The Dead Dream

After spending six months back in the law office the whole thing had dimmed in my mind so that it began to seem like one of those screwy dreams that return in fragments. Uncle Sam had tapped me on the shoulder three years before and lifted me out of the firm where I am so junior a partner that there isn’t any room left on the glass in the door for my name.

Because of a fairly rugged build and a congenital inability to say “No,” I had drifted into an organization called O.S.S. When they got through dropping me out of airplanes and landing me behind Jap lines by sub, they gave me some colored ribbons and sent me home. At first I had believed what I read in the magazines about readjustment. But the easy way I dropped back into the slot proved it was strictly for the birds. I had settled back into the maze of corporation legal problems with only the ambition to get my name up on that glass door. I had no desire to run into the screwball fringe who had apparently composed the bulk of the Oh So Social.

I sat and looked out of my window at a day that was as grey as the clothes in the soap ads and wondered whether I ought to call this Sonia Zathrem back and tell her I couldn’t make it. I could only vaguely remember her as a scrawny black-haired dish with a strident voice and big words. She had been one of the cocktail set overseas, perching on the edges of chairs and stating baldly that the anthropological history of the Thais was a clear indication that subversive propaganda should be directed against their mass mother-complex. I had to track down some precedents in Massachusetts law to clear one of the subsidiaries of one of our clients from a state tax evasion charge, and I wanted to get it over with. But, being one of those guys who can’t say no, I had agreed to meet the Zathrem dish in a hotel lobby...

I was standing looking blankly around when she walked up to me and smiled. “Hello, Billy,” she said; only she pronounced it Beelee. She had changed her hair, wearing it very long with curled under bangs at the eyebrow level. It was blue-black and shining like the best anthracite. On one side of the top of it was something which could have either been a couple of flowers or a hat. She was in black with a big chunk of jade held in a gold claw just at the point where she started to fill out the black clothes in a startling manner.

I closed my mouth long enough to give out with the usual clichés: “Why, hello, Sonia! It’s nice to see you again.” And it was surprisingly nice. Somehow, her big dark eyes peering out at me from under that hair and her wide cheekbones made me think of a pixie looking out from under a hedge — a well-stacked pixie.

We didn’t get down to cases until she had led me across the way to a quiet cocktail bar — a place of dim lights, blue glass and red leather. Just walking with her and noticing the eyes of the casual males wander away and then jump back made me feel good. We took a table in the back, well away from the other tables.

I was glad to see her order a martini. I ordered one, too, and beamed at her with the approval which you always hand out to people who make the entertainment problem simpler. I can mix the best martini in town.

She wasted no time getting to the point. “You probably wonder why I phoned you. We didn’t know each other very well overseas, but when I first saw you I liked your looks. I guess you’re the only person I met in the organization who seemed completely sane.” I curtsied mentally at the doubtful compliment and watched her hands. They were long, thin hands, with twisted fingers, but strangely attractive.

“Even your name sounds so solid and honest — William Quinn,” she continued, smiling at me in a way that didn’t let me know whether or not I was being taken on a ride.

“Once knew a guy named Quinn who slipped his dear old mother a mickey,” I said, and she chuckled, a throaty bubbling sound like slow water swirling around grey rocks. Don’t ask me what I think of women who giggle.

“Now, Billy, I shall tell you why I need you. Just say yes or no quickly when I have finished. You are a lawyer. I can’t go to the police. My mother died in Hungary just before the first war. My father was wealthy. He converted his holdings to cash and left the country with me and my half-brother, Anton. We were both small. I was two and Anton was six. While I was overseas my father died. He and Anton had not spoken for nearly five years. He left his money all to me, about four hundred thousand dollars. Anton is married. Both he and his wife resent me. I have tried to be friendly with them. Three nights ago Anton invited me up to his apartment. There was a light and Anton said many cruel and untrue things to me. He said that I had turned my father against him. His wife said nothing. He and his wife went out to the kitchen, leaving me sitting in the front room of their apartment. I was anxious to find out if they expected me to leave. I wanted to leave, but I thought it would be better to talk to them first. I walked to the kitchen. I walk quietly, not realizing that I am doing so. As I get to the door of the kitchen. I hear Maria. Anton’s wife say, ‘Do not quarrel with her, Anton. I promise you she will not live to enjoy the money.’ There was something about her voice that sent a chill all the way through me. I walked quietly back and left the apartment.

“For three days I have been getting more worried about it. That woman meant what she said to Anton. I can’t sleep. I can’t do my work well. It is too much in the family for me to go to the police. I need the help of someone who is as strong and sane as you, Billy. Will you help me?”

