Fancies and Goodnights - Collier John - Страница 17

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«What was the evidence against me? That they couldn't find traces of anyone else! That's evidence of their own damned inefficiency, that's all. Does a man murder his best friend for nothing? Could they find any reason, any motive? They were trying to find some woman first of all. They have the mentality of a ten-cent magazine. They combed our money affairs. They even tried to smell out some subversive tieup. God, if you knew what it was to be confronted with faces out of a comic strip and with minds that match the faces! If ever you are charged with murder, hang yourself in your cell the first night.»

«In the end they settled on our game of checkers. Our poor, harmless game of checkers! We talked all the while we were playing, you know, and sometimes even forgot whose turn it was to move next. I suppose there are people who can go berserk in a dispute over a childish game, but to me that's something utterly incomprehensible. Can you understand a man murdering his friend over a game? I can't. As a matter of fact, I remember we had to start this game over again, not once but twice — first when Earle mixed the drinks, and then when I mixed them. Each time we forgot who was to move. However, they fixed on that.»

They had to find some shadow of a motive, and that was the best they could do.

«Of course, my lawyer tore it to shreds. By the mercy of God there'd been quite a craze at the works for playing checkers at lunchtime. So he soon found half-a-dozen men to swear that neither Earle nor I ever played the game seriously enough to get het up about it.»

«They had no other motive to put forward. Absolutely none. Both our lives were simple, ordinary, humdrum, and open as a book. What was their case? They couldn't find what they were paid to find. For that, they proposed to send a man to the death cell. Can you beat that?»

«It sounds pretty damnable,» said I.

«Yes,» said he passionately. «Damnable is the word. They got what they were after — the jury voted nine to three for acquittal, which saved the faces of the police. There was plenty of room for a hint that they were on the right track all the time. You can imagine what my life has been since! If you ever get into that sort of mess, my friends, hang yourselves the first night, in your cell.»

«Don't talk like that,» said Logan. «Look here, you've had a bad time. Damned bad. But what the hell? It's over. You're here now.»

«And we're here,» said I. «If that helps any.»

«Helps?» said he. «God, if you could ever guess how it helped! I'll never be able to tell you. I'm no good at that sort of thing. See, I drag you here, the only human beings who've treated me decently, and I pour all this stuff out and don't offer you a drink, even. Never mind, I'll give you one now — a drink you'll like.»

«I could certainly swallow a highball,» said Logan.

«You shall have something better than that,» said Reid, moving toward the kitchenette. «We have a little specialty down in our corner of Georgia. Only it's got to be fixed properly. Wait just a minute.»

He disappeared through the door, and we heard corks being drawn and a great clatter of pouring and mixing. While this went on, he was still talking through the doorway. «I'm glad I brought you up here,» he said. «I'm glad I put the whole thing to you. You don't know what it means — to be believed, understood by God! I feel I'm alive again.»

He emerged with three brimming glasses on a tray. «Try this,» he said proudly.

«To the days ahead!» said Logan, as we raised our glasses.

We drank and raised our eyebrows in appreciation. The drink seemed to be a sort of variant of sherry flip, with a heavy sprinkling of nutmeg.

«You like it?» cried Reid eagerly. «There's not many people know the recipe for that drink, and fewer still can make it well. There are one or two bastard versions which some damned fools mix up — a disgrace to Georgia. I could — I could pour the mess over their heads. Wait a minute. You're men of discernment. Yes, by God, you are! You shall decide for yourselves.»

With that, he darted back into the kitchenette and rattled his bottles more furiously than before, still talking to us disjointedly, praising the orthodox version of his drink, and damning all imitations.

«Now, here you are,» said he, appearing with the tray loaded with drinks very much like the first but rather differently garnished. «These abortions have mace and ginger on the top instead of nutmeg. Take them. Drink them. Spit them out on the carpet if you want to. I'll mix some more of the real thing to take the taste out of your mouth. Just try them. Just tell me what you think of a barbarian who could insist that that was a Georgian flip. Go on. Tell me.»

We sipped. There was no considerable difference. However, we replied as was expected of us.

«What do you think, Logan?» said I. «The first has it, beyond doubt.»

«Beyond doubt,» said Logan. «The first is the real thing.»

«Yes,» said Reid, his face livid and his eyes blazing like live coals. «And that is hogwash. The man who calls that a Georgian flip is not fit to mix bootblacking. It hasn't the nutmeg. The touch of nutmeg makes it. A man who'd leave out the nutmeg —! I could —!»

He put out both his hands to lift the tray, and his eyes fell on them. He sat very still, staring at them.

«Our hen has laid two eggs,» said Mrs. Scrivener, «and I have boiled them for breakfast.» As she spoke she unfolded a snowy napkin, and displayed the barnyard treasures, and she placed the white one in her husband's egg-cup, and the brown one in her own.

The Scriveners lived in a house with a steep roof and a white gable, set in a woodland tract, among juvenile birch trees. It was extremely small, but so was the rent, and they called it Three Bears Cottage. Their menage was frugal, for Henry had retired at forty, in order to study Nature. Nevertheless, everything was as neat as a pin, and everything was carefully regarded. Each week, in their tiny garden, a new lettuce approached perfection. Its progress was minutely inspected from day to day, and, at that hour when it reached the crest and pinnacle of its development, they cut it, and ate it.

Another day, they had the cauliflower.

People who live thus, from one cherished detail to the next, invariably have complexions clear to the point of transparency, and bright and bird-like eyes. They are also keenly sensitive to the difference between one new-laid egg and another, which, like many other fine points, is often overlooked by the hurrying multitudes in cities. The Scriveners were both well aware that, contrary to a commercially fostered superstition, it is the brown egg that is superior in nourishment, in appearance, and in flavour. Mr. Scrivener noted that his wife had retained the brown egg for herself, and his eyes grew rounder and more bird-like than before. «Ella,» said he, «I notice that you have given me the white egg, and retained the brown one for yourself.»

«Well,» said she, «why not? Why should I not have the brown egg? It is I who keep everything neat and trim in the house, and polish the canary's cage, which you, if you were a man, would do for me. You do nothing but scratch about in the garden, and then go lounging about the woods, studying Nature.»

«Do not call Dickie 'the canary' in that fashion,» responded her husband. «I sometimes think you have no affection for any living creature about you, least of all for myself. After all, it is I who feed our dear hen every day, and, when she lays a brown egg, I think I should at least be asked if I would like it.»

«I think I know what the answer would be,» said his wife with a short laugh. «No, Henry. I have not forgotten your conduct when the tomato ripened. I think the less said about who has what in this house, the better.»

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