Rex Stout - 1917 - An Officer and a Lady Page 2

  I transcribe Bill’s thought: The little devil was actually going to call the police! Action must come now if at all, and quickly. He dismissed the idea of a dash for freedom; she would certainly pull the trigger, and she had a firm eye and hand. Bill summoned all his wit.

  “My little girl’s mama is dead, too,” he blurted out suddenly.

  The major, with her hand outstretched for the telephone, stopped to look at him.

  “My mother isn’t dead,” she observed sharply. “She’s gone to the country.”

  “You don’t say so!” Bill’s voice was positively explosive with enthusiastic interest. “Why didn’t you go along, Major, if I may ask?”

  “I am too busy with the Auxiliary. We are pushing the campaign for preparedness.” She added politely: “You say your wife is dead?”

  Bill nodded mournfully.

  “Been dead three years. Got sick and wasted away and died. Broke my little girl’s heart, and mine, too.”

  A suggestion of sympathy appeared in the major’s eyes as she inquired:

  “What is your little girl’s name?”

  “Her name?” Bill floundered in his stupidity. “Oh, her name. Why, of course her name’s Hilda.”

  “Indeed!” The major looked interested. “The same as Cook. How funny! How old is she?”

  “Sixteen,” said Bill rather desperately.

  “Oh, she’s a big girl, then! I suppose she goes to school?”

  Bill nodded.

  “Which one?”

  It was a mean question. In Bill’s mind school was simply school. He tried to think of a word that would sound like the name of one, but nothing came.

  “Day school,” he said at last, and then added hastily, “that is, she moves around, you know. Going up all the time. She’s a smart girl.” His tone was triumphant.

  Then, fearing that another question might finish him, he continued slowly:

  “You might as well go on and call the cops—the police, I suppose. Of course, Hilda’s at home hungry, but that don’t matter to you. She’ll starve to death. I didn’t tell you she’s sick. She’s sick all the time—something wrong with her. I was just walkin’ past here and thought I might find something for her to eat, and I was lookin’ around—”

  “You ate the strawberry shortcake yourself,” put in the major keenly.

  “The doctor won’t let Hilda have cake,” Bill retorted. “And I was hungry myself. I suppose it’s no crime to be hungry—”

  “You took the silver and other things.”

  “I know.” Bill’s head drooped dejectedly. “I’m a bad man, I guess. I wanted to buy nice things for Hilda. She hasn’t had a doll for over ten years. She never has much to eat. If I’m arrested I suppose she’ll starve to death.”

  The sympathy in the major’s eyes deepened. “I don’t want to cause unnecessary suffering,” she declared. “I feel strongly for the lower classes. And Miss Vanderhoof says that our penal system is disgraceful. I suppose little would be gained by sending you to prison.”

  “It’s an awful place,” Bill declared feelingly.

  “You have been there?”

  “Off and on.”

  “You see! It has done you no good. No, I might as well let you go. Turn your back.”

  Bill stared.

  The major stamped her little bare foot.

  “Turn your back, I say! That’s right. I do wish you wouldn’t make me repeat things. Walk forward near the dressing table. No, at the side. So. Now empty your pockets and turn them inside out. All of them. Put the things on the dressing table. Keep your back turned, or—as you would say in your vulgar parlance—I’ll blow your block off.”

  Bill obeyed. He could feel the muzzle of the revolver pointed directly at the back of his head, and he obeyed. He lost no time about it either, for the anesthetized Hilda would be coming to soon.

  Methodically and thoroughly the pockets were emptied and their contents deposited on the dressing table: a gentleman’s watch, two silver cigarette cases, three scarf pins, five rings, a jeweled photograph frame, and ninety-four dollars in cash. The articles that were obviously Bill’s own she instructed him to return to the pockets. He did so.

  “There!” said the major briskly when he had finished. “You may turn now. That’s all, I think. Kindly close the front door as you go out. I’ll attend to the suitcase on the windowsill after you’re gone. I wouldn’t advise you to try any tricks on me. I’ve never got a man on the run, but I’d love to have a crack at one. That’s all.”

