The Key to Nicholas Street

by Stanley Ellin

  “You don’t have to get excited, Bob.”

  “Well, the way you twist and turn everything, and make me out to be a liar all the time …!”

  “Nobody makes you out to be a liar when you tell the truth. Now, we’ll let it go at that, and here’s pencil and paper I happen always to have with me. And I mean anytime I put my pants on I have them with me.” Bob took the little pad and stub of pencil as if they were hot, and Mr. Ten Eyck made an impatient gesture. “Just write the note the way you did last night.”

  “I don’t remember exactly what I said.”

  Mr. Ten Eyck opened the note and while Bob rested the pad against the wall of the house and scribbled away he read aloud: “You said not later than tonight so I have been calling you. I will be back again.”

  “And I signed it,” Bob said.

  “All right, then sign it.”

  Mr. Ten Eyck took back his pencil and pad and watched closely as Bob folded the new note carefully in half and then in half again. It fitted tightly into the crack of the doorway, and then Bob stepped back. “That’s how it was.”

  “And then?”

  “And then just as I was stepping away like this I thought I saw a face at the door inside. So I took a close look, and I knew there was somebody standing there. Like Mr. Chaves is.”

  Mr. Ten Eyck looked at the shadow of Matt’s head behind the curtain on the door, and then looked at Bob. “You mean even in the dark—you said it was late at night—and through this screen door and the curtain you could make out a man’s head there?”

  “It wasn’t as dark as all that. I could write the note, couldn’t I? There must have been some light!”

  “Out here, yes. The streetlight, moonlight, sure. But behind that curtain, my friend, you wouldn’t have any such light.”

  “Then there was some kind of light inside the house. There must have been! Maybe not big like a kitchen light, but some kind of lamp in the dining room or somewhere so that it wasn’t all dark.”

  “I see. Now there was a lamp on.”

  “There had to be!”

  “Oh, for the sake of your story, yes. But for the sake of the cold facts, maybe there wasn’t.” Mr. Ten Eyck nodded toward the door. “Meanwhile, granting there was somebody there, would you say it was our friend who’s standing there now?”

  Bob peered at the curtain, moving his head up and down studying it. “How can I be sure? You can hardly make out anything the way that curtain and screen door are.”

  “But you know it was a man.”

  “It looked like a man,” Bob said warily. “There’s something about the way a man’s head is, the haircut and everything. Anyhow, I think it was a man. I’m almost sure of it.”

  “Almost?”

  “Well, you only want me to say what I’m sure about, don’t you?”

  From behind the door Matt said in a muffled voice, “Say, when do I get out of here?” and Mr. Ten Eyck opened the door and then closed it again behind Matt as he stepped out, but always keeping his eyes on Bob.

  “Now,” he said to Bob, “what happened next?”

  “I walked away, that’s all. I went right home.”

  Mr. Ten Eyck gestured toward Junie. “You didn’t stop to visit with your young lady?”

  “No. I was going to pitch today. Anytime I’m going to pitch I like to get a lot of sleep the night before.”

  “So you just walked away and went home.”

  “That’s right.”

  Mr. Ten Eyck turned triumphantly toward Dick, who was standing there in the doorway of the garage. “Dick, didn’t you tell me you saw Bob run away? And he ran so fast you couldn’t even catch him if you wanted to!”

  “No,” Dick said flatly.

  Mr. Ten Eyck’s jaw dropped. “No?”

  “I didn’t say it was Bob. I only said I saw somebody running away, but I don’t know who it was.”

  “He says he was here himself! He says it was light enough to write a note! And you—thirty, forty feet away—you didn’t know who it was?”

  “No.”

  “You’re lying for him! What is it between you two?”

  “I’m not lying for him. I’m just not sure.”

  “No,” Mr. Ten Eyck said grimly, “nobody is sure of anything around here. But if you think you protect a man this way you are all mistaken.” He glared at Bob. “I’ll tell you right now that all this lying and evasiveness is worse for you than anything else.”