She finished and leaned back in her chair. Her lips had stained the tip of her cigarette crimson. The grey smoke curled up and her eyes looked across at me. She acted as though she had loaded her pack of trouble on my shoulders and could relax. I didn’t want to jump too quickly. In fact, I didn’t want to jump at all.

But there’s something about a woman trusting you and relying on you...

I gave a slow nod and was touched and embarrassed to see tears gather on the lower lids of her big eyes. Quinn, the world’s prize sucker. I ordered another drink and got factual.

“What do you do, Sonia?”

“Do cuts and design work for limited editions for Hawley House. Some type-face design and some experimentation with printing methods, inks and all that. General handy girl.”

I recognized the name of the firm. In fact I had once laid twenty bucks on the line to get hold of their two-volume editions of the works of a minor novelist who has always been major for my money.

“And Anton?” I asked.

A little knot of puzzlement appeared in the clear white expanse between her heavy black eyebrows. “He’s a draftsman and designer for a good firm of architects. I know his work is good, because I’ve seen it, but he never seems to get anywhere with the firm. I think he still gets the same pay he did four years ago. His wife, Maria, works for a dress designer. She gets at least as much as he does. Between the two of them they live fairly well.”

I couldn’t get anything else of any value. I began to feel a little like one of the characters the books call “private eyes”. After martini number four, I decided that the first plan had better be taken care of while we were still in condition. I took her back to the office. I grabbed her arm just above the elbow when we crossed the street. As we got to the far curb she smiled up into my face and I felt a glow.

The office girls were gone, but Sonia told me she could run a typewriter. I dug up some paper and some carbon and had her write out a statement of exactly what she had told me. Then I wrote out a statement and a letter to the District Attorney’s office. We got both the statements notarized at a drug store, then I sealed them up in an envelope and enclosed it in another envelope addressed to the D.A. I stated in the letter that the sealed statements should be retained by the D.A.’s office until such time as I either got in touch with them and asked them to open them, or called for them in person.

After that was taken care of Sonia acted like a little kid on Saturday morning. I gave the Massachusetts research one last reluctant thought, and took her out to dinner. We devoured huge steaks at my favorite chop house, listened to a colored trio of piano, guitar and bass for about an hour, and then went to her apartment to play records and drink some scotch that she had saved. We found a thousand interests in common.

Her apartment was small, but it had lots of windows. We sat and talked and listened to records. The scotch was mellow. We talked until nearly three. I felt that if I made a pass at her it would spoil it all. I don’t know why I felt that way. She acted a little funny as though she had expected me to at first, but when I didn’t she got normal again. I liked the decorations. Soft greys and blues, with a few touches of wine red. All very modern and yet comfortable. A place in which to listen to records and drink scotch.

We were both working, so at three I made the usual excuses and collected my hat. We stood at the door in that strange period of confusion that occurs with every departure. It may have been the scotch, or it may have been the records. At any rate. I grabbed her clumsily and tried to kiss her. She held herself rigid and turned her head. As I was wondering how I could back out of the situation without losing too much dignity, she turned her face back and threw her arms around my neck briefly. Then she slid away quickly and motioned to me to leave, her back half turned. I walked out and shut the door behind me. The world seemed to be a big happy place. I stood stupidly in the hall, holding my hat. Then I remembered where the stairs were and left.

For the next four days I spent a lot less time at the office. But such are the wonders of compensation that I got just as much work done, maybe more. A guilty conscience about seeing so much of Sonia spurred me on to use every minute of office time to the best advantage. It was odd how quickly she became a part of my existence, an essential part. She was my last thought at night, and each morning I would wake up with a sense of pleasure at the new day, and then remember that it was her presence in the world that made it all so wonderful.

It was four-thirty on the fifth day that she phoned me. We had planned to meet at five at the Rumbana for cocktails. I recognized her voice immediately, and she sounded tremendously upset. “Billy — come to my place immediately. Something horrible has happened. I just got here.” I tried to ask her what it was but she had already hung up.

I broke all records getting to her apartment. The elevator was in use, so I pounded up the four flights of stairs, making such good time that I had to use my hands to fend off the walls on the corners.

I knocked and she opened the door immediately. I was astonished at the change in her. There were blue half-circles under her eyes, and her shoulders were sagging, as though she were completely bushed. She looked at me as though I were a complete stranger and tried to shut the door in my face, but I forced my way in and grabbed her by the shoulders. Her face looked so dead that I felt like shaking her to life. She turned out of my hands and walked heavily toward the small kitchen. I followed her out.

In the middle of the kitchen was a small table with a white porcelain top.

