Skirts Bring Me Sorrow, page 14
The butler waited, looking from her to me, not knowing what he should do.
‘Shut the door and scram,’ I told him.
He licked his lips nervously, looked at Sandra. ‘But Mrs Fletcher says …’
‘You’re not wanted …’ began Sandra.
I moved quickly, grasped her by the wrist and elbow, propelled her rapidly towards the lounge so that she half-sprawled across one of the armchairs.
The butler was gaping, mouth wide and eyes protruding. You could almost hear him thinking indignantly: ‘This is the limit. I shan’t stay in this house a moment longer than necessary. I shall give notice immediately.’
‘Shut that door, dope,’ I growled. ‘And when Doctor Railton is through with Fletcher, send him in here.’
I slammed the lounge door, turned to face Sandra. She was angry. Flaming mad is a better description. She rushed at me, eyes flashing dangerously, grim purpose in every line of her shapely figure. If her palm had landed, the sound of my slapped face would have echoed throughout the house.
I’d taken as much from this dame as I intended taking from anyone. I absorbed the force of the slap with my forearm so her arm was numbed to the shoulder, slipped in easily, placed the butt of my hand beneath her chin and heaved.
She kinda ran backwards against the arm of the settee. She hit it with the backs of her thighs, and the top part of her continued travelling while her legs had to remain where they were. Her arms flailed uselessly as instinctively she fought to retain her balance. Then, as her shoulders went down towards the horizontal, the arm of the settee became the pivot of a human see-saw, her legs leaving the floor as they began to follow her shoulders.
It was the neatest back somersault I’ve ever seen. She lay in an untidy heap on the settee, shapely nylon-clad legs scissoring amidst a froth of silky underclothing. She wasn’t hurt bad. Just numbed with surprise and shock. The legs got their bearings, swung down and around, found the floor. She struggled upright, put one hand on her head as though to hold her thoughts still and stared at me strangely, shocked and indignant about her treatment but a little intrigued by it.
‘Pull your clothes down,’ I said. ‘You’re getting a big girl now.’
Automatically she tugged at her skirt. It was a half-hearted effort. ‘You hit me!’ she said incredulously.
My split scalp was still giving me twinges of agony. I said savagely: ‘Hitting is the least of the things I’m gonna do.’
That scared her. She rolled off the settee, scuttled around back of it like she thought I was gonna start in on her right away. There was apprehension in her eyes. ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’ She didn’t sound convinced though.
‘The doctor told you I was putting the bite on him, didn’t he?’ I demanded.
Her eyes were a confession. Her lips said desperately: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You were already being blackmailed,’ I rasped. ‘The doctor told you I was putting on the bite as well. You figured out a smart way to duck both counts. You were gonna shoot the other guy and hang the killing on me.’
‘You’re crazy,’ she said desperately. ‘You must be out of your mind. It’s lies. It’s all lies. You can’t prove a thing.’
‘That’s it, lady,’ I said grimly. ‘You’ve just said it. I can’t prove a thing.’ I took a coupla paces closer. ‘Right now I’ve got to accept that slug on the noggin. You’re in the clear because I can’t prove a thing against you.’ I narrowed my eyes. ‘But I’m gonna even up with you some way, some time, somehow.’
‘I’ll write to your employer,’ she panted desperately. ‘I’ll tell the police. You can’t threaten and frighten …’
She was scared of me. But at the same time she figured she could control me. I put her right on that. I swept into movement, so suddenly that she’d only just started to run for it by the time I’d vaulted the settee and grabbed her.
I held her around the neck, sank my hooked fingers into soft flesh, probed for and found the pressure point with my two thumbs. I put on sufficient pressure to scare the pants off her.
I literally held her life in my hands. She was frozen rigid, frightened to move a muscle. My hands were tight around her throat and my thumbs poised ready to cut short her breathing in a split second.
Instinctively she’d grabbed my wrists, tried to pry them loose. Doing that got her even more scared, because she felt the strength of my hands, knew they were relentless, my two thumbs possessed of an iron strength that could gouge deep into her soft throat, constricting with the mercilessness of a steel vice.
