Target Practice (Stout, Rex)

by Rex Stout

  “I hate her!”

  Besant turned in surprise.

  “I mean,” stammered the girl, flushing, “I mean—she has no right to love you! I mean, there is no earthly reason for it!”

  “I admit it is inexplicable,” agreed Besant. “But I assure you such is the case.”

  “Tell me her name.”

  “Miss Herrow!”

  “Yes. Well—yes. I want to know.”

  “You know very well I will do nothing of the sort. You should not—” He stopped suddenly and glanced at his watch. “Good Heavens! It’s seven o’clock! Only ten minutes. Miss Herrow—you’ll pardon me—” He started for the door.

  “But you haven’t had your breakfast!”

  “I’ll have to go without it,” came from the hall. “Higgins, bring my bag! Good-by, Miss Herrow!”

  The girl stood motionless, amazed. He was actually going—like that!

  She heard the outer door open and close with a bang; then, through the window, came the sound of a motor whirring and the voice of Besant urging someone to go like the devil. Miss Herrow hesitated no longer. One bound and she was in the hall; another carried her to the outer door.

  The next instant she was running like a deer down the gravel walk that encircled the house; and just as Higgins started to close the door of the tonneau after throwing in the bag, a streak of blue rushed past him and deposited itself on the seat beside Mr. Besant.

  “What—” began the young man, dazed with wonder. Then he spoke to the chauffeur: “Go on! We have only seven minutes.”

  The car leaped forward like a mad bull. It reached the gateway—a short, swift turn—then shot forward on the smooth, level road. Besant sat looking straight ahead, with the expression of one who is performing a painful duty.

  “I don’t see why we are hurrying so fast,” observed Miss Herrow presently—if one may be said to observe anything when going at the rate of fifty miles an hour. “You aren’t going to catch that train, you know.”

  “Yes, I am,” shouted the young man without turning his head. “It’s only five miles and we have six minutes. We’ll make it easy.”

  “That isn’t what I meant. I mean you’re not going to get on it.”

  “On what?”

  “The train.”

  He did not appear to think this worthy of an answer. She waited ten seconds, then added:

  “Because I won’t let you.”

  Still no answer. The car was eating up the road hungrily with great bounds and leaps; the fence posts and nearby landscapes were an indistinct blur. She waited till they had crossed a raised bridge, holding tightly to the seat to keep from bouncing out; then called:

  “Mr. Besant!”

  No answer.

  “Ned!”

  Even at that he did not turn. She saw the spire of the village church over some trees two miles away, and fancied she heard the whistle of a train—the train that was to carry him to Baba. She shouted in desperation:

  “Ned, do you love me?”

  Then, and then only, did the young man appear to find the conversation interesting. He turned.

  “Yes!” he shouted back.

  “Then don’t go! Because I love you, too! I do, indeed! And she can’t be very nice, or she wouldn’t let you send for her like that. Please! I do love you! Don’t go!”

  Besant’s face had turned white, and the wind had brought the tears to his eyes. But his voice was loud and firm enough:

  “Will you marry me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t hear you!”

  “Yes!”

  Besant reached forward, touched the chauffeur’s arm, and shouted something in his ear. The car slowed down, stopped, backed, turned around, and headed back.

  Then—it was a lonely country road, and the chauffeur, like all Mrs. Hartshorn’s servants, was well trained—Besant firmly put his arms where they had wanted to be for two years, and at the same time something caused a delicious sensation of warmth to creep around his neck. And if there was no conversation on the homeward journey, it was because there are times when lips have something more important to do than talk.

  Late that evening a girl and a young man sat on a wooden bench in a moonlit garden. As far as shades of expression were revealed by the dim silvery light, it might be seen that their faces were filled with the fire of triumphant happiness; but it might also have been observed that every now and then the girl’s eyes were turned upward with a suggestion of mingled curiosity and hesitation.

  “Ned,” she said suddenly, “I want to know—you must tell me—who is she?”

