Target Practice (Stout, Rex)

by Rex Stout

  “All right, major. But come, what’s the use—”

  “Stop! If you move again like that I’ll shoot. I wonder what’s the matter with Hilda. She sleeps very lightly.” This last to herself.

  Bill looked interested.

  “Is Hilda a big sort of a woman in a blue nightgown?”

  “Yes. Have you seen her?” The brown eyes filled with sudden alarm. “Oh! Where is she? Is she hurt?”

  “Nope.” Bill chuckled. “Kitchen floor. Chloroform. I was eatin’ strawberry shortcake when she come in.”

  The major frowned.

  “I suppose I must call my father. I hate to disturb him—”

  “He’s incapable, too,” announced Bill with another chuckle. “Tied up with sheets and things. You see, major, we’re all alone. Tell you what I’ll do. There’s a suitcase full of silver down on the library windowsill. I’ll agree to leave it there—”

  “You certainly will,” the major nodded. “And you’ll leave the other things too. I see them in your pockets. Since my father is tied up I suppose I must call the police myself.”

  She began to move sidewise toward the silver telephone on the desk, keeping the revolver pointed at Bill’s breast.

  I transcribe Bill’s thought: the little devil was actually going to call the police! Action must come now if at all, and quickly. He dismissed the idea of a dash for freedom; she would certainly pull the trigger, and she had a firm eye and hand. Bill summoned all his wit.

  “My little girl’s mama is dead, too,” he blurted out suddenly.

  The major, with her hand outstretched for the telephone, stopped to look at him.

  “My mother isn’t dead,” she observed sharply. “She’s gone to the country.”

  “You don’t say so!” Bill’s voice was positively explosive with enthusiastic interest. “Why didn’t you go along, major, if I may ask?”

  “I am too busy with the Auxiliary. We are pushing the campaign for preparedness.” She added politely: “You say your wife is dead?”

  Bill nodded mournfully.

  “Been dead three years. Got sick and wasted away and died. Broke my little girl’s heart, and mine, too.”

  A suggestion of sympathy appeared in the major’s eyes as she inquired:

  “What is your little girl’s name?”

  “Her name?” Bill floundered in his stupidity. “Oh, her name. Why, of course her name’s Hilda.”

  “Indeed!” The major looked interested. “The same as cook. How funny! How old is she?”

  “Sixteen,” said Bill rather desperately.

  “Oh, she’s a big girl, then! I suppose she goes to school?”

  Bill nodded.

  “Which one?”

  It was a mean question. In Bill’s mind school was simply school. He tried to think of a word that would sound like the name of one, but nothing came.

  “Day school,” he said at last, and then added hastily, “that is, she moves around, you know. Going up all the time. She’s a smart girl.” His tone was triumphant.

  Then, fearing that another question might finish him, he continued slowly:

  “You might as well go on and call the cops—the police, I suppose. Of course, Hilda’s at home hungry, but that don’t matter to you. She’ll starve to death. I didn’t tell you she’s sick. She’s sick all the time—something wrong with her. I was just walkin’ past here and thought I might find something for her to eat, and I was lookin’ around—”

  “You ate the strawberry shortcake yourself,” put in the major keenly.

  “The doctor won’t let Hilda have cake,” Bill retorted. “And I was hungry myself. I suppose it’s no crime to be hungry—”

  “You took the silver and other things.”

  “I know.” Bill’s head drooped dejectedly. “I’m a bad man, I guess. I wanted to buy nice things for Hilda. She hasn’t had a doll for over ten years. She never has much to eat. If I’m arrested I suppose she’ll starve to death.”

  The sympathy in the major’s eyes deepened. “I don’t want to cause unnecessary suffering,” she declared. “I feel strongly for the lower classes. And Miss Vanderhoof says that our penal system is disgraceful. I suppose little would be gained by sending you to prison.”

  “It’s an awful place,” Bill declared feelingly.

  “You have been there?”

  “Off and on.”

  “You see! It has done you no good. No, I might as well let you go. Turn your back.”

  Bill stared.

