The Case of the Crumpled Knave

by Anthony Boucher

  He knew a small trembling pleasure. He would be free for a little while of that oppressive dominance which Garnett exerted on him. He could think his own thoughts and plan his own plans, whether they pleased Humphrey Garnett or not. And it was reasonably certain that they would not please him.

  Yes, this sudden tension of menace had its advantages. Smoke is in itself a stifling discomfort, but it is also a screen. Besides, this provided a new pleasure to distract him. In his petty respite, he found it markedly more entertaining to deal and arrange facts and emotions than to worry whether the ace was locked under the king (as it almost invariably was).

  “All in all,” he thought, “I should have quite a little collection for an investigator—if it should come to that.” The thought was so absurd and yet (for even his quiet life had tender spots not formed for probing) so terrifyingly plausible that his old hand trembled just enough to produce a slight cut.

  III

  Humphrey Garnett Expounds a Parable

  The conversation at dinner turned largely upon playing cards. This was not unusual; an interest which swayed Humphrey Garnett must inevitably affect the household which he dominated. But even Arthur Willowe, for all his unusually heightened perception, could not realize how vitally the lore of playing cards was to shape all their lives in the days to come.

  The reactions of the group to cards were various. Kay, like a child, loved them for their beauty or oddity of design. Willowe’s appreciation, too, was somewhat abstractly esthetic; but Camilla Sallice affected a preoccupation with the deeper occult meanings behind the now unheeded designs. Will Harding viewed the cards practically as tools with which to attain relaxation, and esteemed them highly as an aid to his work.

  Richard Vinton, however, was the only one of the group to share their host’s interest in the more scholarly and abstruse aspects of card history; and that, unfortunately, was the trend of tonight’s conversation. This was presumably out of deference to their dinner guest—a gaunt, stooped, old gentleman named Warriner, whose exact identity Willowe failed to gather, but who seemed to have something professional to do with playing cards—curator of a museum collection or something of the sort.

  At least the presence of this odd individual, who left his food almost untouched and subsisted largely on snuff taken between courses, served to dissipate for the moment the atmosphere of tension. There was only one awkward situation, and that was precipitated by the curator himself.

  “Are you still engaged professionally, Mr. Garnett?” he asked, chiefly, it would seem, to cut short a heated controversy between the host and Vinton as to the relative priority of the German or Italian suit designs—a controversy which had been seething, as best Willowe could remember, from the day of Vinton’s entry into the house.

  Garnett looked up with a quizzical frown. “Why, yes. You might say that I am, sir.”

  “Might one inquire the nature of your current researches?”

  “One might not.”

  The family was inured to these abrupt answers; but Willowe feared lest their elderly guest might (and quite justly) feel some offense. However, he merely smiled and said, “A secret?”—adorning the word with an italicized emphasis which made it faintly ridiculous.

  “A secret,” Garnett retorted succinctly.

  “Rather too much of a one, if you ask me.” There was an inexplicable note of resentment in Will Harding’s voice. Did he, perhaps, regret the secrecy which kept veiled his own part in these researches—whatever their nature might be?

  “And how,” the elderly scholar continued, “do you protect your deadly secrets against the unjustifiably curious? Do you, like Faustus’ Covetousness, lock them up in your good chest?”

  “I am quite capable of protecting myself.” The words were simple, but Garnett’s voice was rich in quiet menace. Willowe received the disquieting assurance that the man against whom Garnett protected himself would never live to disturb another victim.

  The rest of the talk consisted chiefly of arguments on such topics as the relative origins of cards and chess, with much bandying about of Richard Brome and Isaac von Meckenen and other great names in the history of card design. This meant, of course, that Garnett, Vinton, and Warriner talked volubly, while the others respectfully ate and listened. It was all, Willowe thought, very ingenious and scholarly and impressive—and dull.