  Mr. Besant took his lips away from her fingers long enough to answer, “Who?”

  “Why—the—Baba.”

  “Ah!” Mr. Besant looked up. “That’s a secret, my dearest Sylvia. But no”—he appeared to consider—“I might as well tell you now. You’re sure to find out some day. It is very simple. The word baba is Hindustani for baby. Speaking vulgarly and more or less metaphorically, you are certainly my baby. Therefore—”

  “You don’t mean—” began Sylvia, while her eyes danced with sudden comprehension.

  “Yes, I do,” interrupted Mr. Besant, again raising her fingers to his lips and preparing to resume operations. “Baba was what you might call a strategical creation—a figment of the imagination. There never was any Baba except you.

  “And,” he added, as something happened that caused him to forget all about the fingers, “there never will be.”

  Warner & Wife

  LORA WARNER, AFTER A leisurely inspection of herself in the pier mirror next the window, buttoned her well-fitting blue jacket closely about her, put on her hat, and caught up a bulging portfolio of brown leather that was lying on the dressing table. Then she turned to call to her husband in the adjoining room:

  “Timmie!”

  When she had waited at least half a second she called again, this time with a shade of impatience in her voice: “Timmie!”

  The door opened and a man appeared on the threshold. Picture him a scant three inches over five feet in height, weighing perhaps a hundred and fifteen or twenty pounds; in short, a midget. A thin forelock of reddish hair straggled over his left eyebrow; his mustache, also thin and red, pointed straight down in a valiant but abortive attempt to reach his full lips; his ears, of generous size, had an odd appearance of being cocked like those of an expectant horse.

  The small and deep-set eyes, filled as they were with timidity and self-deprecation amounting almost to docility, seemed nevertheless to possess a twinkle of intelligence. This was Timothy D. Warner.

  “Good morning, my dear!” said he, stopping three paces from the threshold like a well-trained servant.

  “Where were you at breakfast?” returned his wife, scorning the convention of salutation.

  Mr. Warner blinked once, then said pleasantly:

  “I haven’t been.”

  “Indeed! I supposed as much, or I would have seen you. I told you last night I wanted to talk over this Hamlin & Hamlin matter at the breakfast table.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. But you see”—Mr. Warner appeared to hesitate—“I—the fact is, the beastly alarm clock failed to go off.”

  “Did you wind it?”

  “No.” This manfully.

  Lora Warner sighed. “Timmie, you are unthinkable! What about Hamlin & Hamlin? Did you look it over?”

  This simple question seemed to upset Mr. Warner completely. He grew red, hesitated, and finally stammered:

  “No—that is—I read something—”

  “Do you mean you didn’t?”

  He nodded reluctantly.

  “Then what were you doing? There was a light in your room when I went to bed.”

  Mr. Warner gazed on the floor, and was silent.

  “What were you doing?”

  Still silence.

  “I have asked you twice, Timmie, what you were doing.” The tone was merciless.

  Mr. Warner, seeing there was no help for
it, raised his eyes and met her gaze. “I was playing solitaire,” he announced bravely.

  Then, before the storm had time to break, he continued apologetically:

  “I didn’t know there was any hurry about it, my dear, or I would have looked it over at once. The case doesn’t come up till the twenty-fifth. Besides, you said you had it all worked up, and merely wanted my opinion on one or two minor points. If I had known you really needed—” He stopped suddenly.

  “Well? If you had known I really needed—”

  “Nothing,” said Mr. Warner lamely.

  “What were you going to say?”

  “Why—advice—if you needed my advice—”

  “Your advice! Do you think by any chance I need your advice?”

  “My dear, goodness no!” exclaimed Mr. Warner, as though the idea were preposterous.

  “I should hope not,” his wife agreed. “I am quite able to manage my business without you, Timmie. Only, as you do nothing but sit around and read, I thought you might have happened on something that would throw light on the question of annulled liens, which is intricately involved and has an important bearing on this case. But I believe I have it very well in hand.”

