Gift Shop

by Charlotte Armstrong

  Harry pinched.

  “Ow! Hey! What?”

  “Dorinda. Just came in.”

  “Huh?”

  “And-that-is-too-much,” said Harry heavily. “By gosh, I can believe the traditional six before breakfast. But not this.” He was looking wild.

  Jean rubbed her arm and squeezed her eyes open and shut, and wide open. “Did you say Dorinda? But she’s in Copenhagen.”

  “The heck she is. She’s around that corner.”

  “Who is she?” said Jean at last—as fiercely as she had long wanted to say it.

  “You know something,” said Harry. “I haven’t the faintest idea who she is.”

  They both sat very still for a moment.

  Then Jean said, “Hey, I’m a little bit scared.”

  “I know,” he said. “I know.”

  “Somebody told her which flight, in the first place.”

  “I know.”

  “Because she wasn’t there. But then, there she was.”

  Harry followed perfectly. He remembered how they had been the last to board in Los Angeles, how he had scanned the faces, how he had not seen Dorinda’s face, although it must have been there.

  “Watching us now?” said Jean. “Do you think? Somebody?”

  “Could be. Could be.”

  Jean dosed her eyes and let her head droop. She swayed toward him. “I won’t go up to them, if somebody’s watching. I won’t even point. I just won’t do it.”

  Harry bent over her. “I’ll get us some rooms. We’ll have to kick this around a little bit.”

  “Um, hum,” she murmured and swooned as if to sleep again.

  “Oh-oh,” said Harry.

  The American tour was arriving. The hotel braced itself but, nevertheless, it reeled with the impact. Camera-slung, they entered with hoot and halloo. They milled. They were about thirty strong, predominantly female. The tide of sound tended to be soprano, with islands of baritone. A few dragged-looking children, too bored to be shrill, were appended to them, here and there.

  Jean Cunliffe blinked and roused as if the racket had disturbed her. She gazed upon the scene with heavy-lidded eyes. “I see her,” she murmured. “The one in the red coat.”

  “Don’t look.”

  “I’m not looking.”

  Harry patted her knee and rose. “Follow me,” he said. He took up their bags and set off through the crowd to the registration desk.

  But Jean lingered. She poked at her hair, settled her handbag on her arm, got up uncertainly, blinked and craned her neck as if to get the kinks out of it. She soon saw, motionless in the midst of all the motion, the little man in the felt hat.

  Oh ho! she said to herself. His faded eyes were on her casually. He wasn’t the type one would notice noticing, ordinarily. But Jean noticed. In fact, she smiled at him and ducked her head in a bow of recognition. He looked blank. Then, very grudgingly, he nodded and his gaze scurried away.

  Oh, she’d spotted him. Her seatmate! Dorinda’s seatmate! Oh ho! But her heart sank a little. Well, deviosity, she thought.

  Jean started to wend her way through the turbulence toward the tour leader. He was easy to spot, wearing the correct harassed look, besieged by questioners. Jean pushed up to him. “Excuse me,” she said, as rudely as anybody else. She began to make up questions. Had this tour been taken at the same time last year? Had it made the same stops, seen the same sights? The poor man was not sure. She insisted that he ought to be sure. He was sorry.

  Out of the corner of her eye Jean was watching the little man sidle and drift until his ear was in a position to hear everything that she was saying.

  Well, she might be misdirecting him with this nonsense. But she was scared. It was one thing to play hide-and-seek with hypothetical villains, quite another to know that you were being followed, watched, and listened to besides.

  Harry, arranging for rooms, was glad that Dorinda had already disappeared. He asked for Miss Bowie’s room number and got it. He realized that no one was standing within ten feet at the moment, so he said, “I wonder if you could tell me the name … The little girl in the red coat? I know the family. I know their faces, that is, but I’m—uh—kinda embarrassed not to remember the name.”

  “Edwards, sir,” the man said, smiling understanding.

  “That’s it. Thanks a million.” Harry was the very image of the jolly American extrovert. “Certainly want to say hello. Oh, by the way, which room have they?”

  He got the number. It could not be far from Dorinda’s. Well … He looked for Jean, and threaded to her.

