Morse’s Greatest Mystery and other stories

At the Lulu-Bar Motel

I shall never be able to forget what Louis said — chiefly, no doubt, because he said it so often, a cynical smile slowly softening that calculating old mouth of his: “People are so gullible!” — that’s what he kept on saying, our Louis. And I’ve used those selfsame words a thousand times myself — used them again last night to this fat-walleted coach-load of mine as they debussed at the Lulu-Bar Motel before tucking their starched napkins over their legs and starting into one of Louis’s five-star four-coursers, with all the wines and a final slim liqueur. Yes, people are so gullible... Not quite all of them (make no mistake!) — and please don’t misunderstand me. This particular manifestation of our human frailty is of only marginal concern to me personally, since occasionally I cut a thinnish slice of that great cake for myself — as I did just before I unloaded those matching sets of leather cases and hulked them round the motel corridors.

But let’s get the chronology correct. All that hulking around comes right after we’ve pulled into the motel where — as always — I turn to all the good people (the black briefcase tight under my right arm) and tell them we’re here, folks; here for the first-night stop on a wunnerful tour, which every single one o’ you is goin’ to enjoy real great. From tomorrow — and I’m really sorry about this, folks — you won’t have me personally lookin’ after you anymore; but that’s how the operation operates. I’m just the first-leg man myself, and someone else’ll have the real privilege of drivin’ you out on the second leg post-breakfast. Tonight itself, though, I’ll be hangin’ around the cocktail bar (got that?), and if you’ve any problems about... well, about anything, you just come along and talk to me, and we’ll sort things out real easy. One thing, folks. Just one small friendly word o’ counsel to you all. There’s one or two guys around these parts who are about as quick an’ as slick an’ as smooth as a well-soaped ferret. Now, the last thing I’d ever try to do is stop you enjoyin’ your vaycaytions, and maybe one or two of you could fancy your chances with a deck o’ cards against the deadliest dealer from here to Detroit. But... well, as I say, just a friendly word o’ counsel, folks. Which is this: some people are so gullible! — and I just wouldn’t like it if any o’ you — well, as I say, I just wouldn’t like it.

That’s the way I usually dress it up, and not a bad little dressing up at that, as I think you’ll agree. “OK” (do I hear you say?) “if some of them want to transfer their savings to someone else’s account — so what? You can’t live other folks’ lives for them, now can you? You did your best, Danny boy. So forget it!” Which all makes good logical sense, as I know. But they still worry me a little — all those warm-hearted, clean-living folk, because — well, simply because they’re so gullible. And if you don’t relish reading about such pleasant folk who plop like juicy pears into the pockets of sharp-fingered charlatans — well, you’re not going to like this story. You’re not going to like it one little bit.

Most of them were in their sixties or early seventies (no children on the Luxi-Coach Package Tours), and as they filed past the old driving cushion they slipped me a few bucks each and thanked me for a real nice way to start a vaycaytion. After that it took a couple of hours to hump all that baggage around the rooms, and it was half-past eight before I got down to some of Lucy’s chicken curry. Lucy? She’s a honey of a girl — the sort of big-breasted blonde that most of my fellow sinners; would willingly seek to seduce and, to be honest with you... But let me return to the theme.

The cocktail bar is a flashily furnished, polychrome affair, with deep, full-patterned carpet, orange imitation-leather seats, and soft wall-lighting in a low, pink glow; and by about half-past nine the place was beginning to fill up nicely. Quite a few of them I recognized from the coach: but there were others. Oh yes, there were a few others...

He wasn’t a big fellow — five-six, five-seven — and he wore a loud check suit just like they used to do in the movies. When I walked in he was standing by the bar, a deck of cards shuttling magically from hand to hand. “Fancy a game, folks? Luke’s the name.” He was pleasant enough, I suppose, in an ugly sort of way; and with his white teeth glinting in a broad-mouthed smile, you could almost stop disliking him. Sometimes.

