To Keep or Kill

One

The redheaded girl was a practical joker.

And a man sat quietly in the darkened window of his second-story office waiting for the sun to go down. His coat was hung over the back of the chair he sat in, the sleeves of his light blue shirt were rolled at the wrist, and a cold pipe hung between his teeth.

The protesting screech of an ancient streetcar grinding to a halt at the corner half a block away came to his ears. That would be the 7:20 car, regardless of what the correct time happened to be, making its westbound run. It started up again just a short minute before the redhead walked into his line of sight. The man sitting before the window removed the pipe from his mouth and shifted his eyes to the left, curious as to who had come to Wilsey Street.

Wilsey Street was rather dark; there were only a few lighted shopwindows throwing wide splashes of illumination across the sidewalks here and there along the block.

The street was fairly quiet with the fresh stillness of an early summer evening following a sultry, and from a merchant’s point of view, noisy, busy day. The man loafing in the window was not a merchant. For the moment there was no motor traffic in the street. Wilsey Street was one of the lesser business streets of Boone.

The riverbank metropolis of Boone, Illinois, was a large town or a small city, depending upon the individual citizen’s current state of mind and his personal opinions of the place. From the frugal viewpoint of the city water and light department it was no more than a large town, therefore the street lights were not turned on until the very last glimmers of the sinking sun vanished from the fringe of the highest white cloud in the sky overhead.

A few faint streaks must have been lingering however lightly on a cloud somewhere for the lights were unlit. The tall green standards spaced along the curb held clusters of amber-tinted globes, all dark.

The redhead walked in semidarkness.

He picked up the sharp, steady clacking of her heels on the pavement an instant before he saw her. The spiked heels were telegraph keys on the cement sidewalk, sending up to him an invitation to look. He leaned slowly across the dirty sill of the open window and looked down. She had red hair and she was passing the brilliantly lit display window of the hardware store, on his left; that much he glimpsed before the first blink.

Between that and the next blink she had moved away from the lighted window into semidarkness again. A small boy coming from the opposite direction whipped past her on singing roller skates, to vanish towards the noise of the departing streetcar.

In a loose manner of speaking she was a redhead.

Actually her hair was much darker than the term implies. It might be described as auburn with glints. Soft lights placed in the proper positions, as above a dance floor, would bring out tints of fiery gold or bright copper. He judged her height at about five foot nine, making an allowance for the angle of his vision. Tall, and very lovely. She passed directly beneath him, examining the twin taillights of an automobile parked up the block to his right.

He switched his gaze to the car, noted that the license plate between the two red lights held an amazing number of zeros, and looked back to her. Those spiked, beating heels commanded attention. Her stride was magnificent.

Another isolated show window revealed more of her features. They were nice, too, and somewhat exciting. He imagined the possibilities. It would be unfair to say a girl had a peaches-and-cream complexion because peaches and cream are large yellow globs in pale, milky fluid. That would look like the devil on a girl’s face. He preferred to phrase it an inviting complexion.

The redhead had a kissable face: if you missed the lips on the first try, no matter, the rest of the face would taste good, too. He found her figure satisfactory. There were no shortages anywhere; attractive, perhaps dangerous curves all along the route.

She walked from beneath him and continued up Wilsey Street watching the parked car. The man put his dead pipe in the pocket of the coat hanging behind him and considered the rear view.

Her shape, as seen from the above-and-rear angle would look good in slacks. Slacks look fine in front, but... The redhead would do all right in slacks.

But the redhead was a practical joker.

He watched her long, rangy stride, watched the admirable way she used her legs to cover ground. Abruptly the heels stopped. She had halted suddenly beside the car which held her attention. There was no one in it. She read the license number above the rear bumper and then stepped to the front to examine the tax sticker on the windshield. Both apparently satisfied her. She opened the car door, reached in and switched off the parking lights.

If there was anything to the theory of mental telepathy the back of her neck should be itching furiously. The seated man placed his elbow on the window sill, his chin in his upturned palm, and watched. She acted superbly sure of herself. Down the street another show window lit up, controlled by an automatic clock.

The redhead standing beside the car opened her purse, removed a cigarette case, a matching lighter, and something else. In the fast gathering dusk the something else appeared to be a small, red package. There must have been strings or wires attached to either end of it for she hooked the string, or wire, over one finger and let the small red something dangle there while she lit a cigarette.

All the while she was removing the articles from her purse and lighting up her sharp eyes were casually yet closely and completely examining both sides of Wilsey Street, skipping along the sidewalk and store fronts looking for somebody... anybody.

