Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 63, No. 2. Whole No. 363, February 1974

The Man Who Could Only Write Things by Robert Twohy[6]

Robert Twohy was one of the earliest of EQMM contributors — perhaps the earliest — to write mystery stories of the Absurd. His first was “Routine Investigation” (as ironic a title as can be imagined), published in these pages nearly ten years ago (issue of April 1964). Here is another of Mr. Twohy’s oddball stories — far out and offbeat. But we think you’ll enjoy it...

Burt Dee came upstairs from his workroom in the cellar whose floor was half cemented, half earth. He had a zapped look on his face.

His wife, sagging on the couch in their worn-out living room and reading a magazine, turned her head as she heard the clink of bottle against glass, and watched Burt pour a stiff one.

“Are you planning to get drunk again?” she asked.

He had got drunk last night, when the TV script he had been working on fell apart like old cheesecloth.

He stared at her over the drink, with weird eyes. “Listen, you won’t believe this — but I just wrote a horse.”

“Wrote a story about a horse, you mean.”

“No. What I mean is, I wrote a horse.”

“You’ve been at that liquor already this morning.”

“Couple or three shots before I started to work. Then I wrote a horse.”

She got up from the couch, a tall, still good-looking but somewhat slack-faced and faded-eyed blonde, and walked over to him, saying coldly, “We’re both in our forties. That’s too old for nonsense.”

“Listen.”

“To what?”

“The horse.”

She stared at him, tight-lipped. From below came muffled clops and whinnies.

He said, “It’s a horse, I tell you. A small gray honest-to-God not quite full-sized horse.”

Rage suddenly seized her. They were behind in the mortgage payments, all she had to wear were souvenirs of yesteryear, they hadn’t been out in months, the only invitations they got were invitations to pay overdue bills or various horrible consequences would ensue, and instead of grinding out a saleable TV script, he had cooked up some monstrous prank, so he could yuk about it in a barroom. Probably a barfly friend of his had lent him a horse.

She grabbed him by the front of the sweatshirt that covered his fat little torso, and said, in shaking tones, “Why-have-you-put-a-HORSE-in-the-cellar?”

“I haven’t. Leggo. Listen. I was typing and suddenly it was all in high gear, like I was out of myself, typing like mad, knowing something was coming... and there was this horse.”

She stared at him, and knew that if he wasn’t telling the truth, he believed it was the truth.

He put his glass down and said, “I’ll show you.”

They went down the stairs to the cluttered cellar, cement-floored at this end, raw earth at the other. Standing near Burt’s desk and rolling whited eyes at them was a smallish gray horse.

She whispered, “Is it real?”

“Real as any horse in the world.”

She stared at the horse, then at him.

“How did you write it?”

“Like I said. I was writing a love scene and it was limping along, and then suddenly I was aware that I wasn’t writing a love scene any more.”

“Was it a horse scene?”

“No. I just became aware that what I was writing was turning into something. I didn’t know what it was but I kept on writing and then I looked up and saw it. Then I knew I had written a horse.”

They had moved toward the horse, which tossed its head nervously. Back in the dear dead days Lila Dee had lived on an uncle’s farm and had developed a fondness for horses, and the memory of this came back to her as she touched the horse’s neck — and she smiled.

Burt said, “You smiled.”

“Did I?”

“First time in months.”

“There hasn’t been much to smile about.” She gazed at the page in Burt’s machine. There were a few lines of inane dialogue, then rows and rows of letters, all run together, meaningless.

“This is what you wrote?”

“Yuh. It sure doesn’t look like much. But at the time it was like — well, like I was inspired, like.”

“I don’t understand it at all.”

“Why don’t we go upstairs and have a drink?”

“What about the horse?”

“We’ll throw him down a bunch of carrots.”

They went upstairs and talked over how Burt Dee, 44 years old, semi-alcoholic, potbellied, short-sighted, mired in poverty, who in his palmy days in Hollywood ten years ago had been an overpaid hack and who now was, according to his exagent, a burned-out hack — how Burt Dee could sit down at an ordinary typewriter in an ordinary mood, and write a horse; and nothing they could think of threw any light on the why or the how. It was just something that had happened.

