Stranger at Stonewycke

by Michael Phillips

  There were a few women who had been passing parts of his life. But he had never been genuinely in love. He had not been willing, or even able, to give a relationship what any kind of lasting love demanded. Besides, he was much too young to get himself “imprisoned,” as he liked to phrase it. Whenever Molly heard him use the term, she acted affronted. “Wot a way t’ speak of something so loverly as marriage!” she would protest, turning to Skittles with some comment like, “Is that how you think o’ it too, old boy?”

  Skittles would always reply wisely, and truthfully, “’Course not! But then there ain’t many men as can lay claim to such a fine ol’ girl as you, Molly!”

  Nothing less than a discovery so fortuitous as Skittles’ could alter Logan’s less than idealized attitude toward the institution of marriage. But he sincerely doubted he’d ever find someone quite like Molly. Forthright and honest, but at the same time gentle, she could be stubborn and gruff enough to keep things interesting. And how she could laugh! He knew Skittles always had a good time with Molly—which was probably why, in all their thirty years together, he had never strayed. Logan well knew that in the kind of life they led, there were sufficient opportunities.

  However, at this particular moment, marriage was the furthest thing from his thoughts. He lay there, in his run-down flat, gloating over his victory. He had just completed the most successful con game of his young career. And on top of that, had fleeced the famous American gangster and sent him to jail. This could boost his reputation to the heights! For the moment Logan had entirely forgotten his original intent. Intoxicated with his success, he could not keep himself from dreaming about the prospects that might now be open to him. Who could tell—might he not even be able to take over Morgan’s operation himself? Of course he’d put an end to that dirty protection racket. And he’d clean up lots of other things in the process. But that posh club, with its classy clientele—why it would be enough to set up an enterprising man for life . . .

  The insistent pounding at his door suddenly woke Logan from his reverie.

  “Come on in,” he called.

  The door opened and Billy Cochran walked in. He always seemed to have a disgruntled air about him, but his face now showed displeasure.

  “Why don’t you ’ave this door locked?” he reproved without preamble. “I could’ve been anyone!”

  “Who’s going to bother me?” answered Logan airily. “Morgan’s on his way to prison, isn’t he?”

  “I saw them take ’im off with me own two eyes, bad as they may be,” said Billy. “But you can’t be too careful,” he added, squinting and looking about, the lines in his face accentuated in the dim light.

  Ignoring his cautions, Logan stuffed the money he had been holding back into its envelope and, tossing it to Billy, said, “See if this doesn’t cheer you up!”

  Billy caught the envelope effortlessly despite his reputed bad eyesight, and looked inside, emitting a soft whistle.

  “I’d say Morgan’s debt with Skittles is cleared,” said Logan, grinning.

  At the mention of their friend’s name, Billy’s hardened expression dropped and he slowly shook his head. “You ’aven’t ’eard . . . I thought as much.”

  He walked to the bed and sat down heavily on its edge. “I just ’eard mysel’. I guess I thought you might already know.”

  “What is it, Billy?”

  “This hain’t so easy, Logan,” sputtered Billy. “Skittles . . . well—he died earlier this mornin’.”

  For a moment Billy thought Logan had not heard him at all. For when he looked over toward him, Logan was staring blankly at the wall in front of him. The words had come too abruptly, like a fist out of nowhere, striking him senseless. As his glassy gaze gradually came back into focus, Logan slowly turned back toward Billy, his eyes filled with helpless appeal that somehow Billy’s thick accent had distorted his words and that he had mistaken what he thought he heard. But the old man’s small, narrow orbs—grim and filled with an agony even more pronounced because he had forgotten how to shed tears of remorse—dashed the younger man’s flimsy hope.

  It was true. Poor old Billy’s eyes told the story. Skittles was gone.

  Logan jumped off the bed. “I’ll kill him,” he breathed, almost softly in his wrathful distress.

