A Gross Carriage of Justice

Chapter 6

At the hour when Clifford Simpson was sadly lighting up the stub of his last good cigar, and when he and Briggs were sitting down disconsolately to their beer and biscuits, Billy-Boy Carruthers was also feeling a bit peckish. While it is true that in the course of his long and rather checkered career Billy-Boy had often been reduced to surviving on cucumber sandwiches and watercress salads, it was rare, indeed, when he had actually completely missed a meal of some sort. The only time he could remember occurred when he was returning from Great Mickle and the train stalled between Great Mickle and Little Modicum, with neither motive power nor dining facilities, for a matter of six hours. He had gone to Great Mickle to research his novel The Mickle Monster Murders, and while even its author only vaguely recalled the details of the plot, the foodless afternoon had never left his memory. At the moment he was beginning to remember it again.

“I say,” he said to Harold, who had just returned from putting their guest’s bag in the large bedroom adjoining the ample kitchen, “what does one do for sustenance in this establishment?”

“Huh?” Harold asked.

“Food,” Carruthers said, elaborating. “Bread and butter, or even margarine; meat and potatoes; cabbages and kings without the kings. Things of that general nature.”

“Oh!” Harold said, getting the picture. He waved an expansive hand around. “We got lots of food in the joint, and I ain’t a bad cook, if I say so myself. Worked in the kitchen at Sing Sing and Joliet, and even at the big Q, and we got a lot better stuff than the garbage I had to work with in them joints.”

“Excellent!” Carruthers said. “And exactly when do we eat?”

“Oh. I’ll get some supper started as soon as Clare gets back. Don’t worry, pops,” Harold said reassuringly, “you won’t starve here. Maybe it won’t be no frogs’ livers or whatever you rich guys are used to, but it won’t be no poison, neither.” An idea struck him; he was not completely insensitive to the social mores of his host country. “Say, pops, in the meantime, how’s about I make you a nice cup of tea?”

Carruthers had been about to ask the large man to please stop calling him pops, when a more important thought interjected itself in his brain. He nodded at Harold pleasantly.

“Tea should do nicely with the sumptuous repast you undoubtedly will produce at the proper time,” he said agreeably, “but what about something first?”

“First?” Harold was puzzled. Apparently there was something about the tea custom he had missed, because he thought all Englishmen drank tea first, last, and always. If they didn’t, he wondered what Clare was going to do with all the tea he had bought.

“Something libatory,” Carruthers explained patiently, “on the order of an apéritif. But not, of course, a cocktail. Something more manly, like brandy, for example, with champagne for a chaser.”

Carruthers was beginning to see the advantages of being kidnaped. For a short while — or as long as he could possibly drag it out — there was no reason for him to return to beer and cucumber sandwiches. Time enough for that when the sad state of his exchequer became more common knowledge. It was too bad, of course, that Timothy Briggs and Clifford Simpson could not share equally in the beneficence, but as Harold Nishbagel undoubtedly would have put it, that was the way the ball crumbled.

“You mean — hard liquor?”

A terrible, frightening thought came to Carruthers. He swallowed. It occurred to him that upon entering the farmhouse he had seen no sideboard.

“This Clarence of yours,” he asked, “is not an abstainer, is he? He does not, for political reasons, refuse to look upon the wine when it is red?”

Harold stared. “Huh?”

“I said, your Clarence does not remove his hat and stand at attention when the name of Volstead comes into the conversation? He is not a follower of Carry Nation and her crowd?”

“Naw! He’s a Protestant.”

“I mean,” Carruthers said firmly, determined to get to the bottom of this most important matter, “is there liquid refreshment of an alcoholic nature in the house? Does this Clarence imbibe? Partake? To put it in a word — or three, to be exact — does he drink?”

“Oh!” Harold said, finally understanding. “Sure, Clare takes a drop now and then, though he ain’t a lush by no means. You mean, is there hard stuff in the house? Sure, lots of it, and good stuff, too. I know, I ran bad stuff long ago.” He looked uncomfortable. “Only Clare don’t like for me to be drinkin’ when he ain’t around, especially when I’m supposed to be keepin’ an eye on you.”