She said, “Do you think it’ll happen again?”

“Who knows?”

She poured them another drink. “If a horse, why not a suitcase full of money? Or an ocelot coat? You once promised me an ocelot coat.”

“That was in the good days. They ran out before I got to an ocelot coat.”

“You drank too much.” She nestled a little closer to him on the battered couch — something she hadn’t done in a dog’s age. “Try to write a suitcase full of money. Or an ocelot coat.”

He smiled vaguely. “Why not?”

“Now?”

“No, I got to be by myself when I write. I can’t have a horse staring at me.”

“Tomorrow then.”

“All right. But it may never happen again.”

He got rid of the horse the next day — one of his barfly friends gave him $20 and came by in a rented stake truck and took the horse away as a present for a niece or someone; and Burt gave Lila the $20 and said, “Well, we got something out of it, anyway.”

She said softly, “Go down and write a suitcase full of money.”

“I’ll try.” He had little or no faith that anything would come of it. He roosted on his stool at the desk in the cellar and started to type, trying to think big money. He started a tale about a millionaire and worked a half hour or so, but nothing happened, and somehow he knew that nothing would. He wadded what he had written, tossed it into the wastebasket, and went back upstairs.

She looked at him eagerly, and he shook his head. The light went out of her eyes, and she sighed. He said, “I guess it’ll never happen again. It was just some crazy fourth-dimensional thing.”

“Well, here’s a third-dimensional thing.” She showed him what the mail had just brought — a notice of intent to foreclose on the house.

He had a drink. He had another. A perception came to him blindingly: “I can only write tangibles.”

“What was that?”

“It just came to me. I can’t write intangibles. Money is an intangible.”

“Since when?”

“Money’s paper. It’s a value. I can’t write values. I can only write tangibles.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t either.” But he flew down to the cellar and started to crank out dialogue. The words came sputteringly, as usual. Then suddenly, as yesterday, he went into overdrive: he felt the same exhilaration.

Something was happening, he was writing something, he did not know what. His fingers flew over the keys like Paderewski’s, there was no reality, there was no sense of time, he was nothing, he was omnipotent, he was nowhere, he was everywhere...

He leaned back on his stool, gasping, spent. He knew he had written something. An ocelot coat? He looked around. There it was. But not an ocelot coat.

“Lila!”

She came bounding down the stairs.

“There.”

“My God!”

It was a polar-bear rug.

She whispered, “It’s beautiful!”

“Uh huh. Not ocelot, but — on the right track.” He stroked the noble glass-eyed head. “These cost a fortune. I know a guy who’ll give me $500 for it, cash, no questions asked.”

He paced, and at length turned a shining, somewhat red-nosed face to her. “This thing, whatever it is, I’ve got a feeling it’s going to stay with me. I can write tangibles. Anything I want.”

Not quite. There were days when he wanted to write a new suit, a zebra-striped couch, a deep freeze, and all he could write was a monogrammed soap dish.

He found that a certain amount, just the right amount, of liquor in the system was one of the keys to success. Too much, and things went haywire; too little, and nothing came off. Experiment gave him pretty much the formula. The ocelot coat, which he wrote in the third week after the horse, was without a flaw.

Through his barfly connections he was able to unload the various things he wrote, and at good prices — good for the customers, who asked no questions, and good for himself and Lila. Their standard of living began to climb; they got the deadly finance companies off their backs, and refurnished the house. The liquor cabinet was full of the best.

One terrific day Burt, with a strong feeling, moved everything in the cellar off against the walls, so he had a large clear space, and set his mind on a Rolls-Royce... What he wrote was a Falcon, last year’s model, but a white station wagon with red-leather seats, nothing to complain of; the pink slip and this year’s license tabs were in the glove compartment. He got some of his barfly friends who wouldn’t shoot off their mouths to help him remove part of the cellar wall, and they got a ramp in and drove the car out into the back driveway.

Three months after the horse Lila had lost her stringy defeated look, put on 25 pounds, and developed an imperious way of striding into a jewelry or fashion shop and demanding the best. She also developed a yen to partake in the social ramble.

