Target Practice (Stout, Rex)

by Rex Stout

  Late in September she was married to Roy Nelson, a struggling young farmer who lived five miles away and who had walked that distance and home again twice a week to see her, because he had been working his horses all day and thought they needed rest more than he did.

  So Janet became Mrs. Nelson, and at the end of autumn her husband sold out his small interest in his forty acres and the newly married couple came to live with old man Hawkins. Nelson soon proved that Janet had made no mistake. During the following two years he nearly doubled the crops, and yet found time to make his wife happy. I got to know him pretty well, and discovered that he was an admirable fellow in every way. He worshiped Janet, and she thought him perfect. It was a mighty happy family. Nelson wouldn’t let John Hawkins do anything except look after the poultry, but the old man did that with such success that at the end of the second year he had a profit of four figures and half a dozen blue ribbons to show for it. I remember the naive pride with which he showed me his photograph one day, published in the Utah Poultry Bulletin.

  After this explanation, of our acquaintance and friendship with the Hawkins family, you will understand the curiosity that Dal Willett and I felt that afternoon when the stranger Gruber appeared to request a rig and the way to the Hawkins farm. As Dal had observed, the fellow had the appearance of a backdoor politician. We speculated at length on the possible nature of his errand, as two gossiping males will, but of course fruitlessly. The mere sight of Gruber was enough to make a decent man apprehensive, and it was perhaps that fact, rather than any particular premonition of trouble, that caused me to walk back down to the livery stable that night after supper. It was after ten o’clock when Gruber drove in, left the rig and paid for it, and went off with his shuffling gait toward Main Street.

  When I got to my office the following morning I found John Hawkins there waiting for me.

  The old man was standing in the hallway in front of the locked door; it was rather dark there and I didn’t recognize him at once. He didn’t speak as I approached, but merely moved to one side so I could get at the keyhole; as he turned I saw his face, and an ejaculation of amazement escaped me at sight of it.

  “Why, it’s John Hawkins,” I exclaimed.

  He nodded and mumbled, “Yes, I want to see you on some business.”

  I opened the door and we entered. In the light from the windows I gazed at him in astonishment; in the week since I had seen him last the man had apparently aged twenty years. He trembled as he walked over to a chair and sank down in it, and though the old grimness had not entirely departed from his face it was almost obliterated by a new look of despair and unmistakable fear. That was my most vivid impression, that he was terribly in fear of something. After I had unlocked my desk and pulled up a chair I asked him what the trouble was.

  His eyes blinked rapidly and he opened his lips two or three times before he could get any words out. I barely caught his stammering reply:

  “I want to get some money.”

  I glanced at him sharply.

  “How much?”

  “Eight thousand dollars.”

  That rather stunned me. Eight thousand dollars! In Holton County that’s a pretty good-sized sum.

  “Eight thousand,” I repeated stupidly.

  The old man leaned forward in his chair. “Yes, I’ve got to have it,” he said. His voice suddenly became firmer and more distinct. “You can see I’m in trouble, Harry, but don’t ask me any questions, because I can’t answer them. I’ve got to have eight thousand dollars right away. There oughtn’t to be much trouble about it. I only paid six thousand for the farm, but it’s worth easy twice that much now and there ain’t a cent owing on it. If I have to I’ll give a mortgage on the stock, too, and my chickens. They’re worth a lot of money. I thought maybe you could see Mr. Rogers and fix it up today. That’s why I came in so early.”

  I looked at him awhile in silence. Twenty questions were on the tip of my tongue, and of course the stranger Gruber was in my mind. But all I said was:

  “You’re sure that you’ve got to have this money?”

  There was a flash from his eyes. “Would I be asking for it if I didn’t?” he exclaimed with a touch of angry exasperation. Then also instantly he stretched a trembling hand out to me. “I didn’t mean anything, Harry. But I’ve got to have it.”