  The major stamped her little bare foot.

  “ ‘Turn your back, I say! That’s right. I do wish you wouldn’t make me repeat things. Walk forward near the dressing table. No, at the side. So. Now empty your pockets and turn them inside out. All of them. Put the things on the dressing table. Keep your back turned, or—as you would say in your vulgar parlance—I’ll blow your block off.”

  Bill obeyed. He could feel the muzzle of the revolver pointed directly at the back of his head, and he obeyed. He lost no time about it either, for the anesthetized Hilda would be coming to soon.

  Methodically and thoroughly the pockets were emptied and their contents deposited on the dressing table: a gentleman’s watch, two silver cigarette cases, three scarf pins, five rings, a jeweled photograph frame, and ninety-four dollars in cash. The articles that were obviously Bill’s own she instructed him to return to the pockets. He did so.

  “There!” said the major briskly when he had finished. “You may turn now. That’s all, I think. Kindly close the front door as you go out. I’ll attend to the suitcase on the windowsill after you’re gone. I wouldn’t advise you to try any tricks on me. I’ve never got a man on the run, but I’d love to have a crack at one. That’s all.”

  Bill hesitated. His eye was on the neat roll of bills reposing beside him on the dressing table. It traveled from that to the gold wristwatch he would not take because it belonged to the sweet, helpless child. Would he take it now if he had a chance? Would he!

  The major’s voice came:

  “Go, please. I’m sleepy, and you’ve given me a lot of trouble. I shall have to revive Hilda, if it is possible. I have doubts on the subject. She refuses to keep herself in condition. She eats too much, she will not take a cold bath, she won’t train properly, she is sixty-eight pounds overweight, and she sleeps with her mouth open. But she’s a good cook—”

  “She is that,” Bill put in feelingly, with his memory on the shortcake.

  “—and I trust she has not expired. There is my father, too. To put it mildly, he is a weakling. His lack of wind is deplorable. He sits down immediately after eating. It is only three miles to his law office, and he rides. He plays golf and calls it exercise. If you have gagged him scientifically he may have ceased breathing by now.

  “In one way it would be nothing to grieve over, but he is my father after all, and the filial instinct impels me to his assistance against my better judgment. You do not seem to be in good condition yourself. I doubt if you know how to breathe properly, and it is evident that you do not train systematically. There are books on the subject in the public library; I would advise you to get one. You may give my name as reference. Now go.”

  Bill went. The door of the room was open. He started toward the back stairs, but the major halted him abruptly and made him right about; she had switched on the lights in the hall. Down the wide front staircase he tramped, and from behind came the major’s voice:

  “Keep your mouth closed. Head up! Arms at your side. Breathe through your nose. Chest out forward! Hep, hep, hep—the door swings in. Leave it open. Lift your foot and come down on the heel. Turn the corner sharply. Head up!”

  She stood in the doorway as he marched across the porch, down the steps, and along the gravel path to the sidewalk. A turn to the right, and thirty paces took him to the street corner. Still the major’s voice sounded from the doorway:

  “Hep, hep, hep—lift your feet higher—breathe through your nose—hep, hep, hep—”

 
; And as he reached the street corner the command came sharply:

  “Halt! About-face! Salute!”

  A glance over his shoulder showed him her nightgown framed in the doorway. There were trees in between. Bill halted, but he did not about-face and he did not salute. It was too much. Instead, after a second’s hesitation, he bounded all at once into the street and across it, and was off like a shot. And as he ran he replied to her command to salute by calling back over his shoulder, as man to man:

  “Go to hell!”

  Heels of Fate

  I FIRST BEGAN TO DROP in at Dal Willett’s livery stable for an hour’s chat, on my way home from the office in the evening or sometimes during the long hours of a dull afternoon, about five years ago. I had known him long before that, but had not appreciated him. He was a tall, loose-jointed man, about forty then, with a red leathery countenance and keen little gray eyes; and as I gradually discovered, he was an extraordinarily observant fellow, with a sharp knowledge of humans and understanding of them, while his abstract opinions were correspondingly generous and tinged with humor. With his knowledge, he has helped me more than once in the solution of some problem or other when I myself was badly tangled; for though the cases that fall to us country lawyers may be small ones they are often really difficult and complicated. Of course I always hired a rig from Dal on the rare occasions when I had to visit a client on some farm not too far away. His livery stable was the only one in town, and he was prosperous.

