by Hugh B. Cave
He had no hope. That had died long ago. But every night, as a kind of ritual, he went through the motions.
The kitchen door was closed, and he did not hear the front door open, nor did he hear the footsteps. His mind, choked with bitterness, was focused on events buried under three years of shadow. When the kitchen door creaked open, he turned with a startled intake of breath.
She stood there, staring at him. “I’m late,” she said.
He stared back at her, his thin face convulsed. Abruptly he turned his back to her and groped with his twisted hands for the long black gloves which lay on the chair.
When he faced her again, his hands were hidden.
“You shouldn’t have come at all,” he said bitterly.
The girl said softly, “But I did. I always will.”
Four miles from Mr. Dennis’s cottage, in the living-room of another cottage on a lonely back road, an old man with white hair played solitaire with a worn, grimy deck of cards. Papa Nickson they called him. “He’s a grand old man, Papa Nickson. A bit feeble, of course, but always friendly, and quite a philosopher, too.” Everyone knew Papa Nickson.
He peered through thick lenses at the cards and played the game with grave deliberation, now and then cocking his head to hear some bit of music on the radio. He had begun that particular game of solitaire four hours ago, but there was no hurry. “People who hurry,” Papa Nickson always said, “never get nowhere. That’s a fact.”
A voice interrupted the radio music and said: “Residents of the Logan Lake region are warned again to be on the lookout for John Brandon, dangerous madman who escaped a few hours ago from the Logan Lake Asylum. Brandon is still at large.”
“Still at large,” Papa Nickson said, frowning. “That’s bad. Still, I don’t believe he’d harm anyone. I’m safe enough here, I reckon, even if I am all alone.”
He put another card down, thumbing his chin over it, and then suddenly turned his head to look at the door, because someone or something had made a noise outside, on the veranda.
“Who’s there?” Nickson asked anxiously.
For answer, someone knocked.
“Who’s there?” Nickson asked again.
“It’s me. Andy Slade.”
“Oh.”
He went to the door and opened it, and a gust of cold wind, off the lake, came in with the lean, long-limbed youth who entered. Papa Nickson closed the door quickly and shivered, and then frowned at his visitor and said, “Well! What brings you around, Andy?”
“I was just passing by.”
“Oh. Sit down, then. Sit down. I’ve been playing solitaire.”
Andy Slade slouched over to a chair and seated himself. For his age—eighteen—he was big and powerful, with big, heavy hands. It was a shame, Papa Nickson thought, that the boy’s mind was so far behind his body. Of course Andy wasn’t really a halfwit, as some people believed, but he wasn’t normal.
He sometimes had queer ideas.
“How’s business, Andy?”
“What business?”
“Why, the last I talked to you, you were fixin’ to be a guide. You know, to take people out fishin’ and things like that.”
The boy snorted. “Hell, there ain’t no money in that.”
“But you said—”
“Who cares what I said? What I want is real money, and I got an idea for gettin’ it.”
“That’s fine, Andy.”
“Sure it’s fine. You ought to know. You got plenty of money.”
“Have I?”
“Everyone says you have, don’t they? You got it hidden around here; that’s what they say. You been hoardin’ it.”
Papa Nickson leaned back in his chair and chuckled for a long time. “You believe that, Andy?”
“What do you think?”
“What—what’s that you say?”
“I said what do you think? Why do you think I come here tonight?”
Papa Nickson narrowed his eyes and peered long and hard at his visitor. He didn’t like what he saw. He didn’t like the ugly smile that clung to the boy’s moist lips. He said anxiously, “Why—why did you come here, Andy?”
“For money.”
“I haven’t any money. You know that.”
“You got money all right.And I’m fixin’ to take it. Money ain’t no good to an old man like you.” Andy jerked his head around sharply. He thought he heard a scraping noise at the black window, but his single-track, childish mind forgot it almost instantly.
“Andy, believe me, I haven’t any,” the old man said.
