Target Practice (Stout, Rex)

by Rex Stout

  I walked on air and rode on the wings of the angels as I went downtown that night.

  The following evening—for the first time—I dined with her at her home. During the day I had made an important decision—to me. I had decided to ask Miss Markton to be my wife. I could no longer conceal from myself the fact that I loved her—indeed, I no longer had any desire to conceal it.

  It may be asked why I hesitated at all. I put that question to myself impatiently—and I could find no answer.

  No answer—that is, in reason. But always there was in my heart that strange foreboding of evil—something inexplicable that tried to restrain me in spite of myself. I ignored it.

  A dozen times that evening I tried to declare my love—to ask Lillian Markton to marry me—but the words somehow refused to come. In fact, I believe it takes a great coward to propose marriage—no man could possibly have the courage.

  Miss Markton’s mood may have had something to do with it. All her gaiety and cheerfulness of the evening before were gone; but when I attempted to rally her she declared that it was merely a reaction from the strain of the past week, and that all she needed was rest. At my earnest expression of sympathy she rose and crossed slowly to where I sat, resting her arm on the back of my chair.

  When I looked up at her I was surprised to find that her eyes were wet with tears.

  “Mr. Moorfield—” she said, hesitating, her voice strangely tender. Then, after a long minute of silence, “But no—not tonight,” she continued, as though to herself.

  She let her hand fall to my shoulder, then hastily drew it away and returned to her own chair.

  “If there is anything I can do,” I began uncertainly.

  “No,” she said hurriedly, “there is nothing.”

  For several minutes we sat in silence. When she spoke again it was to make what I then considered a rather strange request.

  “I wish,” she said, “to see that picture again—the one on your desk. I wonder—may I call on you tomorrow morning?”

  “Certainly,” I said; “but it seems—if you wish, I can bring the picture to you instead.”

  “No,” she answered; “if you don’t mind I would prefer to see it—to come to your office. Of course, I know that what I am saying sounds queer, but tomorrow you will understand. You don’t mind, do you?” she smiled.

  For another hour we sat, talking trivialities, and by the time I rose to go Miss Markton was almost cheerful. She accompanied me to the door and stood looking down at me as I descended the stairs, and as I paused at the bottom I heard a faint, tender “Good night.”

  I have heard it many times since—in my dreams.

  The next morning I arrived at the office early, after a bad night. I was in anything but a pleasant mood, and I am afraid I made things rather uncomfortable for one or two callers and for James and the stenographer, who seemed relieved when I dismissed them for the day, saying that I expected someone with whom I wished to be alone.

  It was an hour later when the door opened to admit Miss Markton.

  “You see,” I smiled as I ushered her into the inner office, “I have cleared the way for you. Here is your chair. It was just ten days ago today that you first sat in it. Things have changed since then, haven’t they?”

  “Yes,” said Miss Markton slowly, “things have changed. No,” as I took a seat on the window ledge, “sit here—in your own chair. I want to talk to you—that way.”

  I did as she requested, and drew my chair up in front of the desk, close to hers, while she sat regarding me intently, even wistfully.

  Then, as she turned and looked at the picture in front of her, her eyes hardened, and when she spoke it was in a cold, lifeless voice that was new to me.

  During what followed she did not look at me once, but gazed steadily at the picture.

  “Do you know,” she said, “what that picture has done to you—to us? I want you to promise me,” she went on before I could speak, “that you will hear me through in silence. That whatever I do or say you will say nothing—till I have finished. Will you promise?”

  “But surely—” I began, bewildered.

  “No. You must promise.”

  It was my professional training, I suppose, that led me to nod my head gravely and listen calmly as she continued.

  A lawyer grows accustomed to the unusual.