The man in the window grinned, involuntarily. Wilsey Street was being cased by an obvious master of the art. At last satisfied there was no one along the street to observe her actions, she raised penetrating eyes to the bank of upper windows on the opposite side of the street, searching out possible onlookers. They were blank, dark.

She would have discovered him within seconds.

He slid quickly out of his chair and dodged behind the window casement to wait. He felt thankful there was no pipe smoke in the window to betray his presence. The office behind him was dark; the lights hadn’t been on all day and for the last hour or so he had simply been sitting there waiting for dusk to fall so he could go home. He was usually the last tenant to leave the building; there would be no lights elsewhere on the second floor.

Unlike the stores below him (with their jangling cash registers), he had had no business to speak of all day. Save for one caller. The caller had been waiting for him when he arrived at the office; the man had been standing flushed and impatient in the hallway outside his door, playing with a key ring.

The caller was an obese person wearing, and wearing well, the wet personality of a worm. Horne unlocked the door bearing the inscription:

and stood aside to let the worm enter.

“You are Charles Horne?”

“I am.”

Horne saw it coming. The worm that walked like a man wanted a divorce, he said, from a nagging and adulterous wife; and Charles Horne of Confidential Services was to obtain the necessary evidence.

Horne said, no thanks.

“I beg your pardon?” The worm gripped the desk.

“You needn’t. I said no, thanks. I’m not buying.”

The worm could also imitate a pompous ass.

“Now, see here, Horne! I do not brook refusals. I have money — you have a price. I am more than willing to pay you any reasonable fee you may demand.” He was tapping a gloved finger on the desk. “I realize there will be other expenses involved. (I’m not interested in the unpleasant details.) Bother the cost! I am hiring you to deliver to my attorney an airtight case.”

Horne grunted skeptically. “If you had an attorney he wouldn’t have permitted you to come here. He would have contacted me. Now skedaddle.”

“Mr. Horne! You are a confidential investigator, are you not? You are for hire by reputable citizens, are you not? Obtaining evidence for divorce is a legitimate procedure, is is not?” He was shaking in near-anger. “Just whom do you believe you are, my dear chap?”

Horne stood up, wishing the pipe was hot so that he could blow smoke in the worm’s face.

“I’m the guy that’s going to push your face in if you don’t get out of here.” His voice was level and cold.

“By the devils of hell! I’ll have your license!”

Horne felt a distinct surge of sympathy for the worm’s wife. Unless justice was a mockery she was certainly entitled to sleep in someone else’s bed, almost anyone else’s bed. But she should have had better sense than to marry a worm; no one but another worm should mate with a worm, what with all the good men running around loose.

The very first morning she woke up and found a worm sleeping with her she should have slugged him, or fed him cyanide in his oatmeal. Maybe she would yet. In which case, Horne decided, he would get on the jury and free the woman.

He answered, “People have tried to get my license before this.”

“I promise you, Horne, it will be different this time! I mean it. I have some authority around here. I can do things to you.”

“And I,” Horne responded moodily, stalking around the desk, “can do some damned unpleasant things to you. Beginning with that fat face. Get out!”

The fat face propelled itself rapidly backwards. It was a wrathful red as it backed through the door.

“You will,” the lips in the face sneered, “hear from me!”

Horne walked across the room and kicked the door shut.

Confidential Services did not include getting the necessary details on adulterous wives or any other sort of wife. Horne had once possessed and lost a wife and because of that fact would not be a party to any similar occurrence.

An unclocked length of time after that the office door had opened again to admit the mail carrier. There were some letters from the Union Workman’s Mutual, in Chicago; routine forms over the signature of E. E. Everetts, the district supervisor, which Horne read briefly and filed. He had the local agency for the insurance company’s confidential stuff.

On policy applications of more than five thousand dollars it was his job to dig up the past, present and future of the applicant. There is more to an insurance policy than meets the eye. For instance, there is the actuary.

An actuary is an honest to goodness counterpart of an expert crystal-gazer. By constant use of the files covering hundreds of thousands of applicants and hundreds of thousands of deaths, complete with the data and dates they contain, he can predict to a gnat’s eye the date, place and manner of a policyholder’s death — almost. And let a man die of liver trouble at age forty when he shouldn’t have died of liver trouble (considering his drinking habits, his occupation, and such) until at least age sixty, someone will make a cautious check.

When tens of thousands of people in stated categories have died in a certain way, it is simple to calculate the risk of one more applicant in that category.

