Target Practice (Stout, Rex)

by Rex Stout

  “Tell me! Tell me!” Mrs. Stannard implored.

  “Certainly. I am coming to it. I take it, madam, that you do not care to hear the details of the chase. What you want to know is what your husband has done and where he has gone. I have here a list of the dates and places, if you will be so good as to give me your attention.”

  He pulled out his handkerchief to mop his brow, cleared his throat, and read as follows in a loud, rhetorical voice:

  REPORT ON JONATHAN STANNARD, WRITER, 318 RIVERSIDE DRIVE

  Friday, July 9, 2.24 p.m., entered Empire Moving Picture Theater, Third Avenue and Thirty-ninth Street. Remained three hours and eleven minutes.

  Friday, July 9, 8.15 p.m.; entered Royal Moving Picture Theater, Third Avenue and Grand Street. Remained two hours and thirty-four minutes.

  Saturday, July 10, only appearance in company with client, Mrs. Stannard.

  Sunday, July 11, a.m., attended church with client.

  Sunday, July 11, 7.09 p.m., entered Circle Moving Picture Theater, Ninth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street. Remained three hours and fifteen minutes.

  Monday, July 12, 3.03 p.m., entered Louvre Moving Picture

  Theater, Third Avenue and 149th Street. Remained two hours and one minute.

  Tuesday, July 13, only appearance in company with client.

  Wednesday, July 14, 10.48 p.m., entered Columbia Moving Picture Theater, Eighth Avenue and 117th Street. Remained four hours and twenty-one minutes.

  Thursday, July 15, 9.10 a.m., went to Long Beach with client.

  Friday, July 16, 1.55 p.m., entered Mecca Moving Picture Theater, Broadway and Ninety-eighth Street. (Evidently getting bolder.)

  Left him there to report to client.

  Mr. Pearson closed the book and looked at his client with an air of triumph.

  She sat motionless, gazing at him stupidly as though she had not comprehended. Then suddenly she was aware of a shadow on the threshold, and she looked up to see her husband standing in the doorway, a puzzled expression on his grave, handsome face at the sight of his wife seated talking to a man he had never seen.

  He came toward them and saw the look on his wife’s face.

  “What’s the matter?” he demanded.

  She struggled for a moment to find her voice, and finally succeeded.

  “Jonathan,” she said, “I know all. This is Mr. Pearson, a detective. He will tell you—”

  Stannard’s face paled a little as he looked from one to the other.

  “A detective!” he repeated. “What for? What is it?”

  Then Mr. Pearson spoke.

  “Mr. Stannard,” he announced, rising to his feet, “I have just informed your wife that during the past seven days you have spent twenty hours and two minutes in moving picture theaters, with the dates and places.”

  There was a silence. Stannard’s face grew white as chalk, and it could be seen that he trembled from head to foot.

  The detective gazed at him sternly. His wife had cast her eyes on the floor, as though she could not bear to look at him in that moment.

  “I am ruined!” groaned the stricken man, sinking into a chair.

  “And I thought it was some kind of a woman,” whispered his wife. Profound regret was in her voice.

  The detective stooped to pick up his hat.

  “Well,” he said as he started for the door, “I guess you’re through with me.”

  Mrs. Stannard nodded her head in silence, then said suddenly:

  “But I must pay you; how much is it?”

  “That’s all right,” replied the other genially from the threshold; “we’ll mail our bill and you can send a check. I trust the job has been satisfactory?”

  Again Mrs. Stannard nodded. “Quite satisfactory.”

  “Good. Good day, madam.” He started to go, then turned again to add, “You’ll have to excuse me for hurrying off like this, but I got a date to go to the movies.”

  Alone with her husband, Mrs. Stannard turned to look at him with an expression of mingled incredulity and sorrow. The unhappy man sat with his face buried in his hands, moaning piteously; great beads of perspiration stood out on his brow. Thus do strong men, overtaken by their sins, bend under the awful burden of remorse.

  Suddenly he looked up and showed her his haggard countenance.