It scared her rigid, frightened to move a muscle for fear it plunged her into suffocating blackness. I held her that way, stared into her horror-filled eyes and rasped menacingly: ‘You’ve got just thirty seconds. Thirty seconds more and you’ll be stiff and cold. I can slip out quietly, ring the cops and tell them the doctor did it, tell them I saw him through the French windows.’
She didn’t make a sound, not a whisper. The cold touch of death was breathing in her face, a hideous reality that numbed her with horror.
I kept holding her that way, glared down at her with what I hoped was maniacal intensity so that with every passing second she wasn’t sure I wouldn’t do it.
Reaction set in. At first a quiver, then a shiver until finally she was trembling violently, her hands gripping around my wrists convulsively and her eyes bulging in their sockets, threatening to roll upwards.
I let her go. She swayed, her eyes half-closing and knees sagging like her body was too weighty to support. She grabbed at the back of the settee, used it as a handrail, feeling her way along it until she could sit down.
Jeepers, was that dame scared! For seconds she’d thought she was gonna die. And she’d died during every second of that murderous embrace.
Her face was as white as virgin newspaper, her lips a kinda transparent mauviness like her blood had half-turned to water and then frozen. She let her head roll to one side, as though she hadn’t the strength to hold it up, and only the whites of her eyes were showing.
I didn’t know I made such a fine bogey-man. I’d meant to scare her, but not this bad. She was in a state of shock, numbed through and through. She’d thaw out soon, become hysterical, and maybe switch on the waterworks.
Coping with weeping dames is something I loathe. Weeping dames make me feel useless and ineffectual. Yet, thoughtfully fingering the two sore lumps on the back of my head, I didn’t see why I should have sympathy to spare for her.
I left her to it, carefully shut the lounge door behind me and found myself chest to chest with Doctor Railton, who’d just come down the stairs.
‘You can give me a lift,’ I said.
His eyes were shifty, scared and worried. He was trying hard to think of an excuse to dodge me.
I didn’t know how deep in with Sandra he was. He wasn’t a guy to rely on, would be scared of his own shadow and would certainly shrink away from committing a crime. Sandra had planned and nearly executed a murder. I didn’t figure the doctor would know about it. But I wasn’t sure.
‘I’m not going your way …’ he began.
‘You are,’ I said with a grim smile. I took him by the arm, propelled him towards the door.
‘But just a minute …’ he protested ineffectually, weakly trying to pull himself away and darting glances towards the lounge door.
‘Sandra is in there,’ I said tersely. ‘But she doesn’t want to see you.’
That comment seemed to sting him. He jerked away with real strength now, bridled. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said indignantly. ‘You’re lying.’
I intensified my grip on his arm. ‘Listen, chum,’ I gritted. ‘You’re giving me a lift back to town.’ I eyed him meaningfully. ‘Perhaps you’d prefer we both go have a chat with Mr Fletcher?’
He gulped, looked towards the lounge door, gulped again and then gave in. ‘As you say,’ he said weakly. ‘I’ll give you a lift.’
He dumped his little black medical bag on the back seat of the car, climbed into the driver’s seat and looked at me enquiringly. ‘Where to?’
‘The Chicago Chronicle.’
He switched on the engine, got into movement. He was jumpy, waiting for me to start putting on the pressure.
I took my time lighting a cigarette, let loose a thin funnel of smoke and drawled casually: ‘How’s the patient?’
His mind wasn’t on my question. He answered automatically: ‘Should be doing fine. His leg’s well enough. But he still maintains he can’t walk on his leg.’
‘Leave a rattlesnake under his bed,’ I suggested. ‘That’ll get him scampering for the door.’
He couldn’t contain himself any longer: ‘How much?’ he burst out. ‘How much d’you want to keep quiet?’
‘Nothing.’
He stared at me, licked his lips nervously. His voice was almost a whisper. ‘What is it you’re really after?’
‘Better watch the road,’ I told him.