  “Now, we’ll get you to bed,” he said in a masterly manner.

  Chapter Ten

  There was a bed in Jean’s room; it might as well have been a stone.

  It seemed to them, and no use wondering why or even how, that they had been followed here. The man in the felt hat had followed them, Jean was sure. Why, she’d seen him before, too. Somewhere else. She’d think where, in a minute.

  Harry began to amplify his suspicion that Dorinda Bowie had followed them. He could think of a lot of funny little things about Dorinda, come to think of them. Dorinda—insisting upon going to the airport that night that Bernie had phoned. Dorinda, annoyed at having to park the car. Why? Because she might miss something? By golly, she had missed the toy-buying incident. That’s what she had missed. Then, of course, Dorinda’s picking Harry up, that very day, with such singleminded determination. Harry cursed himself for an innocent lamb. An unsuspecting fool.

  “Who’s Dorinda? What is she?” He paced. “She’s damned good-looking. That’s all I know.”

  But there was no use wondering. What, then, to do?

  They had about thirty minutes before the tourists were scheduled to take off again. Might it not be best to wait and simply get into the Edwardses’ empty room and steal the pig? There was no use wondering whether three dollars and ninety-eight cents would imperil their immortal souls. The question arose, how does one steal a pig? Harry was frank to declare that he was not going to climb, by ledge and balcony, across the façade of any building if he could avoid it. He’d sooner pick a lock, or seduce a chambermaid. Of course, he didn’t know how to pick a lock. And furthermore, even if they succeeded in such thievery, they’d risk a hue and cry which would give away the importance of pigs. Harry cursed himself for not having brought along some substitute pigs. Why the devil hadn’t he thought of that?

  Jean, who had given him the floor for some minutes now, said sadly that she hadn’t thought of it, either. She hadn’t been thinking. She had just been enjoying herself, and she was very sorry. She would try to use her head, which was on the whole pretty clear—or so she had been told in her day.

  Harry stared, winced, sat down, and held his head.

  “Here’s one idea,” she said. “We could give up.”

  Harry straightened and gave her a keen glance. “Is that … uh … done?”

  “If we give up, then they’ll never find out what we were after.”

  “True. And we won’t find it either.” Harry found this idea very unsatisfying. “What if they already know what we’re after?”

  “Then they’ve probably got it, while we’ve been up here moaning and groaning and carrying on. They’d steal, in a minute.”

  “Is it necessary to be all that clearheaded?” groaned Harry. “You’re right. You’re right. That’s the trouble.”

  “No, I’m not, and that’s not what troubles me,” cried Jean. “Harry, supposing they are after the little girl … your little sister. What will they do with her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You do believe that they killed Bernie. Killed him?”

  “He was killed. I believe that. And they … they stands for whoever did it.”

  “Then … Oh, listen, they can’t know what we are after. There is just no way they could know about pigs. They followed us. And here we are, where there is a little girl. And just about the right age, too. Didn’t you say seven?”

&n
bsp; “You think they think we’re after the child …” Harry was agog. “Here?”

  “Why wouldn’t they think so?”

  He couldn’t answer that. In a moment Harry said, “All right. We have to get to the Edwardses, get the damn pig, and get out of here, without anybody ever knowing we went anywhere near the Edwardses.”

  “Right” Jean said.

  “Let’s just go where the Edwardses are, then,” he said recklessly.

  “Dorinda’s room is on. their floor, you said?”

  “She’s probably not going to be hanging out her door.”

  “But she could open it, at any moment,” Jean said, “unless we penciled her in.”

  “Unless we what?”

  “It’s a trick. The kids do it in the dorms. Let me see if these are the right kind of doors.” Jean went to look. “We could. It takes a plain wooden pencil. Then she can’t open the door.”

  “Maybe Dorinda has nothing to do with it.”

  “It won’t hurt her,” Jean said patiently. “And here’s a thing. The Edwardses should recognize me. After all, I waited on them. That might make it easier. I mean, if it looks as if we ought, probably we could warn them.”

  “If you think we ought—” Harry watched her young face.

  “I certainly don’t think it’s fair to put their child in a possible danger, and not even let them know it.”

  “What about old felt-hat?” said Harry tensely.

