Francis Nevins - Night and Fear

There was a story around town, never substantiated, that he was indirectly to blame for one high-strung young chap putting an end to himself, to forestall discovery of a defalcation that had been the result of his topheavy “obligation” to this Fredericks. I wouldn’t have put it past him.

I’m one of those lucky people that nothing ever happens to; that are always the bystander. I was the bystander that night that this happened, at the 22 Club, too. Fredericks had never tackled me. Maybe he sensed a detached amusement that baffled him. He could have waved that famous wallet in front of my nose till it wore out and it wouldn’t have done him any good. He knew enough not to try it.

I came into the 22 with Trainor, and we saw Fredericks there swilling Collinses. He came over to our table, and there was a minimum of conversation for a while. I wanted to walk out again, but he was between the two of us and I couldn’t get Trainor’s eye.

The radio over the bar was giving dramatized news events, and the highlight of them was the description of the capture of a long-wanted murderer, cornered at last after being hunted high and low for months. The case, which we all remembered well, was finally closed.

The commentator was good, played it up for all it was worth. It got you. You couldn’t hear a sound in the place until he’d finished. Then we all took a deep breath together.

“There, but for the grace of God,” Fredericks remarked drily, “go you or I or any one of us.”

Trainor gave him a look. “Thanks for the compliment, but I don’t class myself as a potential murderer. Nor does Evans here, I’m sure.”

“Everyone is,” Fredericks said loftily. “Every man you see standing around you in this bar is. It’s the commonest impulse there is, we all have it. It’s latent in all of us, every man-jack. All it’s waiting for is a strong enough motive to come to the surface and — bang!” He drained his glass, started to warm up. “Why, I can pick any two men at random, outside on the street, who have nothing against each other, who’ve never even seen each other before; you give them a powerful enough motive, and one’ll turn into a potential murderer, the other his potential victim, right before your eyes!”

He was feeling his drinks, I guess. He wasn’t showing them, but he must have been feeling them, or he’d never have said a thing like that.

I tried to catch Trainor’s eye, via the bar mirror, to pull him out of it. But his dislike was already showing in his face. He was past the extrication stage.

“You’re crazy,” he said, with white showing around his mouth. “Normal people aren’t murderers, and you can’t make them into murderers, I don’t care what motive, what provocation, you give them! Understand me, I’m talking about cold-blooded, premeditated murderers now, like this beauty we were just hearing about. What the law recognizes as intentional premeditated murder. Crimes of passion, committed in the heat of the moment, aren’t on the carpet right now. What it takes to perpetrate a premeditated murder is a diseased mind. That’s what this guy they just caught had; that’s what every murderer always has. That’s why normal people cannot be made into murderers. I don’t care what motive you give them. Your two hypothetical men on the street, who have nothing against each other, don’t even know each other, would knock your theory into a cocked hat!”

I spoke for the first time. “Let’s change the subject,” I suggested mildly. “Murder is nothing to talk about on a lovely evening like this.”

They neither of them paid any attention. There was a current of antagonism flowing between them that wouldn’t let either one back down.

Fredericks fumbled in his inner pocket. I knew what was coming next. I’d seen the gesture often enough before to know it by heart. I tried to hold his arm down, and he shook my hand off.

Out came the well known wallet with the gold clips on each corner; down it whipped on top of the bar. People looked over at us. Fredericks said, “I’ll bet you a thousand dollars right now any two men picked at random on the street outside can be turned into potential murderer and potential victim, by me, right while you’re looking on! I’ll let you do the selecting, and I’ll let you name the time-limit. And I’ll give you any odds you want on it.”

I knew Trainor’s financial position. I gave him the eye across the back of Fredericks’ neck. “Hundred-to-one shot, ten bucks,” I suggested flippantly, trying to keep the thing theoretical.

Maybe Fredericks knew Trainor’s financial position too. “I don’t make ten-dollar bets,” he said nastily. “What are you trying to do, find an easy out for him? People that haven’t the courage to back up their conviction shouldn’t be so quick to air their opinions. I’ll give him two-to-one, his thousand against two of mine. Well, how about it?” he sneered. “Are you in — or have you suddenly decided that maybe you agree with me after all?”

That was no way to put it. Trainor could have refused to have any part in the fantastic proposition, without it necessarily meaning that he retracted his opinions. But Fredericks always managed to put it in that false light. I’d seen it happen time and again. This time I happened to be the only witness, instead of the usual group, but it had the same effect as far as Trainor was concerned. If there’s one thing any man detests it’s seeming to back down.

“I’ll take you up on that,” he growled. “This is one time I’m going to show you up! It may take you down a little to lose a couple of grand, and it’s certainly worth it! You’ve bet on a sure thing again — but for once you’ve picked the wrong end of it!”

Fredericks was shuffling hundred-dollar bills out of the moire lining of his wallet, as though he was dealing cards. He put his empty Collins glass down on top of them. “This says I haven’t!”

Trainor said cuttingly, “I haven’t that much on me, I don’t usually walk around as though I expected to have to bail myself out of jail. I’ll make out a check, will that be all right? Endorse it to you, if — and when.”

I hadn’t thought they’d go this far. “Say, listen,” I protested, “you don’t want to win that money, Fredericks. If you do, it means a human life’s been taken. Isn’t that the test?”

“We can keep it from going quite that far,” he assured me. “Just so long as the intention to commit murder is unmistakably shown by one or the other of our two hypothetical men. We can interfere at the last minute to prevent it being carried out. But there must be no reasonable doubt, before we do so, that it’s already fairly under way, premeditated by one of the two. Is that satisfactory to you, Trainor?”

“Why shouldn’t it be? There’s absolutely no danger of things going that far — always providing these two have never seen one another before; have no long-standing grievance or bad blood between them. And to keep you from building up any grudge between them, that might fester, corrode and sicken their minds, which would invalidate my argument, I’m going to give you the shortest possible time: one week from tonight. This is Tuesday. Next Tuesday night, at this same time, you and I and Evans will meet here. If one of the two men whom I am about to select — with your approval — has in the meantime made an attempt to take the life of the second one, and there is no possible mistaking it as such, I’ll endorse this check over to you. If not, that two thousand dollars is mine. And I’m sorry, but any move you make, any contact you have with these two, by way of injecting what you call a ‘motive’ between them, must take place in the presence of Evans and myself, or the bet is off.”