  “It is the end,” he whispered miserably. “The end of everything—I cannot—it is too much to expect—Vera, tell me—tell me—can you ever forgive me?”

  And then it was that Vera Stannard shone forth in all the glory of her womanliness. She gazed at her husband and saw the dumb pleading of his eyes fastened on her; she heard the agonized despair in his voice, and she felt something come up in her throat, while the hot tears came to her eyes. It is ever woman’s part to forgive. She smiled at him.

  “We are one, Jonathan,” she said in a sweet voice that trembled. “Who am I to judge you. I will even”—she hesitated and faltered, then went bravely on—“I will even share your sin. Yes, I will share it and glory in it.”

  She stepped forward and laid a hand on his arm.

  “Come, dear; let us dress for dinner. Afterward we shall attend the cinema—together.”

  Sanétomo

  ON THE DAY THAT Henry Brillon took a wife, he renounced—with a pang here and there—the habits and possessions of his single life.

  Most important of all was the change from the luxurious bachelor apartments on Forty-sixth Street to a still more luxurious home on Riverside Drive; it he furnished in a style calculated to strain the purse even of a successful broker. Besides his clothing and some paintings and bric-à-brac, he kept only three articles from the downtown apartment: a lacquer-wood humidor, a case of books, and his Japanese manservant, Sanétomo. He could bring himself to part with none of these. Poor Sanétomo! He was lost in the great house on the drive. He could still dress his master; he could still arrange the shining linen, the trousers, the jackets, in neat rows for a hasty selection; but that was all. No longer was he called on to prepare those savory midnight repasts, those dainty breakfasts, those perfect little teas, which had made Harry Brillon’s rooms the Mecca of all jaded palates.

  The house on the drive had a butler, a great man whom Sanétomo detested and feared, to attend to such things. Sanétomo was no longer a factotum and an artist; he was the merest valet.

  And he could remember the time he had overheard the beautiful Nella Somi say to his master: “My dear M. Brillon, I do not come here for love of you, but to taste this gibelotte of Sanétomo’s!”

  So it is not a question which of the two men, the master or the servant, most regretted the old free life. It may be doubted, in fact, whether Henry Brillon regretted it at all; at least in the first year or two of his marriage.

  His wife, who had been Dora Crevel, daughter of old Morton Crevel, was fair—fair to divinity; and in her large, dark eyes, with their shadowy depths, Brillon found happiness and the recompense for his sacrifice of freedom.

  Her face was noted for its beauty; she was young and healthy; she was intelligent; she was in love with the man she had married—small wonder if she filled his thoughts.

  So they prospered and were happy. If now and then a tiny cloud appeared on the horizon, they rushed together to drive it away.

  One or two small irritations there were, of course. Brillon’s favorite painting, a copy of a Degas, which hung in the reception hall, was an eyesore to his wife, though he never knew it. He was more frank in his disapproval of her activities—feeble and innocent enough, goodness knows—in the interests of women’s rights.

  Of more importance, perhaps, than either of these, since it did cause them some slight inconvenience, was the unaccountable dislike Mrs. Brillon had taken to the Japanese valet.

  She had said to her husband one night, a month or two after the wedding:

  “Ugh! Every time I see him I shudder.”

  “Who? Sanétomo?” asked Brillon in surprise.

  “Yes.”

  “But why?”r />
  “I don’t know.” Already Dora was sorry she had spoken. “He seems so snaky, so silent—I don’t know just what. It makes me feel creepy to know he is near me.”

  “In point of fact, he isn’t very pretty to look at,” Brillon admitted. “He’s even ugly. But you see, darling, I’ve grown attached to him; he’s been with me ten years now, and he saved my life once in Brazil. I don’t believe I could get along without him. You don’t mean—are you really annoyed by his being here?”

  Of course, Dora replied “No,” and punctuated it with a kiss. For the moment Sanétomo was forgotten.