  “It’s not so easy as it sounds,” I replied slowly. “You know when anybody makes a loan, especially one of that size, they want to know what it’s to be used for. You’d have to explain why you want it. The farmers around here have been getting a little reckless, buying automobiles, and so on, and Rogers has shut down on them.”

  Again the old man’s eyes flashed. “I’m an honest man,” he said. “And the farm’s worth it. I didn’t think there’d be any trouble.”

  “There probably won’t be,” I agreed, “if you’ll explain what you want it for.”

  There was a little silence, while the farmer regarded me with a growing expression of despair, and then suddenly a look of shrewdness came into his face.

  “It’s a debt I owe,” he declared almost triumphantly. “To a man—” he hesitated a second, then went on—“a man named Gruber. I’ve owed it over five years now, before I came here.”

  I nodded. “I saw Gruber yesterday. I was at Dal Willett’s when he came there to hire a rig to go out to your place. Funny-looking man, that Gruber. I may be only a country lawyer, Mr. Hawkins, but one look at his face is enough. And besides, you’re not a man to be ashamed of any honest debt. There’s only one thing you could want to give money to this Gruber for, and that’s blackmail.”

  The old farmer started a little and I saw his hand grip the arm of the chair. He was surprised out of his shrewdness, too, for he merely repeated stubbornly, after a moment, “I tell you it’s a debt, Harry.” In another second he added, “What could he blackmail me for?” Then a sudden look of fear drove everything else from his face and he half rose out of his chair as he repeated in a shrill trembling voice:

  “What could he blackmail me for?”

  I got up and crossed over to lay my hand on his shoulder. Under my touch I could feel a tremor all over his frame.

  “That’s just what you’re going to tell me,” I said quietly. “Listen to me. I’m a lawyer, and this sort of thing is my business. Maybe we can find a way out and maybe we can’t, but at any rate if you expect me to help you, you must tell me about it. A decent lawyer doesn’t betray a confidence, and I think I may say I’m decent. Why do you have to give this Gruber eight thousand dollars?”

  In the end he told me. Garrulous, old men may be as a rule, but John Hawkins’s words came hard that morning. He hung off for more than an hour, and when he finally told his story I could see that every word was wringing blood from his heart, where the thing had been so long locked up. But though it was sad enough there was nothing really base in it, and the old man’s tough reluctance may be charged to his blind adoration of his daughter. It may be set down here baldly in a few words.

  Six years before, John Hawkins, whose real name was Timothy Ryder, had been proprietor of a saloon in New York. His wife had died at the birth of their daughter; and Janet, spoiled by her father and not properly looked after, had gotten into bad company. There were details here that Hawkins passed over; he swore that Janet had not done anything really wrong, but through the misdeeds and treachery of her companions had been arrested and sentenced to three years at Bedford. I, who knew Janet, believed him. Hawkins had sold his saloon, spent half the proceeds in arranging his daughter’s escape, and come west with her.

  “Gruber—Nosey Gruber we called him—is a ward-heeler and a crook,” said the old man toward the end. “I chased him out of the district once. I would have killed him last night, only there was no way. Unless I give him ten thousand dollars tomorrow he’s going to telegraph the New York police. I’ve got about two thousand in the bank that I’ve made off of my chickens. It was through them he found out about me; he was in Denver and saw my pictu
re that I showed you in the paper.”

  I remember as Hawkins finished the thought in the front of my brain was one of wonder at a man like Gruber reading a copy of the Utah Poultry Bulletin, and happening on that particular copy. My mind caught at that, I suppose, in an instinctive avoidance of the greater problem, how to save this old man from ruin, for I saw at once that the thing was insoluble. Nothing practicable could be done. We sat in silence, Hawkins with his fingers endlessly kneading themselves together and unfastening again, with so bitter a despair in his eyes as they met mine that I looked away.

  At length we talked, but aimlessly. As a lawyer I had held the belief that no man should pay blackmail under any circumstances, but I faltered before the simple, hard facts. Refuse to pay, and Janet’s life would be ruined; pay, and it would probably be the same in the end anyway. Blackmailers, like cats, always come back. I said these things and many others to old Hawkins, and he merely sat and nodded his head miserably.

