“Then is it . . . I know you’ve been drinking a lot lately, but I thought . . . you don’t mean it’s . . . got hold of you, do you?”
“It isn’t that. It isn’t any particular kind of sin. It’s just a sin. You see, I told you. It’s a curse.”
Linda regarded him seriously. “You did drink all that tomato juice and coffee, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I think you’d better tell me all about this from the beginning.” She slid comfortably onto his lap and kept her ear close to his aching lips.
“It started,” he began, “that night I was celebrating the Shalgreen case. It happened I met a—”
“But that’s awful,” she said when he had finished. “That’s terrible. To think that all sorts of silly wishes might be granted, do get granted— Oh my! The things I wished when I was in high school— I’ll have to be careful.”
“Then you do believe me?”
“Of course.”
“I hardly dared expect— That’s why I didn’t tell you before. It’s so fantastic.”
“But you told me,” she said simply, and leaned over to kiss him. “No, I’d hurt your poor lips.”
“But what am I going to do? I can’t go on like this. For one thing I never know what’s going to count as a sin or not. But what’s worse, I . . . I’m afraid I don’t like to sin. Not when I know it, not when I think: This is sinning. You have to be a special kind of person for that; and I’m not. What are we going to do?”
“Mm-m-m,” said Linda thoughtfully. “I know one thing. I’m going to keep wishing your curse’ll be lifted and maybe sometime there’ll be one of my wimps around.”
“One chance in a thousand, the little man said.”
“And then . . .” Linda hesitated. “There is another way.”
“That my brilliant legal mind has been overlooking?”
“I don’t think you’ve exactly been overlooking it; but maybe on my account . . . I don’t know quite how to say this, Gil; but if there’s one kind of sin you could do easier than another—maybe even one kind that would be sort of fun and you could save yourself that way . . . I mean, after all it is what people usually mean when they say ‘sin,’ isn’t it, and you shouldn’t let me stand in the way of—”
“Linda darling, are you trying to suggest . . . ?”
She gathered her breath. “I’d sooner share you with that Miss Krumpig than not have you at all,” she blurted out, almost as one word. “There. I said it.”
“I couldn’t,” he said flatly and honestly.
Her fingers lifted a kiss gently from her mouth to his swollen lips. “I’m glad. Because,” she said with equal honesty, “I’m not quite sure if I really meant that or not. But I have one more idea.”
“Yes?”
“Get out the car. We’re going down to the beach and find your fringe-bearded magician and fight magic with magic.”
The bartender at the beach said, “Naw, he ain’t been around here since that night you was with him, and that’s O.K. with me. Every time he’d grab him a cigarette out of the air, some drunk’d get to thinking that was some screwy gadget we had here and get sorer’n hell ’cause he couldn’t grab ’em, too. Tell me, mister: How did he work that trick?”
“He was a magician,” said Gilbert Iles. “Do you know where he lived?”
“Seems to me it was down the beach a ways at the Mar Vista. Have another round?”
“No, thanks. Drink up, darling.”
The clerk at the Mar Vista said, “Little man with a fringe beard? He was registered under the name O. Z. Manders. Left here about ten days ago.”
“Leave any forwarding address?”
“No. He left in quite a hurry. Got a cablegram, and whoosh! he was gone.”
“A cablegram? You don’t know what—”
“I just noticed it was from Darjeeling. That’s in India, isn’t it?”
The clerk at the travel office said, “Little man with a funny beard? Yes, he was here. I explained to him that in times like these you couldn’t guarantee any kind of rush accommodations for travel—he’d have to take his chances. So he got mad and went away.”
“Thanks.” Gilbert Iles started to leave, but Linda held him back.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, “but how did he go away?”
The clerk stammered. “I . . . I don’t know. How should I?”
