To Keep or Kill

Nine

A confidential investigator wearing a sore skull and nothing else opened his eyes sleepily and stared up at himself lying in the most effeminate, luxurious bed east of Hollywood.

He pulled his straining eyelids down, then cautiously and slowly re-opened them to discover he was still there, looking down upon himself — or up at himself. He was in an ornate four-poster, a rose-pink coverlet pulled up over his chest, his head resting on an undersized pillow covered with a dainty slip. The slip bore a monogram ‘BE’ in reverse.

Studying the monogram, he saw that it was placed almost under his ear and therefore he shouldn’t be seeing it unless he was sitting up.

He sat up.

The monogram, now no longer in reverse position, rested on the rim of the indentation in the pillow made by his head. He contemplated it for thoughtful seconds and then craned his neck back to stare at the blue-toned mirror which covered the entire ceiling of the bedroom.

Slightly incredulous, he threw back the rose-pink coverlet and put his feet over the side of the bed. They came to rest on a soft, fluffy throw rug about the size of a dollar bill. Looking down at it he wondered what the hell use it might be.

And where were his clothes?

A pair of sharply pressed tweeds he had never before seen hung over the back of a chair near the head of the bed. Beside the chair, on the floor, was a pair of new house slippers. There was nothing else to wear.

A door behind the chair and tweeds drew his attention. Striding to it, he pulled it open to find a spacious closet filled with dozens of dresses and skirted suits and fluffy, useless-seeming articles of feminine wear. With one hand he reached up and shoved all the burdened wire hangers first to one end of the rod and then the other. The filmier things fluttered in the breeze created by the movements, but there was nothing there he could wear.

Several pairs of shoes lined a rack near the floor, and the shelf overhead held a half-dozen hat boxes.

Horne backed out and slammed the closet door violently shut. He turned to inspect the bedroom. A pair of sharply pressed tweeds hung over the back of a chair near at hand, and on the floor were the house slippers. He let his roving glance slide over them and on to the dressing table.

A pipe caught his eye. His pipe, lying beside a matching ivory set of comb, brush and hand mirror. He strode over to them.

There was a new and unopened pound jar of pipe tobacco, the kind he used. Matches were missing but she had left a gold-plated lighter. He picked it up and inspected the monogram.

“Betty,” he mused just under his breath. “Betty—? Batty Betty. Judas Priest! where did she get such ideas? May as well ask what the younger generation is coming to — how old is she?” Mentally and in retrospect he ran his eyes over her figure, recalling the look about her eyes and the skin of her hands and wrists. “Five to ten years younger than I am, anyway. Edging close to thirty, maybe.”

Looking at his face in the mirror he noted his beard. Instinctively putting up a hand to rub it, he rediscovered the sore spot. “Batty Betty with the loaded wallop.” Now that he had time to think about it, that had been an exceedingly lousy trick. So lousy and low-down it begged for retribution.

Horne sat down on the rounded stool before the dressing table and began to search the drawers. The first one he opened was obviously set apart for him. It contained socks and handkerchiefs; he automatically looked at the size of the socks and saw they would fit. He put on a pair.

The other drawers held her things; all shapes and sizes and colors of things, but nothing he could wear. Idly he fingered over the boxes and bottles, reading the brands and sizes, noting the color of the nail polish and the matching lipstick, the wishful thought behind the name of the perfume, several pairs of sheer nylons, leg make-up, brands of facial lotions and cosmetics, the particular preferences of her more personal life. He opened the lid of one box and found the contents untouched.

Slamming the drawer shut, he arose and walked across the bedroom to the chair that stood near the bed. There was no use, he realized, in reading the label giving the waist and inseam measures of the trousers. They would fit.

They did, as well as if he had bought them himself.

Betty knew him like a book: she had said so, and there was little sense in disputing it. He stepped into the slippers and they fit. And he had been accepting money for years under the impression he was a detective! He couldn’t so much as guess the size of her shoe.

Throwing up his nostrils, he sniffed the air in the room. Her perfume, the subtle scent whose acquaintance he had first made when it came into his bedroom the night before. It seemed at first to come from the bed, and then again seemed to permeate the atmosphere of the entire room. He turned to examine the ornate instrument in which he had spent the remainder of the night.

The scent was everywhere; he found himself half-liking it. But the bed—!

Curiously, he bent over it to examine the other pillow. It was smooth and unmarred. Looking at his own, he found the indentation made by his head had vanished, leaving it the unruffled, unmarked twin of the other. From the sheets he could learn nothing: they were twisted in the manner all sheets became after he had slept in them.

