Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  Mildly curious, Reggie picked up the magazine from the newsdealer’s lap, and looked at it. True Astrology. An ink-ringed ad on the open page caught his eye, and he read it slowly, stumbling over several words that were unfamiliar to him. The gist of it, as nearly as he could make out, was that if you got into a jam someone would come and help you out. Like his Uncle Ephraim. His Uncle Ephraim was always bailing him out of trouble. But that was over now, Reggie thought with regret. Uncle Ephraim had died of a heart attack several months ago in a Paris bordello, and had left the bulk of his not inconsiderable fortune to a scientific foundation that was studying the breeding habits of plant lice. Well, Reggie thought, dropping the magazine back onto the newsdealer’s lap, maybe he could use this help sometime. If he ever had an anchor around his neck and was about to practise high-diving . . . But at the moment he didn’t need any help, thank you.

  He strolled on to his apartment, leaving the kneeling man and the newsdealer staring at each other with unchanged expressions . . .

  THIS MAN let him in and helped him out of his coat.

  “There were three telephone calls for you, sir,” Roberts said, as he took Reggie’s hat. “From Miss Alicia.”

  “Well, well,” Reggie said, strolling into the living room. “Miss Alicia, eh?” He frowned suddenly and looked to Roberts’ long, solemn face for enlightenment. “Dash it, don’t just throw names at me that way,” he said petulantly. “Who is Miss Alicia?”

  “Miss Alicia is your fiancée,” Roberts said.

  “Oh,” Reggie said. “Well, that’s better. Alicia, eh? What did she want?”

  “It seems you had an appointment with her for dinner,” Roberts said. “She seemed quite upset about it, if I may say so, sir.”

  “Well, of course you may say so, Roberts,” Reggie said. “After all, Magna Carta, Bill Of Rights, and so forth. Speak up, man.” He rubbed his high forehead with a thin hand. “Dinner date, eh? I seem to remember something about it. Well,” he said in a brighter voice, “too late to do anything about it now, eh? I mean, it’s latish for dinner, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, that’s settled then. Anything else?”

  “The manager of the building stopped by again, sir. In a word, he wants the rent. He was quite unpleasant about it, sir.”

  “Well, did you give it to him?”

  “I?” Roberts looked pained. “No, sir. We have no money, sir.”

  “Oh, that’s right, slipped my mind,” Reggie said, chewing on his lower lip.

  “He was most unpleasant about it, sir.” Roberts disliked bothering his master with these details, but there was nothing else to do. “He said he would put us out in the street.”

  “What nonsense!” Reggie said. “It’s cold outside, in case he doesn’t know it. What makes him imagine we’d enjoy living in the street?”

  Roberts sighed. He was a tall, impeccably dressed man, with a high balding forehead, and the air of an unemployed Shakespearian actor. “He’s a brute, sir. He is quite capable of doing it.”

  “Tonight?” Reggie asked worriedly.

  “Well, I don’t think so, sir.”

  “Then let’s stop fretting about it,” Reggie said contentedly. He had a concept of time that would have amazed scientists. Time wasn’t a flowing river to Reggie, it just didn’t exist. Tonight existed, of course, but tomorrow to Reggie was as misty and vague a place as Mars. “I’m going to look through the papers,” he said. “Turn in, Roberts, and stop worrying.”

  “Very well, sir. Would you like something to eat or drink before I go to bed?”

  REGGIE waved him away. “Not a thing.” He deposited his lean, elegantly tailored frame in a comfortable chair, and opened his paper with a little smile of anticipation. This was a big moment for him. He turned to the comic page, ready for an hour or so of intense concentration. But tonight, for some reason, he couldn’t get into the spirit of the thing. In some dim recess of his mind there was a faint stirring of anxiety. He thought about Alicia. Stunning girl, perfectly ripping and all that, but hipped on this marriage idea. All girls were like that, perhaps. A little nuts on that subject. He had met Alicia—when? Oh, sometime last summer, maybe. They’d got along fine. She was stunning, all right, perfectly ripping. They’d talked about families, and how cunning little babies were, and about houses in the country with roses growing all over the place. Nice elevating conversations. Then, the damndest thing happened. The tenses got mixed up. Pretty soon they were talking about how nice the cunning little babies were going to be, and how nice the rose-covered cottage would be—and after a bit of that, her father was shaking his hand and they were all having a drink and making plans to be married. Damned confusing business.

