He pulled out of my hands and went staggering back against the wall. His eyes were bright, and his teeth showed behind his drawn lips. “What should I do?” he cried. “Forget everything now that Jessie is dead and buried? Sit here until Celia gets tired of being afraid of me and kills me too?”
My years and girth had betrayed me in that little tussle with him, and I found myself short of dignity and breath. “I’ll tell you one thing,” I said. “You haven’t been out of this house since the inquest. It’s about time you got out, if only to walk the streets and look around you.”
“And have everybody laugh at me as I go!”
“Try it,” I said, “and see. Al Sharp said that some of your friends would be at his bar and grill tonight, and he’d like to see you there. That’s my advice—for whatever it’s worth.”
“It’s not worth anything,” said Celia. The door had been opened, and she stood there rigid, her eyes narrowed against the light in the room. Charlie turned toward her, the muscles of his jaw knotting and unknotting.
“Celia,” he said, “I told you never to come into this room!”
Her face remained impassive. “I’m not in it. I came to tell you that your dinner is ready.”
He took a menacing step toward her. “Did you have your ear at that door long enough to hear everything I said? Or should I repeat it for you?”
“I heard an ungodly and filthy thing,” she said quietly, “an invitation to drink and roister while this house is in mourning. I think I have every right to object to that.”
He looked at her incredulously and had to struggle for words. “Celia,” he said, “tell me you don’t mean that! Only the blackest hypocrite alive or someone insane could say what you’ve just said, and mean it.”
That struck a spark in her. “Insane!” she cried. “You dare use that word? Locked in your room, talking to yourself, thinking heaven knows what!” She turned to me suddenly. “You’ve talked to him. You ought to know. Is it possible that—”
“He is as sane as you, Celia,” I said heavily.
“Then he should know that one doesn’t drink in salloons at a time like this. How could you ask him to do it?”
She flung the question at me with such an air of malicious triumph that I completely forgot myself. “If you weren’t preparing to throw out Jessie’s belongings, Celia, I would take that question seriously!”
It was a reckless thing to say, and I had instant cause to regret it. Before I could move, Charlie was past me and had Celia’s arms pinned in a paralyzing grip.
“Did you dare go into her room?” he raged, shaking her savagely. “Tell me!” And then, getting an immediate answer from the panic in her face, he dropped her arms as if they were red hot, and stood there sagging, with his head bowed.
Celia reached out a placating hand toward him. “Charlie,” she whimpered, “don’t you see? Having her things around bothers you. I only wanted to help you.”
“Where are her things?”
“By the stairs, Charlie. Everything is there.”
He started down the hallway, and with the sound of his uncertain footsteps moving away I could feel my heartbeat slowing down to its normal tempo. Celia turned to look at me, and there was such a raging hated in her face that I knew only a desperate need to get out of that house at once. I took my things from the bed and started past her, but she barred the door.
“Do you see what you’ve done?” she whispered hoarsely. “Now I will have to pack them all over again. It tires me, but I will have to pack them all over again—just because of you.”
“That is entirely up to you, Celia,” I said coldly.
“You,” she said. “You old fool. It should have been you along with her when I—”
I dropped my stick sharply on her shoulder and could feel her wince under it. “As your lawyer, Celia,” I said, “I advise you to exercise your tongue only during your sleep, when you can’t be held accountable for what you say.”
She said no more, but I made sure she stayed safely in front of me until I was out in the street again.
From the Boerum house to Al Sharp’s Bar and Grill was only a few minutes’ walk, and I made it in good time, grateful for the sting of the clear winter air in my face. Al was alone behind the bar, busily polishing glasses, and when he saw me enter he greeted me cheerfully. “Merry Christmas, counsellor,” he said.
“Same to you,” I said, and watched him place a comfortable-looking bottle and a pair of glasses on the bar.
“You’re regular as the seasons, counsellor,” said Al, pouring out two stiff ones. “I was expecting you along right about now.”
We drank to each other, and Al leaned confidingly on the bar. “Just come from there?”
“Yes,” I said.
“See Charlie?”
“And Celia,” I said.
“Well,” said Al, “that’s nothing exceptional. I’ve seen her too when she comes by to do some shopping. Runs along with her head down and that black shawl over it like she was being chased by something. I guess she is, at that.”
“I guess she is,” I said.
“But Charlie, he’s the one. Never see him around at all. Did you tell him I’d like to see him some time?”
“Yes,” I said. “I told him.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. Celia said it was wrong for him to come here while he was in mourning.”