Angry with himself, he punched a pillow. All right, so maybe she had, so what? He had been asleep ever since she clipped him.

The bedroom had three doors. One was the already explored closet and he dismissed it from his thoughts. The other two? That one, near the foot of the bed on the opposite side would be the bathroom. And the third would provide exit from the room if it were not locked. If and when it opened, it would open on the rest of the house.

But how about the windows? There were two.

The dog glared back at him when he put his bearded face to the nearest window.

The bedroom was on the ground floor, the window a few feet above a grassy lawn. The sun was somewhere on the other side of the house, throwing its bungalow-shadow out across the yard. The shadows showed a chimney at either end of the house. There was a latticework fence, quite high, around the house and encompassing a huge yard. Between the fence and the far blue horizon there was nothing but parched cornfields, empty pasture land and a distant clump of tall, green trees standing motionless in the blazing summer sun.

Between his window and the high fence stood the dog, legs stiffly apart, watching him with savage intentness. He thumbed his nose at the animal and tried to raise the window.

It wouldn’t budge. He repeated the experiment on the second window without success. The dog had moved his head.

Growling a throaty to-hell-with-it he turned and stalked to the bathroom door. The room was tiled in cream and green. He opened a mirrored cabinet above the washstand and found his shaving needs.

They weren’t his own of course, but they were exact duplicates of everything he owned: the same type of razor and the blades made for it, the same kind of brushless shaving cream, the same brand of face lotion. A new toothbrush wrapped in cellophane hung beside the identical flavor of toothpaste he was currently using.

Dammit, he thought bitterly, she must have been watching over his shoulder! A year — an entire year, and he had never tumbled. To his dismayed face in the mirror he directed a thought: she knows you, too. Like a book, each and every page in the book. She said so! In fact, you must be page one.

He scrubbed and shaved page one.

He walked back to the window and showed his newly-shaven face to the dog. The animal apparently hadn’t moved and if it noticed any appreciable difference in the face, it gave no sign. He peered downward through the pane of glass searching for nails, but none were visible. Well, there remained only the third door.

Crossing over to it he put his fingers on the knob and rotated it silently. It moved with his fingers. Surprised, he pushed the door open. The corridor beyond the sill was empty but for the unseen, tantalizing odor of fresh coffee, bacon and eggs. He stepped cautiously into the corridor, without anyone taking a shot at him, punching his jaw or turning another dog loose. Encouraged, he turned to follow the beckoning odor of food to its source.

In the kitchen doorway he paused.

“A... hello,” he offered.

The buxom and middle-aged colored woman turned from the stove to survey him. Examining him from neatly-combed hair to the tips of his slippers, she suddenly chuckled. He wished he had a shirt.

“Good morning, Mister Jack,” she said, and motioned to the table. “Breakfast is ready for you.”

“I can use it,” he assured her. “My name isn’t Jack.”

The Negro woman pursed her lips into a friendly smile and studied his answer. She had shining white teeth that contrasted with her skin, interrupted only by one gold filling in the center of her mouth, upper row. She also had an unconscious habit of running a thumb back and forth over the filling when engaged in serious study. She did it now. She scanned him again, repeating the previous route from his head to his feet, and then back to his face.

She said, “Miss Betty, she said your name is Mister Jack. Sit down and eat your breakfus’. It’s pas’ nine a’clock.” And that closed the matter of his new name.

Mister Jack only grinned at her. “What’s your name?”

“Hilda, Mister Jack. Now sit down and eat.”

“But supposing I don’t want to, Hilda? Supposing I make trouble instead?”

Hilda favored him with a becoming smile. The gold filling shone. Somewhere inside her she was amused.

“Miss Betty, she said you might ask foolish questions like that. She said that’s what Bumble is here for.”

“She did, eh? And who is Bumble?”

Hilda pointed behind him. “That’s Bumble.”

“Mister Jack” pivoted very slowly and very carefully on his heels. Oh — yes: that would be Bumble.

Bumble was standing like Mount Everest in the doorway of the corridor he had just quitted. Bumble was grinning at him in comradely fashion, amiability and friendliness fairly oozing from his massive, idiotic face. Bumble was, furthermore, thoughtlessly playing with a regulation police nightstick of heavy mahogany.

The mountain called Bumble was a six-and-a-half-foot-tall, two hundred and forty pound Negro Adonis.

“Good morning, Bumble,” the detective said soothingly.

Bumble grinned the wider and remained mute.

