Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 8, No. 7, July 1963

Reunion by Donald Honig

When a fellow is out for personal aggrandizement it isn’t likely a little thing like ethics will upset his political applecart.

Phillipsburg gradually began to fill the windows of the slowing train. First came the outlying industrial area, then rows of sorry frame houses with heavily laden wash lines tied to backyard poles, then a better looking part of town with modern store fronts and one-family houses with broad lawns. By the time the train settled alongside the depot Bill decided he liked Phillipsburg and was glad he had made up his mind to make the surprise visit. He rose from his coach seat and pulled his bag from the overhead rack and made his way down the aisle toward the door.

He descended the iron steps and carried his bag along the platform, staring at everything and everyone with a childlike curiosity. Planning a surprise visit on an old friend — one whom he had not seen since their service together in Korea — filled him with a sort of mischievous excitement.

He crossed the waiting room and put his bag down next to the telephone booth. There he began turning over the pages of the directory (so much thinner than the city directories he was accustomed to) until he found the page he wanted. He ran his finger down the L’s until he found the name: Lawrence, Harry. The word “attorney” was abbreviated next to the listing. Bill smiled with genuine gladness. So Harry had made it after all. Suddenly Bill remembered all that talk of the future — that desultory time-consuming talk that soldiers so frequently indulged in. Harry’s legal schooling had been interrupted by his call to service, and so many quiet, brooding sentences had begun with the phrase, “When I get my degree...” Harry had had ambitions which were positively tenacious. He was going to become prominent in his profession, perhaps one day run for public office. Against the background of bleak, snow-clad Korean mountains, of shells exploding on a distant front, Harry Lawrence had planned, plotted and foreseen his civilian future.

So he’s making it, Bill thought, reminiscing for a moment as he stared at the name on the tissue-thin directory page, remembering his combat-weary and embittered friend who had seemed more than any of the others to hate where he was, what he was doing, who had always had terrible, almost neurotic premonitions of death. Bill’s smile faded. Suddenly his recollections of Harry Lawrence sharpened in his mind, became more vivid. But it had been a long time ago. Things changed, and maybe people did too, as time lengthened.

He had to admire Harry’s adhesive persistence to his dream, even though there had been obvious faults in the man’s character. Harry’s ambitious nature had been cold and calculating. Bill had come a long way to drop in on him, but he had to admit to an incorrigible curiosity about Harry. The man’s absolutely unscrupulous attitude toward responsibility had intrigued Bill at the time and left him intrigued. What ultimately happened to such a man? But again, perhaps time had softened those hard and unattractive elements in the man. And besides, Bill thought, traveling around the country was quite a lonely thing at times, and there was a certain amount of charm involved in seeing an old acquaintance after the lapse of nine years. It would be pleasant to talk about old times and old friends — such as they had been.

He memorized Harry’s number and stepped into the booth and dialed. The phone rang once and then a female voice, keyed to answering politely and inquiringly, picked it up and announced the firm’s name.

“Is Mr. Lawrence in?” Bill asked.

“Yes. Who is calling please?”

“Never mind,” Bill said with a grin and hung up.

So he was in. The thought had never occurred to Bill that Harry might not be there, that the one hundred mile detour to Phillips-burg might be in vain. Now he began to warm with excitement, planning his entrance, his opening line. The last time he had seen Harry was when the latter was being carried down the hill on a stretcher by two medics. Bill had stood there with the other members of the squad and watched him go. No one had said anything. Nine years ago. The wounded Harry had been shipped home from Japan and Bill had not seen him again. One or two letters had been exchanged. It was Harry who had stopped writing, and with Bill on the road so frequently, selling, the friendship had gone into limbo.

As Bill walked along Phillipsburg’s main street carrying his bag, he stared with favor upon the clean, modern, progressive-looking town. Harry certainly had known his quarters. A man of talent and ambition could grow in a town like this, set his goal and work confidently toward achieving it. The smaller the town, Bill remembered him saying, the bigger the man.

In the heart of Phillipsburg, across the street from the tree-shaded square where a statue of General Sheridan stood glaring archaically, Bill saw the long windows over a chain of stores and on the windows, in letters perhaps a trifle too large, too bold, HARRY LAWRENCE ATTORNEY AT LAW. Bill stood across the street and stared at the lettering for. a few moments, then crossed the square and headed for the building,

He was impressed by the lavishness of the office. It was almost ostentatious. The entire decor had the mark of a man who was determined to shout of himself, to elevate himself, and who wanted all who wandered into his proximity to know it.

