by Thorne Smith
“Just like a murderer,” was Tim’s moody reply. “Like Landru, Bluebeard, and Jack the Ripper. That’s how I feel.”
“It must be awful.”
“It is. Break out another bottle, Sally.”
Sally went to the cupboard and extracted from its recesses another bottle of gin. Tim opened it and drank.
“Ugh!” he muttered. “Rotten stuff. At least he won’t have a hangover.”
“Yes,” said Sally, reaching for the bottle. “He’s got you to thank for that.”
“You know,” observed her husband, “what gets the best of me is that we’re taking this murder altogether too calmly. From the way we sit here and discuss it you’d think we polished off some guy every night of our lives.”
“It’s the gin,” explained Sally, nodding wisely. “And then again, people make too much fuss about murders. They’re not nearly so bad as they’re painted. I’ve felt much more upset over a game of bridge.”
“You’re as heartless as hell. One of us should feel sorry for this body.”
“Oh, I feel sorry for it, but that doesn’t help any. It was a good body.”
“You seemed to enjoy it.”
Sally looked at him reproachfully.
“Don’t rub it in,” she said. “I’ll never have anything to do again with any person’s body except yours.”
“And you won’t have much to do with that if we don’t get rid of this one.”
“I’m too dizzy to start in grave-digging right now,” complained Sally. “Wow! I can hardly stand. Let’s put it in the basement for the time being. No one goes down there but yourself.”
“That,” replied Tim admiringly, “is what I call a swell idea. We’ll hide the beggar in the basement.”
And hide the beggar they did. It was not a pretty sight to see as they pushed and dragged the body across the floor. Dopey, aroused by the noise, took one horrified look at what was going on, then disappeared from view. He decided to give the incident a miss. One had to draw the line somewhere.
Difficulties arose on the basement steps. They were steep steps, and Sally, who had gone first, found Mr. Bentley’s feet pressing with undue emphasis against the pit of her stomach. She felt herself being shoved off into space.
“Can’t you hold this body?” she gasped. “I can’t stand its feet.”
“What’s wrong with his feet?” Mr. Willows inquired in an interested voice.
“There’s nothing wrong with his feet, you repellent ass,” replied Sally. “They’re coming down too fast, that’s all. Hold on to the body.”
“Can’t do it,” groaned Tim. “It’s too much. I can’t hold on to my own body. Do you think you could hang on while I got a drink of gin?”
“Listen, sweetie,” said Sally. “This isn’t my murder, you know. It’s all yours. If you don’t stick around now I’ll wash my hands of the body and call the whole show off. You can have the body.”
“I don’t want the body,” replied Tim.
“Well, you can’t wish it upon me. Do you think I want the body?”
“No,” replied Tim. “But someone must want a body. I wonder who?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Sally. “You can’t go round asking people if they happen to want a body.”
“I guess not,” admitted Tim. “They might ask me how I got the body in the first place.”
“Exactly. And then where would you be?”
“I’d be rid of the body if they wanted it.”
“But who wants a dead body, I’d like to know?”
“Well, I don’t, for one,” declared Tim emphatically. “I’m tired of dead bodies. Wish to God I’d never killed this one.”
“Are we going to stand here all night in idle conversation?” asked Sally.
Tim was not standing. By this time he had flattened himself on his stomach and was clinging with aching fingers to the shoulders of the much discussed body. Dopey, who had been unable to restrain his curiosity, mistook his master’s strange behaviour for alluring indications of playfulness. Evidently everything was all right, thought the dog. That terrible still figure was going. Quietly he emerged from his box and with one bound landed in the middle of Mr. Willows’s back. With a cry of utter horror Tim momentarily released his grip and the body began to slip.
“Hey!” called Sally. “What are you trying to do?”
Her question was never answered. Mr. Willows was too busy. Desperately he seized the body again, but it was too late. Mr. Bentley had evidently decided to take matters into his own hands without any further shillyshallying. He began to descend purposefully into the darkness of the basement. Tim Willows was right behind him with Dopey on his back.