  “We can’t worry about him,” said Jean. “We don’t know where he is.”

  “What’s all this about penciling Dorinda in?” Harry’s heart was lifting. “Sounds like a nice dirty trick,” he said cheerfully, “and a nice high-principled reason to use it.”

  Jean gave him a glance of sudden mischief. “That’s what comes of being clearheaded,” she said, and took the yellow wooden lead pencil from his fingers.

  They were two floors too high. They found stairs. Dorinda’s room was only four doors away, and across, from the room they hoped to enter. All was still in this corridor except for the sense of the buzz of life behind walls. Nobody was lurking. So Jean rammed the pencil, full length, on its side, into the crack, the leeway that existed between the edge and the jamb of Dorinda’s door. This wasn’t done noiselessly, and a voice within called sharply, “What’s that?” They didn’t answer.

  “It works. Don’t worry,” Jean whispered as they crept away. “She can’t turn the knob. Somebody has to practically kick it out” Somebody would, of course. Dorinda would be on the phone for help. They had only a few minutes.

  Mr. Edwards opened his door willingly to the voice of an American female and reacted at once. “Say, don’t I know you from someplace?”

  “Of course you do,” gushed Jean. “May we please come in? May we please close the door?”

  “Who is it?” said Mrs. Edwards brightly. She had been lying down with her shoes off and she was readjusting her girdle as best she could in the very act of sitting up.

  “Oh, Mrs. Edwards,” Jean turned with a sure instinct. “I’m the one who sold your little girl a toy, in the gift shop in Los Angeles.”

  “Well, for pity’s sakes. Sally Jo?” said the mother, nervously continuing her struggle.

  “Hi, Sally Jo,” said Jean. The child was sitting cross-legged on the third bed in the room. She was a lanky child with limp brown hair and a pouting lip, and she was bored stiff.

  “Who—uh—is this?” Mr. Edwards had an eye on Harry’s size.

  “My name is Fairchild,” said Harry quietly, keeping himself background.

  Jean said, “We’d like to buy the little toy back from you. It’s very important to us and it’s a long story. We haven’t much time. We’d like to pay anything you think is fair. So would you? Please?”

  “You mean the piggy bank?” said Mrs. Edwards in astonishment. “Well, for pity’s sakes. ” Her plump legs were now dangling off the edge of the bed; her plump feet were stockinged lumps.

  Jean rushed on. “I sold it to you by mistake. I’m so sorry. I’ll see that you get another one, exactly like it. I promise. I’ll mail it wherever you say. And we’ll pay you whatever you think … It’s just that we haven’t time. You don’t mind … too much … do you?”

  The whole Edwards family stared at her. Mrs. Edwards reached for one of her shoes.

  Harry, who stood close to the inside of the door, with his ears tuned for any unusual sounds in the corridor, said, “Do you still have it, by the way?”

  “Well, Sally Jo has it packed someplace. I never heard of such a thing in my life. I haven’t had any sleep.” Mrs. Edwards passed the buck. “Daddy?”

  Mr. Edwards swelled and took over. “You’re talking about a piggy bank? A mistake, you say?”

  So Jean kept on talking, saying the same things over again, while the child did a kind of rolling flip off the bed and began to delve into a suitcase.

  Harry sensed that these were amiable people. They had the impulse to be obliging. They didn’t need the pig; it would be no hardship for them to surrender it. But they had a natural curiosity and they had, alas, the obligation to take time and be “wise.” So they would go around and around and, in the end, act on pure impulse, just the same.

  It was going to take too much time.

  “How could you—uh—make a mistake?” the man was saying, still friendly.

  “Well, you see, it belonged to Mr. Fairchild,” said Jean, giving a little more, “so I shouldn’t have sold it to you at all.”

  “There must be something in it,” said Mrs. Edwards flatly.

  And Jean said quickly, “Oh, we’d return everything the little girl put in it. She won’t lose …”

  “You’re not going to get anything out of that thing without breaking it, are you?” said Mr. Edwards.

  This chatter was suddenly getting nowhere very fast.

  Harry fancied he could hear some banging afar. He took out his wallet and extracted an American one-hundred-dollar bill. “There’s not much time, really,” he said. “Will this be okay?”