  Reggie sighed. Well, there was no help for it now. The fat was in the Rubicon for fair. He might as well enjoy the time that was left. So he turned his mind back to the comics section of the paper. The comics were his favorite diversion, his natural milieu. Day-to-day living presented him with a thousand baffling, illogical problems, but the comics were always a serene and pleasant area of escape.

  But tonight, he hadn’t been at them for more than a few minutes before he realized that something was drastically, absurdly wrong! They were all mixed up. The Flying Space Cadet, for instance. Last night the Cadet was just getting ready for a trip to the moon. But here, tonight, he was already on the moon, and about to be killed by a clique of three-headed villains. How the hell had that happened? Reggie asked himself indignantly. His gaze strayed to the top of the paper, and he noticed the date. Ordinarily Reggie paid no attention to such things, but he happened to know that today was the first of the month, because he had got his club bill today, and the tart note that accompanied it had fixed the event in his mind. But the date on the paper was the seventh! Something wrong here, Reggie thought shrewdly. He got up and began pacing. This was next week’s paper he had been reading. Suddenly, a deep suspicion grew in his spongy brain. The episode at the newsstand came back to him, and he clapped his hands together angrily. Now he understood the meaning of that hocus-pocus. It was all trick, a cheap stunt to foist off worthless papers oil gullible suckers.

  “Ha!” Reggie cried. The devious plot was crystal clear to him. “Ha!” he cried again. Hoodwinked, that’s what he’d been. Of what use was next week’s paper to anyone? Not a bit, certainly. Those foxy cheats—the newsdealer and the kneeling man—obviously got a lot of next week’s papers from somewhere and were passing them off as the real thing. What nerve!

  Reggie sat down again and looked through the paper, glancing sullenly at the stock market reports, race results, and sporting news. All next week’s news. What earthly good was it? But then a cunning smile touched Reggie’s lips. There might be some money in this thing, he thought, chuckling slyly. After all, he knew how certain affairs were going to turn out, and there should be a way to parlay that information into ready cash. For several minutes he stewed over ways and means. Finally, his smile widened; he had it.

  At the club there was one Doaby Forsyth, a genial young man who shared Reggie’s enthusiasm for the comics. Doaby’s family lived in New York, but they paid Doaby a nice sum every month to live in Chicago. Now, Reggie could bet Doaby on what would happen in the various comic strips in the coming week—and the beauty of it was that Reggie couldn’t lose. Excited, he got up and began pacing again. How much could he safely bet? How much would Doaby stand for? Ten dollars a day? No, that would be crowding it a little. No sense in being greedy. Make it a flat five dollars a day. At the end of the week he’d have all of twenty-five or thirty dollars.

  Reggie had never made any money at all in his life, and the prospect of picking up a cool thirty dollars was a heady thought. Flushed with his anticipated prosperity, he toddled happily off to bed.

  ABOUT THE time that Reggie was sinking into the happy depths of his first dream, Creepy Brown was standing before the long mahogany desk of one Malachy Nolan, a Celtic gentleman who owned quite a few night clubs and
slot machines. Nolan was a big, broad slab of a man, with coarse red features, thick black hair, and round, cunning eyes. He sat behind his desk in his large, comfortable office and watched Creepy with very little expression on his heavy face.

  Creepy was talking long, earnestly, and excitedly. When he finished, he leaned closer to Nolan and, in a voice hoarse with passion, said, “Now, whaddya think of that?”

  Nolan lit a cigar and drummed his fingers in time with the music that drifted up from his night club. “Well, let’s see,” he said at last. His voice sounded like gravel being poured down a concrete chute. “You say you read something in this astrology book, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Creepy said breathlessly.

  “And right away you thought how nice it would be if you knew who was going to win the Ace Nelson-Wild Billy Bell show, eh?”

  “Yeah—”

  “And so you wished for next week’s newspaper, eh?” Nolan said, nodding. “And a big guy in a white robe brought it to you on a gold platter.”