  “There is plenty of time till the twenty-fifth,” Mr. Warner observed diffidently.

  “There is,” assented his wife. “But that has nothing to do with this. The case has been put forward. It is calendared for today.”

  “Today! But what—then perhaps—I can look it over this morning and see you at lunch—at recess—”

  “My dear Timmie,” smiled Mrs. Warner, “you appear to think I do need your advice. Don’t trouble yourself. I have it well in hand. Play solitaire by all means.” She moved toward the door.

  “At ten dollars a point,” announced Mr. Warner to her back, “I am sixty-two thousand dollars ahead of the game.”

  “Fine!” She sent a derisive smile over her shoulder. “By-by, Timmie!”

  Mr. Warner gazed at the closed door for a full thirty seconds, then turned and went to his own room to complete his interrupted toilet. That done, he went downstairs to the dining room.

  Sadie, the cook, appeared in the doorway.

  “Good morning!” she observed unamiably.

  “I see I am late,” returned Mr. Warner with a weak attempt at cheerfulness. “Do you suppose I could have a couple of eggs, Sadie?”

  “Fried or boiled?”

  “Well—shirred.”

  Mr. Warner never ate his eggs any other way than shirred, and as Sadie never failed to ask him, “Fried or boiled?” he was forced to begin each day with the feeling that he was being somehow put in the wrong. A most uncomfortable feeling, but one to which he was so well accustomed that he shook it off almost immediately and fell to thinking of other things.

  First of the case of Hamlin & Hamlin vs. the Central Sash and Door Company, which was to come up that day in court. No use to worry about it, he decided; no doubt his wife, as she had said, had it well in hand. His wife usually had things well in hand. No less could be expected of her, being, as she was, the ablest lawyer in the city of Granton, excepting neither man nor woman.

  Everybody said so, including Mr. Warner; indeed, he had said it before anyone else. He had expected it of her from the first; and during all the fifteen years of their married life she had been mounting steadily, with never a faltering step, to the height of his expectation and her own ambition.

  Mr. Warner often pictured her to himself as he appeared on that day when he had first seen her in the law school in New York. His attention, which had just begun to be solidly fixed on torts and evidence, had suddenly wavered, fluttered through the air, and settled inextricably in the fluffy brown mass of her glorious hair.

  It had taken him just three seconds to discover that her face was as fresh and beautiful as any phrase in Blackstone—in fact, a little more so—which was quite a discovery for a man of the temperament and inclinations of Timothy D. Warner.

  The puzzle of his life was, why had she married him? When, some years after the event, in a moment of astounding intrepidity, he had asked her this question directly, she had replied with cynical humor that every ship needs an anchor for safety. Mr. Warner understood quite well what she meant, but he was inclined to doubt.

  He had at one time distinctly heard her pronounce the words, “I love you,” and, since there had been nobody else in the room but himself, he felt justified in believing that they were addressed to him. For six months after the wedding she had openly fed this belief; since then her time had been completely occupied with her own career.

  They had been married within a week after the end of their three years in law school, and had gone immediately to Granton, a town of sixty thousand in the Middle West—Lora having declared there was no time to waste on a honeymoon.

  Luckily, Mr. Warner had inherited an income of some three thousand dollars a year from his father, so they were not forced to dig for bread.

  He had supposed, not unreasonably, that they would open an office together, for Lora had stipulated that her marriage should not interfere with her ambition. But she vetoed this idea without ceremony. No partnership for her. She would carve out her own future, unhampered and alone. So he rented an office for her in the finest building on Main Street, and another for himself two blocks farther down.

  From the first she had been successful. The New Woman had just become fashionable in Granton, and the city received its first female lawyer with open arms.

  Her first two or three cases, unimportant of course, she won easily. Then called in consultation as an experiment by the corporation which owned the largest factory in the city, she had saved them a considerable amount of worry and a large sum of money by showing wherein a certain annoying statute could be proved unconstitutional.