  It was the very quietness of his tone, the clenched understatement, that frightened Billy the most. “Logan,” he began, as one entreating a child, “now don’t go runnin’ off an’—”

  But Logan quickly cut him off, the hot blood of passion now rising in him that the dreadful news had at last sunk in. “I’ll kill him!” he repeated, louder this time. “I’ll kill Morgan, I tell you!”

  Billy stood and caught Logan’s arm, the little man holding Logan’s agitated form fast in his grip.

  “Hain’t no way that’s goin’ to ’elp ol’ Skits now,” he said quietly, but with determination.

  “Morgan murdered him!”

  Billy closed his eyes, seeming to fight against his own passion for revenge, for he also loved Skittles. He, too, would have squeezed the life out of Morgan if it lay within his power. But he was old. Whether that gave him a little extra dose of wisdom, or whether it had made of him a coward, he didn’t know. In any event, he understood the futility of revenge. But to assist him, Billy had something Logan had never made use of. Billy Cochran knew he had his bottle to turn to for the easing of the pain and hatred. He didn’t know what Logan could do instead. Perhaps revenge was his only way to get rid of the ache inside.

  “Don’t stop me, Billy!” yelled Logan, and with a sudden burst of strength, he shoved Billy from him. The old ex-convict stumbled backward, lost his balance, and fell against the iron bedrail.

  The shock of his temporary violent outburst, unintended though it had been, seemed to clear Logan’s head. He rushed forward to assist his friend.

  “Billy!” he cried. “Billy . . . I’m sorry!” Logan stooped down, stretched his arm around him, and helped him to his feet. As he did so, something deep within Logan began to crumble.

  A strangled sob broke from his lips. He fought hard to bite it back, but another quickly followed. Billy reached up to pat his young friend’s shoulder in sympathetic gesture. His caring action wrecked all further attempts at holding his distraught emotions in reserve. Tears started from Logan’s eyes. He tried to brush them away, but the more he did so the more steadily they flowed. Hardly knowing what he was doing, Logan sagged against Billy, and his body shook as the older man laid a comforting arm on his shoulder. Neither had felt such an embrace of comfort since childhood.

  Slowly Billy led Logan back to the bed, where he sat him gently down.

  “Take it easy, lad,” he said in a voice unaccustomed to gentleness. “’Tis a rotten shame, it is . . . but you can see, lad, can’t you? Why, you’re ’most a son to Molly, and it’d break ’er ’eart if somethin’ was t’ ’appen t’ you too.”

  “Molly!” Logan exclaimed with renewed emotion. “I forgot about Molly. I’ve got to go to her!”

  But Billy held him back once again. “You’d better not,” he said. “Least not now. ’Tis best no one has the chance to connect you with Molly.”

  “But Morgan’s in jail.”

  “E’en if he stays in jail—which hain’t at all certain he will, an’ you know it—but e’en if he does, he’s still got boys to take care of things for ’im. I thought you understood before you got into this that you’d ’ave t’ leave town for a while—”

  “You said disappear. You never said get out of town,” Logan interrupted, dismally shaking his head. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “Well,” declared Billy emphatically, “losin’ five thousand quid’s one thing. But landin’ in jail’s another. Morgan’s goin’ to be mad—and he’s goin’ to be on the lookout for you. You might ’ave t’ stay away for a couple months, mebbe longer, till we see wot ’appens.”

  “But—”

  “There hain’t no other way, Logan—that is, if you value y
our skin.”

  Logan stood again and paced the room. Some sharp he was! His great scheme had accomplished nothing more than to make Morgan more dangerous than ever. Not only to himself but to Molly as well, should Morgan ever discover their connection. Skittles was dead. Molly was alone. And he could not even go to her to offer what small comfort he could—and after all she had done for him over the years.

  He kicked at a chair in his frustration, sending the flimsy wooden thing flying across the room. Much as he wanted to see Morgan pay for what he had done, he felt impotent, and such a childish action was the only violence of which he was capable. He could lie, he could cheat, he could steal. But he could not murder. To do so would put him in the same class as Morgan himself. But there was something else besides, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, something inside him which told him a murderer was somehow less of a human being than any other, no matter what other crimes one might have committed. All at once he remembered what Skittles had said to him in the hospital. “Get out,” his friend had pleaded with him, “before it’s too late . . . before you end up going the way of Chase Morgan.”

