The Deep End

by Fredric Brown

  Most of the other things were easy to place, too, although I didn’t see how Dick Whittington got in there unless as a random association with the phrase “Turn again”; there’s an English nursery rhyme something like “Turn again, Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London.”

  But the body under the wolf’s head had been Obie’s and the change to a tiger’s head was easily explicable; I’d thought of Obie metaphorically as a tiger more than once. The ink–well, that was obvious enough for a newspaperman. True, printer’s ink is not a liquid; it’s the consistency of thick paste and wouldn’t work very well in a swimming pool, but dreams aren’t so literal as to insist on a point like that.

  And the pool itself and not being able to swim and the push–my mind had picked those things from the death of Constance Bonner, the teacher who had probably committed suicide. The deep end–well, if Obie had killed her by pushing her into the pool he’d certainly have chosen the deep end for the purpose. Or maybe my subconscious was telling me that I was going off the deep end in regard to the whole thing. And maybe, I thought, my subconscious was all too damned right if that’s what it was trying to tell me in the dream.

  Meanwhile my body, now that I was awake, was telling me something else. It was telling me that I’d drunk quite a bit of beer and that I’d better go to the bathroom before I went back to sleep.

  I got up and went to the bathroom and came back, and I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about Nina, for one thing, wishing I was with her tonight–even under the circumstances. And wondering whether I loved her; whether I’d want to marry her if Millie and I broke up. And whether I wanted Millie and me to break up, or whether basically I was still in love with Millie and the affair with Nina was just an affair, wonderful right now, but nothing important or permanent.

  But damn it, I didn’t want to decide that now; I didn’t even want to think about it. I wanted to stall, to see what was going to happen, to let the decision come to me instead of my hunting for it. And I should wait until Millie came back and find out what she had decided. If she wanted to try playing house again, I should, in all fairness, be able to give it a try; it wouldn’t be a fair try if I’d already decided that I loved Nina more. And if I decided now that I definitely didn’t love Nina then, in fairness to her, I should break things off now before she got too emotionally involved, if she wasn’t already, and was hurt. And I didn’t want to break things off.

  I thought, damn a society that insists on monogamy.

  My thoughts went round in circles. Like the horsefly under the ceiling of the editorial room last Saturday. Less than a week ago. It seemed a lot longer than that. But when I’d watched that horsefly I’d never heard of Obie Westphal or Jimmy Chojnacki, and I hadn’t seen Nina for so long that I’d almost forgotten about her. Certainly I had no thought of having an affair with her this week. I’d been looking forward to a week of fishing and hunting and poker playing at Lake Laflamme.

  Millie still thought that’s where I was. Instead, Millie, I’m here, sleeping alone in the bed in which we’ve had so much happiness. And thinking of you, but of another woman too. Wishing I was with her tonight. But not that she was here, in this bed we’ve shared, with me. Funny what strange scruples and sentimentalities people have. As though it matters where something happens.

  And you, Millie, have you tried an extramarital experiment this week of limbo?

  I tried to picture Millie with someone else and then wished I hadn’t tried; the very thought hurt. Damn the double standard, damn everything, damn not being able to sleep. Damn not being able to sleep.

  The luminous dial of the clock beside the bed had told me it was two o’clock when I’d wakened from that dream. It told me now that the time was three-ten. I’d been awake an hour and ten minutes, after only three hours’ sleep, and I was getting wider and wider awake every minute.

  Was Nina by any chance awake now, wondering, worrying?

  Was Millie?

  Three-sixteen. Millie had mild insomnia occasionally. She had something in capsules that a doctor had prescribed for it. Dormison. Had she taken the bottle of capsules with her or was it still where it usually stood, on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet? I got up and lighted a cigarette and then headed for the bathroom again. The Dormison wasn’t there. Millie had taken the bottle with her.

  Maybe, I thought, I should hit myself in the head with a hammer. Or a blackjack, except that I didn’t have a blackjack. Warm milk might help but there wasn’t any milk. Or more beer, but there wasn’t any beer in the house, or anything else to drink. Or anything to– Yes, there was something to eat. There was still some sandwich meat and two rolls left downstairs from what I’d bought at the delicatessen. Thank God for small favors.

  I went downstairs. Made a sandwich. Ate it. Felt wider awake than ever. Damn Millie for taking all of the sleeping capsules with her; she might have left a few. But then she didn’t know I’d be home this week and besides I’d never had insomnia.

  Until now. Like the stock gag of the nightclub emcee who says other emcees always have stories to tell about things that happen to them on the way to the club, but nothing has ever happened to him on his way to the club. Pause. Until tonight.

  And maybe, just maybe, Nina was awake too right now. Why wasn’t I a telepath so I could know? In her bed, with my arms around her, my body to hers, I could maybe go to sleep and she could maybe go to sleep. But she probably was asleep. Everybody on my side of the world was asleep except me. On the other side of the world it was day and all the Chinamen were awake but I was the only person awake on my side. And I was alone and lonesome and wide awake.