  “I have seen that picture in my dreams,” she went on. “It has haunted me night and day. I could see your surprise when I asked about it every time I saw you. I knew it was dangerous, but I couldn’t help it. Somehow I enjoyed it—I suppose just as a child likes to play with fire. But before I go on—”

  She stopped suddenly and, bending forward in her chair, thrust her hand behind the picture and drew forth a package wrapped in paper. Placing it on the desk at my elbow she broke the string and, tearing off the paper, placed the contents before me.

  One glance was enough—involuntarily I uttered a cry of amazement.

  It was the fifty thousand dollars stolen by William Markton from the Montague Bank!

  Opening a large handbag she had carried with her, Miss Markton picked up the package of money and dropped it inside.

  “There,” she said, patting the bag, “is the money you have been searching for, Mr. Moorfield. I shall keep it. Heaven knows I have earned it!

  “You may wonder,” she continued as, scarcely hearing or comprehending, I sat with staring eyes set straight before me, “why I did not remove the money without your knowledge. It was because I felt that I owed you an explanation.

  “I took the money from Uncle Will’s safe ten minutes after he had put it there. At first it was my intention to return it, but after I opened it and saw—well, I am not making excuses. When I found that Uncle Will had been arrested, I saw plainly that I, too, was in danger.

  “They were absolutely certain to search the apartment, so I went home to get the money, and started downtown with it, having no idea of where to go. Then I saw that I was being followed, and, thoroughly frightened, came to your office merely by chance, although I had heard something of you. Almost the first thing I saw was the picture and, hardly knowing what I did, I thrust the money behind it when you stooped to throw away your cigar. It was only afterward, when your manner told me that it had not been discovered, that I realized what an excellent hiding place I had chosen.

  “You know the rest. You know why I feel myself safe in telling you. And yet you do not know all. There is one thing that such a woman as I am has no right to say to such a man as you. If I had the right”—the hard voice faltered ever so little—“I would say it. Heaven knows it is true. No—let me finish!

  “I have fooled you and cheated you enough. I am speaking now simply that you may know me for the thing I am. If I could only—”

  Here her voice broke, harsh with pain. As I sat with my head bowed between my hands I felt a breath, the merest touch, on my cheek. A moment later the door closed. She was gone.

  I have never found her except in my dreams.

  Perhaps it is just as well.

  I seem somehow to get along better with my memories than most men do with their wives; and the passing years have given me philosophy.

  As for the picture—I returned it to my friend who painted it, and who later sold it for quite a handsome sum.

  Sometimes even memories are sharp-tongued.

  Rose Orchid

  ACCEPTING AS POSTULATES the assertions that human beings are pegs, and that Lieutenant Commander Brinsley Reed, U.S.N. was a human being, it follows with certainty that he was beautifully fitted for his particular hole.

  He was third in his class out of Annapolis. By the time he attained his two full stripes he had successfully dominated three junior messes and been the subject of unusual commendation in two wardrooms; and before he had advanced halfway up the list he was known as the best deck officer in the North Atlantic.

  Four different captains applied for his services as executive when he passed into the next rank. B
ut Lieutenant Commander Reed, who had ideas of his own concerning the proper discipline of a ship, and who was lucky enough to possess a key to a certain door in the bureau at Washington, disappointed them all by obtaining for himself the command of the gunboat Helena.

  For the two years that followed, every man who had the good fortune to be transferred from the Helena to another ship swore at every chance, with violent and profane asseveration, that the Helena was a “madhouse.”

  “The old man’s a holy terror,” they would say. “Bag and hammock inspection and fire drill twice a week. Abandon ship three times a month; and when he can’t think of nothing else it’s general quarters. For a seagoin’ hat it’s ten days in the brig. And brasswork? Say! Why, this is a home!”

  All of which meant to indicate that Lieutenant Commander Reed was one of those persons who illustrate and justify the rather curious order of the words in the phrase: an officer and a gentleman.

  He had at one time believed in the Bible; but it had long ago been discarded for the Blue Book, which is officially known as “Navy Regulations, 1914.”

  In the third winter under his command, at the conclusion of the annual target practice and maneuvers at Guantanamo, the Helena was ordered to San Juan to relieve the Chester, which was returning to go into dry dock at New York.

