The Specialty of the House

by Stanley Ellin

  A door slammed nearby. Three men walked onto the platform and stood there facing her. Two of them were uniformed policemen. The third man – the one they flanked – towered over them tall and cadaverous, dressed in a torn sweater and soiled trousers. His face was slack, his huge hand moved back and forth in a vacant gesture across his mouth. Julie tried to take her eyes off that hand and couldn’t. Back and forth it went, mesmerizing her with its blind, groping motion.

  One of the uniformed policemen held up a piece of paper.

  ‘Charles Brunner,’ he read loudly. ‘Age forty-one. Arrests—’ and on and on until there was sudden silence. But the hand still went back and forth, growing enormous before her, and Julie knew, quite without concern, that she was going to faint. She swayed forward, her head drooping, and something cold and hard was pressed under her nose. Ammonia fumes stung her nostrils and she twisted away, gasping. When the lieutenant thrust the bottle at her again, she weakly pushed it aside.

  ‘I’m all right,’ she said.

  ‘But it was a jolt seeing him, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because you recognized him, didn’t you?’

  She wondered vaguely if that were why. ‘I’m not sure.’

  Dahl leaned over her. ‘You can’t mean that, Mrs Barton! You gave me your word you’d know him when you saw him again. Why are you backing out of it now? What are you afraid of?’

  ‘I’m not afraid’

  ‘Yes, you are. You almost passed out when you saw him, didn’t you? Because no matter how much you wanted to get him out of your mind your emotions wouldn’t let you. Those emotions wouldn’t let you! Those emotions are telling you the truth, aren’t they?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘Then look at him again and see what happens. Go on, take a good look!’

  Lieutenant Christensen said, ‘Mrs Barton, if you let us down now, you’ll go out and tell the newspapermen about it yourself. They’ve been on us like wolves about this thing, and for once in my life I want them to know what we’re up against here!’

  Tom’s fingers gripped her shoulder. ‘I don’t understand, Julie,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you come out with it? He is the man, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes!’ she said, and clapped her hands over her ears to shut out the angry, hateful voices clamoring at her out of the darkness. ‘Yes! Yes!’

  ‘Thank God,’ said Lieutenant Christensen.

  Then Tom moved. He stood up, something glinting metallically in his hand, and Julie screamed as the man behind her lunged at it. Light suddenly flooded the room. Other men leaped at Tom and chairs clattered over as the struggle eddied around and around him, flowing relentlessly toward the platform. There was no one on it when he was finally borne down to the floor by a crushing weight of bodies.

  Two of the men, looking apologetic, pulled him to his feet, but kept their arms tightly locked around his. Another man handed the gun to Lieutenant Christensen, and Tom nodded at it. He was disheveled and breathing hard, but seemed strangely unruffled.

  ‘I’d like that back, if you don’t mind,’ he said.

  ‘I do mind,’ said the lieutenant. He broke open the gun, tapped the bullets into his hand, and then, to Julie’s quivering relief, dropped gun and bullets into his own pocket. ‘Mr Barton, you’re in a state right now where if I charged you with attempted murder you wouldn’t even deny it, would you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You see what I mean? Now why don’t you just cool off and let us handle this job? We’ve done all right so far, haven’t we? And after Mrs Barton testifies at the trial Brunner is as good as dead, and you can forget all about him.’ The lieutenant looked at Juliet ‘That makes sense, doesn’t it?’ he asked her.

  ‘Yes,’ Julie whispered prayerfully.

  Tom smiled. ‘I’d like my gun, if you don’t mind.’

  The lieutenant stood there speechless for the moment, and then laid his hand over the pocket containing the gun as if to assure himself that it was still there. ‘Some other time,’ he said with finality.

  The men holding Tom released him and he lurched forward and caught at them for support. His face was suddenly deathly pale, but the smile was still fixed on it as he addressed the lieutenant.

  ‘You’d better call a doctor,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I think your damn gorillas have broken my leg.’

