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

Doris was sitting very close to Lambert now and the hem of her skirt was up above her knees. She brushed the skirt down casually and held out her hand for her drink.

“Harvey,” she said, “I thought you’d decided to distill the stuff yourself.” There was a deep flush in her cheeks and her full lips had the pouty, slightly swollen look they’d had when she and Harvey were first married and made love so violently.

Harvey handed her one of the glasses and gave the other to Lambert. “I might have to distill some, at that,” he said. “We’re running pretty low.”

“I thought I told you to bring a couple of bottles home with you this morning,” Doris said.

“You did,” Harvey said. “I forgot. Just didn’t think about it.”

“Naturally,” Doris said.

“I didn’t know we were going to have company,” Harvey said, smiling apologetically at Lambert. “I’ll take a quick run into town and pick some up.”

Lambert’s face was almost expressionless. “I’d go over to my place for some,” he said. “But I’m fresh out. A bottle or so of beer, maybe, and that’s all.”

“It’ll only take a few minutes,” Doris said. “Harvey doesn’t mind at all.”

Lambert made a move to rise, with obviously no intention of completing it. “I’ll go with you, Harve,” he said.

“Stay where you are, Mr. Lambert,” Harvey said. “I—”

“Cal,” Lambert said. “Call me Cal, doggonit, Harve.”

“Sure, Cal. Now you stay put. It doesn’t take two full-grown men to carry a couple of little bottles.”

“Well,” Doris said, “I hope you two boys can come to some kind of an agreement. We’re going to be ready for another one pretty soon.”

Harvey laughed. “You folks listen to some records or something. I’ll be right back.” He walked to the hat tree beside the front door and took down his overcoat. There was a mirror behind the hat tree, and as Harvey buttoned up his coat he could see Cal Lambert turn to smile broadly at Doris and then look away again, lips pursed, as if he were about to whistle.

The drive to Lairdsville took less than ten minutes. Harvey parked in front of Teddy’s Taproom and went inside. There were only two men at the bar, Bill Wirt and Gus Bialis, and both of them insulted Harvey loudly and affectionately as he approached them. They were both lifelong friends of his, and, before his marriage to Doris four years ago, his constant drinking companions. At a table near the front end of the bar sat George Helm, another of Harvey’s friends, but one who didn’t drink at all.

“I’ll need a couple fifths of the usual, Ted,” Harvey said to the bartender. “And you’d better give me a couple bottles of soda to help out with the weight.”

“Check,” the bartender said, moving toward the shelves where he kept his package goods. “If you want to spoil good liquor with soda, Harvey, it’s no skin off mine.”

“Well, what do you know,” Bill Wirt said. “You and the missus must be figuring on throwing a real one, Harvey. Something special happen?”

“No,” Harvey said. “Cal Lambert dropped over. Just a neighborly visit, I guess you’d say.”

Bill looked knowingly at Gus Bialis and then back at Harvey. “You mean to say, Harvey, you left your wife there with Lambert while you traipsed off down here for liquor? Is that what you done?” He shook his head wonderingly. “Man, you sure got a world of trust in human nature. Don’t it worry you — them two being out there all alone like that?”

Harvey smiled. “Not so you could notice it, Bill.”

“Well, like I said, you sure got a lot of trust in human nature.”

“Yes,” Gus Bialis said. “He sure’n hell has, hasn’t he? Of course, that little lady of his is straighter’n a string, and we all know it — but what’s the use of tempting fate, I always say.”

“Right, Gus!” Bill said. “You said it right, by God!”

Harvey grinned, paid for his whiskey and mixer, and went back outside. George Helm was waiting for him just outside the doorway.

“I didn’t see you step out,” Harvey said. “How’ve you been, George?”

“All right,” George shrugged, not meeting Harvey’s eyes. He was somewhere in his early fifties, a short, heavy-set, balding man who made a living buying and selling second-hand farm equipment. “I kind of wanted to talk to you private, Harvey,” he said.

Harvey shifted the bottles to his other arm and nodded. “What is it, George?”

George slapped his mittened hands together and hunched his shoulders against the bitter slice of the wind. “Cold, ain’t it?”

“Sure is,” Harvey said. “What was it you wanted, George?”

“Well,” George said hesitantly, “I guess it really ain’t none of my business, when you get right down to it...” He paused. “I guess you know I get around these parts a good bit, Harvey. My type business keeps a man on the move all the time. He has to talk with a lot of people, and sometimes he hears a thing or two. You know how it is. Like maybe he hears that some man’s wife is sort of playing around with somebody else. You know what I mean, Harvey?”

“Sure, George,” Harvey said a little impatiently. “But—”

“Now listen a minute. This here’s a kind of ticklish thing I want to say, Harvey. But supposing you was to find out something like I just said? Would you tell the woman’s husband what she was up to? I mean, don’t you think a man in that position should know what’s going on?”

Harvey frowned. “Well... Well, hell, George, it’s hard to say.”

“Yes, but put yourself in his place. If you was him, wouldn’t you want to know?”

Harvey took a tentative step toward his automobile, then paused. “I guess so, George,” he said. “But no two men feel the same way. Some of them would be better off if they never found out.”

“Yes,” George persisted, “but don’t you think a man like me, when he knows something’s going on, has a duty?”

Harvey sighed and took another step towards his automobile. “That’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself, George. With things like that, nobody else can make up your mind for you.”

George had moved along with him, and now he studied Harvey’s face carefully. “Supposing you put yourself in this man’s position for a minute, Harvey,” he said. “Just say you was him. If you found out your wife had been fooling around, what would you do?”

Harvey opened the car door slowly, put the bottles on the back seat, and got behind the wheel. He started to close the door, but George caught it and held it open.

“Well?” George said. “You ain’t answered my question, Harvey. If you was this husband, and knew your wife was fooling around, what would you do?”

Harvey took a deep breath. “I’d try to find out what was to blame, George,” he said. “That’s the first thing I’d do. Chances are, it’d turn out to be me.”

George’s mouth sagged open. “You?”

“That’s right,” Harvey said. “It’s always easy to blame the woman in a case like that, George. Me, I’d ask myself what I might have done to make her do what she did. I’d figure there must be something wrong with me — some lack, maybe, or something I was doing wrong that I didn’t know about.” He turned on the motor and sat listening to it, his eyes thoughtful. “And then I guess I’d sit down with her and have a long talk, George. I’d try to find out how I was failing her, and then I’d do my damnedest to make it up to her.”

George swallowed twice and shook his head incredulously. “You... you wouldn’t do anything to her? You wouldn’t take a whip to her or anything like that? You wouldn’t even do anything to the man?”