  I went back upstairs because I’d left my cigarettes there. I lighted one and sat on the edge of the bed to smoke it. When I finished it, I’d try once more to go back to sleep. Three-fifty now. I’d been awake almost two hours after three hours’ sleep on the night on which I was going to catch up with my sleeping. Well, I still could if I ever got back to sleep again; there wasn’t any reason why I couldn’t sleep as late as I wanted to.

  That was a bright spot. Look for the bright spots.

  What bright spots? I’d probably never sleep again. No sleep to knit the raveled sleeve of care, and how damn raveled can a sleeve get?

  I finished the cigarette and turned out the light. And lay there wide awake with my mind making like a horsefly. Circling from Millie to Nina and back and again, and I didn’t want to think about them because I might come to a decision and I didn’t want to.

  But I did want to decide about Obie, and why couldn’t I think about him? I guess because I’d thought myself out the evening before. I’d lined up two possibilities, the only two I could see, and I’d carried each of them as far as I could with the data I had. Farther, in fact; I’d been doing a lot of guessing too. If I thought about Obie now I’d just be going over the same territory again, my mind again making like a horsefly, the same horsefly in a different room.

  No use even trying to decide between those two alternatives on Obie until I had more data. I’d have more data when Nina had checked–

  Suddenly I swore to myself, realizing something I hadn’t realized before. Tomorrow–today rather–was Friday, the last school day of the week. If Nina didn’t get me that information from the school records tomorrow, she wouldn’t be able to get it until Monday, three days from now and my vacation over.

  Three days lost, and the only days I’d have completely free before going back to work and maybe Millie being home to boot, for a long time. The three days I had left in which to put in full time following my hunch. Or my delusion.

  I could get up early–or get up now and stay awake; I might as well–and have breakfast with Nina, explain to her then.

  But it was such a complicated, touchy thing to explain. Having to admit to her that I’d been lying to her on other fronts, too; the reason for my interest in the accidents at the school, my questions about th
e Chojnacki family.

  At breakfast? Look what had happened at breakfast this morning or yesterday morning, Thursday morning. I was sleeping, or not sleeping, alone tonight because of it.

  No, I didn’t want to explain to Nina over breakfast why I wanted to know if Obie Westphal’s class schedules gave him alibis for murders. In fact, I didn’t want to have to explain that, and admit the lies I’d told already, to Nina at all.

  Why couldn’t I get that information myself? Right now?

  There wasn’t a night watchman at the high school building; Nina’s story of how the body of Constance Bonner had been discovered by a squad-car patrol proved that. And they’d investigated only because there was a light on. I knew where the file cabinets of students’ records were–or at least where they’d been when I attended school there–and it wasn’t in line with any window. I had a little pencil flashlight that I could use without a chance of it being seen from the outside. True, I’d have to break or jimmy a window to get in but there surely wouldn’t be any burglar alarm system. And I knew the layout.

  Was I kidding myself? Did I have the guts to commit a burglary, even a relatively safe and easy one? A breaking-and-entering, really, since I wouldn’t be stealing anything.

  I looked at the clock. Ten minutes after four. An hour and a half, maybe, until dawn. And I could dress in ten minutes, be there in another twenty. For three precious days.

  I still didn’t know if I was kidding myself. But I got out of bed and dressed, fast. I was in my car, driving, in less than ten minutes and what with the emptiness of the streets at that hour I made the trip in only fifteen minutes, and without speeding.

  I drove past, making sure the building was completely dark, and parked a block and a half away. I checked that I had the things I’d picked up on my way out of the house; the pencil flashlight, a handful of rags in case I had to break glass, a small crowbar. The crowbar was going to be a problem to carry. I solved the problem, though. One end was curved so I dropped it down inside my trousers with the curved end hooked over my belt. With my suit coat buttoned, it wouldn’t show. But it banged uncomfortably against my right leg just above the knee when I walked.

  I walked back to the school without having seen a person or a car. I took a good look around, and a good listen to make sure no car was coming, before I cut back across the grass and got behind the trees and shrubbery on the west side of the building. That would be the best side because the cover was better and because, too, the windows were better situated. The bottom of the lowest row of windows on that side was just flush with the ground and the windows couldn’t be seen at all from the street. If I’d got that far without being seen, I was doing all right.

  I stood there a few minutes, waiting to be sure that I was still doing all right, and to let my eyes get used to the darkness. Or the not-quite-darkness; there was just a touch of gray to the sky already.

  When I could see fairly well, I started moving. I decided to pick a window in about the middle of the building because there I’d be farthest from any residence where some light sleeper or insomniac might hear glass breaking if I had to break glass.

  But I didn’t get all the way to the middle of the building and I didn’t have to break glass. God loved me. Someone had been careless; there was a window open, wide open.

  I lowered myself through it and waited another few minutes–I don’t know why–and then, shielding the pencil flashlight with my hand, I found my way across a classroom and into the corridor. I knew my way. Around one turn and up the middle stairs and right across from it were the offices.

