by Zenith Brown
Then he saw they were up, or somebody was. A curtain moved in one of the long windows at the bridge side of the house, and he saw a golden head, Anita’s or Lucy’s, he couldn’t tell which, before the curtain settled into place again. Stan he did not expect to be up. In fact the whole quiet, reasonable and convincing scene he’d carefully rehearsed was based on Stan’s being gigantically hung over and remorseful enough to listen to him. He took a tighter grip on himself. There was to be no violence, no anger, no recrimination, just the plain facts of Stan’s obligation, chiefly to himself as a fine, upstanding spokesman whose reputation was his cakes and ale, even if Anita still supplied the bread and butter. It was all set in O’Leary’s mind as he passed the yellow midget, glancing down at it, the dew shining on the red leather seat.
Something else was shining at the base of the gear shift, on the dusty, red, rubber floor mat, that he saw without seeing until he was a couple of yards along.
He stopped, frowning a little. But that was because he was fifty-cent piece conscious, as a result of the Three D. Anybody could drop a half-dollar and not see it, rolled on its side up against the small, metal dome that housed the gear shift. He wasn’t conscious of turning his head to look back. It was a purely automatic response . . . as automatic as his jaw dropping, his spine stiffening, as he swung full face around, staring at the front right tyre. The sun was on it, and glinting there in the white wall was a splinter of sapphire-blue glass. It was like a minute stiletto, or a jewelled dart shot from a blowpipe, buried with real force in the side face of the tyre.
As O’Leary stood there, too startled and too shocked to believe what he knew he saw, he was suddenly aware, out of a curious mental din all around him, that he was not alone. Someone was behind him, seeing what he’d seen, knowing he’d seen it and recognised it—someone as motionless and silent and shocked by it as he was. But the silence and the immobility were only for an instant.
“. . . . Oh, good morning, Uncle Spig!”
Lucy Bronson came quickly up to him, her cornflower blue eyes clear and guileless as the day. “Nobody up but me. I’ve been up for hours. Really, hours!”
Only the ghost of the pallor round her red lips, a ghost vanishing but not quite gone, was left to tell O’Leary he was right. She’d seen the blue glass splinter; she knew he’d seen it.
“Won’t you come on in? I’ll make us some coffee. And oh! Uncle Spig! Have you heard the awful thing that happened to Nick at the Three D last night?”
The blue eyes widened inquiringly.
“The most awful thing! Somebody broke a big hole in his glass wall.”
She looked down then at Dunning’s car.
“Oh! Oh, look!” Both eyes and the red mouth were wide open with astonishment. “Lookie! I must have picked up a piece when I was down there this morning! It was all over the place.”
“It was in a nice, neat pile at half-past seven, Lucy,” Spig said dispassionately.
“Oh, but I mean this morning last night.” She laughed, but there had been a sapphire splinter of alarm behind the long, dark lashes for an instant. “It was when Uncle Art and I were coming home. We saw a light out back and drove around. That must be when we picked it up. Isn’t that the oddest thing! You’d think we’d have got it on the front of the tyre, not the side . . .”
She skipped past him and tried to pull the splinter out.
“Ooh . . . that’s sharp! I’ll cut myself!”
She shook her fingers with a comic moue. “I’ll run get some tweezers. I want Uncle Art to see it.”
“I suppose you and Uncle Art called the sheriff’s office.”
“Heavens, no. Why should we? Lucy laughed again. “Nick’s gooney. He’d just blame it on some of the kids. We don’t go to his place any more. He lets the kids have liquor.”
“I’d skip that one, Lucy.”
“What do you mean, skip that one? If Nick’s been saying——”
“He hasn’t said a thing, Lucy.” Spig looked down at her for a moment. “But it’s a public place. Not as empty as you thought, last night. So don’t bother to tell either me or Mr. Cameron Nick’s sold you liquor. And watch it, baby. Charlie’s father was down there looking for him.”
He went on, aware that she was standing stock-still behind him. Then he heard her feet on the drive and glanced back. She was running to the studio, pulling the door open, and he could hear her running up the steps, banging frantically on the door of the apartment. Dunning’s rôle seemed to be an oddly devious one for a friend of the family . . . if he was a friend of the family.