There were two people in the ante room. One was a well-dressed but rather sour-faced young man whose eyes fixed upon Bill the moment he stepped through the door, and remained fixed upon him. A gray felt hat was balanced on the man’s knee. ‘I hope he’s not a client,’ Bill mused. The man looked so disgruntled.

The other person was a lovely blonde receptionist who smiled prettily at him.

“I’d like to see Mr. Lawrence,” he said.

“Is he expecting you?” she asked.

“Hardly,” Bill said. “This is a surprise visit. I haven’t seen Harry since Korea. We were there together. May I walk in?” he asked, pointing to the inner office.

“I suppose it would be all right,” the blonde said. She seemed amused.

Leaving his suitcase outside, Bill opened the door marked private and stepped into the office. There was Harry Lawrence, behind an impressive expanse of blue rug, sitting at a large, glass-topped oak-wood desk, perusing a paper. The years had gone gently with him (he did not look up immediately and Bill, closing the door quietly behind him, had a chance to study his friend). Vanity often kept restraints upon time and Harry did not look much older than he had ten years ago, except, perhaps, for a receding hairline. Bill advanced to the middle of the room and stood there, poised and expectant, a mischievous smile playing on his mouth.

When Harry looked up his face showed first surprise, then betrayed a slight frown of suspicion, displeasure, almost as if trying to read — in this, first moment of recognition before the smile of surprise, of pleasure — why this old friend was stepping unannounced out of the past.

Bill had an oddly discomforting feeling as he suddenly remembered they had never really liked each other. It came back to him with a sweep of recollection, like an old gust of memory abruptly released from some slumbering corner of his mind. He almost felt like recalling this fact in statement and apologizing for the intrusion and leaving.

“Well, Bill,” Harry said, smiling now, rising and offering a hand of welcome across the desk.

“Hello, Harry,” Bill said, stepping forward and grasping the hand and shaking it warmly.

“What brings you into these parts?” Harry asked, sitting down again, waving Bill into a chair.

“I was traveling north of here and I remembered that I knew a guy in Phillipsburg,” Bill said.

“Traveling?”

“Selling. Traveling salesman,” Bill said. “No bad jokes, please. But you’re looking well, and,” Bill added, looking around appreciatively, “doing well, I’m glad to see.”

“Yes,” Harry said. “Trying to get on. Getting the practice built up.”

“It’s been a long time, Harry,” Bill said.

“It does move by, doesn’t it? So, are you planning to stay long?”

“Just a few days,” Bill said. “According to my reckoning, the company owes me a few days of leisure.”

“Married?”

“No,” Bill said. “You?”

“No. There just hasn’t been time,” Harry said. “Look, old man, I’m going to be tied up shortly. Why don’t we get together for dinner tonight and talk about old times, as they say? Where are you staying?”

“I just walked off the train. I haven’t found a place yet.”

“Stay in the Excelsior, it’s the best in town. Tell them you’re my friend.”

“What will that get me?” Bill asked chidingly.

“The best,” Harry said, seriously.

There was an embarrassing pause. Bill felt rather uncomfortable. He got up and they shook hands again.

“Good,” Harry said. “I’ll come by about seven. Good seeing you again.”

As Harry walked him to the door Bill noticed a slight limp in his friend’s gait.

“Is that from—?”

“Yes,” Harry said curtly. “The wound. Well, see you tonight,” he said, opening the door and showing Bill out.

Outside, the receptionist smiled at him.

“That was quick,” she said. “Yes. A busy man,” Bill said as if trying to make apologies for the brevity of his visit. He picked up his bag, glanced at the dead-faced man with the felt hat on his knee who was staring mutely at him, and left.

Bill was sitting in his room at the hotel at seven o’clock when the telephone rang. It was Harry’s receptionist. Apologetically, she had a message. Harry would be unable to keep his appointment this evening.

“Then you come,” Bill said impulsively. After a moment’s demurring pause she said all right.

Her name was Lynn McGrath. She had been Harry’s secretary for almost a year. Talking idly over dinner, Bill learned that Harry had indeed not changed during the years, that he often worked so late in the office that she would find him sleeping on his office couch in the morning.

“I’ve never seen a man so driven,” she said, “so very ambitious.”

“He was always like that,” Bill said.

“Were you good friends?”

