Chester Himes - The big gold dream

"No one in miles," he muttered.

But he did not switch the light back on yet. He felt an inexplicable nervousness-not a premonition, more a building up of tension. He walked through the darkness to the door leading to the stairs. Something brushed against his leg. Shock went through him like cold fire. He jumped to one side, feeling his hair rise from an ice-cold scalp. His hands clawed desperately along the tool rack for a weapon.

Then a cat mewed and moved forward to rub against his other leg. He looked down and saw twin ellipsoids of green light shining in the dark.

He sucked in his breath with a watery sound.

"Sheba!" he gasped. "Sheba, little pussy."

He reached down to stroke the purring black cat.

"Sheba! Little queen. You will make a corpse of old Abie yet."

He crossed the room, turned on the light and went back to work. The kitten played around his feet.

He worked absorbedly. When the padding was removed he sounded the burlap-covered wooden frame with a small wooden mallet. His ear was cocked, listening to the sound of the wood. He worked along the back of the frame down the back legs, then around to the front legs and up the sides. The arms of the frame were seemingly solid cylinders of a light white wood. The mallet made small light sounds as it tapped against the solid wood.

"Impregnable," the Jew muttered.

Disappointment showed in the creases of his face. The cat rubbed against his leg again, and he shoved it aside with a gesture of frustration.

He began tapping the other arm. Suddenly he bent his head to listen. There was a slight hollow sound beneath the mallet blows. His face lit slowly with an expression of uncontainable avarice.

The cat had withdrawn to a distance and sat washing her face with offended dignity.

The Jew knelt and examined the end of the cylinder in the bright light. It was identical with its mate, the grains of the wood unbroken as though cut from a solid beam. He exchanged his mallet for a small iron hammer and tapped the end gently, listening. Then he took a small wood chisel from the bench and began cutting a small circle. A few minutes later the plug sank in.

"Ingenious," he muttered admiringly.

He speared the plug with a gimlet and worked it out from the arm. Behind was a cylindrical opening of an inch in diameter. He probed with his finger. His expression changed to astonishment. With a pair of pincers he fished a cylindrical packet, which fitted exactly, from the opening. The outer cover was yellow oiled silk in a state of perfect preservation. He sniffed it; it smelled slightly perfumed.

He went over to the workbench, switched on another light and smoothed the packet flat. It took the shape of a plain silk pouch, closed with a flap but unsealed. He opened the pouch and extracted a neat sheaf of bright green bank notes held by a paper band. He sucked in his breath. His face was a study in emotions.

"Fantastic!" he muttered. "Brand-new."

The notes were of one-hundred-dollar bills.

Slowly his tongue came out and slid from side to side on his bottom lip.

As he counted the notes, his eyes widened. There were 1,000 hundred-dollar bills.

Suddenly he bent double, laughing as though he had suddenly gone stark raving crazy. He was laughing so hard he did not hear the slight sound made by a shoe sole scuffling against the pavement outside the basement window.

But the cat heard. The cat stopped washing its face and stared unblinkingly at the silhouette of a man peering through the dirty panes.

The silhouette withdrew, and the cat went back to washing its face.

The Jew finally got himself under control. He straightened up and stared at the money. Saliva trickled from the corners of his mouth. He wrung his hands as though washing them. The cat stopped washing its face again and watched him silently. He patted the money. He turned it over and looked at the other side, then held one of the notes against the light.

"Incredible," he muttered.

The next instant his body went rigid. He froze in a listening attitude, his ear cocked. The unmistakable sound of an automobile starter reached his ear. Before his face could form an expression the motor caught and the loud hard roar of a big truck motor racing at top speed shattered the silence. There could be no mistake. Someone had started the motor of his moving van in the shed. No one but himself had keys to the gate. Someone had broken in.

The motor raced, then was cut to idle and left running.

He stacked the money, slipped it back into the pouch, and pulled open a drawer in the workbench, moving with incredible speed. He put the pouch into the drawer and withdrew a. 38 caliber Colt revolver, loaded with tracer bullets, and a large black three-cell flashlight with an oversized lamp. He switched out the light over the bench and moved quickly toward the master switch beneath the other bench. His body, once put into motion, seemed to gather speed. The black-clad figure capped with yellow-gray hair armed with revolver and flashlight gave the impression of incalculable danger.

The switch clicked faintly, and the room was plunged into darkness. But the Jew moved through the darkness as though he could see. He ran lightly on tiptoes through the open door and up the stairs. One of the stairs creaked beneath his weight, and he swore silently in Yiddish.

The staircase turned at a landing and entered the back hall of the first floor, directly beside the back door. The Jew halted for a moment to peer through the grimy panes into the back courtyard. But, coming from the bright light of his workroom, his eyes had not adjusted to the darkness. He put his ear to the pane but could hear only the sound of the idling motor.

With infinite caution he unlocked the inner door. The slight sound made by the clicking of the bolt was barely perceptible above the sound of the idling motor. The door opened soundlessly.

He waited with his face pressed to the iron grille, looking and listening. There was still only the sound of the idling motor. The Jew figured it was a trap. But he didn't know whether it was a legitimate burglar or some teenage hoodlums. He had a telephone in the ground floor cubbyhole office. He could have phoned for the police, but he didn't want the police meddling into his business, poking about and asking questions.

He decided to set a trap of his own. He unlocked the grille and pushed it back on its hinges until it formed a right angle, guarding the entrance from any attack from the left. Then he backed into the shadows and waited.

Five minutes passed. The cat came up the stairs, looked outside, sniffed and walked in a dignified manner across the courtyard with its tail straight up, looking neither to the right nor the left. The Jew knew that was no indication; Sheba would simply ignore anyone she didn't know.

Ten minutes passed, then fifteen. The Jew began growing impatient. He wanted to get back to his money. It could have been some pranksters. No one in their right senses would want to steal his moving van. And had anyone wanted to get into the store, they would have made a move by now. He would wait another five minutes.

He was guessing at the time; but the clock of his mind was fairly accurate. When the five minutes had ticked off in his brain, he put the revolver beneath his coat and cocked it to muffle the sound. Then, holding the heavy black flashlight extended in his left hand, thumb on the switch, and holding the heavy revolver extended in his right hand, finger on the trigger, he emerged slowly from the dark square of the doorway.

To the right of the doorway, a man plastered to the brick wall stepped out. He had outwaited the Jew.

The Jew saw the hammer descending and moved instinctively a fraction of an instant before it struck him on the bone point of his right shoulder. His gun arm went numb with the brackish taste of bone ache. The gun went off before it fell, clattering, to the pavement. Out of the roar the bullet drew a white line through the dark against the brick wall of the brewery and ricocheted upward in a series of arabesques.