He switched his eyes back to the road, wrenched on the wheel, avoided a stationary car by the thickness of a coat of paint and almost rammed the car overtaking him. He stood on his brakes and everything was noise. The whoosh of the overtaking car as it swept past, the frantic squeal of protesting tyres, the thud of my forehead hitting the windscreen and the loud bump as his black medical bag shot off the back seat and landed on the floor.
‘Crazy drivers,’ he muttered, glaring angrily after the car whose wing he’d nearly ripped off. ‘Didn’t ought to be allowed on the road.’
‘What were you trying to do?’ I rasped. ‘Cut my throat on the windscreen?’
He started his engine, which had stalled, got moving once more. ‘Lucky I’ve got good brakes,’ he commented.
‘Sure,’ I said sarcastically. ‘If you hadn’t acted so smart, maybe the other guy would have caused a nasty accident.’
It’s always the same when an accident occurs. It’s always the other guy who’s to blame. My sarcasm rolled off the doctor like water off a duck’s back. ‘You have to keep alert when you’re driving,’ he said complacently, like he was the only guy throughout the States who knew how to drive.
‘Next time give me warning,’ I growled. ‘I nearly went through the windscreen.’
That reminded him. He threw a quick glance over his shoulder. ‘My bag’s on the floor. Get it for me, will ya?’
I leaned over the seat, reached down, gathered up the stethoscope, thermometer and other medical accessories from the floor of the car and thrust them back into his bag. Nothing was broken.
‘A crazy driver like that can cause a lotta trouble,’ he grumbled.
I was hanging over the back seat, my nose inches from the floor. There was a vague, familiar, stuffy smell that struck a chord. I drew in a lungful of the smell, let it filter out through my nostrils. It was a smell that was more than familiar. I knew now where I’d encountered it before.
I replaced his bag back on the seat, turned around in my own seat, got a saw edge into my voice.
‘Upset that medical kit before, ain’t ya?’
He shot me a quick sideways glance. ‘Why? What’s on your mind?’ His eyes flicked back to the road. He’d learnt his lesson.
‘The floor carpet stinks.’
‘So would you if you’d had chemicals upset over you.’
‘Where were you last Friday night at twelve o’clock?’ I shot at him.
‘Last Friday at twelve?’ he echoed. He thought back and remembered. It looked like he was trying to swallow his Adam’s apple. ‘I was at home that night,’ he gulped. ‘Went to bed early.’
‘What about your car? What happened to that?’
He gulped some more, gave a sickly grin, and his forehead was damp. ‘In the garage,. of course. Where else …’
‘Don’t lie,’ I rasped.
He tried to bluster. ‘Look here, Janson. What right have you to …’
‘Cut it out,’ I drawled. ‘Sandra borrowed this car last Friday and you know it.’
He pretended he was manoeuvring for position in the traffic and couldn’t pay attention to my question, playing for time. ‘How do you … what makes you think that?’ he said at last.
I bluffed. ‘Sandra told me.’
His eyebrows raised and his eyes widened. ‘But why should she? She didn’t want anyone …’ He broke off short, realising he’d said too much.
It didn’t matter whether he admitted it or not. I’d spent an hour on the floor of that car with my head enveloped in a blanket, sucking in that chemical smell. It was sufficient for me.
‘Pull into the kerb here,’ I said gruffly.
‘Don’t you want to …’
‘Pull in here,’ I rasped.
He was a real rabbit. He didn’t argue, just slid into the kerb, pulled up and looked at me anxiously.
I hadn’t further time for him. He was a plaything, a pawn Sandra could use or discard when she felt inclined. I didn’t even say goodbye, just slammed the car door, strode away leaving him staring after me with haunted, worried eyes.
I was at peace with the world, seated comfortably in my armchair in my pyjamas and dressing-gown, smoking a last cigarette before retiring, with three fingers of Scotch for a nightcap and the radio purring gently in the background.