  Bill hesitated. His eye was on the neat roll of bills reposing beside him on the dressing table. It traveled from that to the gold wristwatch he would not take because it belonged to the sweet, helpless child. Would he take it now if he had a chance? Would he!

  The major’s voice came:

  “Go, please. I’m sleepy, and you’ve given me a lot of trouble. I shall have to revive Hilda, if it is possible. I have doubts on the subject. She refuses to keep herself in condition. She eats too much, she will not take a cold bath, she won’t train properly, she is sixty-eight pounds overweight, and she sleeps with her mouth open. But she’s a good cook—”

  “She is that,” Bill put in feelingly, with his memory on the shortcake.

  “—and I trust she has not expired. There is my father, too. To put it mildly, he is a weakling. His lack of wind is deplorable. He sits down immediately after eating. It is only three miles to his law office, and he rides. He plays golf and calls it exercise. If you have gagged him scientifically he may have ceased breathing by now.

  “In one way it would be nothing to grieve over, but he is my father after all, and the filial instinct impels me to his assistance against my better judgment. You do not seem to be in good condition yourself. I doubt if you know how to breathe properly, and it is evident that you do not train systematically. There are books on the subject in the public library; I would advise you to get one. You may give my name as a reference. Now go.”

  Bill went. The door of the room was open. He started toward the back stairs, but the major halted him abruptly and made him right about; she had switched on the lights in the hall. Down the wide front staircase he tramped, and from behind came the major’s voice:

  “Keep your mouth closed. Head up! Arms at your side. Breathe through your nose. Chest out forward! Hep, hep, hep—the door swings in. Leave it open. Lift your foot and come down on the heel. Turn the corner sharply. Head up!”

  She stood in the doorway as he marched across the porch, down the steps, and along the gravel path to the sidewalk. A turn to the right, and thirty paces took him to the street corner. Still the major’s voice sounded from the doorway:

  “Hep, hep, hep—lift your feet higher—breathe through your nose—hep, hep, hep—”

  And as he reached the street corner the command came sharply:

  “Halt! About face! Salute!”

  A glance over his shoulder showed him her nightgown framed in the doorway. There were trees in between. Bill halted, but he did not about face and he did not salute. It was too much. Instead, after a second’s hesitation, he bounded all at once into the street and across it, and was off like a shot. And as he ran he replied to her command to salute by calling back over his shoulder, as man to man:

  “Go to hell!”

  Excess Baggage

  NAPOLEON MAY HAVE BEEN IMPRISONED on an island; Milton may have written “Paradise Lost;” Carrie Nation may have smashed a joint; and Hannibal may have crossed the Alps. But I don’t believe it. I believe nothing. When a man’s own wife, the woman whom he loves above all the world, is convinced—but listen to my tale and you’ll know what I mean.

  Since I intend to tell the truth, the whole truth and the rest of it, I may as well admit that before I was married I made no claims to the white badge of purity. At the time I started to grow my first mustache I was a traveling salesman, and I’ve been one ever since. I remember an old refrain that ended something like this:

  Sailors have sw
eethearts in every port,

  And drummers in every town.

  Perhaps it’s a little too flattering; a knight of the road may be attractive and insinuating, but he isn’t irresistible. And besides, there are some towns where a man wouldn’t keep a dog—much less a sweetheart. But the author had the right idea, generally speaking.

  For about twelve years I did all in my power to make the words of that song ring true; and even yet it puffs me up a little to remember that for eight of them I was the champion S.S. of the river route on up as far as St. Albans, Vt. S.S. means Secret Sorrow. No woman is ever happy without one. Only if you ever decide to enter the profession, take it from me that it’s harder than it looks. It’s easy enough to show a girl a good time; too often it’s still easier to persuade her to do things she shouldn’t do. But you have to have a real knack and lots of practice to be a genuine Secret Sorrow. Besides, you are continually in danger of becoming an active member of another organization not quite so popular. In fact, they’re so near alike that it takes an expert to tell them apart—even the names are similar. Many a gawk that writes “S.S.” after his name with a flourish is in blissful ignorance of the fact that instead of Secret Sorrow it may mean Sorry Sucker.