It was just before ten when he got his first bite — a stocky, middle-aged fellow who looked as if he could take pretty good care of himself, thank you. So. So, I watched them idly as they sat opposite each other at one of the smooth-topped central tables, and it wasn’t long before a few others began watching, too. It was a bit of interest — a bit of an incident. And it wasn’t their money at stake.

Now Lukey loved one game above all others, and I’ll have to bare its bones a bit if you’re going to follow the story. (Be patient, please: we’re running along quite nicely now.) First, it’s a dollar stake in the kitty, all right? Then two cards are dealt to each of the players, the court cards counting ten, the ace eleven, and all the other cards living up to their marked face-value. Thus it follows, as day follows night and as luck follows Luke, that the gods are grinning at you if you pick up a ten and an ace — for that is vingt-et-un, my friends, whether you reckon by Fahrenheit or Centigrade, and twenty-one’s the best they come. And so long as you remember not to break that twenty-one-mile speed limit, you can buy as many more cards as you like and... but I don’t think you’re going to have much trouble in following things.

It was the speed with which hand followed hand that surprised all the on-lookers, since our challenger (“Call me Bart”) was clearly no stranger to the Lukesberry rules and five or six hands were through every minute. Slap! A dollar bill in the kitty. Slap! A dollar bill on top. Flick, flick; flick, flick; buy; stick; bust. Dollar, dollar; flick, flick; quicker, ever quicker. Soon I’m standing behind Barty and I can see his cards. He picks up a ten, and a four; and without mulling it over for a micro-second he says, “Stick.” Then Lukey turns over a seven, and an eight — and then he flicks over another card for himself: a Jack. Over the top! And Barty pockets yet another kitty; and it’s back to that dollar-dollar, flick-flicking again. And when Bart wins again, Luke asks him nicely if he’d like to deal. But Bart declines the kind offer. “No,” he says. “I’m on a nice li’l winnin’ streak here, pal, so just you keep on dealing them pretty li’l beauties same as before — that’s all I ask.”

So Lukey goes on doing just that; and by all that’s supersonic what a sharp our Lukey is! I reckon you’d need more than a slow-motion replay to appreciate that prestissimo prestidigitation of his. You could watch those fingers with the eagle eye of old Cortes — and yet whether he was flicking the cards from the top or the middle or the bottom, I swear no one could ever tell. In spite of all this, though, Barty-boy is still advancing his winnings. Now he picks up a seven, and a four; and he decides to buy another card for ten dollars. So Lukey covers the ten dollars from his own fat roll, deals Barty a nine — and things are looking mighty good. Then Luke turns over his own pair (why he bothers, I can’t really say, for he knows them all along): a six, and a nine, they are — and things look pretty bad. He turns over another card from the deck — an eight. And once more he’s out of his dug-out and over the top.

“My luck’ll change soon,” says Luke.

“Not with me, it won’t,” says Bart, picking up the twenty-two dollars from the kitty.

“You quitting, you mean?”

“I’m quitting,” says Bart.

“You’ve played before, I reckon.”

“Yep.”

“You always quit when you’re winning?”

“Yep.”

Luke says nothing for a few seconds. He just picks up the deck and looks at it sourly, as if something somewhere in the universe has gone mildly askew. Then he calls on the power of the poets and he quotes the only lines he’s ever learned:

“Barty,” he says, “ ‘If you can make one heap of all your winnings? And risk it on one turn of pitch and toss...’

Remember that? What about it? You’ve taken seventy-odd dollars off o’ me, and I’m just suggestin’ that if you put ’em in the middle — and if I cover ’em... What do you say? One hand, that’s all.”

The audience was about thirty strong now, and as many were urging Barty on as were urging him off. And they were all pretty committed, too — one way or the other. One of them in particular...

I’d seen him earlier at the bar, and a quaint little fellow he was, too. By the look of him he was in his mid- or late-seventies, no more than four-ten, four-eleven, in his built-up shoes. His face was deeply tanned and just as deeply lined, and he wore a blazer gaudily striped in red and royal blue. Underneath the blazer pocket, tastelessly yet lovingly picked out in purple cotton, was the legend: Virgil K. Perkins Jnr. Which made you wonder whether Virgil K. Perkins Snr. was still somewhere in circulation — although a further glance at his senile son seemed to settle that particular question in the negative. Well, it’s this old-timer who tries pretty hard to get Barty to pocket his dollars and call it a night. And for a little while it seemed that Barty was going to listen. But no. He’s tempted — and he falls.

