The Compleat Boucher

by Anthony Boucher; Editor: James A. Mann

  It was almost twelve-thirty when they got home. It was one by the time lies had conclusively said good night to his wife and retired to the study for a final check-over of the testimony of the prosecution witnesses at the preliminary hearing.

  There, alone in that quiet pine-paneled room, he thought of the wish and the curse for the first time since his morning shave. It was now over an hour past midnight. All day long he had been too busy to devote an instant to sin. And his neck was still eminently unstrangled. He smiled, trying to figure out what curious combination of subconscious memories could have produced such a drunken nightmare. Creative imagination, that’s what he had.

  Then, just as a final touch of direct evidence, he said, “Sriberdegibit!”

  The demon sat cross-legged on the desk, his height fluctuating and the plaintive twang of his tusk ringing through the room.

  Gilbert Iles sat speechless. “Well?” the demon said at last.

  “Well—” said Gilbert Iles.

  “You summoned me. What goes?”

  “I— You— I— You’re real?”

  “Look,” Sriberdegibit expostulated. “Am I real? That’s a fine thing to call me up to ask. Am I a philosopher? Are you real? Is the universe real? How should I know these things?”

  lies eyed the silver tail somewhat apprehensively. “But—it’s way past midnight now.”

  “So what? Why should I bother materializing unless you summon me or unless I have to finish you off?”

  “And you don’t have to?”

  “Why should I? You did your daily sin all right.”

  lies frowned. “When?”

  “You arranged to suborn a witness, didn’t you?”

  “But that . . . that’s all in the day’s work.”

  “Is it? Didn’t something hurt a little inside when you decided to do it? Didn’t you use to say to yourself when you were young that you weren’t going to be that kind of a lawyer, oh no? Didn’t you sin against yourself when you did that?”

  Gilbert Iles said nothing.

  “Can I go now?” Sriberdegibit demanded.

  “You can go.”

  The demon vanished. lies sat in his study a long time that night, staring at the desk but not seeing the transcript.

  “Tom, about Rolfe’s phony witness, I’m not sure we ought to use her.”

  “Not use her? But the whole case’ll blow up without her.”

  “Not necessarily. I think we’re overreaching ourselves anyway with a plea of not guilty. If we lose out, it’ll mean the gas chamber for him. But if we change the plea to guilty in a lesser degree, we can maybe get him off with five or ten years.”

  “And after we paid out two thousand?”

  “Rolfe paid that. And he can afford to.”

  “Nuts, Gil. You’re not going ethical on me, are you?”

  “Hardly. But it’s not safe. She can’t be trusted. She might go on strike for more yet. She might even sell out to the prosecution and arrange to break down on her cross-examination. She might blackmail us by threatening to confess to the Bar Association.”

  “Maybe you’re right at that. When you put it that way— Here, let’s have a snort on it. What else do you know?”

  “Nothing much. Oh, I did pick up a choice little item on Judge Shackford. Do you know that in the privacy of his chambers—”

  Gilbert Iles felt the cool balm of relief. He wasn’t becoming one of these prigs who prate about ethics. God, no. But it was one thing to sin casually against yourself, and quite another to be reminded of it—to know consciously that you had sinned and thereby saved your neck.

  Talking Rolfe into the change of plea was another matter. It was only accomplished after lies had built an exceedingly vivid picture of the dear sweet old lady selling out on the witness stand and delivering Rolfe straight to the Death Row. Then there were officers to see and papers to file and the whole new strategy to go over minutely with Tom Andrews.

  He phoned Linda that he wouldn’t be home, dined on sandwiches and spiked coffee in the office, and finally got home at eleven too tired to do more than hang up his clothes, brush his teeth, and bestow one half-conscious kiss on his wife before his eyes closed.

  He woke up the next morning feeling badly puzzled, and wondered what he was puzzled about. It wasn’t until about 10:30, in the midst of a conference with a client, that the worry struck him clearly. He hadn’t had time to do a thing yesterday except the surely quite unsinful business of abandoning the perjured witness. And yet no silvery tail had coiled about his throat at midnight.

