The Knave of Hearts

by Dell Shannon

  And after a moment Hackett said as softly, "Like they say, touché. It’s a thing in us, if we’re men at all."

  "Two sides to every coin, entendido .... Given any choice, would you rather be finally judged by a psychiatrist or a priest? What’s the difference?—the one blames your grandparents, the other blames you. ¡Ni qué nirio muerto!—me, I’m done, finalmente, with the priests and all their works, but if you pin me down, I think they’re a little closer than the head doctors—it’s the individual who decides what the individual does, or thinks, or feels, or wants."

  "There I’m with you. De veras. Sure we do, sure!" said Hackett rather violently, and stabbed out his cigarette as if it was a personal enemy. "Is it because we’re—the male animal, so to speak—or just because we’re human?"

  "I’ll pass on that one, boy."

  "That’s a kind of answer from authority, God knows," said Hackett, and his tone was angry, hard. "You’ve had enough experience to say—and walked out on enough women."'

  Mendoza looked up at him, silent for a moment, his eyes turned cold and remote. So, he thought, of course—Art had heard about it now, from his Angel, probably. Words unsaid between them here, now, about a woman they both knew: personal words, irrelevant to this case they would work together. “Mi amigo bueno," said Mendoza, amiable, soft, friendly, "let’s keep it the professional discussion—¿conforme, compañero?”

  Hackett met his eyes. "O.K., agreed. Excusas muchas, por favor . . . So how and where do we start to look? You’re the one gives the orders." And if that was just very subtly sardonic, he didn’t emphasize it.

  Mendoza smiled. "I’ll tell you what occurs to me . . ."

  SIX

  The man who had once called himself Edward Anthony, and at another time Mark Hamilton, and other names, was dressing to go out. He’d thought for a while he would have to call and make an excuse; the idea of going out, anywhere away from the safe haven of his own apartment, started him shaking—after he’d read all the papers today. But he felt better now; there wasn’t really any reason to get the jitters, not yet anyway, he’d realized that when he reread everything in the Times story— that one had more details.

  They had come so much closer than he’d ever thought they could, that he’d been terribly frightened at first—all the past two weeks and a half, since the story about Haines had come out in the papers. Every day he’d bought all the editions of all the papers, to see what more they’d found out, and it was like the hand of God starting to reach for him, what they knew. The worst of it was, of course, that they might know a lot more than they let the papers print—you couldn’t be sure. You read about these smart young reporters who ferreted out police secrets, but did they exist?—and he had an idea that these days the responsible newspapers cooperated with the police, withheld things if they were asked. They might know more—but when he thought about it straight, they didn’t know anything important, they just c0uldn’t: his real name or where to find him. He didn’t see how they could ever find out, so there wasn’t any danger really. He mustn’t get nervous for no reason.

  The things they’d found out were all dead ends, couldn’t lead them anywhere. All the same, it was frightening to see it all printed like that, little things nobody but him had known. On that Monday there’d been the Haines story, about that woman confirming his alibi after all, and the question printed in big black type, to startle—Who Murdered Mary Ellen Wood? Then on Tuesday, the interview with Mrs. Haines, and how she thought those other three cases were connected. And for a while the police just kept saying, No comment, on that. But then on Thursday and Friday there’d been rerun stories on those three, and with a lot more detail than had got into the papers before, and the police—maybe pressed by those reporters—had admitted that they were working over those cases again. A lot of deductions and speculations—that was all the reporters. The police wouldn’t tell them what they were thinking, but policemen read newspapers too, and one or two little things might give them ideas if they hadn’t had them before. But of course, even on those things, they could only find out so much—nothing would lead them anywhere. Would it? About how whoever killed Mary Ellen maybe had lived in that neighborhood where the Haineses lived—and that, by what had come out about the other girls, the murderer had planned his crimes, because of giving different names—and what the proprietor of that record-and-art-supply shop had said—and the names—and what those other women said. You wouldn’t think people would remember little niggling bits of casual conversation so long . . . but of course women were all gossips, and especially when it came to what they called boy friends and so on ....

  Lascivious, lewd-minded, setting the trap for men always, all of them. Whether they realized it or not—and some of them, of course, were entirely innocent, poor things. The way Mary Ellen had been. He remembered that little man in the record shop. The little man, his pictures in the papers on Friday and Saturday, who said he remembered the fellow Miss Teitel got talking to a couple times there. But he didn’t really, because the description he gave was vague, would apply to lots of men.

  He looked at himself anxiously in the mirror as he knotted his tie. Surely it would? Nothing at all definite, as if he had a scar to remember, something like that. The proprietor had said, "He was kind of tall, maybe five-eleven, and thin, and he had brown hair, and he was clean-shaved"—al1 true, but true of thousands of men—"and blue eyes," and that was wrong, his eyes were brown. People didn’t really observe closely, remember accurately. No danger there.