  ERROR. It was too much.

  “Say,” burst the man, “what’s in that pig anyhow? Diamonds?”

  The woman licked her lips and said, “Daddy, do you think we ought …?” (She meant she didn’t.)

  “No, no,” cried Jean. “It’s only because we haven’t time to explain.” And there was some generous quality of understanding, some recognition of the pain of unsatisfied curiosity (for which they offered recompense) that caused a moment’s trembling balance.

  Then Sally Jo took the reins of power into accustomed hands. She turned around and stood with the small saucily painted pink pig cradled in her arms. “They can’t have my pig and break it. I don’t want my pig broken. It’s mine.”

  “Ah, I know,” said Jean warmly. “But listen, you’ll have another one …”

  “I don’t want another one. I want my own pig.” She stared at them with hostile smolder. Sally Jo was nobody to miss a chance to dominate. It was her forte. She was going to make trouble if she could. And she could. “You’re going to make me give them my pig,” she whined to her parents, “and you said it was mine. You promised.”

  This tore it.

  “Now, sweetheart,” said her mother, “Mommy and Daddy are not going to make you do anything. We wouldn’t do that.”

  Jean said to the child directly, “Won’t you please sell us the pig? And have a newer one for yourself?”

  “No. You can’t have my pig. I don’t have to sell it to any old dumb …”

  “Sal,” said her father, “now just a minute. Just don’t worry. Let Daddy talk. Look … uh …” He turned to Harry. “I’d sure like to know a little more about this.” His eye was on the money.

  “May I see the pig?” said Harry, severely. He aimed to raise doubt, to hint at one hundred dollars withdrawn. He pinned his hopes on the man.

  “Let me have that a minute, Sal?”

  “No.” The child hugged her property even tighter and turned a defensiv
e hunching shoulder. “No. You can’t have it.”

  “Listen, Daddy’s not going to …”

  “No.”

  “Now, Daddy,” said Mommy. Sally Jo teetered on the brink of tantrum and the threat was paralyzing.

  Oooh, that little pig! thought Jean. Then the mother met her eye and betrayed her child with a grimace. Can’t do anything with her, the glance said.

  “I’ll tell you,” said Sally Jo’s father with a hint of apology, “Why don’t you folks get in touch a little later on? And we can talk this over a little bit more, okay? Fact, we’re due on some trip. There’s no use, right now.” His brows, his glance, his voice, betrayed his child. “She gets set …”

  “Don’t open!” Jean cried. Too late.

  Mr. Edwards was opening the door to show them out.

  “Hey, what’s up, out there?” said Mr. Edwards at once. There were people out there. There was some unnatural commotion. An incident was happening. It was the breaking open of Dorinda’s door.

  Harry, who was standing a few feet within the room, looked behind him. He met the mild eye of a little man who, holding his felt hat to his breast as if the flag were going by, was standing across the corridor, looking in.

  Harry suddenly took control of the door and closed it.

  “Hey, now, just a darned …” Mr. Edwards flared.

  Jean said, “Oh, now … Now there may be trouble, and we didn’t want …” ERROR.

  Mrs. Edwards reacted instantaneously. “I’m very sorry, but I am calling downstairs.” Her tongue licked at her lips. She reached for the instrument. Oh no, no trouble. Nothing like that. Mrs. Edwards washed her hands of trouble. Mrs. Edwards was upright and law-abiding, and authority was on her side. You may or may not be desperadoes, her eyes said, but I want no truck with trouble.

  Jean didn’t know what to do. Harry, tempted to have the game as well as the name, regarded the child and the pig with violent impulses. And the child, either reading him loud and clear, or possessed of her own devil screamed, “He’s a bad man. He’s bad. Mommy! Mommy!”

  And the mother, reacting like a tigress, with one shoe off and one shoe on, came lurching out from between two beds to protect her young. She was off-balance. She fell upon the child. The child’s sturdy young legs held them both up, but the little pig, as if it had been greased for rustic sport, rose out of the child’s grasp, described an arc, and fell to the floor, where it separated rather demurely into two large pieces. The hindquarters rocked reproachfully.