  As I say, I held the Hudson River title undisputed for eight years, and it’s the hardest ground in the country to cover properly. And with it all, I was—and am—a good salesman. If you don’t believe me, ask The Dillbecker Company, Office Furniture, 543 Broadway.

  The rice and old shoe thing never appealed to me. I never even took the trouble to joke about it. My idea was that marriage is a coeducational institution whose problems have no answer in the back of the book, whose lectures are given just when you want to sleep, and whose course of painful instruction is finished only when the minister stretches his hands over you palms downward, and your friends and family throw on a few tears and nice little bunches of flowers inscribed “Rest in peace.”

  For twelve long and happy years I harbored this amiable opinion of the tie that binds. I was a half-and-half mixture of Benedick and Lothario, and I was never able to decide which I admired the more. My convictions were impregnable. Women, I agreed, are the most delightful creatures in the world; I would rather be an S.S. than a Ph.D. any day. But no woman should ever tie me down to the “where have you been” thing; no woman should ever rope me in to teach me the hateful mysteries of a four-room flat; no woman should ever—

  Then it hit me.

  It happened in a little village not more than fifty miles north of Albany. I’d made a bum sale to the only furniture firm in town, and had gone out to Blank’s house for dinner and to spend the evening. The first thing I saw when I entered the parlor was a little blue angel sitting at the piano.

  “Who’s that?” I asked my friend.

  “My cousin,” said she, “from Burlington.”

  We went into dinner almost immediately, and for the first time in my life I felt indifferent in the presence of food. The cousin sat across the table from me. I’m no describer, but I’ll try to give you an idea of how she looked. She wore something blue with little bunches of lace at the wrists and neck. Her hands were so white they made her pink fingertips look almost red. Her eyes and lips seemed to belong to a sort of mutual benefit society. I never saw such perfect teamwork. They teased and trembled and tempted, and yet all the time they kept saying: “Never—absolutely never. We’re having a lot of fun, but we will never—”

  “You will!” I said aloud.

  “You will what?” my friend asked coldly. She had been watching me. I was too busy to answer.

  After dinner I walked out on the front porch alone. My eyes felt funny and I couldn’t swallow. All over my chest it felt like someone was sticking needles in me and pulling them out again. I started down the steps, sat down on the top one, and began to review my past life. Then I jumped up and started to walk up and down the porch.

  “Frank Keeler,” said I, “you’re sick. Your stomach’s out of order. It’s even possible that you’re drunk. But don’t you dare to tell me—” I clenched my teeth hard—“don’t you dare tell me—”

  Then I went back into the house and sat and listened to her eyes for three wonderful hours.

  We were married in September—the 28th, to be exact. At that, I kept my word. She didn’t tie me down or rope me in. It was all I could do to get her to hold on to the rope after I tied it around my own neck. Before she’d even look at me, I had to admit that without her my life would be devoted to the joyless gloom of unrelieved masculinity.

  We took a thirty-day wedding trip to Florida, then came to New York and rented a Harlem flat—she calls it an apartment. By that time my firm was sending me daily hints to the effect that although marriages may last forever, honeymoons don’t; and on the Monday following I left on a trip upstate. My wife’s mother had come down a day or two before for a long visit, so it wasn’t as though I was leaving her all alone among strangers.

  In the short space of four months I had backed up, turned around and started off in the opposite direction. You’ve read how “in that one brief moment was condensed the experience of years, and from being a happy carefree girl she became suddenly a mature and resolute woman.” Well, as a quick-change artist “she” didn’t have anything on me. I had become the most faithful and devoted husband south of the North Pole.

