Turnabout

by Thorne Smith

  “We’ll go by the river path,” decided Tim as he led Mr. Bentley down a side street. “It’s so lovely there and quiet, and there are no prying eyes. We’ll be quite alone—just you and I and the river.”

  For some reason the way Tim brought out the words “river” and “alone” made Carl Bentley shudder slightly. He was the sort of person who confined his reading to the most lurid passages of the current novels. Quite naturally he had never made a complete job of Dreiser’s two-deck American Tragedy but he did recall the drowning scene, and felt no better for it. His mind had reached that stage of morbidity at which only the most unpleasant eventualities seemed probable.

  The success Tim had so far achieved in subjecting Carl Bentley to pain and humiliation had put him in the best of spirits. He felt that if Sally had only been present to witness his various artful dodges his triumph would have been complete. He experienced no compunction for what he had done to Bentley, nor for what he was going to do to Bentley. In fact, he was mildly surprised he had not already murdered the man. As he summed up the score between them he concluded he held a decided advantage over this would-be home wrecker. Once he had almost put an end to his unwholesome activities for all time. Now he was about to repeat the experiment. Tim looked forward to it. Tim Willows was not really a bad man at heart, but when people were mean to him he enjoyed being just a little bit meaner.

  There was still a thin coating of ice on the river. The path that ran close to its edge was narrow, slippery, and disagreeable—the last place in the world to select for a walk at that time of year. Tim pretended to enjoy it. Carl Bentley, a little revived by the fresh air, still clung to his fixed idea. He was going to have his will with Sally Willows. How else could he justify to himself the pain and indignities he had already suffered at her hands? Once more he resumed his tentative endeavor. Winding an arm round his companion’s waist he slipped and sloshed laboriously along at the side of his intended victim. In so doing he received a rather unpleasant impression. Sally Willows’s waist as he remembered it had been delightfully slim and firm. The same could not be said of it now. It was still firm but most decidedly not slim. In fact, it was almost fat. It was fat. Moodily Bentley wondered if Sally was a secret eater—a greedy woman. It would not have surprised him in the least. She was so strange, so different from other women. The truth of the matter was that Tim’s pregnancy was increasing by leaps and bounds. Unaccustomed as he was to pregnancy, especially as applied to his own person, each time he observed his mounting displacement he was freshly indignant with nature and Mr. Ram for the unfair advantage they were taking of him.

  “Soon I’ll be sitting about the house like a jovial female Falstaff unable to rise without assistance,” he had recently complained to Sally.

  “Well, you can’t eat your cake and have it, had been that lady’s unfeeling rejoinder.

  “If the situation were reversed,” Tim had observed, “and you were in my fix I’d be a damn sight more sympathetic with you than you are with me.”

  “That’s because you’re not really a woman,” she had said. “A woman is rarely sympathetic with another woman for performing her natural functions. She either looks on a prospective mother with envy or considers her extremely careless.”

  “Well, after all, it’s your figure that’s being enlarged,” Tim had replied.

  Carl Bentley was now finding things out for himself. Sally Willows’s waist was actually gross. When he attempted to elevate his grip, Tim gave a little scream and halted.

  “Let’s play clap hands!” he cried girlishly, skillfully maneuvering Mr. Bentley so that he was standing with his back to the river and perilously close to its edge. “My patties are awfully cold.”

  Without much display of enthusiasm Mr. Bentley extended his large hands and allowed himself to go through the vapid passes of this exceedingly childish game. But if Mr. Bentley was deficient in enthusiasm his companion more than made up for it. The game, which at its wildest could hardly be called gripping, seemed to stimulate his fair opponent to a frenzy of excitement. So madly did Tim’s hands slap and lunge that Carl Bentley began to wonder whether the woman had mistaken boxing for a simple nursery game. At last he found himself wholly on the defensive, busily engaged in warding off blows. A sense of unreality stole over him as he strove to hold his ground. Why should he be standing there, he wondered, permitting this silly thing to go on? Unconsciously he stepped back several paces, seeking a better foothold. He never found it. At that moment Tim broke through his guard and with a cry of innocent glee gave him a violent shove. The game ended abruptly in a crash and a plop. Carl Bentley had found his foothold on the bed of the river. Only his head was visible, but that was quite enough. From the expression on the man’s face one would have been led to believe that he was seriously contemplating suicide, whether life still held sufficient promise to make a return to it desirable. Never had Tim beheld such a brooding and disgusted countenance. This was good. He laughed shrilly and hysterically.