“Shucks, Mister Jack,” Hilda broke in, “Bumble can’t hear nothing you say. He can’t hear nothing and he can’t talk nothing. He was born that way. But he’s a mighty good man, he is.”

“I don’t doubt it, Hilda; not a damned bit! I think I’ll eat now.”

She chuckled again and began transferring the hot meal from the stove to the table.

“This is wonderful!” he told her enthusiastically.

“I guessed you’d be hungry, Mister Jack. Miss Betty, she said you was in a fit when you come home last night. Menfolks are always hungry after they’s a fit.”

“I was in a fit?”

“Yessir, you sure was. Bumble carried you in.”

“He did? Oh. Yes — I guess I was pretty heavy. Ba— Betty couldn’t do it.” He massaged his head.

“Yessir. If you want more, just say so.”

“More of — oh, sure. Thanks.” He ate a few moments in silence and explored another avenue. “That’s a fine dog you have out there.”

“Yessir, Mister Jack, that’s a right smart dog! Miss Betty, she and Bumble trained him. There ain’t nothing that dog can’t do. You know what she calls him?”

“No, I don’t. I’m a stranger around here.”

She passed it over as if it meant nothing to her.

“Miss Betty, she calls him Winken, Blinken and Nod.” Hilda didn’t bother with a chuckle, she laughed outright this time. “That’s because he don’t almost ever sleep.”

“Betty has a keen sense of humor. For instance, she nailed down the windows to keep the flies out.”

“Oh, nossir, Mister Jack, that ain’t for flies. We spray for flies. All the windows is fastened shut. We got air-cooling!” She chortled it, proudly.

“Of course!” He stopped eating to stare at her. “I had noticed it was cooler in here than it looked outside, but I didn’t stop to think about it. Now imagine that — air-cooling!”

Hilda wanted to parade all the improvements in the house before him. She thoroughly enjoyed her modern domain.

“This is a fine house, Mister Jack. A wonderful house! Miss Betty, she’s got everything in this house. That there air-cooling ain’t half of it. We got electric lights and a’ electric stove and a’ electric icebox. And down in the cellar there a big, red electric pump that brings water right up from the spring. And we got hot water any time you want it; you just turn on the faucet. In the winter time Bumble don’t have to shovel no coal, there’s a’ oil burner. Mister Jack, we even got flush toilets!”

“No!”

“Yessir, just like in town!”

“That is certainly wonderful,” he agreed. “Just how far are we from town?”

Hilda’s proud grin vanished as completely as if it, too, were electric and he had pushed the wrong button.

“I don’t rightly know, Mister Jack,” she said shortly.

“Ummm. Are we all alone out here?”

“Oh, no, Mister Jack. Me and Bumble stay here.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. I’m speaking of neighbors. I noticed we were away out in the country: how far away is the nearest house?”

Stiffly, “I couldn’t rightly say, Mister Jack.”

Mister Jack decided it was time to change the subject if he desired to keep on the good side of Hilda — which he earnestly wanted to do. Stupidity and cocksureness had got him into this. Brains were needed to get him out.

He cleaned up his plate without pushing the matter further, held out the empty coffee cup for a refill, and asked, “Where’s Betty?”

That was the right button. The electric Hilda smile and personality flooded back over him.

“She went away in the car, Mister Jack. She told me and Bumble to take good care of you. She said to tell you she was coming home pretty soon, maybe by lunch time, and if there was anything you wanted, me and Bumble was to get it for you. She said, if we haven’t got it here, she’d get it in town for you, Mister Jack.”

“Swell. I need a shirt. Size fifteen. Suppose she can manage it?”

“Miss Betty, she can get anything you want, Mister Jack. Anything. Miss Betty, she thinks the world of you.”

“She does?” He rubbed the touchy point of his skull. “She’s an excitable girl, all right. Can I walk around outdoors?”

“Oh, no, Mister Jack! Miss Betty, she said to keep the doors locked so tramps can’t break in.”

He got up from the table, thanked Hilda for the breakfast, and said he’d like to see the rest of the house. Hilda invited him to make himself at home, and said if there was anything he wanted, send Bumble. Send Bumble.

He soon discovered what she had implied. The faithful Bumble dogged his every footstep, grinning at the back of his head as if it were a constant, ludicrous joke. Well, he reflected, perhaps it was.

He inspected the basement first; looked admiringly at the big red pump that sucked up water from the spring, at the hot water heater, at the oil burner which saved Bumble so many hours of labor of shoveling coal and carrying ashes. There was a fruit room well stocked with scores of jars of home-canned food, a barrel of homegrown and hand-wrapped apples, and five cases of beer.