“I see. Well, I certainly should not wish to go against the rules of the house,” Carruthers said, vastly relieved that his first fear had been unfounded. “In that case, let me offer a solution. Why don’t I have the brandy and champagne, and you have the tea?”

“Say! Yeah! That’d work!” Harold said, pleased that a practical answer to the problem had been found, and also pleased that his first opinion of the old man’s brain power had been vindicated. Then he paused again, frowning. “But — is it good for you to be drinkin’? I mean, at your age? If somethin’ was to happen to you, Clare would be sore. He’d be climbin’ the walls—”

“If you mean that Clarence would be angry, which in your quaint way with words I suspect you do,” Carruthers said, “may I hasten to add that if something unpleasant should happen to me, I should probably be equally perturbed, if not more so. However,” he added philosophically, “at my age eating and drinking are about the only pleasures left. And the telly, I suppose.” He considered that statement a moment. “On second thought, forget the telly.” He looked around. “You do have a television set, I imagine?”

“Yeah,” Harold said gloomily, “we got a TV in the other room, but Clare said to leave it off.” He was at the cupboard over the sink; by opening one cupboard door a vast array of excitingly labeled bottles was revealed, and Harold was engaged in taking a few of them down.

“I begin to feel a kindred spirit with this Clarence,” Billy-Boy said, and watched as Harold gingerly began to pour a few drops of brandy into a tiny glass. “Here,” Carruthers said in a kindly fashion, “better let me do that. I’ve probably had more experience.” He relieved Harold of the bottle and noted it to be of excellent quality. His opinion of Clarence rose. He replaced the tiny glass with a much more substantial one, poured himself a healthy dollop, took a small sip, nodded with appreciation, set the glass down and then wandered across the room. “And this, I gather, is the fridge?” Harold nodded. “With the ice?” Another nod. “And surely,” Carruthers added, “your good cleaning woman will forgive me the loan of this bucket? There!”

He nestled the champagne bottle in ice in the bucket and settled down at the kitchen table, well pleased with his progress in injecting a more civilizing note into what had started out, at best, to be a rather graceless affair. He sipped his brandy, waiting for the champagne to cool, and watched Harold prepare his tea. When his large companion had finally managed the delicate task and came to join him at the table, Carruthers was feeling quite at home.

“I say,” he said curiously, “what do your usual victims do to while away the hours until their ransom is paid — or is not paid, as the case may be?”

“We ain’t got no usual victims. We ain’t never kidnaped nobody before,” Harold said, thus explaining his lack of knowledge on the subject. Then he paused, wishing to be factual with this kind-faced, fatherly figure. “Oh, yeah. I pick up a guy once when I’m workin’ in Chicago, but we don’t hold him for no ransom.” He gave his imitation of a strangling beagle; for a moment Carruthers wondered in alarm if there had been something in the tea. He was about to come to his feet and pound Harold on the back when he realized it was just the large man’s guffaw. “Only this character don’t have time to get bored,” Harold went on, his plastic grin in place, “because we drop him off the Clark Street bridge with a pair of concrete galoshes that same night.”

Enough of this gibberish was understandable — for Carruthers had often frequented the foreign cinema in his more affluent youth — to make Billy-Boy suddenly reconsider the hominess of the ambient. When all was said and done, not only was the man across from him formidable in appearance but he had just admitted to a deed that the most sanguine could scarcely call a prank. Billy-Boy swallowed. Harold saw the swallow as well as the look that had crossed the elderly man’s face. He hastened to reassure him.

“That was different, pops. That was completely different,” he said earnestly. “This clown is practically committin’ suicide. He’s musclin’ in on the boss’s territory, not to mention makin’ a play for Maisie, who is the boss’s broad. You ain’t done nothin’ like that. All you done is come into some dough. And,” he added, almost as if expecting praise, “we ain’t goin’ to ask for it all. Only half.”