  “You know,” he cried, “you do look a sight. Just like John the Baptist with his head hygienically transferred to ice. Stop moping about and hurry out of there. I’m getting cold standing here on this freezing ground.”

  “Do the misfortunes of others always strike you in a humorous light?” Bentley demanded.

  “Misfortunes, nonsense!” exclaimed Tim. “You just didn’t know how to play the game, that’s all there is to it. Hurry up and let me help you. I’m simply freezing.”

  “That’s too darned bad,” replied Bentley, beginning to chatter a little himself, “but please don’t try to help me. You might get all wet. I couldn’t bear that.”

  But Tim insisted on being helpful. In his eagerness he kept getting in Mr. Bentley’s way and thwarting his most desperate effort to climb ashore. A dispassionate observer would have gained the impression that a very small woman was grimly endeavouring to prevent a very large man from quitting an ice-cold river. The dispassionate observer would have been quite right.

  In desperation the exhausted and chilled Bentley was forced to drop to his hands and knees and literally to claw his way past the obstructing legs of his rescuer. He fell panting and shivering on the muddy bank, a spent man weary of life and of all that it had to offer.

  “Hurry!” cried Tim. “I must get you home and make you strip. It’s a lucky thing I was here or you might have been standing there yet.”

  “If you hadn’t been here,” replied Mr. Bentley, with the uncivil logic of the wet male, “I wouldn’t have been standing there at all.”

  “Cheer up,” continued Tim. “What’s a little river between friends?”

  “If the river had been between us,” declared Mr. Bentley as he struggled to his feet, “it would have been a damn sight safer for me.”

  “Nonsense,” replied Tim. “Don’t go on so. You’re not the first man who ever fell in a river. Thousands drown every year. Suppose you were a lumberjack.”

  “I have no intention of ever becoming a lumberjack,” retorted Mr. Bentley.

  “But that doesn’t keep you from supposing you were one, does it?” asked Tim.

  “No,” admitted the other, “but I can’t see how supposing I was a lumberjack is going to make me any warmer or drier.”

  “It certainly won’t make you any colder or wetter, will it?” demanded Tim argumentatively.

  “All right,” said Bentley desperately. “I’m a lumberjack. What happens now?”

  “Very well, then,” replied Tim. “Come along. I knew it would be like this.”

  “Then why did you ever start out?”

  “I wanted to make sure. Thought at least we might be able to take a quiet walk without your flopping and splashing about in a river.”

  Mr. Bentley could not trust himself to reply to this unreasonable observation. Instead he gave an outlet to his pent-up emotions by sneezing inartistically all over the adjacent landscape.

  When Tim had hauled his visitor home he hustled the dripping creature up t
o the bedroom preparatory to the last act. Here he made Mr. Bentley strip to his union suit, practically dragging the clothes off the miserable man with his own two hands.

  “You wear union suits, I see,” Tim remarked as he yanked off Bentley’s soaking trousers. “Yes,” chattered Mr. Bentley. “What does Willows wear?”

  “Rags,” replied Tim. “Old, unsightly rags. He picks up things about the house and tries them on.”

  “Tough on you,” observed Mr. Bentley, his vanity getting the better of him. “I like to look nice this way. A man owes it to himself. Poor Willows. I’ll never forget the night when he hid behind the portière”

  It was this remark that settled Carl Bentley’s fate. Not only was this great oaf laboring under the delusion that he was going to seduce poor Willows’s wife, but also he was actually pitying the husband with horrid condescension.