“Okey doke,” says Barty. “One more hand it is.”

It was Luke now who seemed to look mildly uneasy as he covered the seventy-odd dollars and squared up the deck. From other parts of the room the crowd was rolling up in force again: forty, fifty of them now, watching in silence as Luke dealt the cards. Barty let his pair of cards lie on the table a few seconds and his hands seemed half full of the shakes as he picked them up. A ten; and a six. Sixteen. And for the first time that evening he hesitated, as he fell to figuring out the odds. Then he said, “Stick,” but it took him twice to say it because the first “stick” got sort of stuck in his larynx. So it was Lukey’s turn now, and he slowly turned over a six — and then a nine. Fifteen. And Luke frowned a long time at his fifteen and his right hand toyed with the next card on the top of the deck, quarter turning it, half turning it, almost turning it — and then putting it back.

“Fifteen,” he said.

“Sixteen,” says Barty, and his voice was vibrant as he grabbed the pile of notes in the middle.

Then he was gone.

The on-lookers were beginning to drift away as Luke sat still in his seat, the cards still shuttling endlessly from one large palm to the other. It was the old boy who spoke to him first.

“You deserve a drink, sir!” he says. “Virgil K. Perkins Junior’s the name, and this is my li’l wife, Minny.”

“We’re from Omaha,” says Minny dutifully.

And so Virgil gets Luke a rye whisky, and they start talking.

“You a card player yourself, Mr. Perkins?”

“Me? No, sir,” says Virgil. “Me and the li’l wife here” (Minny was four or five inches the taller) “were just startin’ on a vaycaytion together, sir. We’re from Omaha, just like she says.”

But the provenance of these proud citizens seemed of no great importance to Luke. “A few quick hands, Mr. Perkins?”

“No,” says Virgil, with a quiet smile.

“Look, Mr. Perkins! I don’t care — I just don’t care — whether it’s winnin’ or losin’, and that’s the truth. Now if we just—”

“No!” says Virgil.

“You musta heard of beginner’s luck?”

“No!” says Virgil.

“You’re from Omaha, then?” says Luke, turning all pleasant-like to Minny...

I left them there, walked over to the bar, and bought an orange juice from Lucy, who sometimes comes through to serve about ten o’clock. She’s wearing a lowly cut blouse, and a highly cute hairstyle. But she says nothing to me; just winks — unsmilingly.

Sure enough, when I returned to the table, there was Virgil K. Perkins “just tryin’ a few hands,” as he put it; and I don’t really need to drag you through all the details, do I? It’s all going to end up exactly as you expect... but perhaps I’d better put it down, if only for the record; and I’ll make it all as brief as I can.

From the start it followed the usual pattern: a dollar up; a dollar down. Nice and easy, take it gently; and soon the little fellow was beaming broadly, and picking up his cards with accelerating eagerness. But, of course, the balance was slowly swinging against him: twenty dollars down; thirty; forty...

“Lucky little run for me,” says Luke with a disarming smile, as if for two dimes he’d shovel all his winnings across the table and ease that ever-tightening look round Virgil’s mouth. It was all getting just a little obvious, too, and surely someone soon would notice those nimble fingers that forever flicked those eights and nines when only fours and fives could save old Virgil’s day. And someone did.

“Why don’t you let the old fella deal once in a while?” asks one.

“Yeah, why not?” asks another.

“You wanna deal, pop?” concedes Luke.

But Virgil shakes his white head. “I’ve had enough,” he says. “I shouldn’t really—”

“Come on,” says Minny gently.

“He can deal. Sure he can, if he wants to,” says Luke.

“He can’t deal off the bottom, though!”