  During the time he was in the hospital he was endlessly silent and withdrawn. The day he was brought home at his own insistence, his leg unwieldy in a cast from ankle to knee, Dr Vaughn had a long talk with him, the two of them alone behind the closed doors of the living room. The doctor must have expressed himself freely and forcefully. When he had gone, and Julie plucked up the courage to walk into the living room, she saw her husband regarding her with the look of a man who has had a bitter dose of medicine forced down his throat and hasn’t quite decided whether or not it will do him any good.

  Then he patted the couch seat beside him. ‘There’s just enough room for you and me and this leg,’ he said.

  She obediently sat down, clasping her hands in her lap.

  ‘Vaughn’s been getting some things off his chest,’ Tom said abruptly. ‘I’m glad he did. You’ve been through a rotten experience, Julie, and I haven’t been any help at all, have I? All I’ve done is make it worse. I’ve been lying to myself about it, too. Telling myself that everything I did since it happened was for your sake, and all along the only thing that really concerned me was my own feelings. Isn’t that so?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Julie said, ‘and I don’t care. It doesn’t matter as long as you talk to me about it. That’s the only thing I can’t stand, not having you talk to me.’

  ‘Has it been that bad?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you understand why, don’t you? It was something eating away inside of me. But it’s gone now, I swear it is. You believe that, don’t you, Julie?’

  She hesitated. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can’t tell whether you mean it or not behind those dark glasses. Lift them up, and let me see.’

  Julie lifted the glasses and he gravely studied her face. ‘I think you do mean it,’ he said. ‘A face as pretty as that couldn’t possibly tell a lie. But why do you still wear those things? There aren’t any marks left.’

  She dropped the glasses into place and the world became its soothingly familiar, shaded self again. ‘I just like them,’ she said. ‘I’m used to them.’

  ‘Well, if the doctor doesn’t mind, I don’t. But if you’re wearing them to make yourself look exotic and dangerous, you’ll have to give up. You’re too much like Sweet Alice. You can’t escape it.’

  She smiled. ‘I don’t tremble with fear at your frown. Not really.’

  ‘Yes, you do, but I like it. You’re exactly what Sweet Alice must have been. Demure, that’s the word, demure. My wife is the only demure married woman in the world. Yielding, yet cool and remote. A lovely lady wrapped in cellophane. How is it you never became a nun?’

  She knew she must be visibly glowing with happiness. It had been so long since she had seen him in this mood. ‘I almost did. When I was in school I used to think about it a lot. There was this other girl – well, she was really a wonderful person, and she had already made up her mind about it. I guess that’s where I got the idea.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘You know what happened.’

  ‘Yes, it’s all coming back now. You went to your first Country Club dance dressed in a beautiful white gown, with Stardust in your hair—’

  ‘It was sequins.’

  ‘No, Stardust. And I saw you. And the next thing I remember, we were in Mexico on a honeymoon.’ He put his arm around her waist, and she relaxed in the hard circle of it. ‘Julie, when this whole bad dream is over we’re going there again. We’ll pack the car and go south of the border and forget everything. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Oh, very much.’ She looked up at him hopefully, her head back against his sh
oulder. ‘But no bullfights, please. Not this time.’

  He laughed. ‘All right, when I’m at the bullfights you’ll be sightseeing. The rest of the time we’ll be together. Any time I look around I want to see you there. No more than this far away. That means I can reach out my hand and you’ll always be there. Is that clear?’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ she said.

  So she had found him again, she assured herself, and she used that knowledge to settle her qualms whenever she thought of Brunner and the impending trial. She never mentioned these occasional thoughts to Tom, and she came to see that there was a conspiracy among everyone who entered the house – her family and friends, the doctor, even strangers on business with Tom – which barred any reference to the subject of Brunner. Until one evening when, after she had coaxed Tom into a restless sleep, the doorbell rang again and again with maddening persistence.

  Julie looked through the peephole and saw that the man standing outside was middle-aged and tired-looking and carried a worn leather portfolio under his arm. She opened the door with annoyance and said, ‘Please, don’t do that. My husband’s not well, and he’s asleep. And there’s nothing we want.’