He went on between the two cars to the front door. His own rôle was as curious, on another level. If the oath he’d just taken meant anything, he ought to impound the car at once, with the evidence of the blue glass splinter and the fifty-cent piece still in it. He hesitated for an instant, standing there. The door was open, the screen unlocked. He listened, then went inside and down the hall to the kitchen. It was empty. He went over to the telephone on the counter and looked up the number of the Three D, keeping one eye on the yellow midget in the drive. It was Greg’s high-pitched voice answering.
“Let me speak to Mr. Yerby, if he’s still there, Greg. Mr. O’Leary talking.” When the sheriff came on he said, “Spig, Buck. What’s the deal?”
“Just like I told you,” Yerby’s voice was a rasp of frustrated anger. “This drunk fella backed his car in the wall, Nick tells me. A nice fella, gave Nick the cash money to pay for it. Didn’t give his name and Nick didn’t take his license number.”
“The slot machine?”
“That old fifty-cent slot’s gone to the shop. A guy hit the jackpot and the thing jammed. Like I said, O’Leary. Nothing happened. Nobody knows a g.d. thing.”
He jammed the phone down just as O’Leary heard another voice, cool and bitter, in the door behind him.
“Oh. The O’Leary show.”
He put the phone down and turned. Anita Ashton was poised in the swinging door from the pantry, in a tailored white terry cloth coat belted like a dress with a short, full skirt, her yellow hair sleek, her lipstick accentuating the hard, narrow line of her mouth, her dark eyes levelled on him burning with resentment.
“I’m honoured, Mr. O’Leary.” She let the door swing sharply as she came forward across the kitchen. “Has your wife sent you to collect Molly Ashton’s board bill she complains to Mag Cameron we haven’t paid? Or have you come to check on my maid? She’s quit, all right. There’s her note. You may read it—if you haven’t already.”
She pointed to the yellow counter. Spig picked the note up.
“Mrs. Ashton—Mr. O’Leary and Mr. and Mrs. Cameron were here. The doctor said Mr. Ashton should stay in bed and not have any more to drink. I’m sorry to leave before you come home. You can let to-day’s money go, unless you want Lucy to give it to my mother over at Mrs. Sudley’s.—Aletha.”
He put it down. “The Camerons had nothing to do with it, Anita,” he said quietly. “I may have. I told her she was headed for trouble. If you’ll get your daughter to tell you the truth——”
“My daughter’s never told me anything but the truth.” Anita was seethingly angry but controlled. “Lucy has her faults. She wouldn’t be my child or her father’s if she hadn’t. But lying’s not one of them. She’s never had to lie to me. And believe me, I’m sick of all the lies the rest of you tell. Mag Cameron, and those miserable Potter girls, ugly little brats . . .”
“That’s hardly their fault, is it? At least Lucy knows who her parents are. She’s not adopted, the way the Potter kids all were. It’s pretty lousy to take your spite out on them, Anita.”
“But anybody can take their spite out on Lucy—because she’s pretty and all the men are crazy about her. Like Mag Cameron. Lucy snitched a martini. Well, she did. She snitched it by request, and the alcoholic old bag she snitched it for stood right there and let Meg blast Lucy and never opened her mouth. And all the stuff about Lucy and Charlie Sudley. Lucy wouldn’t be seen dead with Char
lie Sudley.”
“Nuts,” Spig O’Leary said quietly. “If you believe that, why don’t you get her in here? Ask her where she was last night?”
“Because I know where she was! She was at a movie with Arthur Dunning, and at Colby’s Carnival, riding the ferris wheel while Art sketched a Devon background. I saw them leave here and I heard them come home. I’d have been with them except that Stan Ashton . . .”
Two intense spots burned suddenly in her cheeks as she yanked open the ice box, took a can of orange juice out of it and banged it shut.
“——Stan Ashton.” Her voice was icy with contempt. “Stan Ashton didn’t drink. That’s one of the reasons I married him . . . to get away from the lushes and the liquor, down here to the pure, simple life in the country. Stan was different. Stan worked. Stan believed in something. Money wasn’t important to Stan. And I believed it. I thought it was wonderful. Ha! Stan Ashton would sell his right eye for one dollar and ninety eight cents cash on the barrel head. You can buy any ideal he’s got for thirty cents and get a free lecture thrown in on the cupidity of all the rest of the human race. It makes me sick . . . sick . . . sick!”
The lines of her mouth were drawn down with the bitter taste of it.