  He got rid of the client as soon as he decently could. Then, alone in his office, he cleared his throat and said, “Sriberdegibit!”

  The wavering outline of the demon sat tailor-wise on his desk and said, “Hi!”

  “You,” said Gilbert Iles, “are a fake. You and your curse and your tail. Poo, sir, to you!”

  Sriberdegibit twanged at his tusk. His tail twitched hungrily. “You don’t believe I’m really going to attend to you? Ha!”

  “I certainly don’t. The whole thing’s a fraud. I didn’t have time yesterday to work in a single sin. And here I am, safe and sound.”

  “You just underrate yourself,” said the demon not unkindly. “Remember spreading scandal about Judge Shackford? That’s getting around nicely, and it’s going to cost him the next election. That’ll do for one day.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t thought of it as— Oh— But look, Srib. We’ve got to get this clear. What constitutes—” He broke off and answered the buzzer.

  It was Miss Krumpig. “Mr. Andrews wants you to go over the brief on appeal in the Irving case. Shall I bring it in now, or do you have a conference? I thought I heard voices.”

  “Bring it in. I was just . . . ah . . . just rehearsing a speech.” He clicked off.

  “Well now,” said Sriberdegibit. “As to what constitutes—”

  “Begone,” lies interrupted hastily as the door opened.

  Miss Krumpig listened and frowned as she entered. “That’s a funny noise. Sort of a plaintive twanging like. It’s dying away now—”

  She put the rough draft of the brief on his desk. As usual, she leaned over more and nearer than there was any good reason to. She had changed to a subtler scent and had discovered a blouse with the maximum combination of respectability and visibility.

  Anyone employing Miss Krumpig should have had no trouble at all in contriving a sin a day.

  “Will that be all now, Mr. lies?”

  He thought of Linda and of the curse of a monogamous temperament. “No,” he said firmly. “I’ll think of something else.” Miss Krumpig left the room trying to figure that one out.

  For a week the curse took care of itself, with very little help from Gilbert Iles. He thought of a few sins for himself; but it is not easy to sin when your love for your wife and your stimulated professional conscience block the two simplest avenues. Saturday night he did manage to cheat undetected in the usual poker game and wound up with thirty-one ill-gotten dollars—which once the deadline was passed he proceeded to spend on a magnificent binge for the bunch of them. Another night he visited a curious dive that he had often heard rumors of, something in the nature of the more infamous spots for tourists in Havana. It was the one way of committing a sensual sin without infidelity to Linda. It was also a painful bore.

  The other days, the days when he was too busy or too uninventive to achieve what he thought a sin, turned out all right, too. Like the day when the girl in the restaurant gave him change for a ten out of his five. He noticed the mistake and accepted the money as a gift from the gods, thinking nothing more of it. But Sriberdegibit was sinfully delighted when the girl had to make up the difference, couldn’t do it, and lost her job.

  Then there was the pedestrian that he playfully scared, causing a heart attack. There was the boon companion whom he encouraged in a night’s carousing, knowing subconsciously that it meant starvation rations for his children. There was the perfectly casual lie with which he
got out of jury duty—a sin, Sriberdegibit explained, against the State as representing his fellow man.

  But these episodes all had their effect, and that effect was, for a cursed man, an awkward one. Gilbert Iles was as careless and selfish as the next man, but he was not constituted to do ill willfully. After the Judge Shackford business, he was rather careful as to the scandalous rumors which he spread. He drove carefully, he revised his statement on jury duty, he developed a certain petty financial scrupulousness.

  And one midnight, driving home alone from an evening’s business-sociability with a client, he felt cold scales coil about his throat.

  Gilbert Iles did not have the stuff of a good sinner. His first reaction was to pull the car up to the curb; an automobile guided by a strangled corpse would be a frightful danger at large. And as he did so he managed with choking breath to gulp, “Sriberdegibit!”

  The elastic shape of the demon wavered on the steering wheel as the car stopped, lies tried to shift away from it in the cabined limits of the coupe, but the silver tail held him fast. “Must talk!” he gasped. “One minute!”