  It was a relief when dinner was over and the men, as was their invariable nightly habit, retired to the study. Kay chose this time for going over household affairs with the cook who came in by the day; and Camilla Sallice, if the dinner had not tempted her too much, would settle down to a session of vocal practice. Her voice, Willowe granted reluctantly, was good—a somber, full-bodied contralto. Smoky, he thought, searching for the mot juste, and then winced selfconsciously, remembering the purpose of smoke as it had presented itself to him earlier.

  The old curator excused himself from joining the group in the study. He had, it appeared, an appointment to visit another eminent collector in Beverly Hills, and must depart at once, even when his host urged him to stay on for a game of vint—that curious Russian paraphrase of bridge which Garnett always upheld as a far subtler game than the American version. (That point Willowe could not judge; the science of cards eluded him. The only game which he fully enjoyed was rummy; there was a certain sense of power and compensation in scooping a fine fat fistful.)

  Warriner too was seemingly not of the card-playing breed. “My dear sir,” he explained, “I never touch playing cards save to relish their designs. ‘Infinite riches,’” he went on with punctuation from his snuffbox, “‘in a little room.’ The perfection of a concise deck, yes; but the confusion of that beauty scattered in wanton play—no, my dear sir, no.”

  Now that the four men—Garnett, Vinton, Will Harding, and Willowe himself—were gathered in the study, that abnormal, irrational tension began to assert itself once more. “This is a prologue,” Willowe thought almost involuntarily, “a prologue to something strong and terrible.” He laid out his cards (he was back at Canfield now) with painful overdeliberation. “I must watch these people as though I had never seen them before—as though they were new characters whom I had to establish.”

  He looked at his brother-in-law. Humphrey Garnett’s strong body was hunched over the great board of one hundred and sixty squares, while his long arms adjusted the chess pieces. There were red and green men in addition to the usual black and white—a full complement of each. His stubby fingers placed the exquisitely carved pieces with surprising delicacy.

  Richard Vinton’s hand abandoned the fascination of his wavy hair to pick up the green bishop. “It will be sport,” he mused, admiring the intricate tracings of its miter, “to have a game of four-handed chess again.” His rich voice had that slight trace of British accent which is sometimes so impressive to Hollywood producers. In Vinton’s case, Willowe thought, it seemed to have served him very well indeed. “I haven’t had a chance since the pater died.”

  Garnett shook back his shaggy hair and looked up. “I had some fine games with Sir Edward. I hope you live up to the family tradition, Richard. You’ll find Colonel Rand a worthy opponent.”

  Richard Vinton smiled. “A sort of double family tradition now, isn’t it, sir? I mean, it won’t be many weeks before I’ll be calling you father.”

  Garnett adjusted the white queen deliberately. “In chess,” he said, “you can reckon your moves with certainty, provided you don’t underestimate your adversary. But in other games—cards, for instance—chance plays a guiding part. Eh, Will?”

  The dry young man with the sparse sandy hair and the rimless spectacles (how well that simple description characterized him, Willowe thought—if only it weren’t for that moment on the porch …) looked up from a ponderous German work on chemistry. “What was that, Mr. Garnett?”

  Garnett’s stubby fingers massaged his firm chin. “I was merely developing a banal little parable, Will, to the effect that Richard cannot be quite sure of marryin
g Kay until the marriage has taken place. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s certain enough,” Will Harding said in a flat hopeless voice, and went on reading.

  Garnett, however, had hit his stride and was not to be stopped. He turned to his brother-in-law. “What is your opinion, Arthur? Which is the true symbol of life—chess or cards?”

  Arthur Willowe paused while he decided which red nine to move, but not so much for the sake of the move as to give him time to mask his secret interest in the talk. He knew whichever nine he moved would be wrong anyway. Things were like that. His futile white hands abandoned the game of patience and wavered in the air while he sought the proper words for his answer. “I can scarcely say, Humphrey,” was the best he could bring forth. “As you know, I have never been able to master even simple chess, let alone this complex four-handed affair. No, I fear I cannot judge your analogy.” These were words. The truth was that he was afraid to judge the analogy—afraid of the purpose that might lie behind Garnett’s verbal attack on Vinton.