“Well, yes and no,” Bill said hesitantly, knowing that they had not been. “He’s a tough man to get close to. In the army you’re sort of thrown together. The most unlikely people become friends.”

“You don’t seem so unlikely,” Lynn said.

“Thanks.”

“But Harry was genuinely sorry that you couldn’t get together. He’d completely forgotten about the rally and said he might drop over later tonight.”

“What rally?” Bill asked.

“In the school auditorium. Didn’t he tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“That he’s running for Congress.”

“No,” Bill said shaking his head. “He didn’t say a word about it.”

“That’s odd,” Lynn said.

“I wonder why. It doesn’t sound like him, to keep that a secret.”

“It’s hardly a secret.”

“I mean, from me,” Bill said. “Of course we only spoke for a few minutes.”

“Maybe he was being modest,” Lynn said.

“Harry?” Bill asked with light, humorous skepticism. They both laughed.

Bill suggested they attend the rally. So after dinner they walked through the cool, pleasant night to the school auditorium. Outside, the place was ablaze with lights, flags and placards swung through the air, and a small band of high school musicians were assembled on the lawn playing martial airs. This was more like it, Bill thought; this was as he imagined Harry Lawrence, and not the man in the quiet office in the small town. This was the grandiose background that Harry had always depicted for himself.

All immovable objects were covered with campaign posters. Bill paused to stare at one. There was Harry’s face, handsome, serious, almost grim with resolution, perhaps a little too resolute and humorless. Beneath, it said: VOTE FOR HARRY LAWRENCE/ATTORNEY, FIGHTER FOR FREEDOM/DISABLED VETERAN.

“Disabled veteran,” Bill said aloud, thoughtfully.

“Yes,” Lynn said. “But you knew that, of course.”

“No, I didn’t,” Bill said. “The last time I saw Harry was when he got wounded.”

“Were you there when it happened?” Lynn, asked as they crossed the street to the school.

“Sort of,” Bill said.

They took seats in the last row of the auditorium. In a little while the speeches began. Harry had drawn quite a large crowd and it was keyed up. The man who introduced him (Lynn identified him for Bill as the publisher of one of the town’s two newspapers — the other was violently opposed to Harry’s candidacy) made an impassioned speech, dwelling grandiloquently upon Harry’s service record and the fact that “this man has felt the heat and the steel of our nation’s enemies and shed his blood in its cause.” It got a rousing cheer. Bill watched Harry; the latter seemed almost hypnotically engrossed in what the speaker was saying. He believes in it all, Bill thought, he actually believes in it. Then Harry, having finally been introduced, walked, limping perceptibly (and, Bill thought, exaggeratedly) to the lectern and made his speech.

Bored by the speech, Bill’s eyes wandered and, to his surprise, caught sight of the dead-faced man he had seen in the office that morning. The man was on the stage, leaning against a far wall, invisible to all except the people — Bill and Lynn were two of these — who were sitting facing the stage from a sharp angle. When the speech was over and everyone stood up to cheer, and the high school band to play the National Anthem, the man disappeared through the offstage exit.

Bill and Lynn did not wait for Harry. At the conclusion of the speech they left the noisy auditorium and went to a nearby cabaret for a drink.

“Quite a spectacle,” Bill said as they sat at a quiet back table.

“I hear the sound of disapproval,” Lynn said.

“Maybe,” Bill said. “What are his chances?”

“Quite good. He won the nomination and started the campaign as an underdog but has come a long way. Now he’s expected to win. The incumbent is an old man who has voted unpopularly on some local issues...”

“And is not a disabled veteran.”

“No,” Lynn said. “You don’t seem to approve of Harry’s using that as a point. Well, it seems to be a legitimate campaign device to me. Men have campaigned on much less. But since you were over there with him perhaps you have your own viewpoint on that. Perhaps you think he’s taking advantage of something...”

“Perhaps,” Bill said quietly. “And by the way, who was that friendly-looking fellow I saw in the office this morning? I saw him again on the stage just now, hovering in the background.”

“Oh, him,” Lynn said. “His name is Fancy. I disapprove of him; not that I have anything to say about anything. He worships Harry, and I guess this is all you have to do to be a friend of Harry’s.”

“This fellow adds a distinctly disreputable note to things, if you ask me.”

“I quite agree,” Lynn said. “I think he’s somewhat of an unsavory character. He had an older brother who was killed in Korea, and when Harry came back — a sort of hero — Fancy attached himself to him. The man never talks. I don’t think I’ve heard him utter ten words all the time he’s been around.”