An old Euclidean — or Newtonian, he wasn’t sure which — principle came back to Carruthers, stating that half of nothing is equal to nothing. He feared that with time and enough forehead-wrinkling, even Harold could come to understand that simple fact, while without a doubt this Clarence — apparently the brains of the outfit and from the quality of the brandy, a person of some perspicacity — would see the point at once. For the first time the thought of escape came to Billy-Boy Carruthers, but he put it aside sternly. Not only had he given his word, but escape to what? To beer and watercress salads? To glances of pity from a few at the club at their strangely reduced circumstances, and the gleeful sniggers from Potter and the others of his coterie? To the deadliness of lonely nights in his small rooms? For the time being, at least, he was doing much better than that.

And as to the future, what had Matthew said in the Bible? Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Unfortunately, Matthew had not been content to leave well enough alone, but had to add; Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. He had been doing just fine, in Carruthers’ opinion, until that word evil; and disposing of a kidnaping victim with or without concrete galoshes, to the most liberal interpreter, would definitely fall into that category.

And even had he not given his word, Billy-Boy had to admit sadly to himself that Clarence and Harold had selected well when they chose him over Tim or Cliff for their victim. The picture of him attempting to slip from a window — or even a large door — not to mention trying to outrun Harold, or even the absent Clarence, assuming him not to be on crutches, was enough to make him smile despite his predicament. The smile came as a great relief to Harold, who was already mentally kicking himself for ever having mentioned Chicago, let alone the Clark Street bridge.

“Like I told you, pops,” he said earnestly, “you don’t have a thing to worry about. Your pals will kick in and you’ll be home in a couple of days. And as for what we can do to pass the time without the TV, we can talk, can’t we? Clare, he don’t like to talk to me much, I don’t know why. And there ain’t anyone else around here to talk to. That old bag that does the cleanin’, she’s more of a clam than Clare. That thing in the paper said you guys write books. Well, I could give you a couple of real plots, believe me! I could tell you a couple of stories that would turn your hair white—”

Carruthers held up his hand.

“Beyond the fact that my hair is already white,” he said sadly, “I’m afraid my writing days are gone with Nineveh and Tyre—”

Harold frowned. “Who’re they?”

“Not a song-and-dance team, although I admit they sound like it. Let me put it that my writing days are gone with narrow lapels and miniature golf, with trouser cuffs and neckties that light up, to bring it into your ken. Any stories you told me would be just so much waste. I haven’t put a word on paper since 1925.”

“And I wasn’t even born then,” Harold said reverently.

“If since,” Carruthers remarked absently, and frowned. “No draughts in the house?”

“Naw,” Harold said, rather surprised by the abrupt change in subject. “The place is built like a brick — I mean, they really knew how to build houses in them days.”

“Draughts,” Carruthers explained patiently. “What you Americans frivolously call checkers.”

“Oh! Naw.” Harold shook his head. “I ain’t even seen checkers since one time in Dannemora.”

“Or chess, then. Or backgammon,” Carruthers said, getting desperate. “Or anything, if it comes to that. Even a deck of old cards and a worn bowler hat we could toss the cards into.”

“No games,” Harold said sadly. “And if we had cards we wouldn’t have to throw them into no hat. We could play gin.”

“Gin?”

“Sure. Gin rummy. It’s a card game two guys can play. It’s lots of fun.”

Carruthers suddenly snapped his fingers. He honestly had forgotten.

“I say! By the oddest of coincidences, now that I remember, I just happen to have two decks of cards in my bag.” He looked amazed, as well he should have, at his failure to recall the fact earlier; the cards had cost him enough trouble on the S.S. Sunderland. “They were mementos of a cruise we recently took on a ship called the S.S. Sunderland. With them — plus, of course, some forty-eight or forty-nine other decks, all the decks of cards the game-room steward had, as a matter of fact — I am pleased to say we were able to prepare for the game of Burmese solitaire. The preparation took us all night, with the three of us working like mad, Cliff and I on the cards and Tim running back and forth to the purser’s sharpening pencils, but I’m happy to say the results were quite gratifying.” His face fell at a certain memory. “Unfortunately, the captain — a stickler — requisitioned the sums we won for his own purposes — he said as evidence of something or other, but one never knows. Possibly his salary was not as princely as his uniforms.” Carruthers sighed bravely. “Still, I managed to salvage these two decks of cards as mementos of the affair, so I can’t say it was a total loss.”