  Bob’s voice rose shrilly in panic like a woman’s. “I’m not lying!” he cried. “All I said was I walked away. Like this!” He started slowly down the driveway toward the street, his eyes fixed on Mr. Ten Eyck behind him. “That’s all I said!” And then suddenly with a fantastic burst of speed he was racing down the driveway, and then around into the street and out of sight.

  We stood there thunderstruck, and the first one to come to life was Mr. Ten Eyck. “Jesus!” he shouted, and started down the driveway, but before he had taken two steps Junie grabbed at his arm and almost spilled him. He tried to wrench free, but she clung to him with one hand, striking at him with the other fist.

  “If you hurt him!” she sobbed. “If you hurt a hair on him I’ll kill you!”

  “Let go!” shouted Mr. Ten Eyck. “You think you’re helping him this way!” He managed to pull loose, and then saw, as we all did, it would be a hopeless chase. He stood there breathing hard as he faced Junie. “If anything happens to that boy you can blame yourself, young lady.”

  “You scared him to death!” Junie stormed. “What did you expect him to do!”

  Mr. Ten Eyck ignored her. “Dick,” he said, “I want you to drive me over to the station house. I’ll have to get a couple of men on the job.” He was almost down the driveway with Dick when he suddenly turned around to face us. “And all of you, you be where I can find you. All of you!” he said.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  We went into the house together, all of us, I thought, and then I realized Matt was not there. He had been in the driveway near me when I walked into the house, and now he was gone. I went to the kitchen window that overlooked the driveway, but he was not outside there. I ran through the house to the porch with a strange little fear rising in me, but he was nowhere in sight on the street. Mr. Ten Eyck had told him to stay, but he was a little law unto himself was Matthew Chaves, and he came and went as he chose.

  If I had told him to stay …? But I hadn’t. This morning I had told him to go. I had told him we were finished. I had told him that for all his fine, smooth, well-rounded words he was hard and arrogant and rotten, and that any woman who loved him could never be more than a satellite revolving prettily around him no matter what crazy course he took, even if it led to hate and depravity and wrecked lives.

  So he had gone. But, of course, he had to leave a legacy. The paunch and jowls I would marry until I became disgusted with them, and ran back to him so that we could pick up where my father and Kate Ballou had left off! In this world of conceited men there never has been one or could be one to match the conceit of Matt Chaves.

  I sat in the living room with my back straight and my hands clasped on my lap, and I watched the minute hand of the clock crawl around. Oh, why don’t you cry, cry, cry, Bettina, the clock kept saying.

  But he’d love that, wouldn’t he? Only Jonathan-out-of-a-dream knew how to be warm and tender in the face of a woman’s tears. And it didn’t have to be someone with paunch and jowls for Bettina Ayres; there were Jonathans in Sutton, too. And if not here, somewhere else. If she were half what Matt Chaves said she was, she could have one any time she put her mind to it. Anyhow, the part of her mind that wasn’t filled with Matt Chaves.

  Then I had to forget him! Even if he were standing there right in front of me …

  “Betty,” Matt said. “No, sit down, you idiot, you look as if you’re ready to pass out! Can I get you something? Can I do anything?”

  “Matt. Oh, damn you, Matt, where were you! No! Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. I
don’t want to hear anything about it!”

  “Will you please take your hands away from your ears and stop shaking your head that way! You’re working yourself into a state for nothing, Betty.”

  “I don’t want to hear anything! And keep your hands off me!”

  His hands around my wrists were like iron bands charged with electricity. I wanted to throw them off, but I couldn’t.

  He half dragged me to my feet and shook me. “What’s wrong? Did something happen while I was away?”

  “No! Just let me be.”

  He didn’t. He held me so close and tight that I knew my back would be bruised tomorrow, and I could feel the damp sweatiness of his chest through my dress.

  “Betty, do you know how your hair smells?”

  I held myself rigid. “No. But you smell from sweat and dust, and it isn’t very pleasant.”

  “That’s bound to happen when you run around in this kind of weather.”

  “Run around where?”