  Sriberdegibit hesitated, then let his tail relax ever so slightly. “O.K.,” he said. “I was starting in a minute earlier to make it slow and comfortable. I can do it faster at midnight, but you won’t like it.”

  “Comfortable!” lies grunted. His hand slipped beneath the scaly coils and massaged his aching neck. “But listen.” He was thinking faster than he had ever thought in front of a jury “Our agreement—invalid under laws of this country—contract involving murder non-enforceable as contrary to general welfare.”

  Sriberdegibit laughed and the tail twitched tighter. There was nothing plaintive or grotesque about him now. This was his moment; and he was terrible in his functional efficiency. “I’m not subject to the laws of this country, mortal. Our contract is by the laws of my kingdom!”

  lies sighed relief, as best he could sigh under the circumstances. “Then you can’t strangle me for another hour.”

  “And why?”

  “Contract under your kingdom . . . you admit . . . midnight now but only by daylight saving . . . laws of this country . . . to your kingdom it is only 11 o’clock.”

  Slowly the tail relaxed. “I would,” said Sriberdegibit mournfully, “draw a lawyer. But you’d better get busy before midnight.”

  Giibert lies frowned. Then he started up the car. “Down here on the boulevard there’s a blind cripple sells newspapers. Works all night—I’ve often noticed him there. If I—”

  “Now,” said the demon, “you’re getting the swing of it.”

  Gilbert Iles waited until a late streetcar had picked up the little herd of people waiting by the cripple. Then he started across the street, but his feet would not guide him to the blind vender. They took him first into a bar. He had three rapid drinks, his eyes fixed on the clock whose hands moved steadily from twelve toward one.

  “Don’t let the time get you, Mac,” the barkeep said consolingly after the third. “It ain’t closing time till two. You got all the time in the world.”

  “It’s closing time at one,” said lies tautly, and felt his gullet tighten up at the memory of those scaly coils.

  “You look kind of worried. Need some company?” This was from a girl with a red dress and a bad bleach. “Well, I do,” she went on when he didn’t answer. “You’ll buy me a drink, won’t you? Sure you will. The usual, Joe.”

  The hands went steadily around. The drinks came regularly. The girl moved her stool closer, and the red skirt glowed warm against his thigh. This would be such a simple way. The choice was clear: To sin against a total stranger who would suffer deeply from it, or to sin against your wife who would never know it. The problem was simple, but Gilbert Iles knew the answer before he even considered it. He rose at last from his stool.

  “It’s almost midnight,” he said. “Closing time.”

  The barkeep and the girl in red stared after his lurching exit, and then stared wonderingly at each other. “You’re slipping, Verne,” said the barkeep.

  “This time,” said Verne, “I’ll have a drink”

  Gilbert Iles reached the corner. Another streetcar load was just leaving. Behind them they left the empty corner and the blind cripple. He sat on the sidewalk, his legs crumpled under him at implausible angles. His head with its black glasses moved slightly at each sound. Everything about him was very clear to Gilbert Iles. He could see that his left thumbnail was cracked, that he had a hairy mole high on his right cheekbone, that there was exactly $2.37 in the cash box.

  lies shut his own eyes as he grabbed the cash box. He couldn’t have said why, unless it was from some unconscious desire to even the odds between himself and his adversary.

  Self-blinded, he seized the box. It was a low, foul, damnable act, and he was doing it to save his neck. Neither his closed eyes nor his many whiskies could blind him to the baseness of the act. Sin is not fun.

  And as he grabbed he felt a choking grip on his neck.

  His mind whirled. He couldn’t be wrong. He had five minutes to spare. And this was certainly a— And then he realized that the grip was not of scales but of finger and thumb.

  He opened his eyes. The vender towered over him. The dark glasses were gone, and the legs uncoiled from their double-jointed posture. The face with the hairy mole was transfigured by righteous wrath and the hand with the broken thumbnail was balled into a fist driving straight at Iles’s face. It connected beautifully.

