A dram of poison

by Charlotte Aut Armstrong

  Ethel can, thought Mr, Gibson, and for a moment feared he might whinny this forth nervously.

  "Can't we find the bus?" Rosemary was urging.

  "Gee, Rosie, I dunno," said Paul. "Are you sure he shouldn't be seeing a doctor . . ." Paul jittered.

  Rosemary said, "Hurry, hurry . . ."

  The checker girl said, "Oh gosh, I hope you find it! I hope nothing bad is going to happen!" She peered at Mr. Gibson from her eye corners. "Look, you're all right now, aren't you?" She seemed to care.

  Mr. Gibson couldn't answer. What was it to be "all right," he wondered, with a shadowy sadness.

  Then they were back in the car, as before.

  "Number Five. That is the bus that goes on out the boulevard?" asked Rosemar)'.

  "Yes."

  "But how will we know which one? Did you notice any number on it?"

  "No."

  "But the police could get the number of the right bus, couldn't they? Since they know the time you caught it downtown, the time you got off at the market."

  "Maybe."

  "Then, maybe they have caught it already. They must have. It's two fifteen."

  Rosemary was babbling! It was vocalized worry. Mr. Gibson was answering in monosyllables. Paul was driving the car. He wasn't driving it very well. The car jerked and jittered. The man was nervous. Mr. Gibson—so curiously removed from self by his ruination (which was complete) —found his senses able to perceive. He felt a resurgence of an old power. He was no longer cut off. Paul, he realized, shrank from him as evil. Paul was almost superstitiously afraid of a man who had intended to kill himself.

  Mr. Gibson wondered if he ought to try to explain. The trouble was ... he could not now remember how it had gone, all his reasoning. He thought it odd to be sitting in the middle with the two of them so bent on preserving him from the doom of becommg a murderer. Doom ... ah yes, that was the word. Now he remembered. . .

  "I was going to write a letter," he said out loud. "I was going to explain ... At least, I—"

  "Well, don't!'' said Rosemary vehemently. "Not now. Just don't talk about it. Whatever you thought, whatever it was, whatever it is. Now, we have to find that terrible stuff and stop it from hurting anyone. Afterward," she said grimly, "you can talk about it if you want to. Paul, can you drive faster?"

  "Listen," said Paul, nervous and sweating. "I'd just as soon not wreck us, you know . . ."

  Rosemary said, "I know. I know," and she pounded with her small female fists the side of Paul's car. "But I am to blame for this" said Rosemary.

  Mr. Gibson tried to protest but she turned and looked fiercely into his eyes. "And you are to blame. We are to blame. That has to be true. I'll prove it to you. I'm tired" she cried. "I am so tired—"

  Paul said, "Don't talk, Rosie. He must have been crazy. Let it go and say he was crazy."

  But Mr. Gibson had a strange feeling of solidity. He thought. Yes, of course, I am to blame.

  The boulevard was a divided street. In the weedy center space there lay old streetcar tracks, now superseded by the bus line. The boulevard was lined with little low apartment buildings, arranged in the charming California style, around grassy courts, and in a gay variety of colors . . . pink ones, yellow ones, green ones ... all sparkling clean and bright in the light of this fine day. Like big beads on the pretty chain, there came from time to time the shopping centers. A huge food market, with banks of red and yellow and orange fruit along the sidewalk, its bulk like a mother hen beside its chicks—the drugstore, laundromats.

  After ten minutes of going, the boulevard lost its center strip and became just a street curving off through residential patches into a long valley, where houses became smaller and shabbier and more countrified as the city frayed about the edges. Mr. Gibson, sitting in the middle, looked at all this scenery as if he had come upon a new planet.

  They passed one bus going their way, and, after a while, another. Neither could be the right one.

  It was Paul Townsend, now, who was doing the talking. "Number Five turns around at the junction, I think. Let's

  see. If you got off about one forty-five, then it would get to the end of its line around two forty or a bit after. We might meet the right bus, coming back. What is it now? Two thirty."

  "I can't tell the right bus," Mr. Gibson said. "The police can. Watch the other side of the street . . ." Mr. Gibson's brain, although feebly, was turning over. "Whoever found the bottle," said he with detached composure, "may have gotten off the bus at any stop along the way."