He pulled a bottle out of the uppermost case. It was cool from the temperature of the basement but not cold enough to drink. Suggestively, he turned to Bumble and held out the bottle. Bumble grinned, turned to dash up the stairs, and was back again in seconds with an ice-cold bottle.

Horne accepted it, thanked him, and made as if to offer a bottle to Bumble. The giant Negro made a negative wag of his head, his grin never lessening. Horne replaced the bottle in the case and continued his tour, sipping from the cold bottle. Bumble followed him.

The bungalow had five rooms. Upstairs again, he saw a door leading off the kitchen and guessed it was the bedroom of Hilda and Bumble. He didn’t go in but crossed the kitchen and entered the short corridor. Hilda was making up the bed he had recently climbed out of. She was singing to herself, punctuating the song with gleeful chuckles.

He ignored her and tried another closed door directly opposite the bedroom. It was firmly locked. A Corbin lock, he noted, was set in the door above the regular lock built into the doorknob assembly. Double locked.

The source, he thought to himself, the source, the stockpile, the root of the evil. From that room had undoubtedly come the little red cylinder the size of a quarter and perhaps three or four inches long. There might be more in there. The little red things that had blown a man to hell and made a crater in the street deep enough for a man to walk in.

Betty carried the keys. She would always carry the keys, but not in her purse. Comparatively speaking, that wasn’t a safe place. A purse could be mislaid, lost or stolen. The keys must never be mislaid, lost or stolen. Betty would carry those keys on her person.

The fifth room occupied the entire width of the house in front and was the size of two rooms.

There was a fireplace at one end, flanked by glassed-in bookcases that reached from the floor to the ceiling. Before the fireplace was a long, low divan that seemed to fill that end of the room; it was at least eight feet in length. It faced the fireplace.

He walked to the windows facing the front.

The latticed fence blocked off all sight, entwined as it was with thick greenery, including what seemed to be hundreds upon hundreds of pink and red roses. From somewhere on the other side of that fence, far away and heard very dimly in the airtight house, was the sound of speeding automobiles on a paved highway.

There was also the ever-present dog, glaring at his face. He wished it would go away, or at least turn tail to him.

He inspected the room. Betty was one who liked the best in comfort at home and cared not a whit for formality. The room was a living room, a rumpus and game room, an everything room. One corner contained a small bar. There was a juke box which would play continuously, when switched on, without coins being fed into it. There was a long and sinfully soft studio couch.

He walked to the bookcases to see what she read.

Betty went in heavily for romances, both the pure, and the suggestive volumes. There were a couple of thin books of poetry he recognized. He had their counterparts at home, locked in the chest at the foot of the bed.

Somewhat idly he wondered if Sergeant Wiedenbeck would get around to opening that chest when they started searching for him. His keys were lying on the floor. Yes — the sergeant probably would. The sergeant would see the volumes of poetry and clamp his lips shut. And if he, Horne, were missing long, Wiedenbeck would make the druggist report every sale of the stuff. That... that was an idea.

At random Horne picked up a heavy volume. The title struck him as being ironic: The First Freedom. What was that Betty had harped on? “You’re property. My property.”

She regarded him as so much property, like Hilda, like the house and its electric gadgets, like the dog, like the books! The books... Military Aspects of Atomic Energy, Fission Materials, The Atom As A Weapon...

He stopped reading, stung.

Involuntarily, he glanced at the double-locked door. Bumble had wandered across the room to sit in one of the easy chairs, a picture book in his hands. The beer stood on the end table by the studio couch, forgotten.

Using his index finger, he counted the number of books dealing with atoms and atomic energy. There were fifteen that he recognized, perhaps more that he did not.

Horne’s thoughts spun back to the man he had watched at the bottom of the crater, the man holding the glass box, listening. He had supposed he knew the answer then; in his all-wiseness he thought he saw it all. But now, at the source, with the very obvious screaming at him from the bookshelves about him, he was suddenly a little afraid, unsure of what he had uncovered, afraid he was suddenly a part of it.

He turned on the Negro.

“Bumble — how does she do it?”

Bumble continued looking at the pictures.

“How does she do it?” Horne demanded desperately. “How can it be done on so small a scale? Those things aren’t like pineapples, to toss around or wire under a hood. They’re big! Little parts fit into big parts and pretty soon the last vital part is fitted into place and wham, it goes off. Nobody can reduce those things to red packages carried in a purse! Bumble! How does she do it?”

He raced across the floor.

The Negro looked up and grinned, showed him the picture book he was holding. It was Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.