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

“Aw, go to hell.”

“Go on, look!” Ferlini shouted suddenly. Then his muscular arm whipped out and caught her wrist. He bent her down toward the lighted mirror on his table, forcing her to face it. She looked up at her reflection, at the streaked orange makeup on her forehead and chin, at the age lines around her mouth, the puffy flesh beneath her eyes. She turned her head aside, and Ferlini’s grip tightened cruelly.

“Stop it, Joel For God’s sake!”

“Who you callin’ an old man, hah? I’m younger’n you, understand, on account of I keep in shape! Don’t call me no old man, you hear me?”

“All right, all right!”

He released her, with a growl of disgust. His good mood was dissipated. Wanda, tears blurring her sight, went to the other side of the room and completed dressing.

“Not everybody thinks I’m so old,” she whispered. “Not everybody, Joe.”

“Shut up and get dressed. We’re supposed to go to dinner, let’s go to dinner. Besides,” he said, standing up and slapping his flat stomach, “I want to talk to Roscoe about something. About the water trick.”

Wanda said nothing.

The restaurant Roscoe had picked was just like Phil Roscoe himself: past its prime, seedy, congenial, and well-lit. Roscoe held Wanda’s chair gallantly for her, but Ferlini dropped heavily into a chair, reached for a roll and tore it in half. With his mouth stuffed, he said, “Hey, you should have seen me tonight, Phil, I was the best. You tell him, Wanda, ain’t it true?”

Wanda smiled weakly. “It was a good crowd.”

“Good? I had three curtain calls!” Ferlini said, forgetful that he worked without curtains, and without encores. “I’m tellin’ you, Phil, the escape business is comin’ back with a bang. And I’m gonna be right on top when it does. Especially after we do that water routine—”

“What, again?” Phil groaned. “Look, we haven’t even had a drink, and you’re talking about water.”

Ferlini roared with laughter, and shouted for the waiter.

For Wanda, the meal was tiresome from first course to last. Ferlini and his manager did the talking, and she had heard it all before.

“Look, Joe,” Roscoe said, “You know as well as me that times are different. Few years ago, a good press agent could ballyhoo an escape guy right onto the front page. Only Houdini’s dead, Joe, don’t forget it.”

“Sure, Houdini’s dead. Only I’m alive!” He thumped his chest. “Me, Joe Ferlini!”

“That’s one thing about you, Joe, you never had any trouble with false modesty.”

“Listen,” Ferlini grated, “what could Houdini do I can’t? I work with ropes, chains, irons. I can get out of bags, boxes, hampers, chests. I can do handcuff routines. That bolted-to-a-plank stuff. I can do that Ten Ichi Thumb Tie. I can do the straitjacket. I can do escape tricks Houdini never even thought of. Besides, you know he used a lot of phony trick stuff—”

“And I suppose you don’t?” Wanda snorted.

“Sure, sometimes. I mean, I got my skeleton keys and my phony bolts and that other junk. But you know me, Phil, I do my best tricks with muscle. Am I right?”

“Sure, sure,” the manager said wearily. “You’re the greatest, Joe.”

“I keep in shape, you ask Wanda here. One hour a day. I’m with the barbells. I still got a terrific chest expansion. I can do this water thing, Phil. It’ll be great!”

“But it’s been done, Joe, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. People don’t get excited about it no more.”

Ferlini made a noise of contempt. “You drink too much, Phil; your brain’s soft. Sure, it’s been done, only how many years ago? There’s a whole new generation now. Right? And the way you handle things, it could be a real big deal. What do you say?”

Roscoe sighed, and it was a sigh of surrender.

“Okay, Joe, if you really want it. How do you want to work the act?”

Ferlini beamed. “I figure I’ll do it up good. First I’ll let ’em handcuff me. Then the rope around my body, about fifty feet, and the leg-irons. Then they put me in a sack and tie it up good. Then they put the whole business in a big iron chest and dump me into Lake Truscan. How does that sound?”

“Like sudden death. How much is trick and how much is muscle?”

“The rope is muscle; I’ll just give ’em the chest expansion routine and the whole tiling’ll slip right off me. I’ll have a skeleton key to the handcuffs in a double-hemmed trouser cuff. Once I get them off. I’ll take a razor and slit the bag open. The chest’ll have a phony bottom; I push it open and swim to the surface; the whole works sink and I come up smelling like a rose.” He gave Phil his victory grin.

“How good a swimmer are you?”

“The best. Don’t worry about that part. When I was a kid, I wanted to go over and swim the Channel, that’s how good I was.”

“We could drop you by motor boat, and pick you up the same way. That’ll lessen the risk.”

“Sure, it’s a cinch. I knew you’d see it, Phil.”

“I see it,” the manager said, “but I still don’t like it. Hey, waiter! Where’s that bourbon?”

From their apartment hotel room on the third floor, Wanda could look out of the window and see her husband stroking rapidly across the outdoor pool in the courtyard. He moved like a shark through the water, his graying hair slicked back and crinkling at the edges, the thick muscles in his back and shoulders rippling with every smooth motion of his arms. Once, fifteen years ago, she would have been rapt with admiration. Now she knew better. The great Ferlini needed only one admirer, and he saw him in the shaving mirror every day.

With a sigh, she came back into the room, sat down, and listlessly turned the pages of Variety. There was a timid knock on the door a few moments later, and she called out permission to enter. When she saw Baggett in the doorway, she caught her breath in surprise and guilt.

“Tommy! What are you doing here?”

“I had to see you, Wanda. I knew Joe was in the pool, so I thought it would be a good time. Looks like he’ll be there the rest of the day—”

“You’re probably right.”

She was flustered, but tried not to show it. She offered him a drink, but he said no. She tried to make small talk, but he wasn’t interested. In the next minute, she was in his arms. But she was uncomfortable there, and soon broke from him and started to talk about her husband.

“You just don’t know what he’s like. Every year he gets worse, every day. All he thinks about is the act, night and day it’s escape, escape, escape. Sometimes I think I’ll go crazy, Tommy, I mean it. When we were in Louisville, last year, I actually went to a head-shrinker for a while, did you know that? For three months I went, and then he got the job in Las Vegas, so that ended that.”

“If you ask me,” Baggett growled, “he’s the one that’s crazy, treating you the way he does.”

“You know he even escapes in his sleep sometimes? No kidding. He wakes up m the middle of the night, throws off the covers, and takes a bow.” She laughed without a change of expression, and then the tears flowed. Baggett surrounded her in his arms again. “Sometimes I wish he’d get tied up where he can’t escape. Not ever—”

“What do you mean?”

She looked up at him.

“You know the water trick, where he gets thrown in a lake? He’s going to do it in a couple of weeks. You know what I’ve been thinking about, ever since he decided on it?”

She went to the window, looking down at the pool where Ferlini was still stubbornly plowing the water.

“I was thinking that maybe something would go wrong. He’s good; I know that. He can escape from almost anything. But if one little piece of the act doesn’t work right — he’d drown. Do you think I’m terrible, having a thought like that?”