“I’m done for,” panted Sally as the pressure of Mr. Bentley’s feet grew irresistible. “Here I go and here it comes.”
She abandoned all further effort and the body descended swiftly upon her as she slid down the steps. Mr. Willows and Dopey were close behind and then on top.
“I’m through,” came Sally’s discouraged voice in the darkness. “You might as well bury me too. There’s not a whole bone in my body.”
“Dopey did it,” declared her husband. “Damn him.”
“Whether Dopey did it or President Roosevelt, the result would be just the same,” said Sally. “I’m a gone girl, that’s all I know. Heave this body off and let me die in peace.”
It was a ghastly position to be lying there in the darkness on and under a dead body with a demented dog scraping briskly about the place. Neither Sally nor Tim ever forgot it. It was one of the low lights of their lives.
Tim staggered to his feet and, after some painful groping, switched on the light. Then he bestowed upon the rump of Dopey one of the most venomous kicks ever received by a dog. After he had rolled Mr. Bentley off Sally and lifted her to her feet, they both stood swaying above the body and gazed down at it with reproachful eyes.
“That’s no way for a body to act,” complained Tim. “It’s more dangerous than a thing of life.”
“Well, if that rolling pin didn’t finish him this certainly has,” remarked Sally. “Let’s get the cadaver out of the way. I’m sick of the very sight of it.”
“Hadn’t we better cover it up in the coal bin?” suggested her husband.
“Not a bad idea after all we’ve been through,” remarked Sally. “Between us we’d make one competent murderer.”
Between them and with the interference of Dopey, who had come to regard the body with jovial familiarity, they succeeded in dragging the remains of Mr. Bentley into the coal bin. Tim Willows found a shovel and began to sprinkle coal over the unpleasant object.
“This is awful,” he said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “I can hardly bring myself to do it. If people only knew how much trouble a murder involves they’d resort to some other method.”
“You should have killed him outside the house,” replied Sally, “or in his own bed.”
“You’re worse than Lady Macbeth,” retorted Mr. Willows, with a slight shudder. “By rights you should be taking this murder very much to heart, yet here you go complaining because I didn’t kill him in his own bed. I could never do a thing like that.”
“Why not?”
“What, wake a chap up only to put him to sleep for good? Horrible.”
“Why wake him up?”
Mr. Willows paused, with shovel lifted, and looked at his wife.
“Hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted. “But just the same it doesn’t seem such a nice way to murder a person.”
“And I suppose you consider whanging a man over the head with a rolling pin, shooting him down a flight of steps, and then sprinkling him liberally with coal is a nice way to do him in?”
“No, I don’t,” replied Tim, “and that’s a fact, but you see, this is my first murder and I didn’t have any time to plan it. It just happened on the spur of the moment, so to speak. In I come and down he goes. He dies and I’m a murderer. It seems too damn simple to suit me.”
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br /> “Then order your murders better in the future,” said Sally. “Do hurry up. I’m getting the horrors down here. The gin is wearing off.”
“Keep the damn dog out of my way. He’s trying to dig this body out,” replied Tim.
Moved by a sudden inspiration he pulled off Mr. Bentley’s shoes, then proceeded to submerge him in coal until the last of the body was seen. He was about to turn away when he paused hesitantly.
“Shouldn’t we say a little something?” he asked Sally. “Some sort of prayer?”
“Name one,” challenged that young lady.
“Well, I don’t know exactly,” he hedged. “Seems sort of cold-blooded to leave him here without some little thought. How about, ‘Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep’?”
Sally laughed unpleasantly.
“He didn’t lay him down, dearie,” she explained. “He was jolly well bashed down.”
“We might pray to God to forgive him for making me a murderer,” suggested Mr. Willows.
“He’s your responsibility, not mine,” said Sally indifferently. “Go ahead and take the matter up with God. I’m going to get a drink before I throw a fit.”