  Of evenings we would sit out in front with our chairs tilted back against the wall, Dal in his shirt sleeves, myself in a linen duster, and smoke and talk; or in the winter we would hug the stove in the office. It was interesting to hear Dal discourse on any subject whatever, from local politics to poetry. His favorite topic was the habits and peculiarities of his four-footed animals; he loved horses, and I am convinced understood them better than any other man that ever lived. At the time of this story, I remember, he had in the stable a “kicker,” a magnificent black beast, clean of limb and of glossy coat, but with a most vicious eye. Dal called him Mac; a contraction, as I remember it, of Machiavelli.

  Dal had love in his heart even for Mac, and he would spend hours working with incredible patience to cure him of his vicious habit. His understanding of the creature’s psychology, or instinct, was almost uncanny. Without any apparent reason he would say to the hostlers some morning, after a leisurely tour of the stable, “Look out for Mac today, boys, he’s ready to fire.” And sure enough on the slightest provocation, or none whatever, the horse’s iron-shod hoofs would fly out most unexpectedly like a shot from a cannon, with the force of a dozen sledgehammers.

  His method with balkers was simple but invariably effective; I had a chance to observe it once in the case of a bay mare he had got from a farmer north of town. We would be driving along at a slow trot or a walk when suddenly Dal would pull on the reins with a commanding “Whoa!” The mare would stop with apparent reluctance, and after we had sat there a minute or two Dal would slacken the reins and slap them on her back and off we would go.

  “The idea of balking always enters a horse’s head when it is in motion, never when it’s standing still,” Dal would explain. “It is a double idea: 1—stop; 2—balk. The thing is, don’t let them stop, and the way to avoid it is to stop them yourself before they get a chance to do it of their own accord. That gets ’em confused, and naturally they give it up as a bad job.”

  “But how do you know when they’re ready to begin operations?”

  “I don’t know—something—the way they hold their head—you can tell—”

  That is, he could tell. I grew to regard him as infallible on any question concerning an animal in harness or under a saddle. One thing was certain: he loved his horses better than he did his hostlers, though he understood them equally well; and I am not ready to quarrel with the preference.

  It was one July afternoon, when Dal and I were seated together out in front that the individual known as H. E. Gruber first appeared on the scene. That was the name he gave Dal. We marked him for a new face in the town the moment we saw him glide past us with a curious gait, half furtive, half insolent, in through the door of the runway to the livery stable. I replied to Dal’s inquiring glance:

  “Never saw him before.”

  In a minute the stranger emerged again from the stable, approached me and spoke:

  “The boys sent me out here. You the boss?”

  I designated Dal by a nod of the head, and the stranger turned to him with the information that he wished to hire a rig. I took advantage of the opportunity to look him over. He had a sly, hard face, with mean little colorless eyes that shifted vaguely as he talked; his voice had a curious way of changing suddenly from a puny softness to a grating, rasping snarl. He looked to be somewhere in the fifties, and was dressed well, in a gray sack suit and black derby.

  “Where do you want to go?” Dal inquired with a frown. It was plain that he, too, was unfavorably impressed with the man’s appearance.

  The stranger replied that he wished to drive out to John Hawkins’s farm; and finally, after taking his name and inquiring concerning the extent of his experience with horses, Dal called to one of the boys to tell him to get out a single buggy. While that was being done the stranger, Gruber, inquired the way to his destination, and Dal described the route with the greatest care. He was always particular about those things; not so much, I believe, to serve his customers, as on account of the fact that when a man loses his way he becomes angry and usually takes it out on the horse.

  “It’s good road all the way,” said Dal, as the rig was led out and Gruber climbed in. “You ought to make it in an hour. If you’re kept over suppertime John’ll look after the horse. John Hawkins always feeds his animals before he does himself.”