“I want us to join the country club.”

She also desired to change his image. “You shouldn’t hang around those miserable saloons. People see you drinking with hod carriers and cab drivers and assume you’re just another low-down person.”

“Well, I’m just a hack who writes things.”

“I want to see you always shaved when you go uptown.”

“Why?”

“I’m forming new friends now. I don’t want them to think you’re peculiar.”

He gazed at her, and said slowly, “You’ve changed.”

“Certainly I’ve changed. Money changes a person. If it didn’t, what would be the use of it? I want you to change too. I want you to get a rich man’s outlook.”

“We’re not rich.”

She smiled sleekly. “We will be. Keep writing things. I want everything we used to have, and then some. I deserve it, for putting up with so much. I demand it. It’s my right.”

“I’ll do my best.” And he added, watching her as she strode out, “You were a good wife, Lila.”

More months passed. Lila met people of means. They sat around in the living room, and below them, in the cellar, which Burt insisted be left as it had always been, he roosted on his stool and wrote things. He would appear at times among them, but they didn’t pay much attention to him — he was just Lila’s husband. Lila told her friends he was in creative selling. That sufficed. Nobody especially wanted to know anything more about him.

He had to do a lot of contact work, unloading the things he wrote, and the more they had the more Lila seemed to need. It got treadmilly. It wasn’t the way he had pictured it. In Swinny’s bar they said, “Burt, you look all drug out. Why’n’t you relax?”

“Can’t.”

“You’re working yourself to death. Whatever work you do.”

“I write things.”

“Well, you don’t want to work yourself into the grave.”

Lila said, when he came home one afternoon, “This is Yvonne. She’s our new cook-and-maid.”

“Did we really need one?” But he looked again at Yvonne, and thought, yes, indeed, they had always needed a small dark saucer-eyed French cook-and-maid.

“I have to entertain a lot and Yvonne will take some of the load off me. You’ve no idea how it is to clean up before and after a gathering.”

Three days after Yvonne arrived Burt wrote her a small bracelet. It was presented while Lila was off on a shopping binge.

Yvonne said, “Ooh, Msoo, I could not accept!” She clutched it, her eyes big as soup plates. “It is tres belle! How can I ever zank you?”

Burt had an idea how — but he wasn’t going to force things.

Lila went places, and had people over, and her world was: full. Burt was the machine that provided. As long as the machine functioned, one didn’t worry about it, one hardly noticed it was around,

Burt presented Yvonne with other gifts. The boys at Swinny’s noticed a spring in his step, color in his cheeks, a brightness in his eye. “You’re looking better, Burt. You look like you enjoy life again,”

“I do love life again.”

Yvonne murmured, “I lof you, Burt.”

“I lof you too. I want to marry you.”

“Mais — there is Madame.”

“Yes. Madame. That’s how I think of her now too. Well, Madame will have to go, is all.”

“She would never divorce. You are ze provider.”

“Yes. I write things.”

“What do you write? I never know.”

“Things. Tangibles... You’re right. She’ll never give me a divorce.”

When he left Yvonne, there was a strange look in his eyes.

The next morning he went downstairs to work. Not at the desk, but at the uncemented end of the cellar. Because he couldn’t write intangibles; and what he was preparing for Lila was something quite intangible.

Finally he mopped his sweating face, propped his tools against the wall, and went upstairs. Yvonne was out. Lila lay on the couch. Burt said, “Come down in the cellar.”

“Oh, have you written something special?”

“Uh — well, there’s something special for you down there.”

Downstairs she looked around. “I don’t see anything.”

“It’s at the far end.”

“It’s dark, I can’t see. I’ll get dirt on my slippers. What is it?”

He was behind her. “A little further. You’ll see it.”

She stopped. “A hole. You’ve dug a hole!”

“Yes,” said Burt, and swung hard with his pick.

Later that afternoon, after he’d had some drinks, he wrote a new tile floor for the entire cellar.

He went upstairs and said to Yvonne, working in the kitchen, “Dinner just for us two tonight. Madame telephoned. She said she’s going on a trip.”