A bulky man with thin blonde hair sat in the chair, his arms hanging toward the floor, his face on the table. A wide crimson pool had spread out over the table. It was caked black on the edges and redder in the middle. The raised edge of the table had prevented it from dripping off onto the floor. In the back of the man’s head was a round black hole. The hair around it was singed and blackened. The region around the nose was a gory mass where the bullet had come out. Wedged in the plaster wall opposite where the man had been sitting was a twisted chunk of lead. On the clean portion of the table glistened a large black forty-five automatic, a Colt. I bent over it and read on the side, “Property of the U.S. Army.”

I stood up and looked at Sonia’s worn face and my lips formed the question “Who?”

“Anton,” she answered. “I came home to change my things and found him like this. The door to the apartment was locked. I could smell something acrid, like burning cloth when I walked out here. The blood was fresh.” Her eyes turned upward and she swayed. I caught her as she fell and rubbed her wrists.

In a few moments her eyelids fluttered and she stirred and moaned. I said, “Sonia! Sonia! Come out of it! Listen to me! Did you touch anything? The gun?”

“No. I touched nothing. I couldn’t bear to.” At her words I turned on the bright light overhead and looked closely at the gun without touching it. The trigger had been wiped clean. I couldn’t see any trace of prints on the rough grip.

Then I saw it.

Out near the muzzle, on the side of the weapon was a clear print. The murderer had forgotten to wipe it completely clean. I walked on air to her bedroom. She had gone in and was sitting on the edge of the bed. She looked puzzled at my smile. I held her in my arms and said, “It’s all okay, darling. There’s a print on the gun. That print will clear you.” She turned her lips up to me and we exchanged a kiss as chaste and spiritual as a Baptist picnic.

I called the police. We sat in the front room of the apartment trying to make casual conversation while we waited. I wondered idly why the shot hadn’t been heard, and realized that the other apartments were probably empty at that hour on a working day. I lit a cigarette for her and she smiled at me wanly. Soon we heard the muted sigh of sirens, and in a few moments there was a knock at the door. I opened it and a tall pale man asked quietly, “Mr. Quinn? You phoned?”

I nodded and he walked in. Three nondescript men, one in uniform, followed him in carrying some black cases. I waved toward the kitchen and they thronged out. They weren’t quiet. They shouted instructions to each other and thumped around. We sat and heard the first of many popping flash bulbs go off when the tall man came back in. He sank into a chair with a sigh and looked at each of us in turn with small eyes set close to the bridge of his hooked nose.

“I’m Mercer,” he said. “Pretty unpleasant business. Who was he?”

“My brother, rather, my half-brother,” Sonia said. At that moment another man arrived. He was old and battered looking. Mercer let him in and pointed out the doorway to the kitchen. The old man carried a battered bag. He walked quickly toward the kitchen. Mercer sat down again.

“Who killed him?” Mercer asked bluntly, but his quiet voice took the sting out of the question.

“We don’t know,” I answered. “Miss Zathrem returned to her apartment and phoned me to come right over. He was in the kitchen when she arrived, just like he is now.”

That is where I got the first shock. Sonia turned sad eves toward me and said, “Wouldn’t it be better if we told Mr. Mercer the truth?” She turned toward Mercer and said, “Mr. Quinn arrived here before I did. We were to meet here for cocktails. I was late. Mr. Quinn met me in the lobby all excited. He said there was a dead man in the apartment. Mr. Quinn has a key to the apartment. I hurried up and found — my brother in the kitchen dead. I could smell in the air that odor a shot makes. Everything was just as it is right now.”

Mercer gave us a troubled smile and said, “Now look here, you two. Get together with your stories. One of them must be a lie. You’re giving me a lot of opening, you know,” I stammered and looked over at Sonia, expecting to see a gleam of malice or trickery in her eyes, but she just looked at me with soft, sad eyes as though she pitied me. The tinsel dream of the last four days quivered and slid into a sodden heap at my feet. But I knew I wasn’t licked. The print on the gun would clear me in spite of her damning lie.

That’s where I was wrong.

She stuck to her story and I stuck to mine until there was a flush of annoyance on Mercer’s face. The battered little man came out of the kitchen and said, “Okay, Mercer. Died between a half and three-quarters of an hour before I got here.” Mercer nodded and the old man left. I remembered her story of the key. I had been given no key to her apartment. I told Mercer as much and Sonia shrugged her shoulders as though to say, “I can’t understand the man.” I looked at her and wondered why I had thought her attractive. Her long twisted fingers began to give me the creeps. I know my eyes glowed with hate as I looked at her. It was easy to see which one of us was making the better impression on Mercer.