Luke was on his feet in a flash, looking round the room. “Who said that?” he asked, and his voice was tight and mean. All conversation had stopped, and no one was prepared to own up. Least of all me — who’d said it.

“Well,” said Luke, as he resumed his seat, “that does it, pop! If I’m bein’ accused of cheatin’ by some lily-livered coward who won’t repeat such villainous vilification — then we’ll have to settle the question as a matter of honour, I reckon. You deal, pop!”

The old man hesitated — but not for too long. “Honour” was one of those big words with a capital letter, and wasn’t a thing you could shove around too lightly. So he picked up the cards and he shuffled them, boxing and botching the whole business with an awkwardness almost unmatched in the annals of card-play. But somehow he managed to square the deck — and he dealt.

“I’ll buy one,” says Luke, slipping a ten-dollar bill into the middle.

Virgil slowly covers the stake, and then pushes over a card.

“Stick,” says Luke.

Taking from his blazer pocket an inordinately large handkerchief, the old man mops his brow and turns his own cards over: a queen; and — an ace!

Luke merely shrugs his shoulders and pushes the kitty across. “That’s the way to do it, pop! Just you keep dealing yourself a few hands like that and—”

“No!” cries Minny, who’d been bleating her forebodings intermittently from the very beginning.

But Virgil lays a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Don’t be cross with me, old girl. And don’t worry! I’m just a-goin’ to deal myself one more li’l hand and...”

And another, and another, and another. And the gods were not smiling on the little man from Omaha: not the slightest sign of the meanest grin. Was it merely a matter of saving Face? Of preserving Honour? No, sir! It seemed just plain desperation as the old boy chased his losses round and round that smooth-topped table, with Minny sitting there beside him, her eyes tightly closed as if she was pinning the remnants of her hopes in the power of silent prayer. (I hitched the briefcase tighter under my right arm as I caught sight of Lucy behind the crowd, her eyes holding mine — again unsmilingly.)

By half-past ten Virgil K. Perkins Jnr. had lost one thousand dollars, and he sat there crumpled up inside his chair. It wasn’t as if he was short of friends, for the large audience had been behind him all along, just willing the old fellow to win. And it wasn’t as if anyone could blame our nimble-fingered Lukey anymore, for it was Virgil himself who had long since been dealing out his own disasters.

Not any longer, though. He pushed the deck slowly across the table and stood up. “I’m sorry, old girl,” he says to Minny, and his voice is all choked up. “It was your money as much as mine...”

But Luke was leaning across and he put his mighty palm on the old boy’s skinny wrist. And he speaks quietly. “Look, pop! You’ve just lost yourself a thousand bucks, right? So I want you to listen to me carefully because I’m gonna tell you how we can put all that to rights again. Now, we’ll just have one more hand—”

“NO!” (The little lady’s voice was loud and shrill this time.) “He won’t! He won’t lay down another dollar, d’you hear me? He’s just — he’s just a poor old fool, can’t you see that? He’s just a gullible, poor old—” But the rest of her words were strangled in her throat, and Virgil sat down again and put his arm round her shoulder as she began to weep silently.

“Don’t you want to get all your money back?” Luke’s voice is quiet again, but everyone can hear his words.

“Don’t listen to him!” shouts one.

“Call it a day, sir!” shouts another.

Says Luke, turning to all of them: “Old pop, here, he’s got one helluva sight more spunk in him than the rest o’ you put together! And, what’s more, not a single man jack o’ you knows the proposition I’m proposin’. Well?” (Luke looks around real bold.) “Well? Do you?”

It was all silence again now, as Luke looks across to Virgil and formulates his offer. “Look, pop. I’ve been mighty lucky tonight, as I think you might agree. So, I’m going to give you the sort o’ chance you’ll never have again. And this is what we’ll do. We’ll have just one last hand and we’ll take two points off my score. Got that? I pick up eighteen — we call it sixteen. And just the same whatever score it is. What do you say, pop?”

