by Rufus King
“Why, you beast!”
“That’s right.”
* * * *
Lily was satisfied in the glass with the plain dark gray tailored tweed. She went out into the hallway. Its lights were still on, in competition with the sullen morning, and a uniformed policeman stared at her stonily for an instant and then shifted his eyes to an inch or so above her head. From the landing she saw Dr. Starr at the foot of the stairs, talking with another uniformed policeman. Lily waited until Starr seemed to have finished.
“Doctor Starr—”
“Oh—yes, Mrs. Elser?”
“Would you mind?”
He came upstairs and joined her on the landing.
“I am trying to set things in order, Doctor.”
“Yes?”
“I had meant to ask you earlier whether you would be good enough to take a look at Delilah.”
“Is she ill?”
“I don’t know. She has the usual misery, which could cover anything. I’m a little worried about her. About her manner.”
“Manner?”
“Yes. Sheffield and Nan and I went up to her room after Mr. Hangaway had gone. She apologized for wanting to stay in bed—with her misery—and her manner struck me as being queer. Will you come up with me now?”
“Of course, Mrs. Elser.”
They went upstairs.
Lily rapped on the door and said, “Doctor Starr is with me. May we come in, Delilah?”
Several seconds passed before Delilah’s voice said, “Please do, madam.”
They went inside and Lily found the scene unchanged. The room was gloomily a little brighter, and the shadows from the bed lamp were gone. Delilah still was sitting up on the bed and clutching the bright pink nightgown tightly about her withered body.
“Good morning, Doctor Starr, sir.”
“Good morning Delilah. Which misery is it this time?”
“Just a general all-around touch kind, Doctor, sir.”
Starr went to the bed and felt Delilah’s wrist, taking her pulse. His eyes widened sharply and it seemed to Lily, as she watched him, as if his body stiffened. He kept his fingers on the wrist for a full minute, saying nothing. Then he said casually, “What have you been eating, Delilah?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary, sir.”
“Well, we’ll see.”
Starr looked penetratingly into the soft, blank darkness of Delilah’s eyes. He gently rubbed a finger tip across her upper and lower lips.
He said, “Nothing to worry about. You might take this prescription downstairs if you will, Mrs. Elser, and ask one of the men to go to my office for it. Miss Wadsworth will give him the proper stuff.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
Starr took a prescription pad from his pocket.
“My writing is the usual unintelligible scrawl that is always attributed to medical men, Mrs. Elser. The worst thing about the libel is that it’s true. Here’s the proof of it.”
He tore the sheet from the pad and handed it to her. A shock ran through Lily as she read:
Hangaway is in this room. Go outside and leave the hall door wide open. Do not summon aid. This is imperative.
Lily forced her voice to be natural and calm.
“Doctor Starr will have you fixed up in no time, Delilah.”
“Thank you, madam.”
“I’ll join you downstairs shortly, Mrs. Elser. I just want to take Delilah’s temperature.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
Lily’s eyes, as she walked toward the door, were conscious of the room: swiftly speculative even through her flash of terror as to where Hangaway could be hidden. The bed was angled from a corner, and Hangaway could be crouched behind the head of it, of course, and the door to the clothes closet was an inch ajar. Her nerves jangled as each step seemed bent on becoming a prelude to some swift and narcotic-conceived plan of destruction, some weapon beyond the rational mind with the forces of mania directing the attack. Her fingers shook as they closed about the door-knob. She opened the door to its fullest extent. She went outside.
Starr shook a thermometer down.
He said to Delilah, “Just hold this under your tongue.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
Starr was vibrantly conscious of the moment’s menace. He knew his maniacal minds. To combat them you had to place yourself upon a comparable plane, matching oddity with oddity, thinking ahead if possible into that diseased morass where the very essence of bright cunning was bred. He favored behind the head of the bed as Hangaway’s place of concealment. He judged that a knife or an ice pick from the kitchen would be pressed between the ornamental ironwork and through the pillow against which Delilah leaned, as a grim reminder of what an injudicious gesture or remark on her part could lead her to expect.
He took the thermometer from her mouth and put it in its case and back in his pocket, without looking at it and staring all the while at Delilah, sending his wave of thought into the dark pools of her knowing old eyes.
“Ninety-nine degrees. Well, that’s nothing. I’d go light on food today, Delilah.”
“I will, sir, Doctor.”
“Just stick in the neighborhood of toast and poached eggs. Some tea.”
“Yes sir, Doctor.”
With quiet fingers he loosened the bedding which lay above her lap.
“Have you pains anywhere? Any aches?”
Delilah looked at him earnestly, inquiringly, seeking his lead.
“Well, sir—”
“How’s the chest and the muscles in your back? Does this hurt?”
A strong arm slid behind her back; his other slid beneath her legs, and in an instant her withered fragility was gathered up, swiftly off the bed, swiftly out into the hallway, where he set her down and shut the door. He said to Lily who was standing motionless at the stairhead, “You can tell them to come up now, Mrs. Elser. Tell them to be quiet about it, and please suggest that a man be posted outside in case he jumps from a window.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
Starr held Delilah until she had stopped her fit of trembling.