  No danger really from what the women said, those friends of Jane Piper, and Pauline McCandless, and Celestine Teitel. The names, sure. Christopher Hawke for Pauline, Stephen Laird for Jane. But the names didn’t mean anything, and none of the women had known much about him to tell their friends, even the little while they’d known him before. . . Anything like what he really did, where he worked, where he lived. It didn’t add up to anything, to a useful description or a definite fact.

  Unless the papers hadn’t printed all they’d said; but how could any of them know anything, just from the little those women could have told about him?

  There wasn’t any way the police could connect who he really was with any of those names and women, was there? All the time, he’d been himself too, with a permanent, different name and background, and none of them had known anything about that. And these others, friends they’d mentioned him to, had never laid eyes on him. Had they?

  The papers had said some bad things about the police, because of their getting Allan Haines for Mary Ellen, and not suspecting about these other girls—but other times, in other articles, he’d read how most modern police forces were efficient and honest, with all sorts of scientific experts to help them, and particularly this one here. It was a handicap, not having firsthand knowledge of all this—were they fools or not? In today’s papers and some of yesterday’s, there’d been pictures of some of them. The one in charge of the investigation, it had been a little surprise—he was Mexican, a lieutenant, it said. The fellow with him in that picture, Sergeant Hackett his name was, was quite ordinary-looking except that he looked awfully big—unless this Lieutenant Mendoza was awfully small, and there were standards about that for police, weren’t there? They had to be over a certain height. You couldn’t really tell much from a picture. This Mendoza, that was one thing, of course—he’d be a Roman Catholic and consequently not very smart or knowledgeable. They weren’t allowed to think independently, and any of them that were very smart were sent into the priesthood, they wouldn’t be in the police. That was easy to figure, and encouraging.

  What were they thinking, where were they looking? They’d have to make a big pretense of hunting, with all the papers said about their stupidity.

  But he just couldn’t see any way they’d ever get to him, who he really was. He didn’t like it—he was uneasy—that people had remembered the names he’d given, and even a little about him, or what he’d told those women. He hadn’t thought even that much wou
ld ever be found out. But it couldn’t be dangerous; he’d been too careful.

  He was finished dressing, and it was too early to leave; he sat down to reread the Times article again. Just to be sure there wasn’t anything really dangerous.

  No; since he knew how it was with him, he’d been careful. Just luck that he hadn’t been found out the first couple of times—the one back home, and then the second one. After that, he knew he had to be terribly careful, just in case he couldn’t stop himself, and oh, God, he had tried, he had tried not to. Because when he hadn’t been found out—the police there said it might have been anybody who killed Rhoda, a woman like that—and again with that Anderson girl—it had seemed to him that God meant to give him another chance. And he’d tried. Because it wasn’t right, it was terrible when he thought about it calmly, afterward. Some of the time—right then—it seemed the only possible, righteous thing. These women who had tempted him just being women, who knew the awful weakness in him, who had seen him stripped of all camouflage, all spiritual dignity and control—impossible to let them live. That first time it had happened, he hadn’t had a thought for his own safety. Just a thing he had to do and he’d done it, that was Rhoda, and nobody had connected him with it at all. But terrible, terrible, how the devil was so insidious, tempting .... It hadn’t been quite as hard, somehow, when Father was alive. There under the same roof, a living presence reminding him and, of course, keeping him busy, occupied—idle hands opportunity for the devil—there’d been the shop to tend, always things to do, talk about. The times this awful fleshly hunger came over him, he’d made himself sit down quietly and read the Scriptures or something improving and calming like that. Mostly. But once he was alone, there was the opportunity, nobody to ask where he was going, what he was doing, thinking, feeling. And so, eventually, there he was seeking out the wanton woman—

  And once he’d gratified the lust, the temptation worse, worse, and oftener too—useless to fight, though he fought it, he tried, but always it was eventually too strong for him .... And then he’d have to destroy the source of temptation. It was like riding a toboggan out of control down a steep hill, everything faster and faster once he was out of control, and the inevitable crash at the bottom. The way it was, he knew now—almost surely—never any different, whenever he got to the place with one of them where he had to let go, give in to the lust, then it took him all the way down, helpless, and it always ended in the crash, the holier kind of lust, the savagely beautiful time of total destruction.

  You could really say, all their fault for being what they were—the whole source of sin—but he knew all the same that something was a little wrong in him too, because other men didn’t go out of control this way. Of course, a lot of men hadn’t had the advantage of a really religious upbringing, but— Better to marry than to burn, that was St. Paul, and he’d thought that was the solution—after the Anderson girl, he’d thought that. It wasn’t the best way, the ultimately right way, but if it was your wife it wasn’t sin. He’d been trying to arrange it that way, with Mary Ellen. But it was difficult, there were preliminaries to getting married. The girl expected to be taken around a little, to get to know you, and so on, and it was just too long and nerve-racking. He’d been so upset after the Anderson thing, he’d held himself in desperately for a long while, nearly a year, and then he’d decided he must get married, it would be all right then. Didn’t much matter who, but Mary Ellen was a nice girl, he’d liked her—not like Rhoda or Julie Anderson. But that was the trouble, you couldn’t meet a girl one day and marry her the next, and he couldn’t wait, he couldn’t stop himself—

  But hadn’t he known how it would go, even before? Because, the way the papers said, he’d given a wrong name .... Muddling to reason out, but he didn’t think so, not that time. He’d been frightened over Julie Anderson, because it was so close to home. Of course, later he’d decided it was safer—down there—his real home, his own place, nobody knew about that, and he could use it in safety, in leisure ....