“Please. We understand. Did he just vanish—pouf.—with smoke and stuff?” The clerk said, “I am not a drinking man. But you seem sympathetic, madam. I assure you that he took a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and spread it on the floor, where it grew to the proportions of a carpet. Then he said some strange word and I swear that I saw the handkerchief fly out the door with him on it. But if you ever mention that to my employers—”
“So that’s that,” Linda observed. “You said your little man kept talking about Darjeeling, and now he’s had to go back there. We can’t get any help from him.”
“I hope,” said Gilbert, “he isn’t too much of a problem to the coastal antiaircraft batteries. What would happen to a spotter who reported a magic carpet? But now what can we do?”
Linda held her head high and resolute. “We’re going to call up your demon and talk this over with him. If my husband has to commit a sin a day, I want to know just what kind of sins.”
They drove for miles up and down the beach. It was not easy in full daylight to find a suitably quiet spot for calling up demons.
“People,” Linda sighed at last. “They swarm—”
“Shall we go home?”
“But it’s so nice here at the beach— I’m so glad to have a day off with you even if you have to be cursed and beaten to make it. I know! We can call him up in a hotel.” They drove back to the Mar Vista. There was something appropriate in calling up a demon in the magician’s former home. The clerk was puzzled by their return and looked suspiciously at Iles’s battered face.
“I’ll bet,” Linda whispered, “he thinks I got this wedding ring at the five-anddime. I hope.”
When they were alone in the drab and scantily furnished room, Gilbert Iles said: “Sriberdegibit!”
The fluctuant form perched itself on the dresser.
Linda gave a little gasp. lies took her hand. “Afraid, dear?”
“Heavens, no!” Her voice tried valiantly not to shake. “He . . . he’s different sizes all over, isn’t he?”
“In my kingdom,” said the demon, “everything is in an eternal state of flux. It’s only mortals who have fixed flesh; it must be very dull.”
“I like it,” Linda protested. “How could you buy stockings if your legs— But then you don’t wear any, do you? Or anything—” She snuggled close to her husband. “See? I can talk back to him.” But her voice was on the verge of sobs.
“What is it now?” said Sriberdegibit mournfully. “Did you summon me just to show me to this female?”
lies settled his wife onto his bed and stood facing the demon as he might have confronted a hostile witness. “I want to know what is a sin?”
“Why bother?” Twang. “You’re doing all right.”
“But I don’t like it and I’m not going to take it much longer. Man’s a free agent. That’s what makes him Man.”
“Ha,” said Sriberdegibit.
“I warn you, I’m going to break this curse as soon as I can. And in the meantime, I want to know just what I’m up against. What is a sin?”
“Well, you see,” said the demon, “that all depends on what you believe. A sin is an offense against yourself, your God, or your fellow man.”
“Then blasphemy is a sin?” lies grinned and let loose a five-minute tirade. Linda covered her head with a pillow. Even the demon blinked once or twice.
“There.” lies brushed the palms of his hands together. “That should do for today.”
Sriberdegibit’s tail twitched. “But you don’t believe in God, do you?”
“Why, I conceive of—”
“No. I admit I don’t.”
“Then how,” the demon asked plausibly, “can you possibly blaspheme? No, that kind of sin is out for you. So is sacrilege. You’ve got to believe, consciously or subconsciously, that what you do is a sin.”
“Just a minute,” lies objected. “How about these egocentrics who think whatever they do must be right? Can’t they ever sin?”
“They know all right. Down underneath. But this atheism makes you hard to find sins for. Now if you were a Catholic, you’d have it easy every Friday; you’d just eat meat. Or if you were a Jew, you could eat pork every day and let it go at that. But for you atheists—”
“Hold on. Isn’t atheism itself a sin?”
“Not if it’s honest and if it lets other people alone. If a man comes to the knowledge of God and then denies Him; or if he denies the right of other people to believe in Him— How about that? Want to start some religious persecution? That’s a good one.”
“I— Damn it, I couldn’t do that.”
“Well, let’s see. You can’t sin against your God. You can sin against yourself or against your fellow man. That leaves you lots of scope: abduction, adultery, arson, barratry, bigamy, burglary—”
“That’s a start. Adultery and bigamy are out.”