“Go downstairs, Delilah.”
Starr stood and looked steadily at the knob of the door. No sound came from within the room whatever. It was not a man, he meditated, who was in there but an elemental force, a power and a strength which were cunningly motivated by the obverse of logical reason. A hundred weapons lay at Hangaway’s hand, even if you expected the probable one of the kitchen knife or the ice pick. The barrenness of an asylum cell exampled that: its lack of any weight or movable object or cutting edge or pointed thing with which to stab.
Starr’s problem absorbed him. It did not deal with Hangaway. It dealt with Lily. He could himself, he felt, be a match for Hangaway, and the added odds of the other men in the house made Hangaway’s capture or his death assured. Even a single tear-gas grenade would cover any of that.
But none of those things would cover Lily Elser.
There was this about Hangaway as Starr reviewed it: he mustn’t be captured and so turned into a sullen mute; he mustn’t be killed during any attempt at escape, and he mustn’t be permitted to take his own life. He must be left and interviewed at ease. Starr moved several steps away from the door and closer to the stairhead, picturing in his thoughts a probable view of Hangaway who would now be crouched or standing in a speculative silence with an ear pressed against the door, a bemused finger resting perhaps on the home-shot bolt.
Heffernan headed the silent advance.
Starr motioned him to silence and brought his lips close to Heffernan’s ear, whispering, “There is a bare chance that he may let me come in.”
“Take this gun.”
“No. It can’t be done that way.”
“He’ll kill you. You should have seen him when he went berserk at the hospital.”
/> “He won’t go berserk if I can help it. He’s got to talk.”
“Talk about what?”
“The truth about why Parne and Haines were killed.”
“What do you think he knows?”
“No one knows what he knows, not even himself. It’s my job to find out.”
“You’re taking too great a risk. We’ll sweat it out of him.”
“You couldn’t. This is a psychiatrist’s job, not a policeman’s. This is the time to do it. This moment might not come again.”
“What’s the difference? We’ve proved that Mrs. Elser shot Parne.”
“I’ve just got hold of as good proof that she didn’t.”
“What is it?”
“It’s in connection with the blood group—quiet—he’s testing the handle of the door.”
Slowly, in the hall’s gloomy light, the knob revolved, went back, was still in the stillness that was broken alone by the sound of men breathing.
“There may be some noise,” Starr whispered. “He may have a flash of violence, but don’t come in unless I call. Keep everyone below the level of the head of the stairs. He’ll take a look out into the hallway. Hurry.”
Starr waited until the men had retreated down the stairs. He went to the door and rapped.
“This is Doctor Starr, Mr. Hangaway. Will you let me come in, please?”
“You and who else, Doctor?”
“Nobody.”
“What do you want?”
“You, Mr. Hangaway.”
“You must be crazy.”
“Possibly. I think I can persuade you that there has been enough blood. Are you in any condition to talk rationally?”
“Aren’t you being insulting, Doctor? Stand away from the door.”
“Certainly, Mr. Hangaway.”
Starr moved back and stood against the opposite wall. The door inched open, then opened wider. Hangaway was a pipe-like shadow against the dullish gray within. His large head turned upon Starr and then moved and examined the empty hallway to right and left.
“Come in, Doctor.”
“Thank you.”
They went inside and Hangaway closed the door, thoughtfully shooting home its bolt.
“I find that you interest me, Doctor.”
“We mutually interest each other.”
“Yes. Try that rocker. I understand that they’re coming back again as collectors’ pieces of virtu. Funny animals, men.”
“Very funny. In fact, their humors are endless.”
“You must think I don’t know.”
“Know?”
“That there are men outside. That they’re stepping softly up to the door. That they’re waiting for me.”
“Oh, that.”
“I want you to take a good look at me.”
“All right.”
“Look at my face. Look at my whole general appearance. Would you want me as a friend?”
“I don’t know. But if I should your appearance would have nothing to do with it. It never does.”
“You’re wrong there, Doctor. It has a lot. I’m forty-seven, and about forty of those years have taught me.”
“I’m afraid I still can’t agree.”
“Let me put it this way. I’ll admit the matter is an obsession with me. Who are the malcontents in life? They’re the ugly people—not your sort, because you haven’t the kind I mean—but my sort, the type of ugliness which hints at, which verges on the repulsive. Look at your press pictures of the average communist or agitator or any sort of militant crusader. They’re a proof of what I mean.”
“I suppose your panacea for such discontent would be a blanket order on a plastic surgeon or a beautician.”
Hangaway smiled thinly.
“Well, there’s nothing so fantastic in that. My point is that ugliness is a positive handicap. People do not seek you out. They either ignore you or avoid you and make their voluntary contacts with people who are pleasant to look at. The inner soul, that inside shining goodness, is all tripe so far as I’m concerned.”