  But as time went on her repugnance for the little yellow man increased until she could scarcely bear the sight of him; not that this caused her any great discomfort, since he scarcely ever left his master’s dressing room. She would probably not have seen him oftener than once or twice a month but for the fact that she had contracted the habit of spending a half-hour or so before bedtime in that very room with her husband; it had been begun by her desire to read aloud to him a novel of Dreiser’s.

  One evening as she read she became suddenly aware that the Japanese was sitting on a stool at the farther end of the room, absolutely motionless, with his little, expressionless eyes gazing straight ahead. Sometime later, when he had gone, she had said to her husband:

  “Really, Harry, I don’t think it’s a good idea to allow the servants to sit around like that.”

  But he had only laughed, and replied that Sanétomo was not a servant, but a seneschal.

  Every evening thereafter the yellow man could be seen on his stool in the corner; and when the sight of him became an irritation too strong for Dora’s nerves, she solved the difficulty by simply turning her chair the other way. There she would sit for an hour or so, usually after midnight, three or four times a week, reading aloud from a novel or play, or conversing with her husband, who would he stretched out in a big Turkish chair in front of her.

  And Sanétomo would squat on his stool in the shadow, unnoticed and unheard. Not a sound would come from him during the whole hour; not a cough, nor a movement of the body, nor even a deep breath; none of those little noises by which a human being reveals its presence even in sleep.

  Heaven only knows what he was thinking of, or why he sat there. He gave no evidence of any interest in the story that was being read; Brillon might roar with laughter at a humorous passage, or Dora’s voice tremble and her eyes fill with tears at a tragic or pathetic one, but Sanétomo gave no sign.

  After learning that her husband was genuinely attached to the Japanese, and that it would give him real pain to part with him, Dora said no more about it. But her feeling of aversion increased, in spite of her desire to ignore it.

  She would feel his eyes on the back of her head, and then, turning suddenly, would see plainly that his dull and impassive gaze was either fixed straight before him or on the floor, and she would become impatient with herself for her childishness.

  “Certainly I am not afraid of him,” she would argue with herself; “men why in the name of common sense do I think of him at all? It’s absurd; mere stupid fancy; the poor, harmless thing!”

  Then she began to come across him in other parts of the house; in the corridors, in the servants’ room downstairs, once even in the reception hall; and though she never once succeeded in catching his eye, she persuaded herself to the belief that his gaze was constantly on her.

  The day she met him in the reception hall she turned in a sudden flash of anger and said:

  “What are you doing down here? Why aren’t you upstairs?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I sorry,” replied Sanétomo, backing off.

  “I suppose you know you should not be here,” said Dora quietly, ashamed at having shown temper with a servant.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  And he backed clear to the door and disappeared without turning.

  These were small incidents, of course, in the life of the wealthy and fashionable Mrs. Brillon; the little yellow man was for her merely one of those petty annoyances of existence which meet us in so many forms and disguises, and he probably would have remained so indefinitely—for she had finally decided to tolerate his presence out of consideration for her husband—had it not been for the curious adventure which explained Sanétomo and finished him all at once.

  Early in the summer of the year which saw the second anniversary of his wedding, Brillon took it into his head that he wanted to see the Rocky Mountains; the idea having been suggested by a friend who offered him the use of a bungalow on a ranch near Steamboat Lake, some three hundred miles west of Denver.

  Mrs. Brillon, having looked forward to a season at Newport, made some objections, but was won over with little difficulty, and toward the middle of July they departed for the West, accompanied only by Mrs. Brillon’s maid and Sanétomo.

  They found the ranch, consisting of a few hundred acres of wild forest and tumbling streams—for everything from a cabbage patch to a mountain range is called a ranch in Colorado—sufficiently delightful to repay them for their tiresome journey. More important still to these New Yorkers, the bungalow was furnished completely throughout its nine or ten large rooms, and had been kept in excellent order by the caretaker, an old grizzled veteran of the mountainside who called himself Trapper Joe.

  There were some difficulties at first. They had brought several articles with them from Denver: a case of guns and tackle, three donkeys, a cook, and an automobile. The guns were useless, since it was closed season on everything but chipmunks and small birds. As for the donkeys, Steamboat Lake—the village—was already full of them.