Al whistled softly and expressively, and twirled a forefinger at his forehead. “Tell me,” he said, “do you think it’s safe for them to be alone together like they are? I mean, the way things stand, and the way Charlie feels, there could be another case of trouble there.”
“It looked like it for a while tonight,” I said. “But it blew over.”
“Until next time,” said Al.
“I’ll be there,” I said.
Al looked at me and shook his head. “Nothing changes in that house,” he said. “Nothing at all. That’s why you can figure out all the answers in advance. That’s how I knew you’d be standing here right about now talking to me about it.”
I could still smell the dry rot of the house in my nostrils, and I knew it would take days before I could get it out of my clothes.
“This is one day I’d like to cut out of the calendar permanently,” I said.
“And leave them alone to their troubles. It would serve them right.”
“They’re not alone,” I said. “Jessie is with them. Jessie will always be with them until that house and everything in it is gone.”
Al frowned. “It’s the queerest thing that ever happened in this town, all right. The house all black, her running through the streets like something hunted, him lying there in that room with only the walls to look at, for—when was it Jessie took that fall, counsellor?”
By shifting my eyes a little I could see in the mirror behind Al the reflection of my own face: ruddy, deep jowled, a little incredulous.
“Twenty years ago,” I heard myself saying. “Just twenty years ago tonight.”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE UNIQUE DICKENSIANS
by August Derleth
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the plethora of Holmesian pastiches produced since the 1880s might have been gratifying to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, had not so many of them been so poor.
Among the best of the imitators of the Sacred Writings was August (William) Derleth, who was born in Sauk City, Wisconsin, and who, starting at the age of thirteen, produced a large and varied collection of literary products. Cofounder of Arkham House and Mycraft & Moran, publishers of supernatural and mystery books, he claimed that he was “the most versatile and voluminous writer in quality writing fields.” Mystery fans, however, remember him for his creation of Solar Pons.
“This Christmas season,” said Solar Pons from his place at the windows of our quarters at 7B, Praed Street, “holds the promise of being a merry one, after the quiet week just past. Flakes of snow are dancing in the air, and what I see below enchan
ts me. Just step over here, Parker, and have a look.”
I turned down the book I was reading and went over to stand beside him.
Outside, the snowflakes were large and soft, shrouding the streetlight, which had come on early in the winter dusk, and enclosing, like a vision from the past, the scene at the curb—a hansom cab, no less, drawn by a horse that looked almost as ancient as the vehicle, for it stood with a dejected air while its master got out of the cab, leaning on his stick.
“It has been years since I have seen a hansom cab,” I said. “Ten, at least—if not more. And that must surely be its owner.”
The man getting out of the cab could be seen but dimly, but he wore a coat of ankle length, fitting his thin frame almost like an outer skin, and an old beaver hat that added its height to his, and when he turned to look up at the number above our outer entrance, I saw that he wore a grizzled beard and square spectacles.
“Could he have the wrong address?” I wondered.
“I fervently hope not,” said Pons. “The wrong century, perhaps, but not, I pray, the wrong address.”
“No, he is coming in.”
“Capital, capital!” cried Pons, rubbing his hands together and turning from the window to look expectantly toward the door.
We listened in silence as he applied below to Mrs. Johnson, our landlady, and then to his climbing the stairs, a little wheezily, but withal more like a young man than an old.
“But he clutches the rail,” said Pons, as if he had read my thoughts. “Listen to his nails scrape the wall.”
At the first touch of the old fellow’s stick on the door, Pons strode forward to throw it open.
“Mr. Solar Pons?” asked our visitor in a thin, rather querulous voice.
“Pray come in, sir,” said Pons.
“Before I do, I’ll want to know how much it will cost,” said our client.
“It costs nothing to come in,” said Pons, his eyes dancing.
“Everything is so dear these days,” complained the old fellow as he entered our quarters. “And money isn’t easily come by. And too readily spent, sir, too readily spent.”
I offered him a seat, and took his hat.
He wore, I saw now, the kind of black half-gloves customarily worn by clerks, that came over his wrists to his knuckles. Seeing me as for the first time, he pointed his cane at me and asked of Pons, “Who’s he?”
“Dr. Parker is my companion.”
He looked me up and down suspiciously, pushing his thin lips out and sucking them in, his eyes narrowed. His skin was the color of parchment, and his clothes, like his hat, were green with age.
“But you have the advantage of us, sir,” said Pons.