“You’re a hard woman, Sally,” murmured Tim regretfully, “but perhaps a drink would be the best thing after all.”
Picking up the shoes of the departed Bentley, he switched out the light and followed his wife up the steps to the kitchen. Dopey sought his box while they sought the bottle.
“Now,” said Tim with satisfaction, “you’re as much a murderer as I am. You’re an accessory after the fact. We can both get the chair. What do you think of that?”
“I don’t think so much of that, you worm,” she answered. “As a matter of fact, I think so little of that that I’ve a good mind to go in right now and call up the police.”
“That would make you a squealer,” Tim informed her scornfully.
“What do I care?” she retorted. “I’ll squeal like a pig if I feel like it.”
“Go on and squeal like a pig,” said her husband. “Squeal like a couple of pigs, for all I care.”
“I can’t squeal like a pig,” Sally replied sadly. “I don’t know how. Give me another spot of gin or I’ll squeal like a mouse.”
“Then,” said Mr. Willows, passing his wife the bottle, “the wisest thing that you can do is to go back to that bunch of drunken morons and make out that Bentley’s gone home. Tell ‘em he left by the back way and that I’ve gone to bed. Get his coat and hat out of sight as quickly as possible, then break up the party. I’m going to put on those shoes and make misleading tracks in the snow. Lock the kitchen door and remove the key after you. I’ll lock the back door when I return.”
The moment the winter night struck Mr. Willows full in the face, reason forsook him. For a long time he wandered round in the snow, leaving what he hoped were misleading tracks in his wake, but presently he forgot all about this, and finding himself standing in front of a house of vaguely familiar aspect, and suddenly realizing he was exceedingly cold, he mounted the steps and unceremoniously entered the front door. In the vestibule he dimly remembered that a very pretty woman lived in this house, a Mrs. Claire Meadows, whose husband was ever absent and whose moral and social status was ever a subject of interest to those who had little interest left in life. He had met this shapely, vivid-lipped creature on several occasions and on this occasion he met her again.
As he entered the softly illuminated sitting-room he saw her lying in nothing very much on a large divan. Eyes, lips, and silk stockings formed his first impression. Gradually he became aware of an aura of flame-colored hair and a dead white throat.
“Hello,” she said rather huskily. “I knew you would come sometime.”
“How’d you know that?” asked Tim suspiciously.
“Because you’re the most interesting man in town and I’m the most interesting woman,” he was told. Then she caught sight of his feet, burdened as they were with the huge shoes of a dead man. “God in heaven!” she exclaimed. “Why the Charlie Chaplin effect and why the pajamas and dressing robe? Did you come here to sleep, by chance?”
“Yes,” replied Mr. Willows. “By chance.”
She watched him with her deep blue shadow-touched eyes as he crossed the room and picked up the book she had been reading.
“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” he read, seating himself beside her as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “I’ve always liked that book. I’m glad you do too. I like you, you know.”
“I need a little liking,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t deserve it, perhaps, but that doesn’t keep me from needing it. This world is not overkind. I much prefer Alice’s.”
He reached out and stroked the cool skin of her white throat, and all the time the woman’s eyes were upon him. Her hands lay open at her sides, their palms upturned.
When Tim Willows left the house of Mrs. Claire Meadows some time later he had completely demolished still another commandment, for, as has been previously suggested, Tim Willows could not tolerate half measures.
“I feel that someone is dreaming me,” she said as he left, “and that when the dreamer awakes I won’t be here any more.”
“When you awake,” he told her, “perhaps I, too, shall be gone.”
Sally was in bed and peacefully sleeping when Tim turned into his. His mind was in utter confusion, filled with blank and vivid patches, with slowly revolving colors that comforted and accused. The events of the night formed themselves before his eyes and whirled blindingly like some weird effect seen on the screen. His thoughts were drugged to sleep.
A few hours later when the light was dirtily dim he awoke to find a tall, ghastly figure standing by his bed. The figure was wavering unsteadily as if moved by a spirit wind. Tim recognized the figure only too well, but no face of a living man could be as white as the face that Carl Bentley held down to him now. Tim was electrified with horror. He was shocked even more when words came out of the face… dull, mumbled words with a far-off sound.