Andy Slade got out of his chair and took a step forward, clenching his fists. There was a strange, warped expression on his face, half snarl, half grin. He thrust out his hands and seized the old man’s shoulders.
“I want that money,” he yelled suddenly. “I want it and I’m gonna get it. See?”
He lifted Papa Nickson out of the chair and shook him. “I’m gonna get it! See?”
“I—I haven’t any money, Andy!”
“You’re lyin’!”
“No, Andy, no!”
“Then I’m gonna kill you,” the boy said. “And after I kill you, I’ll find the money myself. I was gonna kill you anyway.”
He took hold of Papa Nickson’s neck, and the old man clawed at him, trying to scream. The old man’s voice made a few scratchy sounds that died against the four walls of the room. Andy Slade laughed at him—and squeezed.
He had huge hands. Powerful hands. When he squeezed and twisted, holding the old man’s squirming body against his own, something snapped. The bone in the old man’s voice box cracked, cut into an artery. Blood spurted from Papa Nickson’s gaping mouth.
Andy Slade let go and the old man slumped to the floor. Andy looked at him, grinning. “No one will ever know I done it. Now I got to find that money.”
He looked for it. For one solid hour he looked, emptying out drawers, turning up rugs, tearing down pictures. It was a small house but it had many potential hiding places. Once he thought he heard a noise outside but he couldn’t see anything or anyone in the black night.
At first he was confident. Then sullen. Then violently angry. And then, after walking around Papa Nickson’s dead body and stepping over it and looking at it time and again, he got scared.
“I can’t look no longer,” he muttered. “I got to get out of here. I got to get out before someone comes!”
He didn’t forget, though, that he had planned the crime so that no one would ever point a finger at him. He stooped and gripped the old man under the arms and dragged him. Dragged him off the carpet, toward the door, leaving a trail of blood which would make people think the old man had crawled that distance after being assaulted.
There by the door Andy Slade took hold of Papa Nickson’s right wrist and dipped the index finger of that hand in the dead man’s own blood, and scrawled on the painted hardwood floor:
“Dennis did it. My money—”
That would help, but it wasn’t enough. Even though everyone said that Mr. Dennis was a nut, it wasn’t enough.
He fished in the dead man’s pocket and found a handkerchief, and looked at the handkerchief to make sure there were no marks or initials on it. Wetting his hands in the blood, he used the handkerchief to dry them. Then he tucked the blood-stained handkerchief into his belt and went out.
He didn’t hurry. It was four miles to Mr. Dennis’s cottage and the road was lonely, winding through the dark along the lake shore. He walked slowly, cursing Papa Nickson for not having any money. Maybe later, he told himself, he would go back and look again. Anyway, no one would ever know he did it—because, Andy laughed to himself, he was going to be smart and make ’em all think Mr. Dennis …
The wind was strong off the lake and the waves beat against the shore, but he paid no attention. The darkness didn’t bother him, nor did the occasional shrill cry of a catbird. Over across, lights winked in the asylum.
“Some feller escaped from there today,” Andy mused. “Mayb
e they’ll blame him for killin’ Papa Nickson. Him or Mr. Dennis, I don’t care, long as they don’t say I done it.”
After a while he saw another light, and it was a light in the living-room of Mr. Dennis’s place.
He approached cautiously. He crept up to the front door and took the bloody handkerchief from his belt and dropped it. Dropped it beside Mr. Dennis’s steps. Then Andy backed away, and turned, and ran. He made a noise, running, but apparently no one heard it.
No one did. Mr. Dennis sat in the living-room behind drawn shades, and she was there, and they were talking. “You can’t give up like this,” she said. “You’re too young.”
“I’m old,” Mr. Dennis muttered. “When a man ceases to be useful, he’s old. Old enough to die.” “Nonsense!” He raised his gloved hands and looked at them. Even
though covered, they seemed thin and crooked in the dim light of the lamp beside his chair. “I’ve done everything possible,” he said bitterly. “I’ve been to the best doctors; I’ve done what they’ve told me to do. And it’s no good. It’s hopeless.”
