The Thurber Carnival, Page 2

  I gave the little laugh that annoys her. ‘All conductors say “lady”,’ I explained. ‘Now, if a woman had got sick on the train, Reagan would have said, “A woman got sick on my train. Tell the office.” What must have happened is that Reagan found, somewhere between Kent and Cornwall Bridge, a woman the office had been looking for.’

  Sylvia didn’t close her book, but she looked up. ‘Maybe she got sick before she got on the train, and the office was worried,’ said Sylvia. She was not giving the problem close attention.

  ‘If the office knew she got on the train,’ I said patiently, ‘they wouldn’t have asked Reagan to let them know if he found her. They would have told him about her when she got on.’ Sylvia resumed her reading.

  ‘Let’s stay out of it,’ she said. ‘It isn’t any of our business.’

  I hunted for my Chiclets but couldn’t find them. ‘It might be everybody’s business,’ I said, ‘every patriot’s.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Sylvia. ‘You think she’s a spy. Well, I still think she’s sick.’

  I ignored that. ‘Every conductor on the line has been asked to look out for her,’ I said. ‘Reagan found her. She won’t be met by her family. She’ll be met by the F.B.I.’

  ‘Or the O.P.A.,’ said Sylvia. ‘Alfred Hitchcock things don’t happen on the New York, New Haven & Hartford.’

  I saw the conductor coming from the other end of the coach ‘I’m going to tell the conductor,’ I said, ‘that Reagan on 142 has got the woman.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ said Sylvia. ‘You’re not going to get us mixed up in this. He probably knows anyway.’

  The conductor, short, stocky, silvery-haired and silent, took up our tickets. He looked like a kindly Ickes. Sylvia, who had stiffened, relaxed when I let him go by without a word about the woman on 142. ‘He looks exactly as if he knew where the Maltese Falcon is hidden, doesn’t he?’ said Sylvia, with the laugh that annoys me.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ I pointed out, ‘you said a little while ago that he probably knows about the woman on 142. If she’s just sick, why should they tell the conductor on this train? I’ll rest more easily when I know that they’ve actually got her.’

  Sylvia kept on reading as if she hadn’t heard me. I leaned my head against the back of the seat and closed my eyes.

  The train was slowing down noisily and a brakeman was yelling ‘Kent! Kent!’ when I felt a small cold pressure against my shoulder. ‘Oh,’ the voice of the woman in the seat behind me said, ‘I’ve dropped my copy of Coronet under your seat.’ She leaned closer and her voice became low and hard. ‘Get off here, Mister,’ she said.

  ‘We’re going to Gaylordsville,’ I said.

  ‘You and your wife are getting off here, Mister,’ she said.

  I reached for the suit cases on the rack. ‘What do you want, for heaven’s sake?’ asked Sylvia.

  ‘We’re getting off here,’ I told her.

  ‘Are you really crazy?’ she demanded. ‘This is only Kent.’

  ‘Come on, sister,’ said the woman’s voice. ‘You take the overnight bag and the beans. You take the big bag, Mister.’

  Sylvia was furious. ‘I knew you’d get us into this,’ she said to me, ‘shouting about spies at the top of your voice.’

  That made me angry. ‘You’re the one that mentioned spies,’ I told her. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You kept talking about it and talking about it,’ said Sylvia.

  ‘Come on, get off, the two of you,’ said the cold, hard voice.

  We got off. As I helped Sylvia down the steps, I said, ‘We know too much.’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ she said.

  We didn’t have far to go. A big black limousine waited a few steps away. Behind the wheel sat a heavy-set foreigner with cruel lips and small eyes. He scowled when he saw us. ‘The boss don’t want nobody up deh,’ he said.

  ‘It’s all right, Karl,’ said the woman. ‘Get in,’ she told us. We climbed into the back seat. She sat between us, with the gun in her hand. It was a handsome, jewelled derringer.

  ‘Alice will be waiting for us at Gaylordsville,’ said Sylvia, ‘in all this heat.’

  The house was a long, low, rambling building, reached at the end of a poplar-lined drive. ‘Never mind the bags,’ said the woman. Sylvia took the string beans and her book and we got out. Two huge mastiffs came bounding off the terrace, snarling. ‘Down, Mata!’ said the woman. ‘Down, Pedro!’ They slunk away, still snarling.

  Sylvia and I sat side by side on a sofa in a large, handsomely appointed living-room. Across from us, in a chair, lounged a tall man with heavily lidded black eyes and long, sensitive fingers. Against the door through which we had entered the room leaned a thin, undersized young man, with his hands in the pockets of his coat and a cigarette hanging from his lower lip. He had a drawn, sallow face and his small, half-closed eyes stared at us incuriously. In a corner of the room, a squat, swarthy man twiddled with the dials of a radio. The woman paced up and down, smoking a cigarette in a long holder.