“That’s the kind of stupid fool I was. I believed what he said. I believed you people in the country were different from people in New York. I wanted Lucy out of there, away from a crowd she was running with, anything to be smart, anything for a thrill. And her father . . . that’s one of the reasons I divorced him—always against her, always believing the worst, never giving the kid a break. It was always her fault if she was in a mess. So I let her come down here—to what? To a lot of carping old blue-nosed bags that don’t have guts enough to talk to me. Art Dunning’s the one they talk to. Well, I’m sick of it. I’m through. I’m getting out. And if there’s anything I can do to pay back all the hypocrisy and all the crap I’ve taken from you people . . .”
“And that includes selling this place to——”
“It includes anything and everything, O’Leary. You’d be surprised.”
She laughed, suddenly brittle, lightly contemptuous. “It even includes watching my old and sometimes constant friend Art Dunning falling in love with your wife. You haven’t a chance, O’Leary. Not when Arthur puts his mind to his wooing. He’s enchanting, believe me, and this time he’s playing for keeps. Molly’ll never know what hit her. One third of his family pill business flows a rich and lovely green, O’Leary. All for Molly. No more cooking or washing or taxi-ing kids around. Money and charm—or vice versa. So now if you’re through in my kitchen, will you kindly get out?”
“Happy to, Anita.” He controlled the white-hot anger, keeping his voice cool, movements deliberate. “I came to see Stan.”
“Good. He’ll love it, I’m sure. Go right ahead. Whether he can talk is something else again. That’s his problem. If he wants a touch of dog hair, tell him it’s kaput. Doctor’s orders. His blood pressure won’t take it. Go right ahead. O’Leary. He’ll probably weasel. It’s unfortunate this place is in his name, not mine. If it was mine, brother, would I love it.”
“I’ll bet you would.” He pushed the pantry door open.
“And take a look at Arthur Dunning’s portrait of the Master,” she said as it swung shut again. “That’s Stan Ashton, the louse he is, not the philosopher king he pretends in public.”
O’Leary went on into the dining-room, a gall-bitter taste in his own mouth. He crossed the eggshell Chinese rug out into the hall, along to the double doors, closing them carefully behind him. The shattered mirror table had been taken away. In its place was a large blotch of dirty grey where the whisky and ice had dried, fading the jade-green carpet. He started to go on through into Ashton’s room and stopped, moving over to the fireplace instead, not to look at the Dunning portrait but to give him time to get control of himself. He had to be calm and reasonable when he talked to Stan. But the portrait dominated the room, a living thing, the lusty gaiety of the bawdy street with a luminous vitality in its wicked contrast to the doctrinaire, superior smile of the prig getting ready to wipe it out, the bloodless puritan sanitizing the dens of the joyful unrighteous for their own good. It wasn’t the portrait of a man. It was a caricature of an egoist, the truth pricked out with a rapier vicious in its subtlety, with a malicious wit as venomous as the flick of a cobra’s fang.
He turned away, trying for an instant to remember the old Ashton, the one before the slow stain of the world set in, and moved his head sharply round as he heard a stealthy creak in the panelled wall next to the fireplace. The door was opening, cautiously and very quietly. Stan Ashton crept in, his eyes shifty with anxiety, fixed towards Anita’s room as he closed the door as softly as he could manage with his hand shaking on the knob. He was dressed for town in a grey pin-stripe summer worsted, his hat and brief-case in his hand.
Spig watched him, his rugged face impassive. There was something revolting in the pantomime of the morning after, the careful, sneaking tread, the ghastly, grey face, razor nicked, the whole unguarded nakedness of a man who thought he was alone, unobserved, mask down, too intent on himself and his movements to see around him. He got the door shut, steadied himself dizzily a moment, and set out on tip-toe across the room, towards the steps up to the hall.
“Hallo, Stan.”
The brief-case thudded to the floor, the hat rolling under the table. Ashton staggered and caught himself, swinging around, gripping the back of the chair by the table to hold himself up.
“Oh . . . I . . . didn’t know you were here, Spig.” He even managed a thin smile. “I hope it’s nothing important.” He looked at the gold bracelet watch on his wrist. “I’m in a good deal of a rush this morning.”
Watching him intently, Spig could see the sudden decision to face it out, the crafty glint in Ashton’s eyes as he raised his brows.