  “That tears it,” said Tim decisively, in his natural voice.

  “Tears what?” asked Bentley, momentarily startled out of his self-satisfaction.

  “You’ll soon find out,” said Tim, walking over to the bureau and producing the automatic. With this lethal weapon held carelessly in his hands he turned on Mr. Bentley and grinned unpleasantly. “Instead of ruining me,” he continued, “I’m going to pretty well ruin you. But before I start in I want to let you know that you look simply terrible in that union suit with its tricky little trapdoor arrangement in the back. You make me ashamed of my sex, as undecided as it is at the moment.”

  Mr. Bentley’s amazement as he listened to Tim’s voice crisply issuing from Sally’s lips mounted to stupefaction. Had it not been for the blue-black automatic covering him he would have been inclined to believe that Sally was playing another trick and not a very nice one at that. The automatic, however, was altogether too convincing. Try as he would he could not find a laugh in his system sufficiently robust to do away with that disagreeable-looking object. So unnerved was Mr. Bentley that he was not even able to work up the sickest sort of a smile. Recalling his embarrassing experience on the train, he came to the conclusion that the voices of the Willows must have become interchangeable. Tim’s voice continued. He was methodically lashing himself into a fury. He fully intended to make himself madder than he had ever been in his life. It would be a fairly easy matter. One short look at Carl Bentley was enough to set him going. A long look was sure to bring on a violent rage.

  “You thought I looked so funny hiding behind that portière” he went on. “You’ll never forget it, will you?”

  Mr. Bentley was far too frightened to become further confused. He made no attempt to answer, but kept his fascinated eyes on that gun.

  “Well, here’s something else you’ll never forget,” continued Tim. “Something that will live with you to your dying day.” Tim’s voice changed suddenly to a note of sharp command. “Unbutton your little trap door,” he snapped.

  “But,” faltered Mr. Bentley, wondering what on earth was in store for him, “that’s hardly—”

  “There’s no buts about it,” interrupted Tim. “I have a desire to see it flap as you go. I want everybody to see it flap.”

  Reluctantly Carl Bentley did as he was told. He felt as if he had been deprived of his last shred of self-respect. He was not only unbuttoned, but also undone.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” observed Tim. “Now about-face and march. Go right down the stairs and directly out of this house. Don’t stop or hesitate. I’ll be close behind you with this gun. Once in the street, walk rapidly but don’t try to run. If you do I’ll start shooting. Get a move on now, and don’t talk back. You can still save your useless life if you do exactly as I tell you. Off you go.”

  Thus it came about that Mr. Carl Bentley, clad in a dripping union suit not properly arranged in the back, was seen walking briskly along the streets by practically the entire population of that suburban town. About ten yards behind this arresting figure came Tim Willows. In his hand was an automatic.

  Carl Bentley at first endeavored to give the impression of a man walking in a trance or in sleep, but as he neared the more populous quarter of the town his frayed nerves snapped and he incontinently fled. Tim, in spite of the fact that he was running for two, did his best to keep up with the fleeing man. The sight of the flapping trap door added greatly to the pleasure of the pursuit. It was then that the shooting began, which terminated only when Mr. Bentley sought protection behind Sally.

  The little party, escorted by the state troopers, proceeded down the street and entered the police station, which also served as the courthouse. As Mr. Bentley was about to go in, one of the troopers rapped him smartly with his club.

  “Button that up,” said the trooper. “Have you no pride?”

  Mechanically Mr. Bentley’s fingers began to grope for the button of what Tim had been pleased to call the little trap door.

  Chapter 14

  Much Ado About Honor

  “Well, well, well,” drawled Sergeant Devlin, letting his pleased eyes dwell ironically on the strange figure of Mr. Carl Bentley. “What have we here?”

  “Damned if I rightly know,” replied one of the state troopers. “I’ve never laid violent hands on anything exactly like it since I’ve been in the force. It’s all wet and nasty.”