The next two hours were a nightmare. They took us both down to a precinct station. I sat numbly and watched the structure build up around me. It was so unbelievable and yet so logical that I wondered if I were going mad.

I was led into a small basement room containing an oak table and a few heavy chairs. There was a small barred window high up on the wall. One small bulb in a ceiling fixture lighted the room. They left me alone for a half hour. I wondered how much I could take before my mind would give way. There is an inward mental heat generated by false accusation. It sends a charge of adrenaline into your blood that makes your mouth dry, your hands shake, your heart pound and cold sweat trickle down your ribs. I knew that I must have been the image of guilt.

At the end of the half hour a key turned in the door and Mercer slouched in. He dropped wearily into the chair opposite me, his manner that of a man who has a very unpleasant job ahead of him. He nibbled at the skin next to his fingernails for a few minutes before he spoke.

“Let me summarize, Mr. Quinn,” he said. “In the first place you deny having arrived at the apartment first. I don’t think either of us can prove that one way or the other. You deny having a key. We found a key in the side pocket of your jacket. You deny any motive, and yet we read your joint statements which you mailed nearly a week ago to the D.A., and, if you are infatuated with Miss Zathrem, and she was threatened by her brother, it gives you a perfect motive. By the way, all those bucks were left to Miss Zathrem to be held in trust until she reaches forty. Her brother was named executor of the estate. His death releases all the money to her immediately. She says she was willing to marry you. That gives you a second motive — the dough. But the thing that clinches it in my mind is that you both deny having touched the weapon. Yet we find a clear print of the index finger of your right hand on the side of the barrel. You can’t laugh that off. We know you did touch the gun, and there’s no point in your denying it. I figure that since we’ve proved you in one lie, you might as well confess the whole thing.”

That was the thing that threw me — that fingerprint. I knew I hadn’t touched the gun. I wondered if the barrel could have been around the apartment disguised as something else and I had planted the print on it during a previous visit. But no, the business end of a forty-five can’t be made to look like anything else.

I shrugged helplessly and said, “I can’t help how it all looks. I didn’t shoot the guy and I didn’t touch that gun — ever.”

His lip curled a little and he answered, “Sure like to believe you, Quinn, because I’ve checked on you and find that you’ve got a pretty square past. But it’s not the first time a guy has gone over the edge for the sake of a girl. And usually when a guy like you goes out of line, you do it sloppy. You sure messed this one up. You plead not guilty and it’s three to one you burn for it. You realize you’re charged, don’t you?”

He got up and left without waiting for an answer. I sat with my head in my hands, cursing the day that Sonia had called me up. Finally they came and got me and took me downtown to a cell. I dropped onto a bunk and fell into an apathy that precluded all constructive thought. That print on the gun was what did it. It was something I couldn’t understand and couldn’t fight.

Harvey Crossman was down to see me in the morning. He is a guy who is making himself a good rep as a trial lawyer, so good in fact that they tried to disarm him by sticking him in the D.A.’s office.

It cheered me up to have him come breezing in. He had told the boys that I had already hired him. That suited me. We sat around and shot the bull for a while about our times in law school. I guess he steered it that way to put me at ease. Then he asked me the details, those that he hadn’t gotten out of the paper. I told him. When I came to the part about the print and denied touching the gun, he looked at me kind of funny.

When I was all through he sat silently for a few minutes, rubbing his fingers through the brown hair that he wears a little too long for my taste. His florid face was set in lines of thought and indecision. Then he said, “Dammit, Bill, you’re supposed to have confidence in your lawyer. You know that as well as I do. You better tell me the truth and I’ll see if we can’t cook up a better answer to the print on that gun. Anything would be better than an impossible answer, the one you got now.”

That was the last straw, to have one of my own friends believe I was lying. I doubled up a fist and I could hardly see Harvey through the haze in front of my eyes. I didn’t recognize my own voice when I said, “Get out! Get out! I’ll be my own lawyer.” He backed off at the expression on my face. He opened his mouth as though to say something, then clamped it shut so hard that I could hear his teeth click. He shouted and they let him out and he left.

I didn’t start to prepare the case until after the coroner had had the farce of charging me. When I did start, it was with a feeling of helplessness. They let me be my own lawyer. In their own peculiar way they were nice to me. They gave me access to duplicates of all the records of the police investigation. I leafed through page after page at the table they had put in my cell. Her apartment had been gone over with extreme care.

They had even checked the garbage and made a note about it. “Nothing of any incriminating nature. Coffee grounds, orange peels. One whole hardboiled egg.”