  Humphrey Garnett laughed loudly. There was something hairy even about his laughter. “That’s one thing I’ll say for you, Arthur. You’re honest. You’re not fit to do anything, and you admit it. You can’t earn a cent, you can’t play a game, you can’t say a sentence worth hearing. You can, of course, play solitaire, if the moves are simple and only one pack is involved; and I can remember once thinking that you could drive a car.”

  There was something more than ordinarily vicious in Garnett’s laughter this time. Arthur Willowe winced and drew into his shell of futility. For a moment he could not even be slyly observant. He could only see that street corner. The shattered glass and the blood and the water pouring out of the broken hydrant to wash it all away—all but the memory. He could see Alicia lying there so still, looking as though she were practicing some queer contortion act, like the shows they used to put on in the barn for two pins a head. He had lain there beside Alicia—his sister, Garnett’s wife—thinking about the bam and wondering if he was dead too.

  But of course he wasn’t. He couldn’t even die. He could do only one thing, and Garnett would despise him more than ever if he knew what that one thing was. Slowly he moved the wrong red nine, then forced his attention back to the others.

  Garnett was still talking. “You can make a very pretty parable, for instance,” he was saying to the dark young actor, “out of pinochle. Or do you happen to know that game?”

  Vinton shook his head gracefully. “Unfortunately, no. It always makes me think of elderly and paunchy film executives.”

  “There are marriages in the game,” Garnett went on. “That is to say, the king and queen of a suit. And it seems moral and laudable that you should score points for something so proper as a marriage. But there’s much more profit in another sort of mating. A pinochle is a queen—and a knave. You see?”

  Vinton shrugged. “I’m not sure I do.”

  “The knave,” Garnett added emphatically, “of diamonds.”

  The room was silent. Will Harding read on in a strange new theory of atomic structure, Richard Vinton strolled over to examine the bookshelves, and Humphrey Garnett put the finishing touches to the great chess table. Arthur Willowe watched it all quietly—and, incidentally, lost another game of Canfield.

  Then the two girls came into the study. With their coming, Willowe meditated, Humphrey Garnett’s oddly assorted household was again complete. Kay Garnett, that dear daughter of so violent a father, was pre-eminently young—young, redheaded, and alive. She moved across the stuffy room with a grace that seemed to belong rather on the tennis court or on a high mountain path.

  “Time for you all to get out,” she said gaily. “I’ve got to see that Father keeps his hours.” She moved over to Richard Vinton and frankly took the young actor’s hand in hers.

  The other girl stood near the doorway holding a glass. Camilla Sallice was several years older and some inches taller than Kay. Beside the younger girl’s brightness she seemed worn and almost sullen.

  “I brought you your nightcap this time, Uncle Humphrey,” she said quietly. “I hope it’s right. Scotch and plain water, no ice.”

  “You’re a true Briton at heart, sir,” Vinton observed.

  Garnett smiled his thanks at the girl and set the glass aside. “Very well, gentlemen. My daughter’s word is law here—especially when reinforced by Dr. White’s. You may retire. I shall have my nightcap here in peace and then go to my rest. Are we ready for that experiment tomorrow, Will? That is, unless Colonel Rand’s arrival postpones it.”

  The young laboratory assistant was placing his rimless spectacles in their case. “Everything’s set, Mr. Garnett. Good night, sir.” He nodded to the company.

  “Good night, Will,” Kay Garnett murmured. But he went out without answering her.

  Garnett surveyed the chess table once more. “Thank God Rand is coming!” he exclaimed, stretching his long arms. “For six months I’ve had two other men in this house who could play four-handed chess, and now at last I have a fourth. I’ll take the green men for myself,” he went on dreamily. “They seem the most bizarre. You’ll take the red, Richard—the color of youth and strength and vigor. White will suit Will—the poor, pale, efficient rabbit. That leaves the black pieces for Colonel Rand. That’s as it should be. He’s always liked black.”