  “What can I do,” he mumbled hopelessly. “I’ve got to pay. I could kill him, I suppose, but that would be just as bad for her. They’d find out who I was and it’d be the same thing. It’s only Nosey Gruber would do this. There’s never been any search for Janet—why was it Nosey saw that picture?”

  I tried to get him to tell me what the offense was for which Janet had been committed, but he wouldn’t talk about it; he would only say that she was innocent and that it was all his own fault. He began again on the subject of the mortgage. He was half-crazed by fear; the thing must be done that day, at once, or Gruber would wire New York. Of course that was absurd, but the old man was unable to think clearly. In the end I refused pointblank to do anything unless he would consent that I first go to Dal Willett for advice. This was a sudden impulse, and nothing but a move of weakness on my part; the responsibility was more than I was willing to assume alone; but, on the other hand, I had come to believe greatly in Dal’s shrewdness and he might, after all, suggest something. To that I succeeded in getting Hawkins to agree, and leaving him there in the office I departed.

  I’ve never seen Dal Willett worked up except that morning. The way I blurted the thing out in a breath had something to do with it, I suppose, but I have an idea that it was more the feeling he had for Janet. It opened my eyes to what passions and aches there had been behind his always quiet manner; I guess after all there was one human being he loved even more than he did his horses. I was astounded at the way he blazed up into fury; and then suddenly he was quiet again.

  “Of course,” he observed, “it isn’t open to discussion. John can’t refuse to pay. It would mean Janet’s ruin and his own death, for the thing would certainly kill him. And he can’t pay either. Gruber would come back again and again, and when the old man dies he’ll keep after Janet. That would be just as pleasant as hell.”

  I mumbled something about there being nothing else to do but pay. Dal glared at me.

  “I said it wasn’t open to discussion, didn’t I?” he returned testily. “It’s a case of only two alternatives and both of them impossible.”

  That appeared to me somewhat absurd. It must be either yes or no. Dal walked to the window of his little office and stood there with his back to me for a long while. I was conscious mostly of a great relief at having gotten half the burden off my shoulders, and I merely sat in silence and waited. Outside in the stable I could hear the boys calling to each other as they hauled the rigs up to the runway for cleaning, and the stamping of the horses’ feet in their stalls. Mot, Dal’s black and white coach dog, wandered in through the door and came up to stick his nose in the palm of my hand, and then ambled out again. Ten minutes passed without anything being said.

  Suddenly Dal turned from the window, and I saw immediately from the look on his face that there was something in his mind.

  “John’s over in your office?” he asked abruptly.

  I nodded. “I left him there.”

  “All right. Go and tell him to go back to the farm and stay there. Tell him to leave this thing to me. If Gruber telephones he must refuse to talk to him. If he’ll do that everything will be all right. Tell him I said so.”

  “But what—” I began, bewildered.

  “Do what I tell you. And tell the old man not to worry.”

  That was all he would say, and a minute later I was trotting back to my office to carry out his instructions.

  I anticipated a hard job of it, but old Hawkins was surprisingly amenable, and the secret of it was the unlimited confidence he felt in Dal Willett. As soon as I told him that Dal had given his word that “everything would come out all right” the old man meekly agreed to do just as he had said. He wanted to go around to the livery stable to talk with Dal, but finally I persuaded him to carry out the instructions to the letter. I went out to the street and unhitched his horse for him and watched him head south and disappear in the direction of the farm.

  I hadn’t any idea what Dal was up to, and I’m not sure even now that he had figured it all out that morning in his office, though I think it likely. It was easy even for me to see that there was only one way out; and having decided to do the thing it remained merely to find the means. It was characteristic of Dal that he let it happen as naturally as possible.

  I stopped at the livery stable on my way home that evening. Dal was seated out in front as usual with a cigar in his mouth. I had telephoned him at noon that Hawkins had agreed to obey instructions, and now as I halted in front of him I had fifty questions on the tip of my tongue. I asked if he had seen Gruber.