  Lieutenant Commander Reed was much pleased at this, for two reasons: first, it would remove him from continual subordination to a flag officer; and second, he would have an opportunity to visit a boyhood friend whom he had not seen for many years, and who was now the owner of a tobacco plantation in Puerto Rico. The Helena had lain at San Juan for a month the previous spring; but the lieutenant commander had not then known that his friend was on the island.

  After all, the visit proved to be disappointing. I will not go so far as to say that Lieutenant Commander Reed had lost all social instinct, but the fact is that in his endeavor to perfect himself as a military machine he had forgotten how to be a man. He found his friend dull, and his friend found him insufferable.

  For two days they made a pretense of amusing each other. On the third morning the lieutenant commander begged his friend to take no notice of his presence, but to follow his own inclinations; the guest would amuse himself.

  “Very well,” the other agreed, “then I shall ride over to the north enclosure; the carts should arrive today. You won’t join me?”

  The lieutenant commander refused, and spent a miserable day lounging in a hammock between two giant cedars, drinking crushed pineapple and reading some ancient copies of popular magazines. That evening he announced his intention of returning to the Helena at San Juan on the following morning.

  “But you were to stay a week,” his host protested rather feebly. “And a rest will do you good. It’s not very amusing out here, but I’d be glad to have you. What’s the hurry?”

  “Confound your politeness,” said the lieutenant commander, who regarded bluntness as an untainted virtue. “It’s no good, Dick; we don’t cut in. We’re only in each other’s way—and I want to get back to the ship.”

  Accordingly, at four o’clock in the following afternoon (the start having been postponed some hours on account of the midday heat), the lieutenant commander mounted his little native pony that had carried him from San Juan to Cerrogordo in six hours, waved a last farewell to his host, and departed on his journey of forty miles across the mountains, through the foothills and down the long plain to the sea.

  As he turned into the white wagon road that leads through San Lorenzo, the lieutenant commander felt a pleasant sense of relief.

  He understood himself perfectly. Stern, passionately fond of authority, conscious of but one code of morals and of conduct, and supremely happy in his power and ability to enforce it, he was utterly unable to breathe in any other atmosphere than that of his cabin. As his pony carried him forward, past the wonderful blue limestone cliffs and innumerable rushing streams of the southern slope of the Sierra de Luquillo, his mind was thirty miles away, on the decks of the Helena.

  It dwelt on a score of petty details: the independence of Ensign Brownell, the return of Quartermaster Moran, the disgraceful condition of the pay storeroom at the last Sunday inspection. He considered these matters at some length; he liked their flavor; and he earnestly desired to deal out justice—according to the code.

  At Caguas, where he stopped for a cooling drink and a few minutes’ rest, he was advised to postpone the continuance of his journey.

  “It is dangerous, señor,” said the proprietor of the little shop. “See!”

  He pointed to the northeast, where, above the top of the dim, blue range, a black cloud was proceeding slowly westward, like a giant treading ponderously from peak to peak.

  “Well, what of it?”

  “It means a storm, señor; you will be drenched. And the trail over the mountains—at night—”

  But the lieutenant commander stopped him with a gesture, mounted his pony, and departed.

  He was very nearly in the center of the range, within two miles of the village of Rio, when the storm finally broke. It began with a mild drizzle; and the lieutenant commander dismounted long enough to unstrap the rubber poncho from his saddle and put it on.

  He had not proceeded a hundred yards farther when the rain began to descend in torrents. At the same moment the fast-approaching darkness came like a blanket over the narrow trail; and the traveler found himself fighting blindly against whirling sheets of water and the impenetrable blackness of a tropical night.

  He soon gave up the attempt to guide his pony; it required all his strength, bending over close against the animal’s neck, to maintain his seat. The roar of the wind and the descending torrents seemed terrific; he was incapable of thought or movement.