  The stranger nodded, shook the reins and was off, with Nanny, one of me best mares in town, breaking into a smart trot the moment she hit the road.

  Dal and I puffed for a couple of minutes in silence. The buggy had disappeared down the street when I took my cigar from my mourn to observe speculatively:

  “Queer specimen.”

  Dal nodded. “Yes. Can’t quite figure him out. Drummer? No. Looks like a backdoor politician. Probably from Denver. What the dickens does he want with old John Hawkins?”

  The same query was in my own mind, for two men more totally different man the stranger Gruber and the farmer he was going to see would have been hard to find. John Hawkins had come to our part of the country some five years before, from where nobody knew, and bought the old Miller farm, paying all but a thousand dollars in cash. That last is a bit of inside information, for I was the lawyer who drew up the deed.

  People laughed at him while they pitied him, for the Miller farm was the most notoriously bad quarter section in the township. But Hawkins soon showed them that if he possessed no knowledge of farmland and farming he at least knew how to work and learn. He found a book somewhere on fertilizers, and the second year he got a fair crop of corn on his west forty, though he nearly starved doing it. The third year was better still, and he began then to make money from his poultry, too. People learned to respect and admire him, all the more because he had earned the reputation of being the hardest worker in the country; and yet he couldn’t have been a day less than fifty-five, with his medium-sized stooping figure, gray hair, and furrowed, careworn countenance. He was a silent, reserved man, with a look of grim submission in his steady brown eyes that at times startled you with its pathos.

  A certain portion of the community was particularly interested in his poultry; and you will understand what that portion was when you learn that the poultry was under the special care of Hawkins’s daughter. Her name was Janet. The best possible advertisement for the purposes of the “back to the farm” propagandists would be a card containing photographs, after the fashion of patent medicine ads, of Janet Hawkins “before” and “after.” When she first appeared—I remember seeing her walk down Main Street with her
father the day they arrived—she was a dark, shrinking little thing with muddy cheeks and dull, stony eyes that refused to look at anybody. Seeing her from a little distance you would have thought her an underfed twelve-year-old; close up she looked nearer twice that age. Really she was then just nineteen.

  In a year she was a totally different creature. My enthusiasm makes me fear the attempt to describe her, for I myself have not reached the age of senility and for three years I held certain hopes with regard to Janet Hawkins which finally proved vain. Though the change in her appearance was startling and complete, it took place so gradually that it would be hard to say when it began or what it consisted of. Her complexion became all milk and roses, her eyes alive with the fire and happiness of youth, her figure supple and incredibly quick and graceful in movement; but there was something deeper than any of these, a rebirth of her spirit that made her laughter thrill you from head to foot and her glance pierce you with joy. She was wonderful. I know.

  It was not long, of course, before she was the object of a mad pursuit; as pretty a race as you would care to see. Two or three young farmers were the first entries, besides old Jerry Pratt, who owns some fifteen hundred acres in the southern part of the county; soon they were joined, one by one, by a dozen of us from the town. Dal Willett was among the number; during one whole summer he drove out to the Hawkins farm every evening, but he spent little time with Janet. He was too reserved in the matter; the others rushed him off his feet, and I believe he never really entertained any hope. He used to sit out on the back porch with old Hawkins, talking horses and crops, and in that way the two men became intimate. About nine o’clock Janet would come out with a pitcher of lemonade, having first served those in front—there was always somebody—and a little later we would all leave together. Many a time I’ve seen two or three buggies and as many automobiles file out one after another through the Hawkins gate.

  When we learned that Walter Rogers had entered the race the rest of us were about ready to give up. Rogers, a man about thirty, was president of the local bank and by far the wealthiest citizen of the country. He was a good, hard-working fellow, too, and well liked. Most of us admitted bitterly that he was just the man for Janet Hawkins, and feeling that our chances were gone we soon capitulated. We should have known that Janet was not the kind of girl to be attracted by an eight-cylinder motor and three servants; but at that we were right in a way. Our chances were gone.