“But there is an improvement,” she said in a low, pleading voice. “I’ve seen it, Andre.”
“You’ve imagined it.”
“No, no! Six months ago you were as helpless as a man with no hands at all. Now you can use your hands.”
He laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “Yes, I can use them. I can open doors now. I can dress myself in half an hour, where before it took me all morning. I can even shave, if I’m careful. Oh yes, there’s improvement.”
“You see,” she said triumphantly, “you admit it!”
He glared at her with smouldering eyes that frightened her. “Admit it?” he snarled. “I admit nothing—except that I’m beaten! Beaten, do you hear? Twenty years of my life I slaved to make these hands of mine worth something. For years they made me a living on every stage in the world. Now it’s all been taken from me, and what am I? A pitiful parasite, useless, practically penniless, a miserable ghost of one who could have been great. Friendless—”
“Not friendless, Andre. You have me.”
“I have you because you are mad! Mad enough to go on loving a wretch who will warp your life with bitterness.”
“I love you. I have faith.”
“You have faith. I should laugh at that. Are they your hands?”
“I wish they were,” she said simply. “I wish I could trade with you.”
“Trade with me! So you could sit here night after night cursing them, struggling to make them obey you. Sometimes, Marie, I think you are mad to keep on caring. I am sure of it. And so—we must end it. Tonight, when that door closes behind you, it sees the last of you. I won’t have you spoil your life. You must not come here again.”
“But I shall,” she whispered.
“You shall not.”
“You no longer love me, Andre?”
“Love you? No! What right have I to drag a beautiful woman down into the depths of my own darkness? My love for you died when these died.” Raising his gloved hands from his knees, he glared at them.
She went to him and put a hand on his shoulder, “You’re a lovely liar. You’re not yourself tonight, my darling,” she said softly.
“Then leave me.”
“No. I shall stay. You need me.”
“And if people talk?”
“Let them.”
He shrugged. “Do as you like. I’m going to bed.”
She helped him out of his chair and went with him to the door of the bedroom. There she held his arms, forced him to look at her. “Kiss me,” she said.
He shook his head, freed himself and closed the door behind him, leaving her there. She turned and went slowly back to her chair, her eyes wet with tears.
The clock on the table said two A.M. and the radio, turned low, sent out a voice to smother the sound of the girl’s sobbing.
“Station WPSO signing off… . Attention, please. Police have requested all radio stations in the state to issue a final warning to residents of the Logan Lake region. John Brandon, dangerous madman who escaped yesterday from the Logan Lake Asylum, is still at large. Shortly after midnight this man attacked and critically injured a member of a searching party and escaped with the man’s gun. He is now armed and is therefore doubly dangerous. Local and State Police, aided by hundreds of private citizens, are combing the lake district in search of him. This man is cunning and desperate. A description of him—”
She shut the radio off and returned to her chair and sat there in the dim yellow glow of the lamp, sobbing. There was no sound anywhere but the sound of her sobbing. Once or twice she glanced at the door of the bedroom, but it did not open.
About an hour later she fell asleep.
Matthew Karkin, known affectionately as Matt, was Chief of Police in Lakeville. He said he would do it alone, and he did. He was a brave man. He said, “I been the law in these parts for seventeen years without no help, and I can handle this without help. The feller may be a nut, but even so I reckon I can handle him.”
His men and the townspeople didn’t argue. They knew better.
He arrived at Mr. Dennis’s cottage at seven-thirty that morning, and it was raining. Not raining hard, but drizzling enough to make the morning gray, the sky heavy, the lake ugly.
Scowling to himself and feeling vaguely uneasy, Karkin approached the front steps—and stopped. And picked up a bloody handkerchief.
He looked at the handkerchief for a moment, then wrapped it in his own clean one and thrust it into his pocket. He drew his gun and knocked.