  “I wouldn’t.” Kay shuddered a little. “It’s such an ominous color—mourning and death and things.”

  “Omens don’t bother me,” Garnett laughed. “I’ve learned that fate can be shaped if you’re strong enough to do it. And I am. Now at long last I am to have a game of four-handed chess, and death is the only agent that can keep me from it.”

  Camilla Sallice’s voice was low and throbbing. “Please, Uncle Humphrey. Don’t joke like that.”

  “And what, my dear,” Garnett asked calmly, “makes you think that I’m joking?”

  The Sallice girl had left the room; and Arthur Willowe, with an unobtrusive good night to the others, slipped out after her. If he waited for Kay and Vinton, they might feel they had to talk to him; and he knew that they wanted to be alone together. But in the hall he discovered that Vinton had followed him.

  He looked up in surprise. The young actor was holding out a piece of paper covered with typing. He seemed to be trying hard not to smile.

  “I found this under your balcony, sir,” Vinton said respectfully. “It must have blown away. I thought perhaps you wouldn’t want anyone else to see it.”

  Willowe stared at the sheet of paper with incredulous horror. “You—you read this, Richard?”

  “I couldn’t help noticing the name. It’s not unknown.” There was awkward embarrassment under the careful British reserve. “But I promise to respect your secret.”

  For a moment Arthur Willowe understood the hidden fury which he had seen briefly revealed in Will Harding’s eyes. He wondered if he himself looked so abruptly altered as had the other. That would never do. Where there is fire, he thought confusedly, there must be smoke—smoke to hide the very glow of the fire. He laughed (the noise was shrill in his ears), mumbled some clumsy speech of thanks, and slipped up the stairs quietly.

  In his own tidy room he felt better. It was amusing now to think that even he might be conceived to have a motive, if such a fantastically twisted one. But people had been killed for knowing what must not be known.

  Yes, he thought, the net around Richard Vinton was drawing cruelly tight. He smiled as he phrased that; but the smile faded quickly. He was beginning to realize, in faint foreshadowing, that other net of strange compulsion which was drawn about Arthur Willowe.

  IV

  Colonel Rand Rereads a Telegram

  The trim little air-line hostess collected funnylooking passengers. That was why she liked Colonel Theodore Rand (U. S. A., retired). He was tall and well-set, with shoulders that looked padded and probably weren’t. His hair was nearly white, and he had waxed mustaches. Even while he gazed out of the window at empty
middle-western plains, he managed to be impressive, commanding, and just a little pompous. In short, he looked so exactly like a drawing by Peter Arno that she amused herself by wondering if he ever really said “harrumph.”

  The Colonel frowned imposingly and reached into his breast pocket. His long fingers drew out a folded piece of yellow paper. He read its message carefully:

  COME TO LOS ANGELES AT ONCE STOP FLY IF NECESSARY STOP YOU MAY BE INVALUABLE WITNESS AT INQUEST ON MY BODY STOP WATCH HECTOR CAREFULLY

  Colonel Rand had no idea how many times he had read that message since he had received it. He was a man of leisure living on a comfortable pension; there was no reason why he should not indulge a friend’s strange whim. But all his military experience had not prepared him for an urgent invitation to an inquest, signed by the expectant victim.

  And who in Heaven’s name was Hector? The name meant nothing to Rand in any connection. The Colonel stared fiercely at the message, then slowly and with great deliberation he went “harrumph,” to the intense glee of the little air-line hostess.

  He looked again at the signature. That was what was so utterly incredible. You couldn’t associate death with him, much less this calm acceptance of it. But there the name stood, in letters as clear and bold as the man himself:

  HUMPHREY GARNETT

  THE CASE

  I

  Colonel Rand Takes a Taxi

  Colonel Rand took a taxi from the Burbank airport. The day was one of those brightly incredible samples of June in January which justify lyric-writers and All the Year Clubs even to the most tough-minded. The old soldier leaned back on the leather seat in stiff contentment, with no serious inkling, despite that perplexing and ominous telegram, of what awaited him at the end of his journey.