  ‘Well, Gail,’ said the lounging man in a soft voice, ‘to what do we owe thees unexpected visit?’

  Gail kept pacing. ‘They got Sandra,’ she said finally.

  The lounging man did not change expression. ‘Who got Sandra, Gail?’ he asked softly.

  ‘Reagan, on 142,’ said Gail.

  The squat, swarthy man jumped to his feet. ‘All da time Egypt say keel dees Reagan!’ he shouted. ‘All da time Egypt say bomp off dees Reagan!’

  The lounging man did not look at him. ‘Sit down, Egypt,’ he said quietly. The swarthy man sat down. Gail went on talking.

  ‘The punk here shot off his mouth,’ she said. ‘He was wise.’ I looked at the man leaning against the door.

  ‘She means you,’ said Sylvia, and laughed.

  ‘The dame was dumb,’ Gail went on. ‘She thought the lady on the train was sick.’

  I laughed. ‘She means you,’ I said to Sylvia.

  ‘The punk was blowing his top all over the train,’ said Gail. ‘I had to bring ’em along.’

  Sylvia, who had the beans on her lap, began breaking and stringing them. ‘Well, my dear lady,’ said the lounging man, ‘a mos’ homely leetle tawtch.’

  ‘Wozza totch?’ demanded Egypt.

  ‘Touch,’ I told him.

  Gail sat down in a chair. ‘Who’s going to rub ’em out?’ she asked.

  ‘Freddy,’ said the lounging man. Egypt was on his feet again.

  ‘Na! Na!’ he shouted. ‘Na de ponk! Da ponk bomp off da las’ seex, seven peop’!’

  The lounging man looked at him. Egypt paled and sat down.

  ‘I thought you were the punk,’ said Sylvia. I looked at her coldly.

  ‘I know where I have seen you before,’ I said to the lounging man. ‘It was at Zagreb, in 1927. Tilden took you in straight sets, six-love, six-love, six-love.’

  The man’s eyes glittered. ‘I theenk I bomp off thees man myself,’ he said.

  Freddy walked over and handed the lounging man an automatic. At this moment, the door Freddy had been leaning against burst open and in rushed the man with the pipe, shouting, ‘Gail! Gail! Gail!’ …

  ‘Gaylordsville! Gaylordsville!’ bawled the brakeman. Sylvia was shaking me by the arm. ‘Quit moaning,’ she said. ‘Everybody is looking at you.’ I rubbed my forehead with a handkerchief. ‘Hurry up!’ said Sylvia. ‘They don’t stop here long.’ I pulled the bags down and we got off.

  ‘Have you got the beans?’ I asked Sylvia.

  Alice Connell was waiting for us. On the way to their home in the car, Sylvia began to tell Alice about the woman on 142. I didn’t say anything.

  ‘He thought she was a spy,’ said Sylvia.

  They both laughed. ‘She probably got sick on the train,’ said Alice. ‘They were probably arranging for a doctor to meet her at the station.’

  ‘That’s just what I told him,’ said Sylvia.

  I lighted a cigarette. ‘The lady on 142,’ I said firmly, ‘was def
initely not sick.’

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ said Sylvia, ‘here we go again.’

  The Catbird Seat

  Mr Martin bought the pack of Camels on Monday night in the most crowded cigar store on Broadway. It was theatre time and seven or eight men were buying cigarettes. The clerk didn’t even glance at Mr Martin, who put the pack in his overcoat pocket and went out. If any of the staff at F. & S. had seen him buy the cigarettes, they would have been astonished, for it was generally known that Mr Martin did not smoke, and never had. No one saw him.

  It was just a week to the day since Mr Martin had decided to rub out Mrs Ulgine Barrows. The term ‘rub out’ pleased him because it suggested nothing more than the correction of an error -- in this case an error of Mr Fitweiler. Mr Martin had spent each night of the past week working out his plan and examining it. As he walked home now he went over it again. For the hundredth time he resented the element of imprecision, the margin of guesswork that entered into the business. The project as he had worked it out was casual and bold, the risks were considerable. Something might go wrong anywhere along the line. And therein lay the cunning of his scheme. No one would ever see in it the cautious, painstaking hand of Erwin Martin, head of the filing department at F. & S., of whom Mr Fitweiler had once said, ‘Man is fallible but Martin isn’t.’ No one would see his hand, that is, unless it were caught in the act.