  "Yes, but—" Paul's eye flirted nervously toward him. Paul wanted to worry out loud, but not this much.

  "In fact, once the bus has turned around to come back —that means that every person who was on it while I was on it, must not be on it any more."

  "Maybe whoever found it turned it over to the driver.

  Maybe they have like a lost and found department . , ."

  "Maybe," said Mr. Gibson stoically.

  "Who's going to take and eat food that he just found?"

  said Paul. "Especially if it looks as if it has been opened.

  Did you break a seal?"

  "No seal. It was a question of turning the cap . . ." "How full was the bottle?" • "Full enough."

  "It wouldn't pour quite like olive oil.'' "It's oily enough," said Mr. Gibson. "The bottle will smell of olive oil."

  "Listen—" said Paul, "even if we don't find it . . . don't forget the police are putting the alarm on the air. That's what he said."

  "Not everyone," said Mr. Gibson, "listens constantly to the radio."

  Rosemary said, "And we should face the facts, shouldn't we?" She turned her head and looked fiercely at him as before. Her eyes were such a fierce blue. Mr. Gibson realized that inside the body of Rosemary—behind the face of Rosemary—within all the graces of Rosemary, which graces he loved— there was somebody else. A fierce angry determined spirit he had never met and never known. This spirit said boldly, "If anyone dies of that poison, you'll go to jail, I suppose?"

  "I suppose," he said and felt indifferent. "In any case, you'll lose your position?" "Yes."

  "People will know . . ."

  The people in the market, the people on the bus, the police, the neighbors, the puolic. Yes, thought Mr. Gibson, everyone will know. . . .

  "But if nobody dies and we find the poison," said Rosemary, ''everything else we can bear. Isn't that a fact?"

  Mr. Gibson put his hand up to shield his eyes. It was a fact, as far as he could tell.

  "Keep your chin up," said Paul nervously. "Who knows? What time is it? Ten of three—the bus has turned around."

  "Look!" said Rosemary. "Look ... up ahead! There it is! There it is!"

  Chapter XIV

  THERE WERE in fact, two buses. One wide yellow vehicle was pulled up on the shoulder of the road. A black-and-white police car nosed against it from behind. Beside it stood a group of three, two policemen and the bus driver.

  The other bus had stopped a few yards ahead and a group of people—ten or a dozen—were climbing on. These people seemed, all of them, to be looking back with crooked necks toward the policemen.

  Paul made a wild U-turn. His car stuttered and bounced and stopped behind the police car. The time was 2: 54. Mr. Gibson found himself limping after his companions over lumpy sod through tall dust-plastered weeds that grew between the road and a patched wire fence. It was an unexpected setting for a crisis. Most crises, thought Mr. Gibson, take place in unexpected settings.

  "I'm Mrs. Gibson," he heard Rosemary cry. "It was mv husband . . . Did you find it? Is it here? The poison?"

  Not one of the three men opened his mouth. So Mr. Gibson knew that they had not found it.

  "Who are those people getting on that other bus?" cried Rosemary against their silence. "What's happening?"

  "Passengers," said one of the policeman. "They don't— none of them—know anything. We're letting them go about their business." He swung around. "You the man left this poison someplace in the
olive oil bottle?" He had selected Mr. Gibson instead of Paul . . . and Mr. Gibson nodded.

  "Well, we can't find it on this bus."

  "Which seat did you sit in?" snapped the second policeman.

  Mr. Gibson shook his head.

  "How big was the package?"

  Mr Gibson showed them mutely, using his hands.

  "In a paper bag?"

  Mr. Gibson nodded. This policeman, a young one, gave him a disgusted look, sucked air into the comer of his mouth, and swung up through the open door of the bus. He didn't like any part of this situation. His partner, an older man, with a thicker mask on, helped Rosemary up by her elbow. Paul went, too. Four of them ducked and bobbed, searching in there, where the policemen must already have searched.

  Mr. Gibson stood in the dusty weeds. This was the bus? He had ridden this bus? He had no recollection of any details at all. Now, here he was, standing in the sun, on the dusty earth, with a field spreading away from him . , . and he, his own survivor.

  The bus driver, a lean man in his thirties with a long and rather surprisingly pale face, stood in the weeds, too, hands deep in trouser pockets, watching him. "So you would your own quietus make? Hey?" said the bus driver softly.