As I leafed through the reports I felt more helpless than ever. They hadn’t been able to trace the gun except to the theater in which I had served. I couldn’t prove that I didn’t bring a gun home. That was a dead end.

I spent one long sleepless night after another, looking up into the caverns of blackness that were the comers of the dark cell. A lot of the guys came to see me, and told me by their handshakes that they were behind me no matter what kind of a damn fool story I had told. But Harvey didn’t come back. And Sonia didn’t come. Not that I expected her to.

They tell me that it was on the eighteenth day that I asked for the hard boiled egg. I found out later that after one of the hired help watched me fiddling with the egg and my silver cigarette case, he told the authorities that he thought I was going mad.

But that eighteenth day was the day when hope came back.

Two hours after I bad insisted on seeing Mercer, he came into the cell wearing the same look of scorn that he had had on his face when I had last seen him.

“Will you do something for me, Mercer?” I asked.

“Within reason,” he agreed.

“Have you ever seen this before?” I held up my flat shiny cigarette case. He shook his head no. I held it out to him and said, “Please make a clear print on the outside surface of it.” He looked at me peculiarly and did as I asked. He handed it back to me carefully. “Now wait,” I told him and I turned my back on him and went over to the brightest corner of the cell. After about twenty seconds I walked over to him again and handed him the case. He noticed that I had rubbed his print off. “Take it to the lab and have them develop the print they will find on the inside of the case and then let me know whose it is.” He acted mystified and I guess ray confident look surprised him. A man who is due to die at the hands of the state has no right to look confident.

I sat on the hunk and tapped my feet. I hummed and jittered. It seemed forever before he returned. When he did be had a look on his face that made me laugh. I couldn’t help it.

“How is that done?” he demanded.

I told him. He sat in silence for a long time. Then he said, “Will you help me on something?” I agreed. Anyway, I rather liked the guy...

I knocked on the door of Sonia’s apartment. It opened quickly. She was wearing a pale grey house coat. So few women can wear grey. When she saw me her eyes widened and I thought she grew more pale.

“Why, Billy,” she gasped. “How... what?”

“They sprung me, honey. They went over that print on the gun again and found out that it wasn’t really mine after all.”

She looked puzzled arid said, “But it was yours...” Then she gasped and stuck the back of her hand in her open mouth. Her eyes were wide.

“And how would you be so certain of that, little chum?” I asked.

Her blood-red nails slashed toward me and I ducked back. She turned and saw Mercer and another man standing a few feet down the hall, well within earshot. She turned and with a muffled cry, the cry of a predatory animal that has been trapped, she scuttled back into the apartment.

I stepped aside to let Mercer follow her. He had a sad and amused look on his long face.

I walked in after him just in time to see him take two running steps and then stop. The small room was filled with the noise of breaking glass. There was a shriek that fluttered away and died abruptly. Mercer stopped and looked at the window. The curtains blew back into the room with the force of the breeze that came through the large jagged hole in the middle of the pane, I walked into the tiny bathroom. I was completely and thoroughly ill...

After we returned to the central station it was necessary for me to demonstrate the technique only once more. With six eager witnesses. I planted my own thumb print on the middle of the cigarette case. I peeled the shell off the egg, heated the print on the case quickly with a match, and then rolled the end of the soft egg gently and firmly over the print. Then I flipped the case open, lit another match and heated the print on the egg quickly and rolled the egg on the clean inside of the case. Then I stepped back. A couple of the fingerprint boys dusted the two prints and then compared the two. One of them said to Mercer in a tone of awe. “It works! That damn egg picked up a lot of the grease from the original print and rolled it off on the clean surface! From now on this business is complicated. How do you tell a real print front an egg copy?”

Then Mercer turned to me and asked, “How did you figure out the method?”

“Must have been my subconscious working on that egg found in the apartment garbage. After a while I related Miss Zathrem’s training to her war job. She was an expert in forging documents. Then I remembered that one of the quick ways of transfering a seal or ink stamp from one document to another is to put a little solvent on the ink and use the dried soft surface of an egg as a sort of gelatinous transfer substance. I knew I hadn’t touched that gun. I just had to figure a way that my print got onto it. She probably got my print off a glass in her apartment and put it on the gun right after I left.”

There were a lot of abort harsh words expressing surprise from the group who were still staring at the prints. They let me go. I walked alone back through the familiar streets, feeling like the man from Mars. I found myself wondering what the future would have been like if only Sonia hadn’t been planning to use me as the fall guy for her premeditated murder. As I walked I realized that I would never be able to completely brush away her ghost — a ghost of a dead dream.