“Gee!” Harold said admiringly. “You talk funny!”

“Yes,” Carruthers said, acknowledging the compliment with a modest nod of his head. “Which,” he added, “is precisely why I feel that mere conversation, despite the scintillation your remarkable efforts contribute, would be a relatively poor means of occupying time. Much better, in line with your latter suggestion, to play this whatever-the-name-of-it-is card game you mentioned.”

“Gin rummy,” Harold said, amazed that anyone in the civilized world hadn’t heard of the game. Still, he supposed they probably didn’t even have cards when the old man was young. He looked across the table. “You don’t know how to play?”

“No,” Carruthers admitted, “but I assume with your eloquence and command of the language you will be able to acquaint me with the basic rules of the game in a mere matter of minutes.” He added a trifle modestly, “In addition to a flair for alliteration, I have a rather good card sense, you know.”

“Well, all right,” Harold said, and hesitated. “But I better warn you, pops, I’m pretty good at cards, all kinds of cards, and especially at gin. When I was workin’ in Chicago, I had to play gin with the boss every night until he got sleepy or until Maisie come home from the club, whichever come first. And I had to see to it the son-of-a — I mean, I had to see to it he won every time. It ain’t that easy losin’ every game without givin’ it away, pops, believe me!”

Carruthers looked at him curiously.

“And you believe your boss really cared whether you lost on purpose or not, just as long as you lost?”

“I never aimed to find out,” Harold said honestly. He paused and frowned a bit diffidently. “Say, pops — you know, in this game of gin, sometimes guys, well, they sort of... well... bet...”

“You mean, wager?”

“Yeah.”

“You mean, they play for — money?”

“Well, yeah. It’s sort of supposed to make the game more interestin’. I don’t suppose—” He looked at the innocent features of his newly found friend and came to a sad conclusion. He sighed. “Naw. I guess not. You don’t look the kind.”

“One can always change,” Carruthers said bravely. “One must always be prepared to learn.”

“Yeah!” Harold said, brightening. “You’re a real sport, pops. I won’t make it too tough on you.” He considered. “How’s about a penny a point?”

“British or American?”

“Huh? Is there a difference?” Harold had never been able to understand the intricacies of the British currency system, nor had he ever faced the need to. Clarence handled all the financial matters in the household, nor would Clarence have had it any other way.

“There is a difference,” Carruthers said sadly. “Not as great as it once was, or as it should be, but definitely a difference.” He thought a moment and then nodded his head. “However, to eliminate this fiduciary confusion, why don’t we simply forget the pennies, or pence, or whatever. Why don’t we play, instead, for a few shillings a point?”

“What are shillings? They worth much?”

Carruthers sighed mightily.

“Again, not what they were, or should be. I remember a time — but I digress. To get back to shillings, why don’t we utilize the decimal system for the purpose for which it was originally created and play for — say — ten shillings a point? In that way all we have to do is multiply the point difference in our score by ten and we’ll know where we stand, what? Reduce the arithmetical difficulties, so to speak.”

Harold had long since given up any attempt to understand every word Carruthers said, but there were still certain principles he wanted clearly understood.

“Yeah,” he said doubtfully, “but the thing is, I don’t want to see you get hurt, pops. Bein’ nicked for the ransom’s bad enough. So how much is that ten-whatevers in dough?”

Carruthers might not have heard him.

“And I’ll keep the score so there is no confusion,” he said in a kindly tone, “since the numbers are obviously strange to you.” He reached into a pocket for a pencil.

“Sure, but how much—?”

“The cards.” Carruthers said gently, reminding his host. “In the top right-hand pocket of the bag, inside. It is not locked.”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Harold said, and hurriedly arose to get the cards from his guest’s luggage. Behind him Billy-Boy Carruthers decided the champagne was cold enough whether it was or not. He expertly removed the cork and poured himself a brimming glass, then added sufficient brandy to his other glass so as not to make his hosts appear parsimonious, after which he leaned back calmly, awaiting the return of Harold with the two decks of cards.