  Sitting in his apartment, drinking a glass of milk, Mr Martin reviewed his case against Mrs Ulgine Barrows, as he had every night for seven nights. He began at the beginning. Her quacking voice and braying laugh had first profaned the halls of F. & S. on 7 March 1941 (Mr Martin had a head for dates). Old Roberts, the personnel chief, had introduced her as the newly appointed special adviser to the president of the firm, Mr Fitweiler. The woman had appalled Mr Martin instantly, but he hadn’t shown it. He had given her his dry hand, a look of studious concentration, and a faint smile. ‘Well,’ she had said, looking at the papers on his desk, ‘are you lifting the oxcart out of the ditch?’ As Mr Martin recalled that moment, over his milk, he squirmed slightly. He must keep his mind on her crimes as a special adviser, not on her peccadillos as a personality. This he found difficult to do, in spite of entering an objection and sustaining it. The faults of the woman as a woman kept chattering on in his mind like an unruly witness. She had, for almost two years now, baited him. In the halls, in the elevator, even in his own office, into which she romped now and then like a circus horse, she was constantly shouting these silly questions at him. ‘Are you lifting the oxcart out of the ditch? Are you tearing up the pea patch? Are you hollering down the rain barrel? Are you scraping around the bottom of the pickle barrel? Are you sitting in the catbird seat?’

  It was Joey Hart, one of Mr Martin’s two assistants, who had explained what the gibberish meant. ‘She must be a Dodger fan,’ he had said. ‘Red Barber announces the Dodger games over the radio and he uses those expressions – picked ’em up down South.’ Joey had gone on to explain one or two. ‘Tearing up the pea patch’ meant going on a rampage; ‘sitting in the catbird seat’ meant sitting pretty, like a batter with three balls and no strikes on him. Mr Martin dismissed all this with an effort. It had been annoying, it had driven him near to distraction, but he was too solid a man to be moved to murder by anything so childish. It was fortunate, he reflected as he passed on to the important charges against Mrs Barrows, that he had stood up under it so well. He had maintained always an outward appearance of polite tolerance. ‘Why, I even believe you like the woman,’ Miss Paird, his other assistant, had once said to him. He had simply smiled.

  A gavel rapped in Mr Martin’s mind and the case proper was resumed. Mrs Ulgine Barrows stood charged with wilful, blatant and persistent attempts to destroy the efficiency and system of F. & S. It was competent, material and relevant to review her advent and rise to power. Mr Martin had got the story from Miss Paird, who seemed always able to find things out. According to her, Mrs Barrows had met Mr Fitweiler at a party, where she had rescued him from the embraces of a powerfully built drunken man who had mistaken the president of F. & S. for a famous retired Middle Western football coach. She had led him to a sofa and somehow worked upon him a monstrous magic. The ageing gentleman had jumped to the conclusion there and then that this was a woman of singular attainments, equipped to bring out the best in him and in the firm. A week later he had introduced her into F. & S. as his special adviser. On that day confusion got its foot in the door. After Miss Tyson, Mr Brundage and Mr Bartlett had been fired and Mr Munson had taken his hat and stalked out, mailing in his resignation later, old Roberts had been emboldened to speak to Mr Fitweiler. He mentioned that Mr Munson’s department had been ‘a little disrupted’ and hadn’t they perhaps better resume the old system there? Mr Fitweiler had said certainly not. He had the greatest faith in Mrs Barrow’s ideas. ‘They require a little seasoning, a little seasoning, is all,’ he had added. Mr Roberts had given it up. Mr Martin reviewed in detail all the changes wrought by Mrs Barrows. She had begun chipping at the cornices of the firm’s edifice and now she was swinging at the foundation stones with a pickaxe.

  Mr Martin came now, in his summing up, to the afternoon of Monday, 2 November 1942 – just one week ago. On that day, at 3 p.m., Mrs Barrows had bounced into his office. ‘Boo!’ she had yelled. ‘Are you scraping around the bottom of the pickle barrel?’ Mr Martin had looked at her from under his green eyeshade, saying nothing. She had begun to wander about the office, taking it in with her great, popping eyes. ‘Do you really need all these filing cabinets?’ she had demanded suddenly. Mr Martin’s heart had jumped. ‘Each of these files,’ he had said, keeping his voice even, ‘plays an indispensable part in the system of F. & S.’ She had brayed at him, ‘Well, don’t tear up the pea patch!’ and gone to the door. From there she had bawled, ‘But you sure have got a lot of fine scrap in here!’ Mr Martin could no longer doubt that the finger was on his beloved department. Her pickaxe was on the upswing, poised for the first blow. It had not come yet; he had received no blue memo from the enchanted Mr Fitweiler bearing nonsensical instructions deriving from the obscene woman. But there was no doubt in Mr Martin’s mind that one would be forthcoming. He must act quickly. Already a precious week had gone by. Mr Martin stood up in his living-room, still holding his milk glass. ‘Gentlemen of the jury,’ he said to himself, ‘I demand the death penalty for this horrible person.’