  Mr. Gibson was inomeasurably startled. "I botched it," said he pettishly.

  The bus driver poked out his lips and seemed to be touching his tongue up over his teeth. He moved back far enough to lean in at the door of the bus. "This man sat halfway back on the right side, near the window, alone," he bawled.

  The four inside responded by gathering together on the right side of the bus. The driver came forward far enough to lean on the high yellow bus wall.

  "You botched it, all right," he said to Mr. Gibson. "Hamlet made a mess of it, too. Hey? Going to try again?" He had sandy lashes.

  "I doubt it," snapped Mr. Gibson. "I'll take what's coming to me." He pulled back his shoulders.

  "Gibson, hey? Teach at the college, don't you?" the man said. "What do you teach?" "Poetry."

  "Poetry! Hah!" The man grinned. "There's a million poems about death, I guess."

  "And about love, too." said Mr. Gibson with frozen-feeling lips. This was the oddest, the most unexpected conversation he had ever gotten into.

  "Sure—love and death," the bus driver said, "and God and man—and all the real stuff."

  "Real?" Mr. Gibson blinked.

  "You think it ain't?'' the bus driver said. "Don't gimme that."

  The younger policeman came out of the bus. "Nope," he said. "No soap. We'll look again in a few minutes."

  "Yeah?" said the driver. "Whassa matter? Don't you trust yourselves?"

  "Eyes can do funny tricks," the policeman said stiffly.

  "O.K. by me. I don't mind being out of service. Nice day." The bus driver looked at Mr. Gibson again with contemplative eyes.

  Rosemary jumped down out of the bus. "What can we dor

  Paul behind her, took her arm. "Better go home, Rosie," he murmured. "The broadcast is the only hope, now. Nothing we can do but wait."

  "You remember him?" cried Rosemary to the bus driver.

  "Sure do, ma'am."

  "Did you see the paper bag."

  "Might have," said the bus driver, narrowing his eyes. "Seems to me I get the impression he shifted a little package to his other hand when he put his fare in. It's just an impression but I got it. Might mean something."

  "Did you see it in his hand when he got off?"

  "No, ma'am. People getting off have their backs to me."

  "Did you see who took the seat he'd been sitting in . . . ?"

  "No, ma'am. Lessee. He got off at Lambert? Well, I had a little poker game with a green Pontiac there—where he got off. This Pontiac and me was outbluffing each other, so I paid no attention. . . ."

  "Was the bus full?"

  "No, ma'am. Not at that hour."

  "Do you understand?" said Rosemary. "It's a deadly poison. In the wrong bottle. Do you understand that?"

  The bus driver said sweetly, "I understand." Did you notice anyone getting off with a green paper

  "I can't see their hands when they're getting off, ma'am," he reminded her patiently.

  Rosemary clasped her own hands and looked off across the field.

  Paul said, "Somebody picked it up and took it and there's no way of finding out who. . . . The broadcast warning will either reach him or it won't."

  The two cops were Ustening quietly. The older one shifted his weight.

  "Maybe," said Rosemary. "Maybe there is something we can do. You were there," she said to the bus driver. "Did you recognize anybody else who was on the bus then?"

  "Hey?" said the bus driver, wrinkling his brow.

  "Anyone else we could find and ask? Somebody who was also there and might have noticed?"

  "Wait a minute." The driver seemed to bristle up. "This stuff's poison, hey?"

  Paul said, "Damned dangerous," and looked angry. "He took it from my lab. He knew what it was. He should never . . . Oh, come home, Rosie."

  "A stranger," said Rosemary, still addressing the bus driver, "trusting iil a label. Some stranger to us, who doesn't want to die. People do trust labels. . . ."

  "Yes," he said, "they got a right to. And there was my blonde."

  "Blonde?"

  "Yeah, and while she wouldn't ... I don't think. . . . Nobody," said the bus driver forcefully, heaving himself away from his leaning position, "is going to poison my blonde!" He grew taller. "Is that your car?"

  "Who is this blonde?" the young policeman said moving in.

  "I don't know her name."

  "Where does she live?"

  "I don't know where she lives.''

  "She was on the bus?"

  "Yeh, she was on the bus."

  "If you don't know her ... how come . . . ?"