  The automobile had beautiful lines and its engine was smooth as butter; but it refused to climb hills, and the Rockies will slope.

  But worst of all was the cook. In his sober moments—that is to say, for the first day or two—he was bad enough; but the third morning—He had evidently decided that Mr. Brillon had brought along just one too many cases of champagne, and attempted to remedy the error in one heroic coup.

  When they found him he was frightfully drunk, even for a cook. Brillon packed him off with a ticket back to Denver.

  And that was how Sanétomo came into his own again.

  “You don’t object to cooking for us, do you, ’Tomo?” asked his master.

  A swift gleam appeared in the eyes of the yellow man.

  “No, sir. I like.”

  “All right. Thank the Lord! Luncheon at one. Come on, Dora, let’s see if we can push that confounded car uphill.”

  Many pleasant days followed. There were peaks to be climbed, trout to be caught, cañons and forests to be explored; and best of all, Brillon finally succeeded in persuading the automobile that it was the duty of a Christian car to toil upward.

  After that they made delightful daily excursions. They would coax the motor through some winding valley or along a narrow road at the brink of a precipice until the way became steep beyond all reason, and then they would get out and open a hamper; and there, on the cool grass beside a little tumbling mountain stream, with the light, winey air in their nostrils and the songs of birds in their ears, they would sit and eat good things and perhaps while away a whole afternoon reading or talking, or merely gazing in silence at the soft green of the valleys below and the dim gray and purple peaks in the distance.

  They usually took Sanétomo along to look after the hamper. Brillon insisted on it, and Dora kept her objections to herself.

  It was really a sacrifice on her part, for the yellow man’s presence took away a good half of her pleasure. It sounds unreasonable enough, and indeed she thought it so herself; but she hated the very sight of him. Instinctive aversion is stubborn, and grows.

  There was certainly nothing in Sanétomo’s behavior or appearance to warrant dislike, beyond the fact that his skin was yellow. He was always quiet, always efficient, and never impudent or obtrusive. In the automobile he sat in front with his master, who drove; and not once would he turn his head; nor would he betray the
slightest sign of anxiety or fear when they crept along at the edge of a chasm and Dora would be begging her husband to stop with every turn of the wheels.

  Arrived at a halting place, Sanétomo would unstrap the hamper and find a shady spot of green to spread the cloth—and with what a feast would he cover it! The meal over, he would pack up again; and then he would sit down somewhere against a tree and—what?

  That was a question. What was in his mind? Dreams of far-away Nippon? Considerations of the ragout to be served at dinner that evening? Or simply nothing at all?

  He would sit for hours without moving a muscle of his face, with his little black eyes staring dully, apparently at nothing. Sometimes he would turn them on his master, more seldom on his master’s wife. But they would remain utterly expressionless; no one could have guessed his thoughts, or whether he had any.

  Once Dora, happening to turn and meet his gaze, addressed her husband in a tone of irritation:

  “Harry, I wish you would tell Sanétomo to stop looking at me. He annoys me.”

  Brillon, who was lying on his back in the grass, laughed good-humoredly.

  “Is he looking at you? I don’t blame him. You grow more bewitching every day here in the mountains.”

  “I say he annoys me,” repeated Dora angrily, ashamed of her petulance, but too irritated to keep the words back.

  “Really?” Brillon turned lazily. “ ’Tomo, you hear what your mistress says. Don’t annoy her. Look the other way.”

  The Japanese had turned the offending eyes on the ground.

  “Tatta Sanétomo,” he said quietly. “I sorry.”

  And after that Dora met his gaze no more. But yes—once.

  One day toward the end of August they had left the bungalow quite early in the morning, intending to reach Cotton Pass, about sixty miles north of Steamboat Lake, by midday. But the latter half of the way was unknown to them, and they met more hills and dangerous roads than they had bargained for.

  Several times Brillon was forced to stop the car and walk some distance ahead to see if a passage was safe, or even possible; and when noon came they found themselves still twenty miles short of their destination.