  The next day Mr Martin followed his routine, as usual. He polished his glasses more often and once sharpened an already sharp pencil, but not even Miss Paird noticed. Only once did he catch sight of his victim; she swept past him in the hall with a patronizing ‘Hi!’ At five-thirty he walked home, as usual, and had a glass of milk, as usual. He had never drunk anything stronger in his life – unless you could count ginger ale. The late Sam Schlosser, the S. of F. & S., had praised Mr Martin at a staff meeting several years before for his temperate habits. ‘Our most efficient worker neither drinks nor smokes,’ he had said. ‘The results speak for themselves.’ Mr Fitweiler had sat by, nodding approval.

  Mr Martin was still thinking about that red-letter day as he walked over to the Schrafft’s on Fifth Avenue near Forty-sixth Street. He got there, as he always did, at eight o’clock. He finished his dinner and the financial page of the Sun at a quarter to nine, as he always did. It was his custom after dinner to take a walk. This time he walked down Fifth Avenue at a casual pace. His gloved hands felt moist and warm, his forehead cold. He transferred the Camels from his overcoat to a jacket pocket. He wondered, as he did so, if they did not represent an unnecessary note of strain. Mrs Barrows smoked only Luckies. It was his idea to puff a few puffs on a Camel (after the rubbing-out), stub it out in the ashtray holding her lipstick-stained Luckies, and thus drag a small red herring across the trail. Perhaps it was not a good idea. It would take time. He might even choke, too loudly.

  Mr Martin had never seen the house on West Twelfth Street where Mrs Barrows lived, but he had a clear enough picture of it. For
tunately, she had bragged to everybody about her ducky first-floor apartment in the perfectly darling three-storey red-brick. There would be no doorman or other attendants; just the tenants of the second and third floors. As he walked along, Mr Martin realized that he would get there before nine-thirty. He had considered walking north on Fifth Avenue from Schrafft’s to a point from which it would take him until ten o’clock to reach the house. At that hour people were less likely to be coming in or going out. But the procedure would have made an awkward loop in the straight thread of his casualness, and he had abandoned it. It was impossible to figure when people would be entering or leaving the house, anyway. There was a great risk at any hour. If he ran into anybody, he would simply have to place the rubbing-out of Ulgine Barrows in the inactive file forever. The same thing would hold true if there were someone in her apartment. In that case he would just say that he had been passing by, recognized her charming house and thought to drop in.

  It was eighteen minutes after nine when Mr Martin turned into Twelfth Street. A man passed him, and a man and a woman talking. There was no one within fifty paces when he came to the house, half-way down the block. He was up the steps and in the small vestibule in no time, pressing the bell under the card that said ‘Mrs Ulgine Barrows’. When the clicking in the lock started, he jumped forward against the door. He got inside fast, closing the door behind him. A bulb in a lantern hung from the hall ceiling on a chain seemed to give a monstrously bright light. There was nobody on the stairs, which went up ahead of him along the left wall. A door opened down the hall in the wall on the right. He went toward it swiftly, on tiptoe.

  ‘Well, for God’s sake, look who’s here!’ bawled Mrs Barrows, and her braying laugh rang out like a report of a shotgun. He rushed past her like a football tackle, bumping her. ‘Hey, quit shoving!’ she said, closing the door behind them. They were in her living-room, which seemed to Mr Martin to be lighted by a hundred lamps. ‘What’s after you?’ she said. ‘You’re as jumpy as a goat.’ He found he was unable to speak. His heart was wheezing in his throat. ‘I – yes,’ he finally brought out. She was jabbering and laughing as she started to help him off with his coat. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I’ll put it here.’ He took it off and put it on a chair near the door. ‘Your hat and gloves, too,’ she said. ‘You’re in a lady’s house.’ He put his hat on top of the coat. Mrs Barrows seemed larger than he had thought. He kept his gloves on. ‘I was passing by,’ he said. ‘I recognized – is there anyone here?’ She laughed louder than ever. ‘No,’ she said, ‘we’re all alone. You’re as white as a sheet, you funny man. Whatever has come over you? I’ll mix you a toddy.’ She started toward a door across the room. ‘Scotch-and-soda be all right? But say, you don’t drink, do you?’ She turned and gave him her amused look. Mr Martin pulled himself together. ‘Scotch-and-soda will be all right,’ he heard himself say. He could hear her laughing in the kitchen.