  “I went over to see the baseball game.”

  “Baseball game!” This time I succeeded in pulling away from him, and all the murder in me must have showed in my eyes. “You mean, with everything that’s happened, with Kate Ballou dead, you went to see a baseball game!”

  “I didn’t go to see the game. I went to see Bob Macek—and I did.”

  I couldn’t grasp that at once. “But Bob Macek—but he ran away! They must be looking for him now!”

  “And when he gets home they’ll find him there. He left the clubhouse with me.”

  “How did you know he’d be at the game?” I asked accusingly.

  “Oh, it’s no plot or anything, if that’s what you mean. Call it a hunch, or whatever you will, but when he took off the way he did, it struck me that the one place he’d head for would be that game.”

  “But why?”

  “Because he had all the ego kicked out of him, and he was going to the one place where it could be built up again. It may sound cockeyed, but if he had really done something wrong he’d be just the kind of guy to stand there and try to brazen it out in his dull-witted way. But the only thing he did wrong was to get himself scared silly by our equally dull-witted and highly prejudiced friend, Ten Eyck.”

  “Oh, so you happen to know that Bob Macek isn’t guilty.”

  “I knew it before he even took off the way he did. Talking to him just verified what I had already figured out.”

  “And what makes you so sure?”

  He took a deep breath. “I know who did it, Betty.”

  I said something, and then realized the word had not been spoken out loud. I cleared my throat. “Who?” I said hoarsely.

  He looked at me steadily, his face that damned blank mask he affected.

  “Don’t you even want to know what Bob told me, Betty?”

  “I want to know who did it!”

  He said evenly, “Listen to this, Betty. Somehow or other, Bob had gotten to talking with Kate about his baseball team, and she had promised—because she liked him, out of a whim, whatever it was—to advance a thousand dollars to the team for uniforms and fixing up the grounds. Not really a gift, you see, but a sort of long-term loan to be paid back whenever the club could manage to do it, if it ever could. And when she closed her account at the store last week and said something about giving up her house, he got scared she’d forget about the money.

  “It was to be a whole big deal. One day the fans were going out to the ball park, and there would be the team in brand-new uniforms, and the stands all painted up, and it would be just like the Yankee Stadium that Bob is always dreaming about. Only if Kate went away without giving him that money the dream would go pop. Don’t you think it’s amusing, Betty, that a man should find himself neck-deep in murder because he has a dream, but he’s ashamed to talk about it in public where people might laugh at it?”

  “I think you’re trying to get away from answering me, Matt. Who did it?”

  “I don’t have to answer that, Betty. You’ve given up all claims on me.”

  “I have,” I said defiantly. “And if you think you’re going to blackmail me into saying things are going to be the way they always were between us …”

  He said, “I wasn’t trying to blackmail you. I was saying good-by. And I’d like to see your father and Dick before I go.”

  “You can’t go without telling me what you know! And Dick isn’t even home yet.”

  “I’d like to shower and change into my stuff. I can wait in his room.”

  He was going up the stairs now. I was going to call after him, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to know the answer now. I was suddenly afraid of what it might be. And he was at the head of the stairs now, turning out of my sight.

  Matt! Can’t you understand? Can’t you see why we don’t belong together!

  But I didn’t say it. And he was out of my sight now.

  Tick, said the clock as it started to strike six: Miss Prim, Miss Prim, Miss Prim …

  PART FIVE

  RICHARD

  CHAPTER ONE

  He was there when I walked into my room, squatting beside the wastepaper basket and studying a piece of broken phonograph record he had taken from it. I let the door close behind me, and stood watching him.

  “What are you looking for, Matt?”

  He didn’t even seem bothered at being caught poking and prying. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all I really expected to find.” He was twisting and turning the broken piece of record trying to make out what it said on the torn part of label left on it. “Ravel’s La Valse,” he said. “One of your favorites, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t care for it any more.”

  “Oh?” He squinted up at me curiously. “Why not?”

  “I just don’t.”