“That sort of man isn’t going to do Harry any good,” Bill said.

“I mentioned that to him once, but he became quite angry and said that any man who was a friend was worth having around,” Lynn said. “Harry doesn’t have many friends, not people who really like him, anyway. Everyone respects him and his abilities, but there aren’t many who are truly close to him.”

Later that night, quite late, Bill was sitting in his room, unable to fall asleep. His thoughts were concerned with Harry Lawrence. He was thinking about Korea. What kind of man had Harry really been then? Harry had been strange, cold, aloof; a friend only because the accident of circumstances had thrown them together. He realized now that he hardly knew the man. He felt that he should not have come. He did not like Harry Lawrence, nor did he like what the man was doing. Bill felt himself feeling increasingly resentful.

A knock at the door interrupted his reverie. He answered the knock and Harry came in. There was a certain brusqueness to the man, the same old aloofness, as if he had come here on distasteful business rather than to have a reunion with an old friend.

“I guess you’ve found out what I’m doing,” Harry said abruptly, unceremoniously.

“I was at the rally tonight,” Bill said. “You limped quite impressively.”

“I thought you would think something like that. I knew the moment you walked into the office this morning you were bringing trouble.”

“I’m not bringing any trouble, Harry.”

“Then you’re leaving town?”

“When I’m ready.”

“And when will that be?”

“I told you — when I’m ready. I don’t know when that might be. Your campaign interests me.”

“Don’t start anything, old friend,” Harry said, intoning the last two words with obvious sarcasm.

“I wasn’t planning to, but seeing you, hearing you, thinking about what you’re doing, it’s given me a damned sick feeling and maybe the only remedy is a good dose of truth,” Bill said.

“You’re giving me a damned sick feeling myself and maybe the remedy is not truth.”

“Am I to take that as a threat?”

“Take it any way you choose,” Harry said. “But I don’t intend letting any ghosts from the past come in now and upset what I’m doing. I hope you’re listening with both ears, Billy boy. You never were overly bright, but I hope you’ve gotten smarter with the years. Don’t involve yourself in something that’s out of your league.” Harry headed for the door. He paused to say, “There’s an eight o’clock train tomorrow morning. Do us all a favor and be on it.” And he left.

For the next hour Bill paced his room, chain smoking cigarettes, restive and resentful. Slowly an anger built in him. What had been quiet resentment before now flared into anger. He had been threatened. He did not like that. It was ugly. It made Harry and what he was doing the uglier, the more reprehensible. Harry was not merely a charlatan and an opportunist, he was something worse. He was a dangerous, scheming man. The recent scene in this room convinced Bill of that, convinced him that he had to do something about it.

He put on his jacket and left the hotel. An idea had come into his mind, vaguely at first, but the more he dwelled upon it the more it seemed to be the right thing to do. He did not ask himself why it was the right thing, nor why he was doing it. He simply accepted it. He had made a judgment and now he was going to act upon it. Right and wrong seemed clearly defined in this case and, like a man following an instinct, Bill hurried along the deserted late night streets toward the newspaper office — the other one, the one supporting Harry’s rival — when a car pulled up to the curb next to him. Harry was at the wheel.

“Get in,” Harry said.

“Why?” Bill asked suspiciously.

“I want to talk to you.”

Suppressing his suspicions, Bill got into the car. Not until he had closed the door, and was sitting next to Harry in the front seat did Bill notice the man, Fancy, sitting like a statue in the shadows of the backseat.

“Where were you going, Bill?” Harry asked as the car pulled away.

“Frankly?” Bill asked candidly.

“Of course,” Harry said. “You’re talking to an old friend.” There was a faint, almost mysterious smile on his lips.

“I was going to tell about you,” Bill said. He was too vehemently filled with indignation toward Harry, and with the righteousness of his decision, to lie about anything now, even though he felt it unwise of him to have made this admission.

“I’d rather hoped you wouldn’t, though I was afraid you might,” Harry said.

They seemed to be driving away from town. The passing houses were becoming less and less frequent. The car’s headlights were cutting a wide path down the lonely highway.

“Where are we going?” Bill asked.

“Out of Phillipsburg,” Harry said. “We don’t want you in this town.”

“You’ve decided that, have you?”

“Yes,” Harry said. “I’ve decided.”

Bill looked back over his shoulder at the mute, stolid figure in the back. Fancy stiffened at the movement and Bill sensed the man was poised and prepared to move against him. For the first time he had a genuine feeling of fear. He looked back at Harry.