  The man walked past her into the foyer before she could stop him. He took off his hat and faced her. ‘I’m not a salesman, Mrs Barton. My name is Karlweiss. Dr Lewis Karlweiss. Is it familiar to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It should be. Up to three o’clock this afternoon I was in charge of the City Hospital for Mental Disorders. Right now I’m a man without any job, and with a badly frayed reputation. And just angry enough and scared enough, Mrs Barton, to want to do something about it. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘I don’t see what it has to do with me.’

  ‘You will. Two years ago Charles Brunner was institutionalized in my care, and, after treatment, released on my say-so. Do you understand now? I am officially responsible for having turned him loose on you. I signed the document which certified that while he was not emotionally well, he was certainly not dangerous. And this afternoon I had that document shoved down my throat by a gang of ignorant politicians who are out to make hay of this case!’

  Julie said incredulously, ‘And you want me to go and tell them they were wrong? Is that it?’

  ‘Only if you know they are wrong, Mrs Barton. I’m not asking you to perjure yourself for me. I don’t even know what legal right I have to be here in the first place, and I certainly don’t want to get into any more trouble than I’m already in.’ Karlweiss looked over her shoulder toward the living room, and shifted his portfolio from one arm to the other. ‘Can we go inside and sit down while we talk this over? There’s a lot to say.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right, then I’ll explain it here, and I’ll make it short and to the point. Mrs Barton, I know more about Charles Brunner than anyone else in the world. I know more about him than he knows about himself. And that’s what makes it so hard for me to believe that you identified the right man!’

  Julie said, ‘I don’t want to hear about it. Will you please go away?’

  ‘No, I will not,’ Karlweiss said heatedly. ‘I insist on being heard. You see, Mrs Barton, everything Brunner does fits a certain pattern. Every dirty little crime he has committed fits that pattern. It’s a pattern of weakness, a constant manifestation of his failure to achieve full masculinity.

  ‘But what he is now charged with is the absolute reverse of that pattern. It was a display of brute masculinity by an aggressive and sadistic personality. It was the act of someone who can only obtain emotional and physical release through violence. That’s the secret of such a personality – the need for violence. Not lust, as the Victorians used to preach, but the need for release through violence. And that is a need totally alien to Brunner. It doesn’t exist in him. It’s a sickness, but it’s not his sickness!

  ‘Now do you see why your identification of him hit me and my co-workers at the hospital so hard? We don’t know too much about various things in our science yet – I’m the first to admit it – but in a few cases we’ve been able to work out patterns of personality as accurately as mathematical equations. I thought we had done that successfully with Brunner. I would still think so, if you hadn’t identified him. That’s why I’m here. I wanted to meet you. I wanted to have you tell me directly if there was any doubt at all about Brunner being the man. Because if there is—’

  ‘There isn’t.’

  ‘But if there is,’ Karlweiss pleaded, ‘I’d take my oath that Brunner isn’t guilty. It makes sense that way. If there’s the shadow of a doubt—’

  ‘There isn’t!’

  ‘Julie!’ called Tom from the bedroom. ‘Who is that?’

  Panic seized her. All she could envision then was Brunner as he would walk down the prison steps to the street, as he would stand there dazed in the sunlight while Tom, facing him, slowly drew the gun from his pocket. She clutched Karlweiss’s sleeve and half-dragged him toward the door. ‘Please, go away!’ she whispered fiercely. ‘There’s nothing to talk about. Please, go away!’

  She closed the door behind him and leaned back against it, her knees trembling.

  ‘Julie, who is that?’ Tom called. ‘Who are you talking to?’

  She steadied herself and went into the bedroom. ‘It was a salesman,’ she said. ‘He was selling insurance. I told him we didn’t want any.’

  ‘You know I don’t want you to open the door to any strangers,’ Tom said. ‘Why’d you go and do a thing like that?’

  Julie forced herself to smile. ‘He was perfectly harmless,’ she said.