“If you really—” Linda tried to say.
“Out, I said. Barratry might do.”
“What’s that? It sounds dreadful.”
“Inciting unnecessary litigation. Very bad legal ethics. But this demon, hang it all, has gone and aroused my professional conscience. I don’t know— Burglary—”
“What was the first?” Linda demanded of the demon.
Sriberdegibit was beginning to look bored with the whole thing. “Abduction.” Twang.
“Abduction! That’s it. You could do that, couldn’t you?”
“Abduction? But what would I do with what I abducted?”
“That doesn’t matter. Just abduct.”
“But it’s a serious infringement of the rights of the individual. I don’t know that I could—”
“Gil darling, don’t be a prig! Think what’ll become of me if he . . . if that tail— Please, dear. You can do a little thing like that for me, can’t you?”
No man can resist a pleading wife. “Very well,” said Gilbert Iles. “I’ll abduct for you.”
“Is that all?” said Sriberdegibit wearily.
“I think so, unless—” Suddenly lies whirled, in the manner of one tearing away the last shreds of a witness’s mask of hypocrisy. “Breaking an oath would be a sin, wouldn’t it? Even for an atheist?”
“Atheists don’t make oaths. They affirm.”
“Then breaking an affirmation?”
“Very well.” lies raised his right hand. “I hereby solemnly affirm that I shall commit a sin every day of my life.” He dropped his hand to point straight at the demon. “Now every day that passes without a sin I shall have broken my solemn affirmation.”
“Gilbert!” Linda gasped. “You’re wonderful.”
Sriberdegibit shook his head. “Uh-uh. It’s like what you said about contracts. Unenforceable because contrary to good ends. That’s a vow more honored in the breach than the observance. No go. Can I go now? Thanks.”
lies stared at the empty dresser. “Demons,” he murmured, “are amazing. I never heard that quotation correctly used by a mortal. Do you suppose that Shakespeare— But I hope not.”
“It was a brilliant try,” said Linda consolingly.
“And now I start on a career of abduction—”
“Uh-uh. Lirst we’ll go ride on the merry-go-round and then you take me to dinner at a nice fish place and then home, then you go out and abduct.”
“It’s early for dinner,” lies said. “Even a little early for merry-go-rounds.”
“It never is,” Linda asserted.
“But as long as we have us a hotel room and the room clerk did give us that look . . .”
Linda laughed. “And you all tattered and torn, poor darling! Why, you’re just like a private eye!”
“Only,” she said later, “they never get three and a half years’ practice, do they? Poor things . . .”
Gilbert Iles kissed his wife good night and watched her go into the house. It had been a perfect day. Aside from interviewing a tusk-twanging demon, it had been an ideal, quiet, happy, marital day at the beach. He sighed, started up the car, and set off on an abduction prowl.
There was no use trying anything until night had really fallen. Meanwhile he drove around at random, surveying people. Casing the job, as a client had once called it. The ideal victim for an abduction should be alone and helpless. If not helpless, certainly not capable of battering Iles’s picturesque face any further. He forced himself to look professionally upon possible victims—small children, old ladies.
He shuddered at himself. His mind, which should be devoted to the humane practice of his profession, twisting itself into these devious and stupid byways of sin. He was glad when the night grew dark. Now he could get it over with.
He turned the car onto an ill-lit side road. “The first person I see,” he muttered, “after I count a hundred. One—two—three—” He narrowed his eyes so that they saw only the road ahead. “Fifty-five—fifty-six—” Nothing to it. Simply a snatch. And then? “Ninety-nine—one hundred” He widened his eyes and fixed them on the first person along the all but deserted street.
It was a policeman.
“May I be—” lies began, but stopped. Once was enough; he had sworn off that oath ever since the night in the bar. But a cop was too much. Not even practical. Make it two hundred. “One oh one—one oh two—” Where on earth do you— “ One ninety-nine—two hundred.”
This time it was an old woman in a shabby gray coat, carrying a string bag that clinked. Gilbert Iles set his teeth and pulled the car up to the curb. He flung the door open and tried to remember every gangster picture he had ever seen.