Between the agent writing the policy application and his questions, and the doctor examining the applicant and his thumpings, and skeleton-in-the-closet rattlers such as Charles Horne, a man’s life story pretty well becomes company property when he signs up. All this gathered-up information goes into the home office files where it is fondled and played with by that great big father spider called the actuary.

And that had been the extent of the day’s work thrust upon Charles Horne, Confidential Services.

He stepped back to the window and looked down into the street at the parked automobile.

The redhead was playing a practical joke.

Without noise she had lifted the hood of the car and was attaching the small, red package to the ignition circuit. The man watching her grinned with pleasure and expectancy.

The screech-and-smoke bomb is a marvelous little gadget for scaring the dying daylights out of the guy who steps on the starter. Even those who have been bit before invariably fall for the gag a second time, and tumble out of the car on the double when the hidden bomb begins to spout smoke and screech.

The girl fastened it into place quickly and replaced the hood. Then, coolly flicking the accumulated ash from her lipstick-tinted cigarette, she glanced up and down Wilsey Street for oncoming traffic, and finding none, crossed to the opposite sidewalk. She sauntered along the walk towards the carline, pausing once to inspect a shop-window, and then on again. Near the corner she passed from the line of sight of the man in the upper window. He could have leaned over the sill to watch her, but didn’t.

Instead he switched his gaze back to the parked automobile and began patiently to await the owner. Behind him the telephone rang. When he answered someone said, oh sorry, you must be the wrong number. It happened all the time. His phone number was similar to that of a feminine-wear shop. The license number of the car held his attention again. It read: D-1000000. One million, although no commas were used.

The sound of the streetcar coming back along; Main Street on its eastbound, return trip made itself distantly heard. Boone boasted just two carlines, again a tossup between the designation of a large town or small city, depending upon the public’s point of view. One line ran the east and west lengths of Main Street, crossing Wilsey only half a block away. The second line traveled the north and south lengths of Lincoln Avenue; the two lines intersecting at the center of town a few blocks from Wilsey Street.

The city light department suddenly made up its collective mind and the street lights came on. The amber glass clusters spread a pleasant glow the width and depth of the downtown business district. The parked automobile was between two light standards, the inflated license number showing up plainly in the reflected illumination.

Charles Horne turned his ear to catch the noise of the streetcar. Oddly somewhat quieter for a gladsome change, it had barely come to a full stop for Wilsey Street before the conductor clanged the bell and it was in motion again. Still keeping an eye on the automobile, he found time to wonder why the redhead hadn’t stayed to watch the fun. After that risk and trouble any jokester was entitled to see the results.

A well-dressed man appeared far down the block to the right. He was wearing a white suit which was momentarily tinted with amber as he passed beneath each street light.

Horne leaned across the sill. Hunch said this was the owner of the car. The figure was somehow vaguely familiar. He hitched the chair closer to the window and rested both elbows on the sill to see the circus.

The man approached the automobile, pulled at his ear and squinted uncertainly at the doused parking lights, finally reached into a coat pocket for the ignition key. The waiting detective sucked in his breath as recognition smote him.

It was the anonymous caller of early morning, the worm with the adulterous wife. Even from the distance his presence suddenly became repugnant.

Excitedly, with rapidly mounting pleasure, Horne hitched his chair nearer the window. This was certainly going to be good. A shadowy movement immediately beneath him caught his attention. He put his head out and stared down.

Someone else was waiting to watch the results of the joke, someone other than the recent redhead because it was wearing long pants.

The trousers and a pair of shoes beneath them stood just inside the doorway leading to the second floor. The man was holding himself flat against the wall so that he couldn’t be seen from the automobile. The heels of the shoes were backed against the baseboard, the feet sticking out, and the trouser legs slightly twisted as the man inside them craned his neck around the door frame.

The car door slammed shut, jerking the detective’s attention around to the wormy man. In spite of himself he hunched his shoulders and waited for the shrill, climbing screech of the gadget.

The sudden blast blew him backwards out of the chair, hurling him with terrific force across the office. His head struck a desk leg. The window rained down in a million splinters.

There was a quick, blinding flash of orange-yellow light from under the hood of the car, followed by a stinging, hot rush of tortured air that swept everything before it like a gale. After that came the thunderclap. Horne couldn’t be sure it was the flash of light or the rush of baked wind that knocked the glass out of the windows. In his dazed mind it seemed to be the awful, deafening explosion of sound that smote him seconds after everything else was all over.

It was an illusion of course, but he wasn’t sorting illusions just then. He was flat on the floor attempting to hold onto the desk leg with both hands and still cover his ears to shut out the blasting crash of thunder that bounded up from the street and played havoc within the four walls.