  But the terror had taken root in her now – and it thrived. It was fed by many things. The subpoena from Dahl which Tom had her put into his dresser drawer for safekeeping and which was there in full view every time she opened the drawer to get him something. The red circle around the trial date on the calendar in the kitchen which a line of black crosses inched toward, a little closer each day. And the picture in her mind’s eye which took many forms, but which was always the same picture with the same ending: Brunner descending the prison steps, or Brunner entering the courtroom, or Brunner in the dank cellar she saw as his natural habitat, and then in the end Brunner standing there, blinking stupidly, his hand moving back and forth over his mouth, and Tom facing him, slowly drawing the gun from his pocket, the gun barrel glinting as it moved into line with Brunner’s chest—

  The picture came into even sharper focus when Dr Vaughn brought the crutches for Tom. Julie loathed them at sight. She had never minded the heavy pressure of Tom’s arm around her shoulders, his weight bearing her down as he lurched from one room to another, hobbled by the cast. The cast was a hobble, she knew, keeping him tied down to the house; he struggled with it and grumbled about it continually, as if the struggling and grumbling would somehow release him from it. But the crutches were a release. They would take him to wherever Brunner was.

  She watched him as he practiced using the crutches that evening, not walking, but supporting himself on them to find his balance, and then she helped him sit down on the couch, the leg in its cast propped on a footstool before him.

  He said, ‘Julie, you have no idea how fed up a man can get, living in pajamas and a robe. But it won’t be long now, will it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Which reminds me that you ought to give my stuff out to the tailor tomorrow. He’s a slow man, and I’d like it all ready when I’m up and around.’

  ‘All right,’ Julie said. She went to the wardrobe in the hall and returned with an armful of clothing which she draped over the back of an armchair. She was mechanically going through the pockets of a jacket when Tom said, ‘Come here, Julie.’

  He caught her hand as she stood before him. ‘There’s something on your mind,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You were never any good at lying. What’s wrong, Julie?’

  ‘Still nothing.’

  ‘Oh, all right, if that’s the way y
ou want it.’ He released her hand and she went back to the pile of clothing on the armchair, sick with the feeling that he could see through her, that he knew exactly what she was thinking, and must hate her for it. She put aside the jacket and picked up the car coat he used only for driving. Which meant, she thought with a small shudder of realization, that he hadn’t worn it since that night. She pulled the gloves from its pocket and tossed the coat on top of the jacket.

  ‘These gloves,’ she said, holding them out to show him. ‘Where—?’

  These gloves, an echo cried out to her. These gloves, said a smaller one behind it, and these gloves, these gloves ran away in a diminishing series of echoes until there was only deathly silence.

  And a glove.

  A grey suede glove clotted and crusted with dark-brown stains. Its index finger gouged and torn. Its bitter taste in her mouth. Its owner, a stranger, sitting on the couch, holding out his hand, saying something.

  ‘Give that to me, Julie,’ Tom said.

  She looked at him and knew there were no secrets between them any more. She watched the sweat starting from his forehead and trickling down the bloodless face. She saw his teeth show and his eyes stare as he tried to pull himself to his feet. He failed, and sank back panting.

  ‘Listen to me, Julie,’ he said. ‘Now listen to me and take hold of yourself.’

  ‘You,’ she said drunkenly. ‘It was you.’

  ‘Julie, I love you!’

  ‘But it was you. It’s all crazy. I don’t understand.’

  ‘I know. Because it was crazy. That’s what it was, I went crazy for a minute. It was overwork. It was that deal. I was killing myself to put it across, and that night when they turned me down I don’t know what happened. I got drunk, and when I came home I couldn’t find the key. So I came through the window. That’s when it happened. I don’t know what it was, but it was something exploding in me. Something in my head. I saw you there, and all I wanted to do— I tell you I don’t even know why! Don’t ask me why! It was overwork, that’s what it was. It gets to everybody nowadays. You read about it all the time. You know you do, Julie. You’ve got to be reasonable about this!’