  The file cabinets were still in the same place. At a distance and angle from the windows and around a corner from them so I could use my flashlight, with reasonable care, without a chance of its being seen from the street. I didn’t know how they were arranged but I saw one drawer labeled 1953. And since it was now only the summer of 1952 I thought the date must mean the class of 1953, which would be Obie’s class. I opened it and I was right. The folders in it each bore a name, arranged alphabetically. And among the W’s I found a folder labeled Westphal, Henry O. I took it back into the far corner, still safer from the windows, and opened it on the floor. I had his schedules for the three years he’d attended the school, his grades and his credits, his attendance record and a few other things that weren’t important from my point of view. I got the information I wanted except that there wasn’t in the file any record of extracurricular activities such as membership in school clubs. Then I remembered that would be covered in the school annuals and that there was–or had been–a neat chronological row of them in the bookcase on the opposite side of the room. I put Obie’s file back in the cabinet and closed the drawer.

  And then went to where the bookcase was. Or used to be. It had been moved to another wall but I found it and I found the 1952 volume of the school annual. I found the pages, two of them, devoted to the Drama Club and studied them. I put the volume back in the bookcase and left the way I had come.

  The sky was definitely gray now.

  I was a block away from the school when the squad car passed me, being driven slowly. Two men in it. The one on my side, not the driver, looked me over as it went by but I must have looked all right, even for a five o’clock in the morning pedestrian, for the car kept on going.

  But half a block farther on it pulled in to the curb in front of the car I’d left parked there. My ancient Buick. I had to keep on walking; I’d been seen and if I turned around and started the other way they’d have been stupid not to pick me up for questioning. So I kept on going toward the Buick, and the crowbar that I hadn’t had to use banged against my leg at every step.

  One of the two policemen was still in the squad car parked just ahead. The other had his foot on my front bumper and was writing out a ticket. He looked up from his writing as I came close. “Your car?”

  I nodded.

  He said, “The whole Goddam block to park in, nothing else near, and you park in front of a fireplug. Been drinking, pal?”

  I looked and I had parked in front of a fireplug. It was so ridiculous that I wanted to laugh and, for the moment, I quit being scared. I said, “No, I haven’t been drinking. But my parking there sure must look as though I had been. My God, I deserve a ticket for that one.”

  I should have argued; I should have realized that it makes a cop suspicious if you don’t argue with him.

  He looked at me. “Where you been, this time of night?”

  The other cop was getting out of the car now, coming to join the first one. The crowbar hanging down my right trouser leg felt as though it weighed a ton and must be noticeable a mile away. But my mind was still working.

  I said, “Visiting a friend,” and had the rest of my story planned.

  “We passed you walking almost a block back. Where does your friend live? How come you didn’t park in front of his house?”

  I took a deep breath and let it out as though I was trying to decide whether to tell him something or not. Then I said, “I parked over a block away on purpose, Officer. And for the same reason that I’m leaving at this hour, before her neighbors might be awake and see me.”

  “Let’s see your license.”

  I reached for it thankfully. If they were going to pat me over for a gun–and find that damned crowbar–they’d have done it before they let me reach into a pocket for my wallet. I was okay now; I could show them I was a solid citizen and not a burglar. That crowbar would have been something to explain. I handed them my wallet, opened out, instead of slipping the driver’s license out of it; that way they could see the license under the celluloid window on one side and my press pass under the window on the other.

  The cop who’d just got out of the car looked over the other’s shoulder. He said, “Reporter. What the hell, Hank, he’ll just square a ticket if you give him one. Come on.”

  “Not this time,” I said. “Think I want
to tell Joe Steiner I parked in front of a fireplug in an empty block at night? And have him kid me about it for the next year? This one I’ll pay, if you give me a ticket.”

  The first cop put his foot on the bumper again, ready to write. He said, “Okay, if you want one.”

  The second one said, “Ahh, nuts. Give the guy a break. He had hot pants when he parked there. His mind wasn’t on fireplugs.”

  The first cop took his foot off the bumper and put the pad in his pocket. He said, “Okay, okay. Next time look, though.”

  I said, “Thanks, boys. How’s about telling me your names? So if they ever pop up in a story I’ll at least see that they’re spelled right.”

  They told me their names and how to spell them and we talked a few minutes. Then they got in the squad car and drove off.

  I got behind the wheel of the Buick, turned on the lights and started the engine, and then decided to sit there and jitter a minute before I started driving. I got the crowbar out and reached over and put it on the floor in the back seat. I never wanted to see a crowbar again in my life.

  And how damned lucky it was that I hadn’t had to use it to break in! If I’d had to jimmy a window there’d be a burglary report made tomorrow by the high school. And since this was their beat those squad cops would get the report and, solid citizen though they now thought me, they’d remember the hour of my return to my car and want to ask me some more questions. Oh, I could have bluffed it through, even with Chief Steiner, by sticking to my story and refusing to divulge the name of my mythical friend to give myself an alibi. But it wouldn’t have helped my standing with the police department. As things had worked out, though, I felt sure that I’d left everything at the school just as I’d found it and that there wouldn’t be any report of a burglary.