  “I swear to hope to die if I ain’t telling the truth,” Creepy cried. “I was too lightning-struck to do a thing but stare at the guy, and that’s when this young swell comes along and walks off with the paper. So I came right to you. You see—”

  “Creepy, go home,” Nolan said in an unkind voice.

  “But look—”

  “Beat it, you’re drunk,” Nolan said.

  “You know I never touch the stuff,” Creepy said.

  “Then you’re on the junk. Get out, scram, beat it.” Nolan shook his head. “Of all the damn wild stories I ever heard—”

  “I’m no dopey and I never tasted a drop of booze,” Creepy said desperately.

  “Beat it,” Nolan said.

  “Well, all right,” Creepy muttered, and started for the door.

  “Wait a minute,” Nolan said, and Creepy scurried back to his desk like something on a string. It was true that Creepy didn’t drink or use a junk. And Nolan, like most people mixed up in unsavory enterprises, had a broad streak of superstition down his back. He had seen too many weird things happen in his life to be completely certain that there weren’t strange powers at work in the world. Why, just last week he’d heard of a copper who’d turned down a bribe. . . Figure that one, hey?

  “Creepy, who’s the guy who got the paper?” he said.

  “I don’t know. He lives in the neighborhood of my stand. One thing I know, though; he’s a member of the Drexel Club. He came by my stand one day with Judge Bench, and the Judge said, ‘Well, I’ll see you at the Drexel,’ when they broke up.”

  “The Drexel Club. That’s a fancy joint,” Nolan said. He frowned at his desk top. Should he give Creepy the brush, or look into this thing? He decided to look into it. It was crazy enough to be on the level. Also, his night clubs were in hock to the town gamblers, and he could get out from under if he had advance information on the Nelson-Bell fight.

  “What does he look like?” he said to Creepy.

  “Well, he’s a little funny-looking,” Creepy said. “He’s tall, and has light hair, and—well, he acts like a bug, if you get me. Talks to himself, grins as he walks down the street, that kind of stuff. But harmless, Mr. Nolan, harmless as a flea.”

  NOLAN RUBBED his face. “Talks to himself,” he muttered. With the feeling that he was making a kingsized mistake, he picked up his phone and asked one of his men to come up to his office. Handsome in a rather jaded fashion, with graying temples, pouchy eyes, and very good clothes, the man arrived within a minute. His name was Benjamin Nelson.

  “What is it, boss?”

  “Ben, I got a job for you,” Nolan said. “You know the Drexel Club?”

  “Yeah, so to speak.”

  “Can you get in there?”

  Ben rubbed his jaw. “Yeah, I guess so. I know a bartender there. What’s the deal?”

  “Tell him, Creepy,” Nolan said. When Creepy finished, Ben started to laugh. He laughed for a long time and then he noticed that he was laughing alone. Nolan was staring at him with a frown. “Got all the yaks out of your system now?” he said sarcastically.

  “Well, sure,” Ben said, looking serious. “You want me to contact this guy, get the dope on the fight from him, eh?”

  “Well, find out if there’s anything to it,” Nolan said.

  “Okay,” Ben said. “But supposing I use a dame, too, just in case I can’t make a dent in the guy. If he won’t go for me, then I’ll toss in the dame.”

  “That’s okay,” Nolan said. “And I got the dish for the job.” He picked up the phone again.

  “You wanted to see me, Mr. Nolan?” Sari Ward said from the doorway a few minutes later.

  “That’s right. Come in, kid. You know Ben, of course, and this is Creepy Brown.”

  They nodded around at each other. Sari Ward worked as a cigarette girl in Nolan’s club. She distributed all brands of cigarettes, an occasional wisecrack, and nothing else at all. Customers frequently complained. She was a slender, sweetly-built girl of twenty-three, with long, perfect legs, a tiny waistline, short blonde hair, and blue, eyes that kept an eye on the score.

  “Let’s all sit down,” Nolan said. “Sari, I got a job for you, kind of a reward for good behavior, you might say. This is a real opportunity for you, baby, and—”

  Sari looked cynical. “What do I have to do?”