He had to knock several times because the girl, asleep in the chair, waked slowly and was bewildered by the knocking when she did wake. Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she stood up, her body a vast ache from being curled so long in an awkward position.
She glanced at the closed bedroom door and then she said anxiously: “Who—who is it?”
“The law,” Karkin said.
She opened the door and he entered, staring at her. Her presence confused him. He had been given to understand that Mr. Dennis lived alone and never had visitors.
“Who’re you?” he demanded gruffly. And added: “Where’s Dennis?”
She ignored the first question and answered the second. “He’s asleep.”
“Oh. Well, I want to talk to him.”
“Who are you?”
“Chief of Police.”
She said, frowning: “Can’t I answer your questions? Mr. Dennis needs his sleep so badly.”
“Sorry,” Karkin told her, “but my business is with Dennis.”
She turned to walk to the bedroom door, but it wasn’t necessary.The door opened before she reached it. Mr. Dennis, with a dressing gown over his wrinkled black pajamas, stood there staring.
“What is it?” he demanded.
Karkin, his gun back in its holster with his right hand resting on it, scowled and said, “You’re Dennis?”
“Yes.”
“Like to have a talk with you, then.”
“Who are you?”
“Chief of Police. Matt Karkin.”
Mr. Dennis thought he understood, and nodded. It would be about the escaped madman. The police were combing the region, and this was a routine visit. He paced forward, motioned Karkin to a chair and sat down himself. The girl sat, too, and stared uneasily at both of them.
“You ever hear of Papa Nickson, Mr. Dennis?” Karkin asked.
“Papa Nickson? No.”
“You sure of that?”
“Quite sure. I know very few of my neighbors, Mr. Karkin.”
“Who said he was one of your neighbors?”
“Well,” Dennis said with a vague smile, “I assumed from the question—”
“Papa Nickson,” Karkin declared gravely, “was murdered last night.”
“Murdered?”
“Murdered,” repeated Karkin slowly, his gaze falling to the long black gloves which covered the other man’s hands and wrists, “by someone with mighty st
rong hands.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“It’s rumored around here,” Karkin said, “that Papa Nick-son was what you might call a miser. Folks were of the opinion he had money hidden away. Last night or some time yesterday, someone tried to get that money.”
“I see. And just how does this concern me?”
“It was a brutal murder,” Karkin said. “Like I just told you, someone with mighty strong hands did it.”
“Mr. Nickson was strangled, you mean?”
“Worse. His neck was broke. Matter of fact, his neck was near twisted off.”
Dennis glanced at the girl. Her face was pale, her eyes very wide.
“It sounds,” Dennis declared,“like the work of that escaped madman.”
“It wasn’t. We might’ve thought so, but Papa Nickson lived long enough to tell us the name of the man who did it.”
“Oh. And his name?”
“Dennis.”
Mr. Dennis sat quite still, staring at his accuser. His lean face seemed to dry up a little, but his other reactions were entirely internal. The girl was different. She stiffened spasmodically in her chair, leaned forward and said shrilly: “But that’s ridiculous!”
“Is it?” Karkin said grimly. “Then maybe Mr. Dennis can explain this. I found it out by the steps, on my way in.” With his left hand he fumbled the bloody handkerchief from his pocket, unwrapped it and held it up. His right hand remained on the butt of his gun.
“So I’m—accused of murder,” Dennis said wearily.
“That’s right; you’re accused of murder. Maybe you’d have got away, but it so happened we stopped at Papa Nickson’s early this morning for coffee, after searching for that crazy guy all night.”
“You realize, of course,” Dennis said, “that I didn’t do it. That I couldn’t have done it.”
“Why couldn’t you?”
“He couldn’t,” the girl said quickly, “because—”
A glance from Dennis silenced her.
“You say Mr. Nickson was murdered by a man with unusually strong hands?” Dennis asked.
“That’s right.”
“You think my hands are strong, Mr. Karkin? You think I wear these gloves to conceal the fact that my hands are scratched, perhaps—or bruised, or bloody?”