  Something brushed violently against his body, and he felt the pony sway and stumble; then a jar, a feeling as though he was being hurled violently through space.…

  The lieutenant commander sat up, glanced round, and cursed long and variously. He wanted to know where in the name of the Seven Seas—Then he remembered.

  He started to rise to his feet, and suddenly became conscious of a sharp, stinging pain in his left arm; and, trying to raise it, found that it hung helpless at his side. With another oath he stood up and stamped vigorously to assure himself of the seaworthiness of his legs, and gave an involuntarily grunt of pain as the shock communicated itself to the broken arm.

  The storm was past.

  Overhead the stars gleamed with the soft brilliance of the South. About and above him the thick foliage waved its broad fingers mysteriously in the gentle breeze, and through a rift to the left could be seen the uncertain white outline of a limestone cliff. Toward this the lieutenant commander made his way, thinking to find the trail. The pony was not to be seen.

  For perhaps half an hour he searched for the trail, stumbling over roots and fallen branches, occasionally brought to an abrupt stop by a growth of shrubbery and vines too dense to penetrate.

  At every step a shiver of pain ran through his body from the injured arm, and his head felt faint and dizzy.

  Suddenly he found himself in an open clearing, at the farther end of which he saw a light shining from the window of a cottage. He staggered to it painfully and hammered on the door.

  The door opened; the floor seemed to rise to meet him; and once more all was darkness.

  When he awoke it was to a feeling of the most delicious warmth and weariness. For some minutes after he became conscious he kept his eyes closed, merely through the lack of desire to open them. Suddenly he heard a voice at his elbow. The words were Spanish.

  “No, beloved, he is still asleep.”

  Another voice, a man’s, came from across the room.

  “But are you sure?”

  “But yes. Really there is no cause for worry. Except for the arm, there is no injury.”

  “All right. Come here, Rita.”

  The lieutenant commander opened his eyes. It was broad daylight; evidentl
y he had remained unconscious, or had slept, for many hours. He noted a small bamboo table placed close by the couch on which he lay, an American wicker rocking chair, a homemade palm screen; then his gaze wandered across the room, where stood the owners of the voices.

  The girl was directly in front of the man, disclosing to view only the outlines of his figure. Suddenly she moved to one side; and the lieutenant commander gave a start of surprise and closed his eyes involuntarily.

  Then he opened them again, slowly and cautiously. The man’s face stood out clearly in the light from the open window; and there could be no mistake.

  “Decidedly,” thought the lieutenant commander, “I’m in a devil of a hole. The wonder is I’m still alive.”

  Then he lay silent, feigning sleep, and overheard the following dialogue:

  “Well, I must go,” accompanied by a masculine sigh.

  “But, Tota! I’ve been waiting for you to say that; I’ve seen it in your eyes. This is our holiday; you promised it.”

  “Now, little one, don’t be unreasonable. How could I foretell the storm? And those hombres; you know what they’re like. If it were not for the little trees—”

  “Very well; then do you go. I shall not miss you; I shall amuse the stranger. I shall sing to him, and prepare for him the little yellow bisca, and perhaps—”

  The voice ended with an indescribable tone of teasing suggestion.

  “Rita! What do you mean?”

  There came the sound of feet scurrying across the floor, a sigh, a little breathless laugh, then:

  “Oh, Tota, my beloved! Well then, kiss me, kiss me! Ah!”

  There was a pause, then the man’s voice: “And now—”

  “Now you may go. But I shall go with you to the spring. And I want—but come, I’ll tell you on the way.”

  The lieutenant commander heard them go out, leaving the door open behind them; and he opened his eyes and thought swiftly.

  He understood at once that he had not been recognized; which was easily accounted for by the facts that he was in “civilians,” and that in the past six months he had grown a beard. But there still remained some danger; and this position of insecurity and helplessness was extremely unpleasant. Decidedly, he must get away at the very first opportunity. The first thing to do was to find out about his pony. He would ask the girl when she returned.