  She and Mr. Warner had sat up every night for a week, studying this problem. It was, of course, by the merest luck that Mr. Warner happened to be the one who discovered the solution. So said Mr. Warner, and his wife politely agreed with him.

  Nor could she see any necessity for mentioning her husband’s name when she carried the solution to the board of directors in her own pretty head.

  At any rate, it earned for her a share of the corporation’s law business, and in addition the amazed respect of the solid businessmen of the city. They began to take her seriously. At the end of a year one of these men actually placed an important case entirely in her hands. She was half afraid to take it, and told her husband so.

  “My dear,” said Mr. Warner, “you are far too modest. You’ll win it, sure as shucks.” And he had straightway sat down and attacked the case on both flanks and in the center, with the result that in less than a fortnight he had it bound, gagged, and delivered into her hands.

  Mrs. Warner acknowledged the obligation in private with a kiss—the first he had received in four months. That was his reward. Hers consisted of a fee in four figures, an immense gain in prestige, and the clamorous eulogy of the men higher up.

  From that day forth her office was filled with clients and her portfolio with briefs.

  As for Mr. Warner’s office, it was never filled with anything but tobacco smoke, for Mr. Warner himself occupied a very small portion of space, and no one else ever set foot in it.

  Nevertheless, for fifteen years he continued his habit of visiting it for an hour every day, usually about two o’clock in the afternoon. He would lean back in the swivel chair, cock his feet on the edge of the desk, and light his pipe. Thus he would remain, looking meditatively out on Main Street for the space of three pipefuls; the time varied from forty-five minutes to an hour and a quarter, according to the kind of pipe he happened to be smoking.

  Then he would return home and bury himself in the library with the documents relative to some one of his wife’s important cases which she had recommended to his study.

  For it must be understood that Mr. Warner did all his wife’s “preliminary work.” That was what she called it—not inaccurately, for
what he exactly did was to work up her cases for trial. That is, the difficult and doubtful ones.

  “But,” you will exclaim if you happen to be a lawyer, “that is all there is to the case. The preparation is the difficulty. Anyone with a little wit and common sense can do the court work.”

  That may be true. I am not a lawyer, and am not qualified to judge. You may take the facts as I give them for what they are worth.

  To resume. Mr. Warner’s time was so taken up with his wife’s preliminary work that he had none left to search for clients on his own account. Besides, was he not the happy possessor of an exciting avocation? Any man who has won sixty-two thousand dollars from himself at solitaire, even at ten dollars a point, has had his hands pretty full.

  Mr. Warner had been driven to solitaire by loneliness. The loneliness was a natural growth. His brilliant and beautiful wife, drawn more and more as her popularity increased into the whirl of Granton society, had at first attempted to take her husband along, and he had not been averse. But he soon had enough of it.

  Two teas and one dinner were sufficient to make it plain to him that his position was perfectly analogous to that of the husband of a prima donna. His wife was courted, sought after, flattered, fawned upon, flirted with. She was beautiful, witty, graceful, and four inches taller than her husband. He was—well, he was Timmie.

  So he went home and played solitaire.

  He played for hours, days, weeks, months—whenever he could find a respite from the preliminary work. He played all the kinds he had ever heard of, and when they became tiresome, invented new ones.

  Then, one day he had an idea. He had had it before, but never had it struck him so forcibly. All day it remained in the front of his brain, and that night after dinner he spoke to his wife about it. It was an embarrassing idea, and he grew red and stammered for a full ten minutes before Mrs. Warner grasped the meaning of his disconnected and halting sentences. When she did understand, she stopped him with an exclamation.

  “My dear Timmie! You know very well it’s impossible. I regret it as much as you do. I—I would like to have—to be a mother, too. But right in the middle of my career—it takes time, you know—and there is the danger—really, it’s impossible. It’s too bad, Timmie; but one can’t have everything. Here are those Tilbury supply contracts; look them over, will you? They must be absolutely tight.”