“My name is Ebenezer Snawley.” Then he turned to me and stuck out an arm. “They’re Pip’s,” he said, referring to the clerical cuffs, which I saw now they were. “No need for him to wear ’em. He’s inside, and I’m out, and it would be a shameful waste to spend good money on gloves for the few times I go out in such weather.” His eyes narrowed a trifle more. “Are you a medical man?”
I assured him that I was.
“Have a look at that, Doctor,” he said, indicating a small growth on one finger.
I examined it and pronounced it the beginning of a wart.
“Ah, then it’s of no danger to my health. I thank you. As you’re not in your office, no doubt there’ll be no fee.”
“Doctor Parker is a poor man,” said Pons.
“So am I, sir. So am I,” said Snawley. “But I had to come to you,” he added in an aggrieved voice. “The police only laugh at me. I applied to them to have the nuisance stopped.”
“What is the nature of the nuisance?” asked Pons.
“Aha! you’ve not told me your fee for consultation,” said Snawley.
“I am accustomed to setting my fee in accordance with the amount of work I must do,” said Pons. “In some cases there is no fee at all.”
“No fee? No fee at all?”
“We do on occasion manifest the spirit of Christmas,” continued Pons.
“Christmas! Humbug!” protested our client.
“Do not say so,” said Pons.
“Christmas is a time for well-meaning fools to go about bestowing useless gifts on other fools,” our client went on testily.
“But you did not come to discuss the season,” said Pons gently.
“You are right, sir. I thank you for reminding me. I came because of late I have been much troubled by some fellow who marches up and down before my house bawling street songs.”
“Are they offensive songs?”
Our visitor shook his head irritably. “Any song is offensive if I do not wish to hear it.”
“Scurrilous?”
“Street songs.”
“Do you know their words?”
“Indeed, and I do, Mr. Pons. And I should. ‘Crack ’em and try ’em, before you buy ’em eight-a-penny. All new walnuts. Crack ’em and try ’em, before you buy ’em. A shilling a-hundred. All new walnuts,’ ” he said in mimicry. “And such as ‘Rope mat! Doormat! You really must buy one to save the mud and dust; think of the dirt brought from the street for the want of a mat to wipe your feet!’ Indeed I do know them. They are old London street cries.”
Pons’s eyes now fairly glowed with pleasure. “Ah, he sells walnuts and rope mats.”
“A ragbag of a fellow. Sometimes it is hats—three, four at a time on his head. Sometimes it is cress. Sometimes flowers. And ever and anon walnuts. I could not chew ’em even if I bought ’em—and there’s small likelihood of that. Catch me wasting good money like that! Not likely.”
“He has a right to the street,” observed Pons.
“But Mr. Pons, sir, he limits himself to the street along my property. My house is on the corner, set back a trifle, with a bit of land around it—I like my privacy. He goes no farther than the edge of my property on the one side, then back around the corner to the line of my property on the other. It is all done to annoy me—or for some other reason—perhaps to get into the house and lay hands on my valuables.”
“He could scarcely effect an entrance more noisily,” said Pons, reflectively. “Perhaps he is only observing the Christmas season and wishes to favor you with its compliments.”
“Humbug!” said Snawley in a loud voice, and with such a grimace that it seemed to me he could not have made it more effectively had he practiced it in front of a mirror.
“Is he young?”
“If any young fellow had a voice so cracked, I’d send him to a doctor.” He shook his head vigorously. “He can’t be less than middle-aged. No, sir. Not with a voice like that. He could sour the apples in a barrel with such a voice.”
“How often does he come?”
“Why, sir, it is just about every night. I am plagued by his voice, by his very presence, and now he has taken to adding Christmas songs to his small repertoire, it is all the more trying. But chiefly I am plagued—I will confess it—by my curiosity about the reason for this attention he bestows upon me. I sent Pip—Pip is my clerk, retired, now, like myself, with his wife dead and his children all out in the world, even the youngest, who finally recovered his health—I sent Pip, I say, out to tell him to be off, and he but laughed at him, and gave him a walnut or two for himself, and sent one along for me! The impudence of the fellow!” His chin whiskers literally trembled with his indignation.
Pons had folded his arms across his chest, clasping his elbows with his lean fingers, holding in his mirth, which danced around his mouth and in his eyes. “But,” he said, visibly controlling himself, “if you are a poor man, you can scarcely be in possession of valuables someone else might covet.”
Plainly now our client was torn between the desire to maintain the face he had put upon himself, and to lift a little of it for us to see him a trifle more clearly; for he sat in dour silence.
The Twelve Crimes of Christmas Page 26