  He was different from the likes of Morgan. Wasn’t he? He knew where to draw the line. He would never . . .

  His thoughts drifted off to an indistinct end. Well, he was different! And he wasn’t going to let Skittles down. Never!

  Slowly he turned back toward Billy, still seated on the edge of the bed anxiously watching him pace back and forth.

  “Square everything with the lads that helped us,” Logan said, nodding toward the envelope which Billy still held. “Keep some for yourself and get your watch back. Then give the rest to Molly.”

  It seemed that abruptly Logan had resigned himself with what must be done. His voice now took on a determined tone.

  “Don’t worry about a thing, lad,” answered Billy. “I’ll take care of it. But wot about yoursel’?”

  “Guess I’ll need a bit for traveling.”

  Billy handed him two hundred pounds.

  Logan recoiled. “I don’t need that much!” he exclaimed. “I’d only lose it gambling, or doing something else just as stupid.”

  “Take it,” insisted Billy. “You earned it. An’ Molly wouldn’t want to be thinkin’ of you headin’ off to who knows where penniless.”

  Logan hesitated a moment longer, then reached out and took the notes from Billy’s hand. After an awkward embrace, during which even the crotchety old counterfeiter’s eyes glistened with a hint of moisture, Billy left to deliver the money, and more bad news to Molly.

  Through the dirty pane of his flat’s only window, Logan watched him head up the mostly deserted street, sighed a long sigh when he was out of sight, then turned back into his room. He went directly to the closet, pulled a brown leather suitcase from it, and hoisted it onto the bed to begin packing. His possessions were few, so the activity occupied little of his time. When all his other worldly belongings had been stuffed inside, he laid on top the fine cashmere suit he had worn to impress Morgan, along with the silk necktie and linen shirt. Who could tell when he might need them again? Instead of such finery, he dressed himself in clothes more appropriate for travel—a brown tweed suit, with an open-collared shirt, sturdy shoes, and his well-worn dark overcoat. He picked up Skittles’ checkered cap and set it rather reverently on his head. It hardly went with the rest of his attire, but at such a moment Logan could think of wearing nothing else.

  “I’ll never live up to it,” he said to himself, “but maybe it’ll bring me luck.”

  The new fedora—well, there just wasn’t room for it. And somehow it reminded him of things he’d just as soon forget at present. He laid it on the dresser, hoping it would come by a worthier owner than Skittles’ cap had. Next to the hat he placed a few notes to cover his back rent. He didn’t want a disgruntled landlady setting the police on his tail, too.

  As he stepped outside, the wind and rain pelted him. He pulled his overcoat tightly about his neck, looked back and forth along the street, then headed out into the nasty weather. It was no day to be traveling.

  He cast a backward glance at the building where he had lived for the past year. It had never meant much to him, but now it was all he had to represent those many things that did mean so much to him in London. The falling rain, the dreary tenement, the deserted street—it all seemed such a sad ending to his seven years in the city of cities, a city he had grown to love in spite of its size and occasional filth and squalor.

  I’ll be back . . . and soon! he told himself, then turned away and walked down the street, not looking back again.

  An hour later he found himself looking up at the entrance of Euston Station. He had arrived there almost without thinking where his steps were leading him. He still had no idea of his ultimate destination as he walked inside and strode to one of the lines.

  He gradually made his way toward the front, wondering what he would say when he reached the booth. Standing before the ticket seller at last, the single word Glasgow seemed to come out of his mouth of its own volition.

  11

  Home Again

  The train ride was a long one.