  "She doesn't know that she's my blonde—not yet. One of these days . . . Aw, I was biding my time. Now look," the bus driver said, "I'm going. One thing I do know and that's the stop she gets off at. I can find her. And nobody's going to poison my blonde."

  He set off toward Paul's car.

  "Oh yes! Paul," Rosemary cried, "Kenneth, come on! We'll all go, find her. She might have noticed . . . Hurry,

  come on

  The whole group was streaming toward Paul's car.

  The older policeman said, "Wait ... I can call in, you know. I can get a prowl car there in seconds ..."

  "Where?" said the driver. "When I don't know where myself? All I got is the stop. Comer of Allen and the Boulevard. What can you do with that? Thanks, anyway, but I guess I got to go find her myself. I'll know her when I see her, see?"

  "What about this bus?"

  "Life and death," said the driver, with his hand on Paul's car. "Let them fire me." Paul was right behind him. "Give me the keys," the driver said.

  "My car . . . I'll drive." Paul looked as if he were suffering. His mouth was grim.

  "You are an amateur," said the bus driver, and took the keys out of Paul's hand.

  Mr. Gibson knew only that Rosemary's hands were pulling and hustling him. He and she got into the back seat. Paul got in beside the bus driver.

  "Good luck," said the older policeman, rather kindly. "Call in, now." The younger one was chewing grass.

  The bus driver was moving levers. Paul's car surged backward, slipped out into traffic. It seemed to respond with pleasure to a master's hand. "I can make better time, that's all," the bus driver said. "Driving's my business. Every business has its skills."

  "That's all right," Paul murmured.

  They were sailing back toward town.

  Chapter XV

  "The' name's Lee Coffey" said the bus driver suddenly. Paul straightened up with an effect of relaxing, of feeling better. "I'm Paul Townsend," he said in something nearer his normal amiable voice. "A neighbor of the Gibsons'."

  "I see. And the lady is Mrs. Gibson."

  "Rosie," said Paul, "this is Lee Coffey—"

  "Her name is Rosemary" Mr. Gibs
on heard himself saying loudly. "My name is Kenneth Gibson. I am the man . . ."

  "How do, Mrs. Rosemary?" the bus driver said over his shoulder. "Say, Mr. Kenneth Gibson, what was it that was coming to you . . . you'd rather take poison?"

  Mr. Gibson tried to swallow with a dry mouth.

  Paul said quickly, "No, no, don't talk about it. It was a temporary . . . He didn't even know what he was doing. He must have been crazy. He's all right now."

  "What puts him all right, all of a sudden?" the bus driver said.

  "Why, he knows ... he has friends. He's got everything to live for."

  "Candy?" said the bus driver.

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "I never could get that," said the bus driver, sliding the car skillfully to a strategic position in the center lane. "How come—now you take a suicide sitting on a ledge up high, see ... ? People trying to talk him out of it, offer the same as loUypops. Everybody's his friend, they tell him. Come home, the dog needs him. Or he can have beer. He can have chocolate. . . . Seems to me if a man gets to the point of taking his life he's got more serious things in his mind. It's no time for candy, is it?"

  "You are wrong," said Mr. Gibson forcefully.

  "That so?"

  "There is one moment when a loud pop is enough, either way."

  "I see," said the bus driver. "Yeah .... well, you'd know. That's very interesting."

  The car moved. It was not speeding. But no second was lost by indecision or by fumbhng. Mr. Gibson found himself admiring this with peculiar pleasure.

  "If you want to talk about it . . ." the bus driver said, and Paul said again, "No, no . . ."

  Mr. Gibson answered truthfully. "I'd like to talk to you about it. Not just now, I guess." He felt expanded and relaxed in contact with a mind that interested him. A mind that cheerfully pried off a certain lid ... a lid that had been stifling and muffling and shutting up that which is interesting.

  He looked sideways at Rosemary, and her eyes were

  visited by the ghost of a smile. "Tell me about your blonde, Mr. Coffey," she said almost'brightly.

  "Look at me, rushing to the rescue," the bus driver said, "of a blonde who doesn't know she's mine. I'll tell you a little bit. I see her nearly every day. Watch for her, now. I'm getting to know her. I'm thinking of getting up the nerve to speak to her. Never have. Doesn't matter. I already know that I like her a lot. So how can I let her get the poison? Will this offend her, Mrs. Gibson?"