  “No, and I’d rather not talk about him,” he replied; and since I saw that none of my questions would be answered I went on home without asking them.

  The following morning I, myself, saw Gruber as I walked down Main Street to my office. He was seated on the piazza of Charley Smith’s Commercial Hotel, reading a magazine and smoking a cigarette. I looked at him curiously, and in the light of what I knew the man appeared more repulsive and snaky than before. He looked up and stared at me, and I hastened my step to get past the place.

  A little before noon I had a telephone call from John Hawkins. At the first sound of his voice I could tell that the security he had felt from Dal Willett’s assurances had become considerably weaker; the old man was almost in a state of panic again. Gruber had called up the farm twice that morning; Janet had answered the phone and told him her father would not speak to him. Janet was beginning to suspect some kind of trouble—luckily she had not seen Gruber—and Hawkins had evaded her questions with difficulty. I tried to reassure him, and he finally agreed to hold fast.

  All that day I seemed to myself to be hanging in the air. A dozen times the impulse seized me to go to Dal’s and find out if anything had happened. It was Thursday, the day on which Gruber had said the money must be paid; and though I knew that was merely a bluff I somehow felt that before the sun went down that night the thing would be settled. By the middle of the afternoon I was quivering with expectation so I could hardly stay in my chair. I pictured Dal walking calmly down the street to where Gruber was perched on the Commercial Hotel piazza, drawing a revolver and filling him full of bullets; I could see Gruber topple over with his ugly face knocking against the rail. Dal would then go down and give himself up to Tom Connolly, and they would send for me. My mind went forward to the courtroom, to the trial, and I saw myself opening for the defense—it would be a tremendous speech—

  I shook myself and got to my feet, and crossing to the window saw Gruber walking down the street on the other side. I started as though I had seen a ghost. He was going along at a good pace, like a man who intends to get somewhere. I watched him till he disappeared around the corner two blocks down. Then I went back and sat down again at my desk.

  I had a picture of Janet there in a drawer, and I pulled it out and looked at it. Old Hawkins’s words protesting his daughter’s innocence were in my mind, and I smiled. They had been so perfectly superfluous. To think of a girl like that in the clutches of a Gruber! I began to i
ndulge in memories, and was soon lost in a sentimental reverie.

  Fifteen minutes later I was brought to myself by hearing an automobile stop out in front.

  I turned in time to see Jim Rowley, the doctor, jump out of his runabout and dash for the door of my office. Instantly I knew. I had the door open by the time he reached it. He blurted into my face:

  “Dal Willett just phoned me—there’s a man hurt down there—he told me to stop and get you—”

  Without stopping for a hat I rushed out and leaped in the car. Jim must have been surprised at the readiness with which I grasped his unusual information, but I had no idea there was need of discretion. Almost immediately he was at the wheel beside me and we were off at a leap, tearing down Main Street.

  “What is it—who is it—how was he hurt?” I shouted at Jim, but he was busy turning a corner and didn’t answer. It was only a ten-minute walk from my office to the livery stable, and it took the car only a space of a dozen breaths. Before I knew it we were there.

  Tom Connolly’s buggy was out in front, with his mare breathing hard, and a crowd of boys was peering in at the big door of the stable, with a woman or two among them, while others came running down the street from both directions, shouting to one another. As the car came to a stop opposite the door and Jim leaped out with his black case in his hand, I caught sight of a group of men standing within, gathered in a close circle, and one of the stable boys running from the rear with a pail of water.

  I got out of the car and started toward the crowd at the door, which was being reenforced every moment by new arrivals. The doctor had disappeared inside, and I saw the circle of men make way for him, calling, “Here he is!” There was confusion everywhere, those coming up being greeted by a chorus of cries so that nothing could be understood. I had started to enter the stable, but halted on the threshold. Somehow I didn’t want to see what was in the center of that group of men—