“Of course, if it’s about the strip across the road that we had some vague idea of selling the State . . .”
“It wasn’t vague, Stan, and we weren’t selling it.” O’Leary downed the sharp spurt of adrenalin that made his muscles twitch for an instant. “We were going to give it. But it’s not that I’m here about. It’s this side of the road.”
“Oh, well, my dear fellow . . . nothing’s settled about that. Anita’s just exploring——”
“That’s a lie, Stan.” The wave of anger rose again, wiping out all the sweet reasonableness he’d planned. “It’s not Anita. It’s you. And it’s not being explored. It’s settled—waiting for you to get out to avoid the stink. But you’re not getting out, Stan. You’re staying. Right here.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Spig!” Except that he was still holding on to the chair, Ashton had got his professional superiority intact. “Stop being so damned Neanderthallish, will you? It’s so childish. And such an unmitigated bore.” He managed to shrug. “That’s the only reason I haven’t consulted you about my plans. It’s so futile to try to get you to see anything intelligently that I decided the hell with it. I get so fed up with the mores of the herd. The destructive apathy——”
“Climb down, Stan. I’m not a woman’s club.”
Ashton’s grey face flushed, his lips tightening.
“My dear Spig . . . you barge into my house and attack me, and expect me to get down and grovel on all fours. This O’Leary superiority complex gives me an acute pain in the apse, old fellow. You’re just eaten with envy. You can’t forgive me for making a name for myself. You’ve resented every success I’ve ever had. Everything you can do to belittle me and undermine my influence here in Devon you’ve done religiously, you and all the rest of them. I’ve been hamstrung, pilloried . . . never the least co-operation in anything I’ve done here.”
“Have you done anything, Stan? Except talk?”
“That’s just what I’m saying.” Ashton’s voice rose, shaking. “All right. You’ve asked for it. You can have it. I am selling. Not for money. Money’s nothing to me. It’s the freedom . . .
freedom to get out of this filthy hole, freedom to live and do my work! And you, over there, sweating like a pig to make both ends meet . . . you’re a fool, Spig! A fool, do you hear? Well, I’m not. I’m cleaning up while I’ve got a chance. I won’t have to be humiliated every time Anita doles out ten cents. I’ll be rich. And for you to have the effrontery to come over to me, as if I’m accountable to you for what I do——”
“Stan,” Spig said quietly. “Listen. You are accountable to me, and you damn well know it. That’s why you sneaked in Nat Twohey’s office and stole that letter.”
“That’s a lie! That’s a damned lie!” Ashton’s face was livid, his voice raised to a hysterical scream. “I didn’t steal it! I took it so you couldn’t get hold of it and change the date. You know as well as I do no court’s going to uphold a phony contract you forced me to sign! That was right after my wife was killed . . . I was mad with grief, with no idea of what I was signing! You knew how much this property was worth. You were the one trying to steal. But I’ll show you! I’ll spread the Dulaneys and the O’Learys on the front page of every paper in the country! So sue me if you want to! You haven’t got the money to sue, but go ahead. Try it. That’s all you can do. There’s nothing else, not one solitary other damned thing, O’Leary!”
He let go the chair, swayed a moment and broke for the steps, caught the railing and swung round.
“Do you hear me, O’Leary? Not one solitary other damned thing, you stupid, poverty-stricken fool!”
O’Leary stood, the blinding red fog swirling through his brain. Out of it he heard himself, hardly recognising his own voice, cool and deadly even.
“There’s something else, Ashton. One thing. I can kill you. And if you sell this place to a gambling outfit, I’ll do it. You’ve got twenty-four hours to change your mind. Twenty-four. If you haven’t changed it by then, I’ll kill you, you filthy, rotten, little swine.”
He went across the room to the three steps, holding himself rigidly in control, seeing Ashton stagger away from him, his face a convulsive mask of terror, his eyes bulging with abject, cringing fright, opening his mouth to scream. O’Leary went on past him, stopped as he heard a strangled gasp, swung around and back as the doors flashed open and Anita took one step forward through them, her eyes blazing with fury and contempt, fixed past him on the abject figure of her husband. The strangled sound from Ashton’s throat shattered as a cyanotic flush bloomed for one hideous instant on his face, and with it an instant’s incredible horror of recognition. His jaw went slack, his hands clutched at the air as he pitched forward, the recognition still on his face as he saw death before it came.