But old Virgil — he shakes his head. “You’re a good sport, Luke, but—”

“Let’s make it three off then,” says Luke earnestly. “I pick up twenty — we call it seventeen. OK? Look, pop!” (He leans across and grips the wrist again.) “Nobody’s ever gonna make you any better offer than that. Nobody. You know something? It’s virtually certain you’re gonna get all that lovely money right back into that wallet o’ yours, now, isn’t it?”

It was tempting. Ye gods, it was tempting! And it was soon clear that the audience was thinking it was pretty tempting, too, with a good many of them revising their former estimate of things.

“What d’you say?” asks Luke.

“No,” says Virgil. “It’s not just me — it’s Minny here. I’ve made enough of a fool of myself for one night, haven’t I, old girl?”

Then Minny looked at him, straight on, like. A surprising change had come over her tear-stained face, and her blue eyes blazed with a sudden surge of almost joyous challenge. “You take him on, Virgil!” she says, with a quiet, proud authority.

But Virgil still sat there dejected and indecisive. His hands ran across that shock of wavy white hair, and for a minute or two he pondered to himself. Then he decided. He took most of the remaining notes from his wallet, and counted them with lingering affection before stacking them neatly in the centre of the table. “Do you wanna count ’em, Luke?” he says. And it was as if the tide had suddenly turned; as if the old man sensed the smell of victory in his nostrils.

For a few seconds now it seemed to be Luke who was nervy and hesitant, the brashness momentarily draining from him. But the offer had been taken up, and the fifty or sixty on-lookers were in no mood to let him forget it. He slowly counted out his own bills, and placed them on top of Virgil’s.

Two thousand dollars — on one hand.

Luke has already picked up the deck, and now he’s shuffling the spots with his usual, casual expertise.

“Why are you dealin’?”

Luke looks up, and stares me hard in the eye. “Was that you just spoke, mister?”

I nod. “Yep. It was me. And I wanna know why it is you think you got some goddam right to deal them cards — because you don’t deal ’em straight, brother. You flick ’em off the top and you flick ’em off the bottom and for all I know you flick ’em—”

“I’ll see you outside, mister, as soon as—”

“You’ll do no such thing,” I replies quietly. “I just ain’t goin’ to be outside no more tonight again — least of all for you, brother.”

He looked mighty dangerous then — but I just didn’t care. The skin along his knuckles was growing white as he slowly got to his feet and moved his chair backwards. And then, just as slowly, he sat himself down again — and he surprises everybody. He pushes the deck over the table and he says: “He’s right, pop. You deal!”

Somehow old pop’s shaking hands managed to shuffle the cards into some sort of shape; and when a couple of cards fall to the floor, it’s me who bends down and hands them back to him.

“Cut,” says pop.

So Luke cuts — about halfway down the deck (though knowing Lukey I should think it was exactly halfway down). Miraculously, it seems, old Virgil’s hands had gotten themselves rid of any shakes, and he deals the cards out firm and fine: one for Luke, one for himself; another for Luke, and another for himself. For a few moments each man left them lying there on the top of the table. Then Luke picks up his own — first the one, and then the other.

“Stick!” he says, and his voice is a bit hoarse.

Every eye in the room was now on Virgil’s as he turned over his first card — a seven; then the second card — a ten. Seventeen! And all you’ve got to do, my friends, is to add on three — and that’s a handsome little twenty, and the whole room was mumbling and murmuring in approval.

Every eye now switches to Luke, and in the sudden tense silence the cards are slowly turned: first a king, and then — ye gods! — an ace! And as Lukey smiles down at that beautiful twenty-oner the audience groaned like they always do when its favourite show-jumper knocks the top off the last fence.

And where, my friends, do we go from there? Well, I’ll tell you. It was Lucy who started it all immediately Luke had left. She pushed her way through the on-lookers and plunged her hand deep down between those glorious breasts of hers to clutch her evening’s tips.

“Mr. Perkins, isn’t it? I know it isn’t all that much; but — but if it’ll help, please take it.” About seven or eight dollars, it was, no more — but, believe me, it bore its fruit two-hundred-fold. It was me who was next. I’d taken about thirty-five dollars on the coach and (once more hitching the old briefcase higher under my arm) I fished it all out of my back pocket and placed it a-top of Lucy’s crumpled offerings.

