Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

“You’ve had enough,” he said arbitrarily and quite inaccurately. I hadn’t had anything. “You’re cut off.”

And with that he came back toward me, and this time did push me, gave me a good hearty shove out through the partial aperture I had been standing in. So tempestuous a one in fact that I went all the way back and over, and again sprawled on my shoulder blades in a sort of arrested skid across the sidewalk.

This time he locked the door from the inside (evidently a temporary measure until I should go away) and pulled down a shade across the grimy glass portion of it in final dismissal.

It was the second time I’d been toppled in about three minutes and I blew a fuse.

I got up into a crouched-over position, like a runner on his mark just before the start of a race. I swung my head around, this way and that, looking for something to throw. There was a fire hydrant, but it was immovable. There was one of those Department of Sanitation wire-lattice litter baskets that stud the sidewalks of New York. I went over to that, still at a crouch, and looked in it for something heavy. All I could see from the top was layers of newspapers. So instead of throwing something from its contents, I threw the whole receptacle itself.

Lifted it clear, hoisted it overhead, took a few running steps with it, scraps of litter raining out of it, and let it fly.

The door responded with an ear-splitting bang like the backfire from a heavy truck’s exhaust tube.

But it wasn’t strong enough to break the glass, which was what I’d been trying for, or my throw wasn’t strong enough, or there was a wire-mesh backing protecting the glass. It just fractured it and rolled off, leaving behind a star-shaped cicatrice that looked like it was made of powdered sugar.

The barman flew out and grabbed me. I never saw anyone come out of anywhere so fast. Everyone else came out too, and some stayed and some skipped out on their drinks.

A couple of patrol cars knifed up in pincers formation, one with the traffic, one against the traffic, dome lights dead for surprise value, and caught me in between them.

The next thing I knew I was standing in front of a police sergeant’s desk.

The barkeeper said his door pane was worth fifty-five dollars. I felt like saying his whole place wasn’t worth fifty-five dollars, but I wasn’t in a position to submit appraisals. The desk sergeant asked him if he would be willing to drop the complaint if I made good on the fifty-five dollars. He said he would. The desk sergeant asked me if I had fifty-five dollars. I checked myself out, and said I didn’t have. The desk sergeant asked me if I could get fifty-five dollars. I said I’d try. The desk sergeant said I could use his phone.

I called up Stewart Sutphen, my lawyer. I knew it was no use calling his office at that hour of the night, so I called his home instead. He wasn’t there either. He was up in the country somewhere. He was always up in the country somewhere whenever you tried to reach him, I reflected rather disgruntledly. He had been the last time too, I remembered. He was the out-of-towningest attorney I ever heard of. He’d once told me he liked to go over his briefs up where it was quiet and peaceful and there were no distractions, at one of these little country hotels or wayside stopping-off places. I often wondered if anyone went along to help him turn the pages, but that was a loaded question. And none of my business besides. He seemed to be happily enough married. I’d met his wife.

I left my name and where I was, and asked her to tell him to come down in the morning with the fifty-five dollars.

The fifty-five being in default, my pocket-fill was taken away from me, stacked into an oblong manila folder, the flap of this was wetly and sloppily licked by a police property clerk who seemed to be over-salivated, and it was then pummeled into adhesion, and held, to be returned to me on exit. My name and my other details were entered on the blotter, and I was booked and remanded into a cell to be held overnight on a D. and D. charge.

I’d never been in one of them before. Actually, it wasn’t so bad. If you closed your eyes a minute and didn’t stop to tell yourself what it was, it could have been any barren little room, except that the light was on the outside and never went off all night.

I was alone in it. There were two bunks in it, but the other one was fallow. D. and D., drunk and disorderly (conduct), must have been on the scarce side that night. There are runs on various types of charges at certain times, the cops will tell you that in their line of work. The blanket smelled of creosote, that’s the part I remember most. I could hear somebody nearby snoring heavily, but I didn’t mind that, it took a little of the aloneness away.

Even the breakfast wasn’t too bad. No worse than you’d get in an average elbow-rest cafeteria. And of course, on the city. They passed it in about six, a little earlier than I usually had mine. Oatmeal, and white bread, and a thick mug of coffee. I skipped the first two, because I don’t like soupy oatmeal and because I don’t like cottony white bread, but I asked for a refill on the coffee and was given it not only willingly but even (I thought I detected) with a touch of fellow feeling by him outside there in the corridor. I guess I wasn’t the usual type he got in there.

And meanwhile I kept thinking: Don’t they know yet? Don’t they know what I’ve done? Why is it taking them so long to find out? I thought they were so fast, so infallible.

Sutphen came around ten in the morning and paid out my damages, and in due course they unlocked me and indicated me out. On our way down the front steps of the detention house side by side, he shook his head full of tightly spun pepper-and-salt clinkers at me and gave me a mildly chiding: “A man your age. Breaking bar windows. Brawling. Trying to do, act like a perpetual juvenile?” Beyond that he had nothing else much to say. I suppose to him it was too trifling, and not a legal matter at all but one of loss of temper.

I didn’t tell him either what I’d done. I don’t know why; I couldn’t bring myself to. He was more the one to tell than the cops. My friend and lawyer in one. It would have given him a head start at least on figuring out what was best to do for me. But I was tired and beat. I hadn’t closed my eyes all night in the detention cell. I knew once I told I wouldn’t be left alone; I’d be dragged here and lugged there and hustled the next place. I wanted time to sleep on it and time to think it out and time to tighten my belt for what was coming to me.

He asked me if he could drop me off, in a perfunctory way. But I knew he was anxious to get back to his office routine and not play anyone’s door-to-door driver. And I wanted to be alone too. I had a lot of thinking to catch up on. I didn’t want anyone right on top of me for a while. So I told him no and I walked away from him down the street on my own and by my lonesome.

And thus the night finally came to its long-drawn-out end, the memorable unforgettable night that it had been.

I felt rotten, inside and out and all over. Like when you’ve had a tooth that hurts, and have had it taken out, and then the hole where it was hurts almost as bad as before. You can’t tell the duff.

But the paradox of the whole thing was this: on the night that I committed a murder, I was only locked up on disorderly conduct charges.

Breathes there a man who truly understands the heart of a woman? Well...

“How beautiful you are!” I breathed to her. I couldn’t help it. I wouldn’t have tried.