Fredrick Brown - Night of the Jabberwock

Anyway, it was going to get Dick Ehlers in trouble with Kates. When Kates looked for that gun and found it was missing, he'd know that I'd been in the courthouse and that Ehlers had missed me. He'd know that I'd been right in his own office while he'd been out searching for me.

And so there I was in the dark, in safety for a few minutes until a car full of deputies decided to cruise down that particular alley looking for me. And I had a gun in my pocket that might or might not shoot — I hadn't checked that — and I had my shoes on and my hands were shaking again.

I didn't even have to ask myself, Little man, what now. The little man not only wanted a drink; he really needed one.

And Kates had already been to Smiley's looking for me and had found that I wasn't there.

So I started down the alley toward Smiley's.

Funny, but I was getting over being scared. A little, anyway. You can get only just so scared, and then something happens to your adrenal glands or something. I can't remember offhand whether your adrenals make you frightened or whether they get going and operate against it, but mine were getting either into or out of action, as the case might be. I'd been scared so much that night that I — or my glands — was getting tired of it.

I was getting brave, almost. And it wasn't Dutch courage, either; it had been so long since I'd had a drink that I'd forgotten what one tasted like. I was cold damn sober. About three times during the course of the long evening and the long night I'd been on the borderline of intoxication, but always something had happened to keep me from drinking for a while and then something had sobered me up. Some foolish little thing like being taken for a ride by gangsters or watching a man die suddenly or horribly by quaffing a bottle labeled "Drink Me" or finding murdered men in the back of my own car or discovering that a sheriff intended to shoot me down in cold grue. Little things like that.

So I kept going down the alley toward Smiley's. The dog that had barked at me before barked again. But I didn't waste time barking back. I kept on going down the alley toward Smiley's.

There was the street to cross. I took a quick look both ways but didn't worry about it beyond that. If the sheriff's car or the deputies' car suddenly turned the corner and started spraying me with headlights and then bullets, well, then that was that. You can only get so worried; then you quit worrying. When things can't get any worse, outside of your getting killed, then either you get killed or things start getting better.

Things started to get better; the window into the back room of Smiley's was open. I didn't bother taking off my shoes this time. Smiley would be asleep upstairs, but alone, and Smiley's so sound a sleeper that a bazooka shell exploding in the next room wouldn't wake him. I remember times I'd dropped into the tavern on a dull afternoon and found him asleep; it was almost hopeless to try to wake him, and I'd generally help myself and leave the money on the ledge of the register. And he dropped asleep so quickly and easily that even if Kates and Hank had wakened him when they'd looked for me here, he'd be asleep again by now.

In fact — yes, I could hear a faint rumbling sound overhead, like very distant thunder. Smiley snoring.

I groped my way through the dark back room and opened the door to the tavern. There was a dim light in there that burned all night long, and the shades were left up. But Kates had already been here and the chances of anyone else happening to pass and look in at half past three of a Friday morning were negligible.

I took a bottle of the best bonded Bourbon Smiley had from the back bar and because it looked as though there were still at least a fair chance that this might be the last drink I ever had, I took a bottle of seltzer from the case under the bar. I took them to the table around the el, the one that's out of sight of the windows, the table at which Bat and George had sat early this evening.

Bat and George seemed, now, to have sat there along time ago, years maybe, and seemed not a tenth as frightening as they'd been at the time. Almost, they seemed a little funny, somehow.

I left the two bottles on the table and went back for a glass, a swizzle stick, and some ice cubes from the refrigerator. This drink I'd waited a long time for, and it was going to be a good one.

I'd even pay a good price for it, I decided, especially after I looked in my wallet and found I had several tens but nothing smaller. I put a ten dollar bill on the ledge of the register, and I wondered if I'd ever get my change out of it.

I went back to the table and made myself a drink, a good one.

I lighted up a cigar, too. That was a bit risky because if Kates came by here again for another check, he might see cigar smoke in the dim light, even though I was out of his range of vision. But I decided the risk was worth it. You can, I was finding, get into such a Godawful jam that a little more risk doesn't seem to matter at all.

I took a good long swig of the drink and then a deep drag from the cigar, and I felt pretty good. I held out my hands and they weren't shaking. Very silly of them not to be, but they weren't.

Now, I thought, is my first chance to think for a long time. My first real chance since Yehudi Smith had died.

Little man, what now?

The pattern. Could I make any sense out of the pattern?

Yehudi Smith — only that undoubtedly wasn't his real name, else the card he gave me wouldn't have been printed in my own shop — had called to see me and had told me—

Skip what he told you, I told myself. That was gobbledegook, just the kind of gobbledegook that would entice you to go to such a crazy place at such a crazy time. He knew you — that is, I corrected myself — he knew a lot about you. Your hobby and your weakness and what you were and what would interest you.

His coming there was planned. Planned well in advance; the card proved that.

According to a plan, then, he called on you at a time when no one else would be there. Probably, sitting in his car, he'd watched you come home, knowing Mrs. Carr was there — in all probability he or someone had been watching the house all evening — and waiting until she'd left to present himself.

No one had seen him, no one besides yourself.

He'd led you on a wild-goose chase. There weren't any Vorpal Blades; that was gobbledegook, too.

Connect that with the fact that Miles Harrison and Ralph Bonney had been killed while Yehudi Smith was keeping you entertained and busy, and that their bodies had been put in the back compartment of your car.

Easy. Smith was an accomplice of the murderer, hired to keep you away from anybody else who might alibi you while the crime was going on. Also to give you such an incredible story to account for where you really were that your own mother, if she were still alive, would have a hard time believing it.

But connect that with the fact that Smith had been killed, too. And with the fact that the pay roll money had been left in your car along with the bodies.

It added up to gibberish.

I took another sip of my drink and it tasted weak. I looked at it and saw I'd been sitting there so long between sips that most of the ice had melted. I put more of the bonded Bourbon in it and it tasted all right again.

I remembered about the gun I'd grabbed up from Kates' desk, the rusty one with which the two murders had been committed. I took it out of my pocket and looked at it. I handled it so I wouldn't have to touch those dried stains on the butt.

I broke it to see if any shots had been fired from it and found there weren't any cartridges in it, empty or otherwise. I clicked it back into position and tried the trigger. It was rusted shut. It hadn't, then, been used as a gun at all. Just as a hammer to bash out the brains of two men.