“What is this all about?” he demanded.

Harry said nothing. They drove silently for another few miles, and then Harry turned off the highway and followed a dirt road into a dark, heavily wooded area. After a few minutes of bumpy going he stopped. He turned off the motor and ordered Bill to get out. Fancy slid like a cat from the back seat and was facing Bill when the latter got out of the car. The three of them walked around to the front of the car and stood in the glare of the headlights.

“So this is the way it’s to be,” Bill said, squinting through the fights at the two men who faced him like accusers.

“Yes,” Harry said. “You couldn’t mind your business. So it has to be this way.”

“And you’re going to go on, faking your way.”

“Perhaps,” Harry said. “But it’s no longer going to concern you.”

“You mean he’s just going to pull the trigger and that will end it?” Bill asked. “It’s going to be as simple as that?”

“Fancy knows how to take care of these things. He’s a very skillful man.”

Bill looked at the dapper little gunman who was watching him with steady unblinking eyes. A revolver had appeared in Fancy’s hand. Never had Bill seen a colder face, a more gross mouth, deader, more lightless eyes. There was no question that Fancy would, when Harry gave him the nod, pull the trigger of that gun; and somehow, too, Bill knew that Fancy would indeed know how to take care of the rest of it. The man looked born for assignments of this nature. Harry had chosen him well.

Bill was going to say, ‘But you’re running for a seat in the Congress of the United States, and here you are in the woods at night, about to commit murder.’ He would have said it, had he thought it would help. But it would not help. Harry was no more interested in ethics, or moral responsibilities, or serving his country now than he had been in duty or personal responsibility, or serving his country in Korea. Harry was simply and ruthlessly out for personal aggrandizement, and you did not mention the question of ethics.

“And what will you do about him, Harry?” Bill said nodding toward Fancy. “He’ll know something about you. Perhaps one day he’ll be tempted to talk too.”

“Fancy knows the value of silence,” Harry said.

“How much does he know about you now?”

“He knows his job, that’s all.”

“Does he know about Korea, or are you afraid to tell him?”

“He doesn’t know, but even if he did — he’s loyal, he can be trusted.”

“You don’t know what your great hero did in Korea, do you?” Bill said turning to Fancy, feeling a wild desperation but trying to keep it under control, to let his thoughts continue to come rationally.

“And he doesn’t care,” Harry said. “Because it’s none of his business.”

Bill, still addressing Fancy, wet his lips and said, “You mean to say you don’t know how your great hero here got his leg wound? Why don’t you ask him?”

Fancy’s eyes remained cold and lightless, watching Bill, eyes like a statue’s, devoid of life, of warmth, of curiosity; but watching Bill with a peculiar, narrowing intentness.

“We were supposed to take out a foot patrol,” Bill said, speaking quickly, desperately now, not knowing when his life was going to be abruptly cut off; determined to say this. “It was a dangerous mission. So Harry, here, decided he wanted no part of it. ‘I want to get out of here; this is for crazy men,’ I think were his exact words. So he went off somewhere and shot himself in the leg. Several of us covered up for him. I don’t know why, but we did. Maybe we were glad to be rid of him. He wasn’t much of a soldier anyway. He was a coward, or he was shrewd. Call it what you want. But other men died.”

A silence filled the damp night air. The mist swirled and burned in the car’s headlights that created a little pool of tense light in the pitch-dark woods. A multitude of flying insects swarmed and blundered into the two starkly glaring lights. Fancy continued his cold staring at Bill. The silence was broken by a harsh laugh from Harry Lawrence.

“See?” Harry said. “You told him. What did it get you?”

The shot rang out, the echo being swallowed almost instantly by the dark, hidden woods.

“And then he just got back into the car and drove off,” Bill said as they walked along the platform next to the tracks. “He never even looked back. He just drove away and left me there to hike back to town. Harry died on the spot. He had the most startled expression on his face.”

“It was. because of his brother — Fancy’s brother,” Lynn said. “Harry must have forgot about that, or else he’d never have let you tell it. Fancy worshipped his brother. The brother was killed in Korea, after volunteering for a dangerous mission.”

“The police said I’ll have to come back when they catch up to him,” Bill said, putting his bag down on the platform.

“Don’t wait for that,” Lynn said. “Come back sooner if you get lonely.”

“If? I’ve already begun to feel lonely,” Bill said as they heard the train whistling down the tracks.