Роберт Артур - Alfred Hitchcock’s A Hangman’s Dozen

“I always say,” he said, “better to overtip than undertip.” And he kicked me under the table.

“Not me,” I said. “Personally, I believe waste not, want not.”

“I agree with Mr. Holland here,” Mr. Jones said to Arch. “I like to count my pennies.”

“Well,” Arch said, “it just so happens I have a small article here which might please you, sir.” He took out a little embossed card. “Mr. Holland’s signature is on it, and we’d like you to have it with our compliments. It entitles you to ride through the Holland Tunnel for nothing.”

“You don’t say?” Mr. Tones said, and laid down three eights and accepted the card. “Well, this certainly is wonderful. I don’t know how to thank you boys.”

“Mr. Holland,” Arch said to me. “So long as we find ourselves talking about the tunnel, why don’t you run down to the stateroom and bring up those ownership papers? I’m sure Mr. Jones here would like to see what they look like.”

I went down to the stateroom and got the papers Arch had had printed up. When I got back, the two of them were talking about something else entirely.

Arch took the papers and casually handed them over to the other man. “Look these over at your leisure, Mr. Tones,” he said. “We’ve got another night on ship board yet.”

“Well, thank you,” Mr. Jones said. “So long as we’ve reached this point, I might as well warn you boys, not a word about this to anyone. We don’t want it to get back to the Holland family in New York.”

“Heavens no,” Arch said.

At the card table the following evening, our last night at sea, the matter of the tunnel came up at once.

“Boys,” Mr. Jones said, “I’ve been thinking over your proposition. Your business adviser here drives a hard bargain, Mr. Holland, but I’ve decided the terms are acceptable.”

“Well, sir,” Arch said to him, “I trust you brought your checkbook with you and you won’t be sorry. If Mr. Holland here didn’t need the money, you could never have scored like this. I believe you’ll make that hundred thousand back in the first month’s operation.”

“I’m counting on it,” Mr. Jones said. “I have the check all written out. As soon as I’ve seen the property, the money is yours.”

“Seen the property?” Arch said.

“Why, yes,” Mr. Jones said. “Soon as we get to New York in the morning, I hope you boys won’t mind driving through the tunnel with me, just so I can look it over. It’s a standard practice of mine in all real estate deals.”

“Why, certainly,” Arch said. “We can conclude our deal at the New Jersey end of the tunnel if you like. Meanwhile, should we have a hand or two of poker?”

“My pleasure,” Mr. Jones said. “I certainly hope your luck changes, boys. You’ve been holding miserable cards.”

Later, back in the stateroom, Arch started to beat himself on the right side of the head with the palm of his hand. “Come on,” he said to me. “Think. Put your brain to work.”

I said, “What’s the nature of the problem?”

“We’ve got to go through that tunnel for nothing,” Arch said. “He’s got that card I gave him, so we’ve got to make it work.”

We doped it out finally on a timetable basis. Arch cabled ahead to have two rented cars waiting for us at the dock in New York. I had to figure out some excuse to get away, ahead of Arch and Mr. Tones, so I could take the first car. Everything had to be right.

It was agreed that we both would use the farthest right-hand toll booth at the tunnel entrance on Canal Street. When I got there in my car, I handed a dollar bill to the collector. He tried to hand me back fifty cents, but I wouldn’t take it.

“What’s this?” he said.

“Look,” I said, “there’s going to be a car come along in a couple of minutes with a nut inside. He’s going to show you a card and tell you he owns the tunnel. Don’t charge him anything. Just salute him and let the car go through. The extra half dollar I’m giving you now will pay for that car. Understand?”

“Sure,” the toll booth guy said doubtfully. “You say he owns the tunnel?”

“He thinks he does. We’re taking him to an asylum in Jersey. I’m going ahead now to cement the necessary arrangements.”

“He ain’t going to do something crazy, is he? Like stop the car in the middle of the tunnel?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “There’ll be a gent with him doing the driving. Don’t worry about a thing.”

“I shouldn’t, huh?” the toll booth guy said.

I waited and waited in the hotel room without any sign of Arch. After a while it occurred to me that it had been my money we’d lost at poker, playing with Mr. Jones on the boat, and Mr. Jones’ check for the tunnel had been made out to Arch, as it had to be since I’d been using the assumed name of Holland, and that maybe Arch just wasn’t going to show up at all.

But then I figured no, Arch was too honest to do a thing like that. And sure enough, finally there was a knock on the door and Arch was standing there. He had a big grin on his face.

“Well?” I said.

“Worked fine,” he said. “We rode free.”

“Where’s the money?”

Arch set down his briefcase. “No money. He got a good look at the place and decided it just wasn’t his kind of tunnel.”

“It wasn’t his kind of... Wait a minute! We lost five thousand dollars playing cards with him and went to all this trouble with the printing and the toll booth and now...”

Arch held up his hand. “He realized all that. He’s a splendid citizen, this Mr. Jones. Comes from an old distinguished New York family. All kinds of tradition and honors and so forth. Said he felt he should do something for us.” Arch opened the briefcase. “And so, my friend, in exchange for just five thousand dollars more, we...”

“You gave him another five thousand?”

“Please,” Arch said. “Look what we wound up with.”

He handed over a batch of documents.

No doubt about it, he is a fine and upstanding character, this Mr. Jones, from an old and honored New York family.

Arch and me, we own Jones Beach.

Not so long ago a relative asked me if I’d like to go hunting with him. I was about to say yes when a line in this story, which fortuitously I was reading at the moment, leaped out at me: “... there’s no thrill like shooting your own.”

She had a kind of sad face. The gray eyes were set wide apart and they had a way of taking on a gaze as though she were thinking of something far away and forever lost. Her high cheekbones gave her the hollow look of pining away and the long, rose-colored lips were almost always grave. She seldom smiled. Still she was beautiful, beautiful in a haunting, unforgettable way. I know.

She was not tall or short for a woman, and she was slim, very slim. You could see the fine bone structure beneath the skin when she closed her hands. She was like a piece of delicate china. Even her voice had a fragile quality, like the last echo of some forgotten whisper.

Every time he took her in his arms, it seemed as if he would crush the breath, maybe even the life, out of her for he was a big brute of a man; but I suppose he could be gentle because she seemed to like it. These were the few times that something like a smile would touch her lips and she’d hug him in return and then kiss him. I always tried not to watch, but no matter how quickly I averted my eyes the picture was there, sharp and lasting.

She had seen us coming and had stepped outside and was standing there, bare-headed, in the snow. She waved and that was enough to send him on ahead with long, fast strides. I hung back looking out over the hard rippling blue of the lake which was still unfrozen after this first light snowfall of November.