  And tedious. Despite whatever resolve he may have felt while staring out the window as the buildings and streets of London gradually gave way to the countryside of Chilterns, by the time they reached Northampton, Logan was embroiled in a heated game of cards. And as he had predicted, he had lost nearly everything before the train reached Carlisle. He had been a wealthy man in Leeds, but by the time the train had pulled into Cumberland, he had lost his shirt, just as the Duke by that same name nearly had against Bonnie Prince Charlie not far from that very spot. He built his fortune up once more by Moffat in his own homeland. But Logan had had no Culloden like the famous Duke, and by the time he reached Glasgow, he was a poor man once again.

  “Just like when I left,” Logan mused as he stepped off the train.

  He straightened his silk necktie, buffed the toes of his black dress shoes on his pant cuffs, and made one last attempt to brush the wrinkles from the cashmere suit he had donned in honor of his homecoming. Even without the fedora, he cut a rather striking figure strutting down the street as if he owned that portion of the soot-blackened industrial city. The two days on the train, and the outbreak of sunshine eight hours north of London had served to heighten Logan’s enthusiasm for life once more. Never one to stay down for long, he walked along feeling as optimistic as if he did own the city—and the world, if he chose. Having no money in his pockets was only a minor inconvenience to Logan Macintyre, though certainly one he would not want to advertise in his hometown. But temporary setbacks, as he always called his losses at cards and dice, in no way diminished the possibilities for the future. Though he remembered his friend fondly, and indeed, over the last two days the image of the old man’s dying face had scarcely left his mind, Skittles’ final words to him had yet to be driven into his heart. It would take more than a friend’s death to penetrate his superficial existence with a deeper and more lasting vision of life’s true values.

  As he passed a public house where he had spent many an idle hour during his youth, Logan’s brisk pace slowed to a stop. Through the sooty window he spied several faces he thought he recognized, sitting, as it seemed, in the very spots where he had left them seven years earlier. He turned inside, wondering if he had changed as little as they. His question was answered in short order; he sauntered toward the bar unrecognized.

  He removed Skittles’ cap, kept his eye on the table where three old friends sat, and waited. It took but a moment or two longer before a dawning stare of recognition began to spread over one of the faces. Logan grinned.

  “Be that Logan Macintyre?” exclaimed the man.

  His two cronies glanced up and peered across the room.

  “Ain’t no wiseacre kid no more!” said another.

  Slowly Logan approached, laughing at their comments.

  “Hoots! Jist look at ye!” cried the first.


  “Didna anyone tell ye there was a depression on?” asked the third man, speaking now for the first time. “Where ye been, Logan, ’at ye can dress in sich fine duds?”

  “London,” replied Logan.

  “An’ hoo lang’s it been since ye left Glasgow, lad?”

  “Seven years.”

  “Ye still haen’t told us hoo ye came by sich a suit,” jibed another. “Hasna the Depression hit auld London yet?”

  “Or maybe oor frien’ here has finally found himsel’ a lucrative”—with the word the speaker winked at his two friends knowingly—“line o’ work!”

  Logan laughed again, wanting to dispel no fancies for the moment, at least until he could once again get a feel for the lay of the land.

  Drinks were bought all around, and no one so much as thought of allowing Logan to lay out a penny toward them. The fact that he looked wealthier than all of them put together only made them the more determined that they should finance this festive afternoon of his homecoming.

  “Where’s old Bernie MacPhee?” asked Logan.

  “Oh, he’s doin’ a drag up in Barlinnie for stealin’ a automobile.”

  “An’ Danny?” tried Logan again.

  “Got himsel’ killed a year ago. Seems a feller didna agree that his full house were on the up-an’-up.”

  Logan exhaled softly at the news, somewhat deflated.

  “An’ what hae ye been up t’ in Lonnon, Logan?”

  “Me?”

  But before he had the opportunity to frame a response, one of the others at the table answered for him.

  “Why look at him, ye dunderhead,” the man said, fingering the fine fabric of Logan’s suit. “Anyone can see he’s doin’ jist what he set oot t’ do. Ye run one o’ them fancy night clubs, nae doobt, don’t ye noo, Logan?”