“Get in the car!” he snarled.
The old lady got in. “That’s awfully nice of you,” she said. “Of course I’m only going to my daughter’s, the one that’s married to the fireman, and it’s just a ways up the hill but I’m not so young as I used to be and these hills hit me in the back sometimes. It’s awfully nice of you to give me a lift. You know, young man, you look like the picture Cousin Nell sent us of that boy her second girl married. You haven’t got any folks in Cedar Rapids, have you?”
Gilbert Iles gave up. Just a way up the hill he stopped the car in front of the indicated house, opened his own door, got out, and helped his passenger to alight. She had not stopped talking once. “—and I do thank you, young man, and I wonder”—she reached into the clinking string bag—“if you’d like a glass of this jelly I was bringing my daughter? It’s Satsuma plum and her Frank, he certainly does love it, but I guess he won’t mind missing one glass. Here. You wouldn’t like to come in and see that grandson I was telling you about? Of course he’d be asleep by now, but—”
“No, thanks,” said lies politely. “But give him my love. And thanks for the jehy.”
As he drove off he muttered a full stream of what the demon had assured him could not be blasphemy, but which felt quite as satisfactory. Then back to the beginning. “One—two—three—” What would he run into this time? A detachment of marines? “Ninety-nine—one hundred.”
It was a man, alone. lies pulled the car up just ahead of him, slipped out, and stood beside the walk waiting for him, his hand sinisterly thrust into his topcoat pocket.
“Get in the car!” he snarled.
The man looked at him, then burst out guffawing. “lies, you old son of a gun! What a card! Wait’ll I tell the boys down at City Hall! What are you doing wandering around here? Who waded into your face like that? Where’s Linda? What a card! How’s about a drink? There’s a good joint near here. ‘Get in the car!’ What a
card!”
“Ha ha,” said Gilbert Iles.
What was all this? Were there really guardian angels, as well as wimps and demons, and was his deliberately frustrating his every effort at a serious sin? Well, there were still three hours to go. If he pretended to drop his abductive intention— Or can you fool a guardian angel? He didn’t know.
He didn’t care much either, after the third or fourth round. The politician was right; this was a good joint. The liquor was fair and the entertainers lousy; but there was a magnificent Negro who played such boogie-woogie as lies had never heard before. Even curses and sins did not matter particularly when that boy really took it and lifted it out of this world.
In one ecstatic moment, Gilbert Iles’s eye happened to light on the clock, and ecstasy vanished. It was almost 12:30.
“Sorry,” he said hastily. “Got a date at one.”
The politician leered. “And I thought you were a good boy. How about Linda?”
“Oh, that’s all right. Linda told me to. Good-by.” And he disappeared almost as rapidly as his friend the demon was wont to.
He turned up the first side street that presented itself. He didn’t bother with the counting game this time. The minutes were short. His neck already twitched in anticipation of that garroting tail. Surely a trained lawyer’s mind could find some way of breaking that curse. The demon had said that its previous owners, the Murgatroyds, had “got rid of it.” Did that mean there was a loophole? If a Murgatroyd could find it, what was stopping an lies? And why was his mind buzzing with a half-remembered tune . . . something about the dead of the night’s high-noon?
For one hesitant instant he wavered on the verge of discovery. His alcohol-sharpened intellect seemed, for one sharp moment, to see the solution of the whole problem. Then his eyes caught sight of a figure on the sidewalk, and the solution went pop!
The routine was becoming automatic. You pull up to the curb, you fake the presence of a gun, and you snarl. “Get in the car!”
The girl drew herself up haughtily. “What do you mean, get in the car?”
“I mean get in the car. And quick!”
“Oho you do, do you? And why should I get in the car?”
“Because I said so.” His arm snaked out—he could not help comparing it to a silver-scaled tail—seized her wrist, and dragged her in. He slammed the door and without another word drove off.
The Compleat Boucher Page 19