  In this, you understand, I was serious—darned serious. If I thought you’d know what I mean, I’d say I was an extremist. Of course I don’t claim any originality; many a man has called the Venus de Milo ugly because she didn’t look like his wife. But usually it’s merely a disease. With me it amounted to a religion. And there wasn’t any forcing about it, either; the thing actually seemed to agree with me. The worst of it was, I liked it.

  As I say, soon after edging into a Harlem flat I left for upstate. The parting was tender and tearful. It was the first time I’d ever left for the front looking backward, and as I ran into an ash cart while turning to throw a final kiss up at the window where my wife sat, I felt for an instant that life had been robbed of one of its sweetest pleasures. But by the time I’d reached the 125th Street Station and bought a mileage book, I was thinking how dignified and noble it was to go out into the world and work for the support of a wife and the preservation of a home.

  I shall never forget that trip up and down the river. I had never before realized the full extent of my success and popularity. If I told you all the incidents of that eventful month it would sound like the plot of a musical comedy or the autobiography of a jackass. At each stop it seemed as though everybody I didn’t want to see was waiting for me at the station.

  I’d got no farther than Peekskill when I discovered that no man should ever become a Secret Sorrow unless he intends to stick on the job. If you tell a woman she’s all the world to you, she’s usually willing enough to let you fall off the earth; but if you can get her to put her hand in yours just once, and then tell her how sad it makes you to feel that you can never love her, she’ll never let go. If you say you love her, she yawns indifferently and asks what time it is; if you say you can’t love her she looks at you dreamy and sad and makes you promise to stay over an extra day on your spring trip. Multiply that by 249 and you’ll have some idea of what I was up against.

  It wouldn’t have mattered so much if I’d been willing to sit tight in the front parlor and explain things. But nothing like that for me. You’ll get an inkling of my state of mind when I tell you that I cut out Harris & Puler at Troy because they’ve got a lady buyer who always expects a box of candy and a pleasant smile. Each morning I said over to myself a Lord Tennyson vow about faithfulness in word, thought and deed, and I was getting better every day. I figured that if I came through that first trip with a whole skin the rest would be plain sailing; and what with going down side streets and taking the first train out of towns and spending my Sundays in places where I’d never left my mark, I was exceeding my own fondest hopes.

  Every night I wrote a long
letter to my wife, full of lonesomeness. Hers were a little more cheerful. She and her mother were picking all the department stores to pieces and filling the flat with everything from pillows to pills; and at the end of my third week out she wrote me that her brother was in New York for a few days and had already invited them to two concerts and four plays. It was in the same letter that she told me about tying a pink ribbon on the sponge in my humidor. It didn’t make me feel any better to know that she could be gay and happy while I was lonesome and homesick—to say nothing of the awful temptations I was dodging—but still I knew that was better than if she was there all alone. And of course I didn’t complain any. Instead, I wrote her to be sure and have her brother stay till I got back, so I could show him a corner or two which he’d probably miss without a guide.

  By this time I was going along pretty easy. The worst territory had all been covered, and I’d proved my mettle by steering straight between Scylla and Charybdis without blinking an eye. I had only a week more to go, and I began to breathe easy and natural, feeling that all danger was past. I even got so cheerful and gay that I wrote my wife I wouldn’t arrive till Saturday, thinking to get in on Thursday and give her a little surprise.

  Thursday morning I called on Marshall Bros, of Poughkeepsie—my last stop. I’d been selling them for ten years, and I knew that all I had to do was to run over the stock and fill in the empty places. So I went back to the office and got Billy and we had the job finished up in an hour. Then I went to the office again to get the order signed.

  Just as I got ready to leave old man Marshall came in, looking worried. As he caught sight of me his face brightened up.

  “Keeler,” he said, “you’re just the man I want. When do you leave?”

  “Twelve fifteen for New York,” said I, “and as fast as I can go.”

  “Couldn’t be better,” said he. “Come in here a minute.”

  Now I’m always willing and anxious to oblige a customer, of course. So when I followed him into his private office I walked eager and pleasant. Then he explained to me that his wife’s niece was going down to New York to visit a cousin, and she was very innocent and timid and had never been there before, and would I act as escort?