I was glancing through a book written by a guy named Plato. Considering it was written more than two thousand years ago, it was pretty up-to-date too. Some of those ancient philosophers had a novel way of looking at the world. I was being convinced I was born in the wrong era. Sanitation may not have been so hot in ancient Greece, horse-drawn transport would have been a drawback too. But I had a sneaking suspicion the easy, leisurely life of the Grecians, concerned mainly with the realms of thought and the contemplation of beauty and goodness of humanity, may have been a whole lot more civilised than the primeval jungle of modern civilisation.
Today, nations make the production of war weapons their main industry, pass conscription laws, impose crippling taxes, restrict the manufacture of household good and impose a humiliating rationing system.
Modern civilisation is a nauseating picture, the nations of the world subjecting their citizens to a life of blood and toil, sweat and tears. Human, everyday needs are forgotten, the little pleasures of life are forfeited, everyone must work their damnedest, and the objective of all this sacrifice and half-living is the production of an enormous quantity of war materials, explosives and weapons of destruction of all kinds.
The citizens of modern society make monkeys of themselves. They sweat, they sacrifice and suffer to forge weapons which, if they are put to use, will mean the destruction of the people who made them. And if they are not to be used, why should there be so much slavery and sacrifice?
Yeah, the more I thought about modern civilisation, the more I plumped for the Greeks. Maybe they were a lazy lot, walking around in those white drapes they called togas, drinking sweet wine and indulging in their favourite pastime – talking.
But those guys had brain muscles. They thought to some purpose. They didn’t give political speeches full of empty phrases. Instead they argued logically, each giving way readily when the logic of others proved his own reasoning wrong.
You can get a long way doing that. You can sit all day beneath a tree with a dozen other guys and reach the stars. By the process of reasoning logically, those lazy old Greek scholars formed conclusions about the universe which scientists of today, using the most modern and expensive scientific equipment, are only just proving.
Yeah, for some things you sure have got to hand it to the ancient Greeks. I could imagine what a belly laugh they’d have got out of modern society. In their eyes, what a set-up it would seem! The peoples of the world in a futile arms race, manufacturing the largest quantity of explosives ever dreamed of, and all the time scared silly that some time someone’s gonna start letting them off.
It’s such a crazy set-up, the ancient Greek philosophers would have settled it in five minutes. I had fun, imagined the statesmen of the world seated on the steps on an ancient Greek temple, happy and content because of the sweet wine they had drunk, warm because of the benevolent sun beaming from a Mediterranean blue sky. There’s no false dignity among them, no parades of soldiers or dignitaries in resplendent uniforms. There’s just the statesmen of the world, sitting in a friendly circle, looking all very much alike in their white togas, their feet bare except for sandals.
Clem starts the ball rolling. ‘I say, Joe. I hear you’ve got an awful lot of men under arms. A lotta factories turning out war materials too.’
‘That’s right,’ agrees Joe, moving a little so the sun can warm him more easily.
‘Why?’ asks Clem.
‘I’m scared of everyone else,’ says Joe. ‘Harry here, Pierre and you have got more men under arms, are making even more war materials.’
‘That’s only because we’re afraid of you,’ admits Clem honestly.
Harry butts in. ‘It’s an arms race,’ he says, with a note of surprise in his voice. ‘As soon as we get as strong as you, Joe, or stronger, we ease up production until you’re stronger, then us again.’
‘That’s right,’ agrees Joe complacently.
Harry shakes his head unhappily. ‘What a waste of labour and essential materials,’ he says.
‘And the risk too,’ says Pierre. ‘You can never tell, some day some crazy general may fire off a gun. Before we know where we are, the whole world will be at war, annihilating humanity with atom bombs.’
Joe says: ‘We oughtta do something about it. Maybe we oughtta cut out conscription and armaments altogether.’
‘That’s sensible enough,’ says Clem.
‘We’ll do it right away,’ says Harry. ‘We’ll ban armies, outlaw the making of armaments. What do you say, Pierre?’
‘Suits me,’ says Pierre.
‘That’s gonna make things a whole lot easier,’ says Joe with satisfaction.
‘Now that’s settled,’ chips in Clem, ‘there’s another topic I want to bring up. What is beauty?’
Joe takes a deep breath. This is his subject. ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’ he says heavily.