“Move over,” moaned the apparition. “Move over. I must lie down.”
“Move over?” said Tim incredulously. “Me move over? Good God! I’ll do more than that. I’ll move clean out. You can have the whole damn bed.”
He sat up with a springlike snap and the figure started back, its eyes fixed with terror on the face of Tim Willows. A sudden, fearful memory gripped the tall, wavering shape. The face it saw was the face of a man it associated with the most deadly peril—death itself. One wild shriek pierced the silence as the figure turned with fluttering hands and fled from the room. Sally woke up in time to see it go. Immediately she disappeared beneath the coverings at which her husband was clawing with frenzied fingers.
“Oh-o-o-o-o dear, good little God, what was that?” she chattered. “Don’t pull those covers down. Stop it! Stop, I tell you!”
“I’ve got to pull those covers down,” said Tim, tremulously. “That horror actually wanted to get in bed with me. Imagine that. He might come back and try to do it again.”
“But if he sees you over here,” she protested, “he might follow and try to get in.”
“He won’t get a chance to see me,” said Tim, “and if he does we’ll just tell him flat there isn’t any more room.”
“You’ll tell him,” retorted Sally, letting her husband in. “I’ll have nothing to do with a ghost, particularly with one of your making.”
Tim pulled the covers securely over his head.
“Of all the nerve,” he murmured. “The appalling thing tried to get me to move over.”
“Pretty clubby for a man you’ve just murdered,” said Sally. “Magnanimous, I calls it. Sinister.”
“Shut up! He mightn’t know.”
“Spirits know all,” said Sally bleakly.
“Perhaps this one is dumb,” replied Tim, reaching for a straw. “I hope to God we’re still squiffed and merely imagining things. Of all the damned nights.”
Mr. Ram gazed disapprovingly down u
pon the headless bed. Things were getting out of hand… going far too far.
Chapter 4
Mr. Gibber Leaves the Room
Tim Willow’s pious hope that he was imagining things fell far short of fulfillment. Not only was it totally disregarded, but also virtually flung in his face.
Rising with a clamorous head the next morning, he gulped down some coffee, and leaving Sally still painfully sleeping, rushed from the house and along the too familiar ways that led to the station. He had had neither the time nor the inclination to visit the body in the bin. Sally would have to see to that. He scarcely cared whether she saw to it or not. Tim Willows was so nauseatingly sick and disgusted that he would have greatly preferred a quiet cell in the death house to a weary day at the office.
Of all the ghastly trips he had ever made to the station—and he had made many—this morning’s was by all odds the most like that. Never before had he achieved such abject and unqualified depths of physical, mental, and spiritual demoralization. Never before had he carried to the office such consciousness of guilt and awareness of impending evil. His body was sick and his soul was sick. He was unable to meet the eyes of the meanest of living creatures. Think as he would, he could find no redeeming quality within himself nor could he see any hope of salvation in the future. The sky ahead was drenched with ink and aggressively sinister. Soon it would swoop silently down and blot him out—smother him lingeringly. One circumstance alone saved him from going completely mad and running around in frenzied circles before the disapproving eyes of his fellow commuters. He was too physically debilitated to care a great deal whether or not he was a murderer. His mind had not yet had the opportunity to grasp the terrible significance of what he had done. That would come later in all its stark, blinding reality. Yes, there were many unpleasant things Tim Willows had to face. At the moment his reactions were merely mechanical. His conduct was dictated by sheer force of habit. Automatically he moved and thought, and with the nice instinct of a sick animal he isolated himself as well as he could from the main body of commuters exhaling frosty puffs along the station platform. A through train swept by. It was headed in the opposite direction, leaving New York behind. There was a dumb appeal in Tim’s eyes as he watched the swift passage of that train. He wished he himself were aboard it, bound away to parts unknown.