  “I shall remember the revolting circumstances when recommending you for promotion,” observed the sergeant, returning once more to his rapt contemplation of the miserable object under discussion. “You know,” he continued, in his calm, deliberate voice, “I’ve sat here behind this desk for many a long year and during that time some mighty unpalatable-looking specimens have been dragged in off the streets, but this one is by all odds the queerest—the most difficult to classify as a member of the human race. It’s enough to unseat one’s reason.” Having delivered himself of this scholarly observation—Sergeant Devlin being an exceptionally well-educated officer—he let his eyes refresh themselves on the figure of one he mistook for a small but none the less appealingly fashioned woman. Suddenly he started and a dismayed expression appeared in his eyes. “Joe,” he said to one of the troopers, “what is the little lady doing with that large gun in her hand? That doesn’t strike me as being quite prudent. Ladies with revolvers are notoriously irregular. However, it doesn’t really matter. Everything connected with this affair seems to be somewhat irregular.” Giving the officer addressed as Joe no opportunity to reply, the sergeant resumed his dispassionate scrutiny of Carl Bentley. “Couldn’t you have arranged to put a little something on before getting yourself brought before me?” he inquired, with surprising gentleness. “Had it been the lady, now, I would have offered no word of protest, but then I suppose in my job one shouldn’t expect too much in the way of amusement.” At this point in the officer’s monologue it was on Sally’s stubble-covered face rather than on Tim’s smooth one that the blush of modesty appeared. Tim in his vulgar manner giggled rather indecently. Sergeant Devlin was quick to note the incongruity of these reactions. “Who is that man?” he demanded, inclining his head in the direction of Sally.

  “Seems to be the lady’s husband,” one of the troopers replied.

  “He seems to be?” repeated Devlin. “‘Seems’ is hardly the word. Either he is or he isn’t the lady’s husband. However, it doesn’t matter. That may be irregular, too.”

  “We’re man and wife,” spoke up Sally, with truly ladylike hauteur.

  “That could easily be possible,” replied Sergeant Devlin, looking more searchingly at the male owner of the female voice, “but which is the man and which is the wife is still a question in my mind. Your attributes seem to have become strangely confused.” Once more he turned his attention to Carl Bentley. “You know,” he remarked easily to that individual, “your quaint idea of a gentleman’s walking attire has placed you in a very unfortunate position, my dear sir. Even before this obviously involved situation has been made clear to me I feel strongly inclined to charge you with several disgusting offences.”

  “I had no opportunit
y,” Carl Bentley protested in a feeble voice. “I was fleeing for my life.”

  “Was it worth it?” asked the sergeant, with the detached interest of the true skeptic. “I believe things would have worked out better for you in the long run if you had lost your life. Many persons—I don’t say all—but many nice-minded persons would rather be found dead than caught the way you are.”

  “But that woman was trying to murder me,” whined the no longer statuesque Mr. Bentley, pointing an accusing finger at the cause of his degradation. “She’s a terrible woman, Sergeant. You don’t know. There’s something strange about her.”

  A smothered exclamation broke from the undeniably provocative lips that circumstance had thrust on Tim.

  “You horrid man!” he cried threateningly. “You just wait until I tell the nice officer all about how you tried to do in my honor. If you’d had your way with me I wouldn’t have had enough honor left to dust a fiddle with.”

  As Sergeant Devlin smiled approvingly on Tim the miserable Mr. Bentley shivered with apprehension. The poor man seemed to realize he had not the ghost of a chance. The sergeant’s next remark made assurance doubly sure.

  “I can see nothing strange in the lady’s conduct,” Devlin observed. “I would very much like to murder you myself. Unfortunately duty forbids.” He turned graciously to Tim. “Not that it matters much,” continued the sergeant, “but did you have any definite reason for wanting to kill this creature, madam, or were you merely trying to perform a public service? I’ve always been interested in trifles.”