Тэлмидж Пауэлл - Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 1, January, 1957

Stafford stared in horror as he saw Hamilton’s hands come out of his pockets, saw the size of them and the tight, pink Latex gloves sheathing them. Too late, he tried to dodge away as Hamilton lunged toward him. Hamilton’s great hands closed over Stafford’s throat. Stafford tried to break the grip, struggled frantically, but all that happened was that Hamilton’s hands closed more and more tightly until drops of sweat oozed out from under the wrist bands of the rubber gloves and Stafford’s legs gave under him. Long after Stafford was hanging helplessly limp from his hands, Hamilton continued to squeeze. While he did this, he averted his eyes so that he wouldn’t see what was happening to Stafford’s face.

When he was finished, Hamilton let Stafford fall to the floor and then quietly left the apartment. He was quite certain nobody saw him leave the building. He got into his car and halfway home he threw the rubber gloves out the window onto the street.

When he arrived home, Kay was in the bathroom, fixing her hair before the mirror. She was a tall woman whose statuesque figure couldn’t even be hidden by a faded, almost formless bathrobe. Her face was finely featured and would have been pretty except that it was a completely colorless face, devoid of character. She was about thirty-five, a little over twenty years younger than Hamilton.

She looked around at him, smiling faintly, as he passed the door. She said: “I’m sorry I took so long at the library, with that research, but I had trouble finding the right books. Where have you been, Poppa?”

“It got a little lonesome here with you gone so long, honey,” he said. “So I took a ride downtown and back. Were you worried about me?”

“A little,” she said.

“Hurry and finish with your hair, Kay,” he told her. “All the TV programs we like are on tonight. I’ve missed our nice evenings together, since you’ve been so busy with your — research.”

He didn’t hear what she answered. He was busy thinking about how she would react when she heard about Stafford tomorrow. He hoped his daughter would not get too ill and upset; he couldn’t afford to take too much time off from work right at this time.

“This isn’t an office,” Sam said. “It’s a bedroom!” I let him have it, Doreen started laughing low and soft...

I’m afraid to go home tonight.

I’ll go, of course. To a modern, lovely house on Coquina Beach overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. The beach is not the habitat of paupers.

A singularly beautiful and devoted woman waits for me there. Doreen. My wife.

We are ringleaders in a smart cocktail set. We get special service whenever we go into a beach restaurant. Everything has worked perfectly. No one on the beach suspects how we came into our money.

To an outsider I might well be a person to envy. Yet I would give five years of my life if I could escape going home tonight.

Doreen was unaware of the jam I was in when we went on that hunting trip together six months back. We had been married only a few weeks at the time, after getting acquainted during a business trip I took to Atlanta.

She was still pretty much of a stranger to me, and she was such an intense person I didn’t know how she would take the news.

We’d had a wonderful time on the trip. Few women would have taken the dark, tangled swamp, the south Georgia heat as Doreen had. Snakes, alligators, they didn’t faze her. Neither had the panther.

We were in Okeefanokee hunting deer. I’d struck the panther’s spoor in late afternoon. I’d wanted Doreen to turn back, but she’d looked at me strangely.

“Enos,” she said, “I never suspected you’d be afraid of anything. You’re big, ugly, direct, blunt, hard-headed, cruel — or is that only a front?” She finished with a short laugh, but there was a seriousness beneath her words.

“I’m not afraid for myself,” I said.

“Then never be afraid for me,” she said excitedly. “Come on, Enos, I want to see you get this cat.”

I jumped the cat twenty minutes later. As it came out of a clump of palmetto and saw grass I put a 30–30 slug in her. My aim was a trifle high. The panther screamed, pinwheeled in the air, and came at me, a crazed mass of fury and hatred.

Doreen stood her ground and waited for me to shoot the cat. When the beast lay still and prone, it was I who had to wipe sweat from my face.

Doreen walked to the cat slowly. Blood on the animal’s hide was already beginning to draw flies and gnats.

“See, Enos,” Doreen said, “some of it is still pumping out of her, the hot, red life. Wasn’t she beautiful in death?”

I shivered. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. Let’s get back to camp.”

We returned to camp and Doreen cooked our supper. Rabbit on a wooden spit and sourdough biscuits.

When we had eaten, we retired to our tent behind mosquito netting. Around us the swamp was coming to life. Its music was a symphony with tones ranging from the shrill of crickets to the basso of the frogs. The swamp rustled and sighed and screamed occasionally.

Doreen slipped into my arms. “You were wonderful with the cat today, Enos.”

Thinking of it, her breath quickened and I could feel her heart beating against me.

“I’ve shot ’em before,” I said.

She pulled my chin around with her thumb and forefinger. “I don’t interest you a bit at the moment, Enos,” she stated. “What’s bothering you?”

“A business detail. Nothing for you to worry about.”

“I’m your wife,” he said. “Tell me.”

“All right,” I said looking directly into her eyes. They were large and dark. In the dim light of the lantern her pupils were dilated and as black as the glossy midnight color of her hair.

“I’m in trouble,” I added after a moment. “Serious trouble. I might even be yanked into prison.”

“Why?”

“I’ve taken some money that doesn’t belong to me.”

“From whom?”

“Sam Fickens.”

“Your business partner,” she said.

“That’s right. You know we’ve been spending at a heavy clip, Doreen. The house was costly. A good buy, you don’t find many old colonials on an estate any more. But costly.”

“You’re sorry, Enos?”

“I’m not sorry for a thing,” I said. “Except that money ran short. Sam and I had this deal with the Birmingham company coming up. My share would cover the shortage. But the deal blew up. And Sam discovered the shortage the day before you and I left on this trip. He told me to go ahead and take the trip — and use it to figure out whether I want to make him sole owner of the company or spend a few years in prison.”

“Why, the dirty snake,” Doreen said, not without a degree of admiration in her voice. “It’s nothing short of blackmail.”

“True.”

“You’re not going to let him get away with it, are you?”

“What can I do?”

She looked at me oddly. “You’re asking me. You, a man, asking a woman?”

I colored a little. “I told you not to worry your head with it. I’ll figure something out.”

She lay back on her cot. I smoked a cigarette. I was lighting a second from it when she said, “Enos?”

“Yes?”

“If anything happened to Sam what would happen to the business?”

“I’d get his share. It’s not an unusual partnership arrangement.”

“Well, you didn’t hesitate when that cat was coming after you this afternoon, did you?”

I went cold under the muggy sweat on my body. “You mean kill Sam.”