  He shrugged and tossed the piece of record into the wastebasket. When he stood up I saw that he was wearing his old tee-shirt and moccasins and had that damp, shiny look of having just bathed.

  “Going back to the ferry now?” I asked.

  “I’m going, but not back to the ferry.”

  “Then where?”

  “Away. Maybe New York, maybe San Francisco, maybe Tierra del Fuego. But far away from Sutton and its teeming hundreds.”

  “But Bettina,” I said. “What about her?”

  “I’m afraid she wants to be reckoned among the teeming hundreds. I’ve already said good-by to her. I was just waiting to say it to you.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well—good-by.”

  He went to the door and then stopped there, leaning back against it lazily. “I don’t suppose our friend, Ten Eyck, will need me any more. But if he does …”

  “He won’t,” I said. “They caught Bob Macek again. Somebody went to his house, and there he was. I was just leaving the police station when they brought him in.”

  “And that’s that,” Matt said. He put a hand on the doorknob, but let it rest there. “Oh, I almost forgot to thank you for what you did. I mean, standing up for me, and saying you were up in the attic, and all that. It was decent of you to do it.”

  “I suppose I made a fool out of myself,” I said, “but I don’t care. Mr. Ten Eyck was crazy to start suspecting you.”

  “Yes,” Matt said, “but only you and I know that, Dick.” And then his hand was no longer on the doorknob, but on the key, and he twisted it with a sharp little gesture so that I heard the bolt slide home with a flat click.

  My fists knotted up, and I could feel every muscle in my body tighten behind them. I took one step toward him, and then I said, “What do you mean by that?” but very softly so that no one outside could hear me.

  He didn’t move. He still leaned back against the door, and the way he looked made me think of one of those Siamese cats, all light eyes in a dark face and a hateful arrogance gleaming in them.

  “All right,” he said, “I’ll tell you what I mean if you answer one question.”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you know your father and Kate Ball
ou were having an affair?”

  “My father and Kate Ballou! An affair!”

  “You’re big enough to understand what I’m saying even if I don’t draw you any diagrams, sonny. In fact, you’re big enough so that I’ll feel a lot more comfortable if you don’t come tiptoeing any closer. Just stay where you are, and we’ll get along fine.”

  “No,” I said. “We won’t get along fine, at all. You were told to get out of this house, weren’t you? Now nobody wants you around any more—my mother, Bettina, nobody! So you’ll just make up some lies to get even for that, won’t you!”

  “I’ll be damned,” he said, and he sounded really surprised. “So you didn’t know.”

  “Do you think talking like that will make me believe you?”

  He looked at me, and his eyes were narrowed like a cat’s. “If you didn’t know, why did you do it? What crazy reason could there be to make you do it!”

  “Do what!”

  “You son of a bitch,” he said in a flat voice, “you killed her. You got her in those big, clumsy hands of yours, and you broke her in half like a stick of wood. But why? Why did you do it!”

  “I didn’t!” I was close to him now. I was so close that if I swung my arm my fist would smash right into his face. “But if you talk like that I’ll kill you!”

  “Why not? You already tried that once, didn’t you?”

  I wasn’t pretending. I couldn’t understand that, at all. “I tried to kill you?”

  “The unwilling witness,” he said. “The clean, fine, upstanding, unwilling witness. The boy who’s smart enough to say he took the key, and then back out of it so that an extra load of suspicion is dumped on my head. The boy who’s smart enough to say he saw Bob Macek running away, and then say he didn’t see Bob Macek so that everybody wonders what kind of lie Bob is telling. It’s a beautiful act, isn’t it, that unwilling witness act, because it could shove Bob or me right into the electric chair and leave you looking like a best friend right up to where they pull the switch!”

  “I was trying to help you!” I said. “Now I’m sorry I did!”

  “You hate my guts inside out, sonny. Maybe when you first knew me it was different, but once you saw where your mother stood you lined right up with her. You’d see me boiled in oil before you’d lift a finger to help me. But it wasn’t until you made one little slip that I fitted that into the picture, and it all started to make sense.”