“Mr. Perkins,” I said sombrely. “You should’ve been on my coach, old friend.” That’s all I said.

As for Virgil, he said nothing. He just sat back all crumpled up like before, with Minny sobbing silently beside him. I reckon he looked as if he couldn’t trust himself to say a single word. But it didn’t matter. All the audience was sad and sullenly sympathetic — and, as I said, they’d had their fill of Louis’s vintage wines. And I’ve got to hand it to them. Twenty dollars; another twenty dollars; a fifty; a few tens; another twenty; another fifty — I watched them all as these clean-living, God-fearing folk forked something from their careful savings. And I reckon there wasn’t a single man-jack of them who didn’t make his mark upon that ever-mounting pile. But still Virgil said nothing. When finally he stumbled his way to the exit, holding Minny in one hand and a very fat pile of other people’s dollars in the other, he turned round as if he was going to say something to all his very good friends. But still the words wouldn’t come, it seemed; and he turned once more and left the cocktail bar.

I woke late the next morning, and only then because Luke was leaning over me, gently shaking me by the shoulder.

“Louis says he wants to see you at half-past ten.”

I lifted my left arm and focused on the wrist-watch: already five to ten.

“You all right, Danny?” Luke was standing by the door now (he must have had a key for that!) and for some reason he didn’t look mightily happy.

“Sure, sure!”

“Half-past, then,” repeated Luke, and closed the door behind him.

I still felt very tired, and I was conscious that the back of my head was aching — and that’s unusual for me. Nothing to drink the night before — well, only the odd orange juice that Lucy had... orange juice...? I fell to wondering slightly, and turned to look at the other side of the bed, where the sheet was neatly turned down in a white hypotenuse. Lucy had gone — doubtless gone early; but then Lucy was always sensible and careful about such things...

I saw my face frowning as I stood in front of the shaving-mirror; and I was still frowning when I took the suit off the hanger in the wardrobe and noticed that the briefcase was gone. But I’d have been frowning even more if the briefcase hadn’t gone; and as I dressed, my head was clearing nicely. I picked up the two thick sealed envelopes that had nestled all night under my pillow, put them, one each, into the pockets of my overcoat, and felt happy enough when I knocked on the door of Louis’s private suite and walked straight in. It was ten thirty-two.

There were the usual six chairs round the oblong table, and four of them were taken already: there was Luke, and there was Barty; then there was Minny; and at the head of the table, Louis himself — a Louis still, doubtless, no more than four-ten, four-eleven in his built-up shoes, but minus that garishly striped blazer now; minus, too, that shock of silvery hair which the previous evening had covered that large, bald dome of his.

“You’re late,” he says, but not unpleasantly. “Sit down, Danny.” So I sat down, feeling like a little boy in the first grade. (But I usually feel like that with Louis.)

“You seen Lucy?” asks Minny, as Barty pours me a drop of Irish.

“Lucy? No — have you tried her room?”

But no one seemed much willing to answer that one, and we waited for a few minutes in silence before Louis spoke again.

“Danny,” he says, “you’ll remember that when we brought you into our latest li’l operation a few months back I figured we’d go for about a quarter of a million before we launched out on a new one?”

I nodded.

“Well, we’re near enough there now as makes no odds — a fact perhaps you may yourself be not completely unaware of? After all, Danny, it was one o’ your jobs to take my li’l Lucy down to the bank on Mondays, now wasn’t it? And I reckon you’ve got a pretty clear idea of how things are.”

I nodded again, and kept on looking him straight in the eyes.

“Well, it was never no secret from any of us — was it? — that I’d be transferrin’ this li’l investment o’ mine over to Luke and Bartholomew here as soon as they — well, as soon as they showed me they was worthy.”

I was nodding slowly all the time now; but he’d left something out. “Lucy was goin’ to be in it, too,” I said.

“You’re very fond of my Lucy, aren’t you?” says Minny quietly.

“Yep. I’m very fond of her, Minny.” And that was the truth.

