually, maybe let Kates read it himself off the card. “The body is in the attic of the old Wentworth place out on the pike.”
“Stoeger, are you drunk?”
“I’ve been drinking,” I told him. “I’m not drunk.” At least I hoped I wasn’t. Maybe that last one I’d taken in the car just before I’d left it had been one too many. My voice sounded thick, even to me, and I had a hunch my eyes were looking a trifle bleary from the outside; they were beginning to feel that way from my side of them.
“What were you doing in the attic of the Wentworth place? You mean you were there tonight?”
I wished again that Hank Ganzer had been there instead of Kates. Hank would have taken my word for it and gone out for the body; then my story wouldn’t have sounded so incredible when I’d have got around to telling it.
I said, “Yes, I just came from there. I went there with Smith; at his request.”
“Who is this Smith? You know him?”
“I met him tonight for the first time. He came to see me.”
“What for? What were you doing out there? A haunted house!”
I sighed. There wasn’t anything I could do but answer his damn questions and they were getting tougher all the time. Let’s see, how could I put it so it wouldn’t sound too crazy?
I said, “We went there because it is supposed to be a haunted house, Kates. This Smith was interested in the occult—in psychic phenomena. He asked me to go out there with him to perform an experiment. I gathered that some other people were coming, but they didn’t.”
“What kind of an experiment?”
“I don’t know. He was killed before we got around to it.”
“You and him were there alone?”
“Yes,” I said, but I saw where that was leading so I added, “But I didn’t kill him. And I don’t know who did. He was poisoned.”
“Poisoned how?”
Part of my brain wanted to tell him, “Out of a little bottle labelled ‘DRINK ME’ on a glass table, as in Alice in Wonderland.” The sensible part of my brain told me to let him find that out for himself. I said, “Out of a bottle that was planted there for him to drink. By whom, I don’t know. But you sound like you don’t believe me. Why don’t you go out and see for yourself, Kates? Damn it, man, I’m reporting a murder.” And then it occurred to me there wasn’t really any proof of that, so I amended it a little: “Or at least a death of violence.”
He stared at me and I think he was becoming convinced, a little.
His phone rang and his swivel chair screamed again as he swung around. He barked “Hello. Sheriff Kates,” into it.
Then his voice tamed down a little. He said, “No, Mrs. Harrison, haven’t heard a thing. Hank’s over at Neilsville, checking up at that end, and he’s going to watch the road again on his way back. I’ll call you the minute I learn anything at all. But don’t worry; it can’t be anything serious.”
He turned back. “Stoeger, if this is a gag, I’m going to take you apart.” He meant it, and he could do it, too. Kates is only a medium-sized man, not too much bigger than I, but he’s tough and hard as a rock physically. He can handle men weighing half again as much as he does. And he’s got enough of a sadistic streak to enjoy doing it whenever he has a good excuse for it.
“It’s no gag,” I said. “What’s this about Miles Harrison and Ralph Bonney?”
“Missing. They left Neilsville with the Bonney pay roll a little after half past eleven and should have been back here around midnight. It’s almost two o’clock and nobody knows where they are. Look, if I thought you were sober and there was a stiff out on the pike, I’d call the state cops. I got to stay here till we find what happened to Miles and Bonney.”
The state cops were fine, as far as I was concerned. I’d reported it where it should have been reported, and Kates would have no kickback if he himself called the state police. I was just opening my mouth to say that might be a good idea when the phone rang again.
Kates yelled into it, and then, “As far as the teller knew, they were heading right back, Hank? Nothing unusual happened at that end, huh? Okay, come back; and watch both sides of the road all the way in case they ran off it or something…. Yeah, the pike. That’s the only way they could’ve come. Oh, and listen, stop at the Wentworth place on your way and take a look in the attic … Yeah, I said the attic. Doc Stoeger’s here, drunk as a coot, and he says there’s a stiff in the attic there. If there is one, I’ll worry about it.”
He slammed the receiver down and started shuffling papers on his desk, trying to look busy. Finally he thought of something to do and phoned the Bonney Fireworks Company to see if Bonney had showed up there yet, or called them. Apparently, from what I could hear of the conversation, he hadn’t done either.
I realized that I was still standing up and that now, since Kates had given that order to his deputy, nothing was going to happen until Hank got back—at least half an hour if he drove slowly to watch both sides of the road. So I found myself a chair and sat down. Kates shuffled papers again and paid no attention to me.
I got to wondering about Bonney and Miles, and hoped they hadn’t had an accident. If they had had one, and were two hours overdue, it must have been a bad one. Unless both were seriously hurt, one of them would have reached a phone long before this. Of course they could have stopped somewhere for a drink, but it didn’t seem likely, not for two hours at least. And, come to think of it, they couldn’t have; the closing hour for taverns applied to the whole county, not just to Carmel City. Twelve o’clock had been almost two hours ago.
I wished that it wasn’t. Not that I either needed or wanted a drink particularly at that moment, but it would have been much more pleasant to do my waiting at Smiley’s instead of here in the sheriff’s office.
Kates suddenly swivelled his chair at me, “You don’t know anything about Bonney and Harrison, do you?”
“Not a thing,” I told him.
“Where were you at midnight?”
With Yehudi. Who’s Yehudi? The little man who wasn’t there.
I said, “Home, talking to Smith. We stayed there until half past twelve.”
“Anybody else there?”
I shook my head. Come to think of it, nobody but myself had, as far as I knew, even seen Yehudi Smith. If his body wasn’t in the attic at the Wentworth place, I was going to have a hell of a time proving he’d ever existed. A card and a key and a flashlight.
“Where’s this Smith guy come from?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”
“What was his first name?”
I stalled on that one. I said, “I don’t remember. I’ve got his card somewhere. He gave me
one.” Let him think the card was probably out at the house. I wasn’t ready to show it to him yet.
“How’d he happen to come to you to go to a haunted house with him if he didn’t even know you?”
I said, “He knew of me, as a Lewis Carroll fan.”
“A what?”
“Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking-Glass.” And a “DRINK ME” bottle on a glass table, and a key, and Bandersnatches and Jabberwocks. But let Kates find that out for himself, after he’d found a body and knew that I wasn’t either drunk or crazy.
He said, “Alice in Wonderland!” and sniffed. He glared at me a full ten seconds and then decided, apparently, that he was wasting his time on me and swivelled back to his paper shuffling.
I felt in my pockets to make sure that the card and the key were still there. They were. The flashlight was still in the car, but the flashlight didn’t mean anything anyway. Maybe the key didn’t either. But the card was my contact with reality, in a sense. As long as it still said Yehudi Smith, I knew I wasn’t stark raving mad. I knew that there’d really been such a person and that he wasn’t a figment of my imagination.
I slipped it out of my pocket to look at it again. Yes, it still said, “Yehudi Smith”, although my eyes had a bit of trouble focusing on it clearly. The printing looked fuzzy, which meant I needed either one more drink or several less.
Yehudi Smith, in fuzzy-edged type. Yehudi, the little man who wasn’t there.
And suddenly—don’t ask me how I knew, but I knew. I didn’t see the pattern, but I saw that much of it. The little man who wasn’t there.
Wouldn’t be there.
Hank was going to come in and say, “What’s this about a stiff in the Wentworth attic? I couldn’t find one.”
Yehudi. The little man who wasn’t there. I saw a man upon the stair, A little man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today; Gee, I wish he’d go away.
Night of the Jabberwock Page 12