  But nobody knew Julie was dead, and in the end it had all blown over with no trouble. But it had set him thinking, just in case—mightn’t it be a good idea to start all over again, the way he had when he came here first, with a new name and background? That had been in his mind that day—a different name and all—he hadn’t consciously planned to do it, but when she’d said her name and he had to introduce himself, the Edward Anthony had come out quite naturally. Queer, how things happened .... He’d felt all buoyed up right then, as if everything was going to be different from then on, it was a new beginning, he would be Edward Anthony and no one else, he’d marry this nice girl so it wouldn’t be sinning, and get all straightened out. It would mean—this had crossed his mind regretfully—quitting his job, starting in fresh somewhere else, and what he’d do about papers, certificates, that would be a problem—but worth any sacrifice.

  Just chance, meeting her like that there in the college cafeteria. He’d been thinking, then, if he just had enough to keep him busy all the while, outside work hours—and he’d gone there to ask about the evening classes— And there was Mary Ellen, at the table where he took his coffee. Friendly, but of course innocently so. A nice girl.

  And he’d tried to do it right, meant to take her out, the ordinary thing, work up to marrying her in the conventional way. But it all went wrong, too fast, the first time he found himself alone with her in the car that day, only two days later ....

  It just showed how people could get the wrong idea, too, from plain facts. Sally Haines had been quite right in saying he had a reason to put Mary Ellen there, but it wasn’t anything to do with her husband. It was her. All of a sudden, he’d thought of where to hide Mary Ellen, and if they did find her, it would be a terrible shock to that woman, and serve her right. He hadn’t, at the time, known her name or anything about her, just what he’d seen and heard, passing the place as he did almost every day. (He moved away afterward, of course.) A most unwomanly woman, who wore trousers, and several times he’d heard her speaking very sharply to her husband, really ordering him around. One of those women who thought herself superior to men, you’d think common sense would tell them how false a notion—it said quite plainly in the Scriptures that—

  It had been too bad about Allan Haines. He was sorry about it, it hadn’t crossed his mind that anything like that would happen, but when it all came out he hadn’t felt quite as bad, because of Haines confessing his sin. A married man, too.

  And it was lucky he hadn’t given Mary Ellen his right name. As if it was meant he should be saved. But that was the end of any new start as Edward Anthony, of course. And of any real hopefulness that even if he did manage to get married— But that would be the best solution, if he could ever control himself and be patient enough to get there with a woman. It was what he’d tried for every time since, with Celestine and Jane and Pauline: what had been in his mind.

  Only then, those times, knowing what might happen, he’d been very careful to give them another name, tell them wrong things about where he worked and lived, and so on. If it had ever worked out, well, he’d just have forgotten this permanent name and place, started over again (the way he’d hoped with Mary Ellen), but it never had .... It all happened just like before—he couldn’t stop himself.

  Another thing about that, he’d been careful—after Julie—not to try with any woman who knew him in his own background, by his own name. A few times it had been hard. He’d meet some woman like that, in the way of business or introduced by someone who knew him, and want her—and knowing what might happen, he didn’t dare . . . He never planned it out, cold. Just, suddenly the day or so after that, he’d find himself in conversation with a strange woman somewhere, the way it had been with Celestine . . . and meeting Jane Piper in the bank elevator that day, talking—and afterward, waiting for her to come out, so he could pretend to meet her by chance in the street, invite her to have a cup of coffee with him .... And Pauline sitting there alone on the beach, looking lonely. Everyb
ody talked to strangers, casually, on the beach. Of course, he knew honestly that his instinctive good manners, his quiet behavior, were reassuring to respectable women: he wasn’t the ordinary kind who tried to pick them up. Well, a man in his line of work, a job with some prestige, educational requirements—he acquired that manner.

  Oh, he’d been careful, but sometimes it was hard. Right now, for instance, there was this woman he felt powerfully attracted to, and God, God, he must be careful, because she knew him as who he really was—properly introduced—and if anything like that happened to her— Well, it mustn’t, that was all. When they’d connected those other three with Mary E1len—guessed that it had been a man known personally to all of them—if another one happened—!

  He got up and walked around the room uneasily, loosening his collar, feeling hot and excited, trying to get himself in hand. Hard. Times like that, before, when the immediate lust was focused on a woman who knew him, he’d just found another who didn’t. A strange one . . .That was how the Scriptures said it, the strange woman.