“Really? Where?”

“She didn’t say. She sounded kind of odd. Said she’d write me a letter, explaining.” He sniffed at the pots. “What’s for dinner?”

The sudden disappearance of Lila Dee caused puzzlement to her friends. They weren’t satisfied with Burt’s explanation that she had gone suddenly on a trip. They buzzed about it among themselves.

At length someone suggested the police.

Burt had given little thought to possible consequences; as far as Lila was concerned, it was out of sight, out of mind. Yvonne, however, had worries.

“It is very strange about Madame. No word from her. If only we had a letter, in her handwriting, in case people start to wonder.”

“Yes,” said Burt. They looked at each other. He said, “You got relatives in France?”

“Oui.”

“Good.” It was 2:00 P.M. on a Friday afternoon. “I’ll go down and do some work for a while.”

A letter postmarked from France would be a good thing to have. He would keep it vague. It would be in longhand, telling about, tensions she’d been having, an urge to get away for a while, think things out, travel a bit... so she and Philip had gone away. Don’t try to contact her, she’d write later.

Philip was a nonexistent person. Burt was pleased with the concept. It would give the police a chance to snoop about — and Burt a chance to develop a more permanent disposition of Lila’s memory.

He thought that a little later he would present another letter from Lila, hinting at some illness. Finally, there would be a brief, grave note from Philip, saying that Lila had passed away on a cruise; her body had been buried at sea.

Not a perfect solution, far from it. However, sufficient unto the day, and giving him time to hatch up something better, as it might occur.

Lila’s handwriting would be no problem. She had no living relatives and had rarely corresponded with anyone — even lately, her contacts were always by telephone. He had taken care of all their business affairs. Her signatures on some documents were all there was on record. He had samples of it, and it would be easy to forge. Nobody could say for sure that a note, slanted like her signature, and showing characteristics in certain letters that could be compared, was not written by her.

Burt took some nips out of his desk bottle and started a draft of the letter on the typewriter.

He wrote, “Dear Burt. I am sorry to have left without notice, but certain tensions, certain—”

Suddenly he felt the overdrive. Damn, he thought, as his vision blurred and his fingers skipped over the keys, I’m writing something. I didn’t want to. I just wanted to write this note.

Isn’t a note a tangible? But no — he saw the flaw. A real letter would be a tangible. But this, what he had set out to write, was a false letter. A hoax. A hoax was an intangible. And he couldn’t write intangibles.

Damn. But he couldn’t stop. Once started, he just had to pound away until something tangible had been written.

At last came the spent feeling. He shook his head, wiped his glasses, and looked around to see what he had created.

Yvonne, at his shoulder, said, “Msoo!”

He jumped on his stool.

“Msoo, it is a Sergeant Hare — from the police.”

Burt looked beyond her shoulder to a broad-faced man who stood at the bottom of the cellar steps.

Yvonne said, “I knocked, I called — mais you were absorbe.”

“Yes.” In the machine before him was the sheet of paper, with its incriminating message, trailing off in x’s. Fortunately the sergeant didn’t have a view of it.

“Yes,” said Burt, rolling the sheet out, laying it on the desk, and casually sliding other sheets over it. “I was working. I’m a writer, you know. I write things.”

Sergeant Hare said, “I am making an inquiry about your wife.”

“Yes,” said Burt. “She telephoned me some days ago. Said she was going on a sudden trip.”

“You have no idea where?”

“No. I expect she’ll write soon. She’s been behaving somewhat oddly.”

“Do you mind if I look around?”

“Help yourself.” Burt waved, to indicate the whole cellar, with its perfect tile floor.

Then his eyes stuck out. So did Hare’s.

“What’s that?” said Hare.

“What’s what?” said Burt, though you couldn’t miss it, looming palely at the dark far end of the cellar.

Hare walked over to it. He read aloud:

“Well?” said Hare.

Burt walked over. The tombstone was rich gray marble, topped with an exquisite angel. The carving was deep, sure, masterful.

Burt sighed. He had to feel a little pleasure.

“I write good stuff,” he said.