“Yes, so far as you’re concerned.”
“Do you think I have none?”
“I think that you failed or were prevented from cultivating it.”
“No. No, it would have done no good. I’m not a malcontent in the sense we’ve been speaking of. I belong to the other group of ugly people, the ones who use their handicap as a springboard to leap into power and success. But there is a drawback common to both classes, Doctor. We live alone.”
“Yes, that is true enough.”
“We’re single people except for whatever companionship is put up for sale. We’ve our sycophants and our court jesters in ratio to our money or our importance, but we have no friends. It becomes our one great dread.”
“Solitude?”
“Yes, Doctor. That’s why I let you in here. You took away the nigger woman. I want company when I go.”
“Aren’t Parne and Haines enough?”
“They’re dead already.”
Starr smiled at the statement’s simplicity.
“You’re not going to die, Mr. Hangaway.”
“I should find small pleasure in living behind bars, Doctor. I think our journey will be best.”
“Your childhood is at the bottom of this.”
“That’s right. It was my face.”
“It alone. You have a good many years left you in which to readjust yourself. I say that sincerely.”
“I know you do.”
“Just now you’re at the apex of a pitch you’ve been working yourself up to during the past few days. Or has it been for longer than that?”
“It’s been since the time the boys started getting wise to Haines.”
“Do you mind telling me?”
“Not a bit. That jug’s cracked. For me at any rate.”
“I don’t know Detroit very well. I suppose it all centers there?”
“Yes. Did you know much about Haines?”
“No, just the general outline which Heffernan has given me. Politics, influential in the state machine, wealthy, being groomed to run for Congress on a reform platform with the governorship in view—that sort of stuff, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right. The strong, fearless, attractive type. A man’s man, a friend of the people. Still and always a friend of the people even though his wife is one of the richest and most socially prominent women in the state and his daughter is ranking debutante number one.” A look of awe came over Hangaway’s face. “When this thing breaks!”
“What, Mr. Hangaway?”
“Why, that the kid’s illegitimate, of course.”
“His marriage—”
“Marriage? He was a lousy bigamist. He married Gertrude Witstock two years before Mrs. Elser got her divorce. And the kid, the current Jennie Elspeth Haines, popped out on the nine-months dot.”
“You speak of the boys…?”
“The opposition, Doctor. Lanner Compson and his gang, they’ve had a political strangle hold on the state for years.”
“And they know all this?”
“No, they suspect something like it, but they’ve got no proof. They know it the way a lot of big stories are known but never break. Doctor, you would be astonished at some of the stuff that is simply waiting for the first public false step before it is cracked down on the heads of a lot of important men.”
“I suppose that’s true. You say the boys have no proof in this case?”
“That’s right. Parne came here and got it, of course, but he’s dead, and Haines himself is dead, which leaves me. It’s a shame, Doctor. Do you know something? I think I’ll get out of here. I’m not going to waste this. I can still take Mrs. Haines and the kid for a million. I can take her for every nickel she’s got.”
�
��That’s a pretty big order, isn’t it? It means killing me, killing Mrs. Elser and her daughter, killing seven or eight armed men. I think it’s stupid to figure on it, Mr. Hangaway.”
“I suppose you’re right. It’s a pity though. I don’t like things to go to waste.”
“You aren’t being very clear about all this.”
“Why aren’t I?”
“Or possibly I’m a little dense. Possibly it’s because I’m not accustomed to mixing with important men. What’s plain to you seems a bit unreal to me.”
“What things?”
“Well, Haines in Detroit, how Nan Elser entered into it, the Elsers here—you speak of the boys getting wise—what put them wise?”
“That’s easy. Miss Elser’s picture in the Detroit Free Press after she won the design contest did that. You could feel it run all through town: ‘What’s Jennie Haines doing winning a design contest? No, it isn’t Jennie Haines. It’s some girl called Elser from some town in Ohio called Laurel Falls. Well, would you believe it? You could take them for twins. But after all, everybody has a double. Look at the movie stars, at the doubles contests, at any prominent person. So forget it.’ So people did forget it, Doctor. But the wise boys didn’t. Not them.”
“Why?”
“Any pelt has some value, Doctor, and a political pelt runs into real dough. I don’t have to tell you that. And remember that once Haines started running for public office he was right out in front, all washed and combed, as a target for mud. Naturally they had dug back into his past. They traced it easily to two years before his marriage. That was when he first hit Detroit. He wasn’t an ugly man, Doctor. He was one of the lucky ones.”
“Yes, I could see that. He would be attractive to women, especially back at that age.”
“Right. Young and dashing and gallant Worthby Haines, fresh out of the golden West. A smart boy.”
“Just how, especially?”
“Because he announced San Francisco as his origin. Because he announced that his parents and every contact that could be authenticated about him were wiped out in nineteen-six during the earthquake and the fire; in fact, that the horror of it all upon his childish mind had made the whole thing practically a blank. That was very smart. You can not substantiate nor deny any statements by poking about in cinders.”