  “Nothing much at all, baby. There’s a guy in town who’s got some advance information on the Ace Nelson-Wild Billy Bell fight. We want you to get next to him, in a nice way, of course, and find out what he knows. See? It’s simple.”

  “Yeah, very simple,” Sari said, leaning back and crossing her legs. She was wearing tiny spangled tights and hip-length black silk stockings, and her simple leg-crossing gesture almost caused Creepy’s eyes to cross. “Look, Mr. Nolan, you can count me out. I sell cigarettes, and I like my job. I don’t want to get mixed up with gamblers and fixed fights. That’s a fine way to die young, I’ve been told.”

  “But, baby, this guy isn’t in the rack—I mean, business,” Nolan said. “He’s just a nice simple chump who stumbled onto some information about the fight.”

  “You mean he’s on the level?” Sari said.

  “Well, pretty much, I guess,” Nolan said. “No guy is completely on the level, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Sari said, with a touch of bitterness. “Well, give me the rest of it. If I don’t go along, you’ll bounce me out of here, I suppose.”

  “Now, baby,” Nolan said.

  “Well, wouldn’t you?”

  “Sure, but I wouldn’t like it,” Nolan said. “Now, here’s the pitch: you’ll work with Ben here. Tomorrow . . .”

  THE NEXT morning Alicia Masterson awoke in a bitter mood. She threw back the covers and put on a white silk dressing gown and slipped her feet into a pair of mules, and as she did, she said, in a savage voice, “Damn you, damn you, damn you, Reggie—”

  Alicia was a tall, dark-haired woman in her early thirties. Her figure was still excellent, but there were tiny lines at the corners of her eyes. Alicia was two people; when she was with someone she was trying to impress her face was soft and feminine, and her laugh was a tinkling bit of music. But alone, her face was hard, and her eyes were cold and calculating. Now she was not only alone, but in a foul humor, and she looked like some Empress who had just been kicked out of the royal palace to make room for a teen-aged dancing girl. After combing her hair and making up her face, she went into the sitting room that adjoined her father’s bedroom.

  Her father, Colonel Masterson, was already up, eating his breakfast. He was consuming bacon and eggs, and between mouthfuls telling the waiter of certain High Command’s mistakes in the last war. The Colonel was a bluff, hearty man, with a complexion like raw meat, and thick, brush-cut gray hair. He wore tweeds, and smoked a pipe, and talked of little but horses and war.

  “Morning, Daddy,” Alicia said cheerfully, and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Ah, good morning, my
dear,” the colonel said. “Just in time for coffee. I’m meeting General Thayer of the Second Army this morning, so I’ll have to be leaving shortly.” He laughed—the man-to-man laugh of a man who wouldn’t like to scare the ladies. “Nothing to it, my dear. The usual thing. They want me back. But I’ve told them that old war horses need a rest.”

  “I hope you don’t have to go away, Daddy,” Alicia said.

  “Well, duty, you know,” the colonel said.

  When the waiter had gone, the colonel said, “Now there’s a smart youngster. He was in the Air Force last time, and I was simply explaining to him—”

  “Oh, shut up, for God’s sake,” Alicia snapped. “The whole hotel is laughing at you. They know our bill isn’t paid, and they also know that the only army you ever served in was the Salvation.”

  The Colonel coughed into his napkin. “Don’t shout so, my dear,” he said. “What’s got into you this morning?”

  “Reggie stood me up again last night,” she said, putting her cup down with a little crash. She stared at her father. “Do you know what that means?”

  “Why, nothing at all, my dear. We can always—well, you know—breach of promise and all that.”

  “I want his name, I want to marry him, you old fool,” Alicia cried. “I’m tired of being a half-trollop, half-lady. I want to relax. I want to be Mrs. Saint Gregory, and have tea in my own home, and go to horse shows, and flower shows, and live like a human being. I don’t want to go into court fighting for money from a man who doesn’t want me. I’m tired of that.”

  “Well, I’m sure he forgot about it,” the colonel said. He frowned slightly. “Are you sure he’s got money?”

  “Of course he has. He’s from one of the oldest families in the country.”

  “I would prefer a new family with oil wells to an old family with just traditions,” the colonel said a bit anxiously, “But, I suppose you’re right. At any rate, there’s always breach of promise.”