Richard Deming: Tweak the Devil’s Nose

The little man paused while his eyes stared sightlessly in front of him, seeing not a group of people gathered on a cool front porch, but the interior of a hotel room.

“I didn’t know exactly why I was following him, except that it seemed to be time for a showdown about Isobel. I had things to say about his embezzlement, of course, but I had checked with the bank before closing time and knew the money was safely back in our account, so that discussion could have waited until he returned to the office. I told him I wanted him to stay away from Isobel.”

Again he paused, and this time when he resumed, his voice was barely audible. “He said he loved her, both he and she intended to get divorces, and he meant to marry her. And then he laughed at me.”

He stopped speaking, this time for good, letting us visualize the rest for ourselves. It was not hard to visualize: a round little fat man confronted by a tall, virile rival who had cheated him, stolen his beautiful wife, and now destroyed his dignity with the final insult of laughter. Momentarily I almost found myself sympathizing with him, but then I remembered he was the same killer who had attempted to murder Fausta.

Fausta remembered it at the same moment. Staring at Jones with the same fascination she might have regarded a freak in a side show, she said, “Now I understand why you looked as if you were seeing a ghost the first time we met. You thought you had just poisoned me.”

“Yeah,” I said. “He also thought you’d immediately recognize him as Lancaster’s killer when you walked into his office with me, not knowing the story that you had seen his face was a deliberate plant.”

At a gesture from Warren Day, Hannegan heaved to his feet and curtly motioned for Jones to arise. Numbly the little man got up, then gazed down at his wife in mute appeal.

But Isobel was already regarding him as though he were something without much interest from her past. Her eyes flicked over him indifferently, then settled thoughtfully on the burly figure of Lieutenant Hannegan. You could almost see her filing him away in her mind as a future possibility to while away an evening of boredom. I had a feeling that if she had him alone for a moment, she would issue an invitation for that evening.

Suddenly she smiled brightly up at Harlan. “I suppose you have it arranged for me to inherit everything, haven’t you, dear?”

Fausta forgot she was a lady. Leaving her seat next to me almost as fast as Farmer Cole could have moved, she planted a beautiful roundhouse square in Isobel’s lovely left eye.