  “You low scum of a rat!” the vender murmured. “Rob a blind man, will you?” Thud. “Steal a cripple’s earnings, will you?” Wham. “Take advantage of a man’s helplessness, will you?” Crash.

  The accurate legal mind of Gilbert Iles gave one last flicker. “But you’re not a—”

  “You thought I was, didn’t you?”

  Guilt and the whiskies combined to rob lies of any power to fight back. When it was over, his puffed lips formulated one question. “Whaddimeizzit?”

  The vender deciphered it and looked at a concealed watch. “One ten.”

  “Thanks, brother,” lies groaned. The sodden pulp of his face managed to smile.

  “Sriberdegibit!” he said when he was back in the car.

  “I’m still here,” said the voice bounced through invisible caves. “You didn’t dismiss me.”

  “Sorry. Can’t see so good. My eyes . . . they swell— But it’s after even your midnight, and I didn’t manage to—”

  The demon repeated the vender’s own argument. “After all,” he said consolingly, “you meant ill.”

  “And what,” Linda demanded, “were you celebrating last night?”

  Gilbert Iles rolled over in bed, sat up, and opened his eyes. Or rather he tried to open them. Through puffy slits he could barely see his wife and beside her the clock which said 1:30.

  He gave a groan and started to jump out of bed. When he moved his muscles, the groan redoubled and he sank back on his pillow.

  “You are in a state,” said Linda. There was sympathy under the tartness of her voice.

  “The time,” lies muttered. “The office—Tom—”

  “Tom phoned about eleven. I told him you were laid up with a bad cold.”

  “But I ought to—”

  “I thought you’d better sleep it off. And you’re not going to any office today looking the way you do. I’d bring you a mirror to prove it, only it’s no sight to greet a man before breakfast. But what was all the celebrating for? And I didn’t have a headache last night.”

  “You see, dear—” lies tried to articulate between swollen lips.

  Linda smiled. “Don’t try, darling. Sorry I asked. Tell me after breakfast—or never, if you don’t want to. Everything’ll be ready as soon as you are.”

  Every perfect wife is a perfect diagnostician. For this breakfast Linda had prescribed soft-boiled eggs, tomato juice, a very full pot of black coffee, the morning paper—in its virginal and unrumpled state—and solitude. She served his food but d
id not speak to him or come near him again.

  After the fifth cup of coffee and the third cigarette, Gilbert Iles went in search of his wife. He found her on the sun porch watering the ferns. She wore a bright printed jumper and the sun was alive in her hair.

  “Linda—” he said.

  “Yes, darling?” She scooped a magazine off the most comfortable chair and helped him as his creaking legs eased into it.

  “I’ve got something to tell you, Linda.”

  She went on watering the ferns, but her hand trembled enough to scatter a few drops wide of their mark. “What is it? A new case?”

  “No, it’s—There’s something about me you’ll have to know, dear.”

  “How long is it? Three and a half years? And there’s something I still don’t know?”

  “I’m afraid there is.”

  “Bad?”

  “Bad.”

  “Worse than smoking in the bathroom?”

  He laughed, but it hurt his mouth. “A little. You see, Linda, I . . . I’m living under a curse.”

  Water splashed on the floor. Then Linda forced herself to set the can down very steadily, take a cloth, and mop up the mess. Not till she had finished did she say, very lightly, “That’s a fine thing to say. Here I wear my fingers to the bone slaving to make a nice home for you—”

  “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  “I know. It’s just that— Well, it’s a funny way of putting it. Tell me what’s the matter.”

  “It isn’t anything to do with you—”

  Linda went over to the chair and put her arm around his shoulder. “Isn’t it just?” she demanded fiercely. “Whenever there’s something the matter with you, Gilbert Iles, it is something to do with me. You’re me; don’t you understand that?”

  “My curse isn’t your curse. You see, Linda, it’s . . . I know it’s hard to believe, but . . . well, I have to commit a sin every day.”

  Linda stared at him. Her face expressed a sort of grave average between laughter and tears. “You mean— Oh, darling, do you mean I’m not enough for you?”

  He took her hand. “Nonsense. You’re all I ever want.”