“It’s not bin difficult for any of us to see that, old girl, now has it?” Louis turned to Minny and patted her affectionately on the arm. Then he focuses on me again. “You needn’t have no worries about my li’l daughter, Danny. No worries at all! Did it never occur to you to wonder just why I christened this latest li’l investment o’ mine as the ‘Lulu-Bar Motel’?”

For a few seconds I must have looked a little puzzled, but my head was clearing nicely with the whisky, and I suddenly saw what he meant. Yes! What a deep old devil our Louis was! The Lu-cy Lu-ke, Bar-tholomew Motel...

But Louis was still speaking: “I only asked you down this mornin’, Danny, because I was hopin’ to wind it all up here and now — and to let you know how much I’ve bin aware o’ your own li’l contribution. But — well, it’s all tied up in a way with Lucy, isn’t it? And I reckon” (he looked at Luke and Bart) “I reckon we’d better call another li’l meeting tonight? About eight? All right?”

It seemed all right to all of us, and I got up to go.

“You off to town, Danny?” asks Louis, eyeing the overcoat.

“Yep.” That’s all I said. Then I left them there and caught the bus to the station.

I’d always noticed it before: whenever I’d felt a bit guilty about anything it was as if I sensed that other people somehow seemed to know. But that’s behind us now. And, anyway, it had been Lucy’s idea originally — not mine. She’d needed me, of course, for devising the cheque and forging Louis’ signature — for though I’m about as ham-fisted with a deck of cards as an arthritic octopus, I got my own particular specialism. Yes, sir! And Lucy trusted me, too, because I’d been carrying all that lovely money — 240,000 dollars of it! — all neatly stacked in five-hundred bills, all neatly enveloped and neatly sealed — why, I’d been carrying it all around with me in the old briefcase for two whole days! And Lucy — Lucy, my love! — we shall soon be meeting at the ticket barrier on number one platform — and then be drifting off together quietly in the twilight...

At a quarter to twelve I was there — standing in my overcoat and waiting happily. (Lucy had never been early in her life.) I lit another cigarette; then another. By twelve forty-five I was beginning to worry a little; by one forty-five I was beginning to worry a lot; and by two forty-five I was beginning to guess at the truth. Yet still I waited — waited and waited and waited. And, in a sense, I suppose, I’ve been waiting for Lucy ever since...

It was when the big hand on the station clock came round to four that I finally called it a day and walked over to look at the Departure Board. I found a train that was due for New York in forty-five minutes, and I thought that that had better be that. I walked into the buffet and sat down with a coffee. So? So, here was yet another of life’s illusions lying shattered in the dust, and yet... Poor, poor, lovely Lucy! I nearly allowed myself a saddened little smile as I thought of her opening up those two big envelopes in the briefcase — and finding there those 480 pieces of crisp, new paper, each exactly the size of a 500-dollar bill. She must have thought I was pretty — well, pretty gullible, I suppose, when we’d both agreed that she should take the briefcase...

A single to New York would cost about fifty or sixty dollars, I reckoned; and as I joined what seemed to be the shorter queue at the ticket office I took the bulky envelope from the right-hand pocket of the overcoat, opened it — and stood there stunned and gorgonized. Inside were about 240 pieces of crisp, new paper, each exactly the size of a 500-dollar bill; and my hands were trembling as I stood away from the queue and opened the other envelope. Exactly the same. Well, no — not exactly the same. On the top piece of blank paper there were three sentences of writing in Louis’s unmistakably minuscule hand:

By now, though, I reckon you’ll know those last few words that Louis wrote.

I walked back across to the buffet and ordered another coffee, counting up what I had in my pockets: just ten dollars and forty cents; and I fell to wondering where it was I went from here. Perhaps... perhaps there were one or two things in my favour. At least I could spell “philosophy”; and then there was always the pretty big certainty (just as Louis said so often) that somewhere soon I’d find a few nice, kindly, gullible folk.

But as I glance around at the faces of my fellow men and women in the station buffet now, they all look very mean, and very hard.