Fredrick Brown - Night of the Jabberwock

And I'd certainly made a fool of myself by bringing it along. I played right into the killer's hands by doing that. I put it back into my pocket.

I wished that I had someone to talk to. I felt that I might figure out things aloud better than I could this way. I wished that Smiley was awake, and for a moment I was tempted to go upstairs to get him. No, I decided, once already tonight I'd put Smiley into danger — danger out of which he'd got both of us and without any help from me whatsoever.

And this was my problem. It wouldn't be fair to Smiley to tangle him in it.

Besides, this wasn't a matter for Smiley's brawn and guts. This was like playing chess, and Smiley didn't play chess. Carl might possibly be able to help me figure it out, but Smiley — never. And I didn't want to tangle Carl in this either.

But I wanted to talk to somebody.

All right, maybe I was a little crazy — not drunk, definitely not drunk — but a little crazy. I wanted to talk to somebody, so I did.

The little man who wasn't there.

I imagined him sitting across the table from me, sitting there with an imaginary drink in his hand. Gladly, right gladly, would I have poured him a real one if he'd been really there. He was looking at me strangely.

"Smitty," I said.

"Yes, Doc?"

"What's your real name, Smitty? I know it isn't Yehudi Smith. That was part of the gag. The card you gave me proves that."

It wasn't the right question to ask. He wavered a little, as though he was going to disappear on me. I shouldn't have asked him a question that I myself couldn't answer, because he was there only because my mind was putting him there. He couldn't tell me anything I didn't know myself or couldn't figure out.

He wavered a little, but he rallied. He said, "Doc, I can't tell you that. Any more than I can tell you whom I was working for. You know that."

Get it; he said "whom I was working for" not "who I was working for." I felt proud of him and of myself.

I said, "Sure, Smitty. I shouldn't have asked. And listen, I'm sorry — I'm sorry as hell that you died."

"That's all right, Doc. We all die sometime. And — well, it was a nice evening up to then."

"I'm glad I fed you," I said. "I'm glad I gave you all you wanted to drink. And listen, Smitty, I'm sorry I laughed out loud when I saw that bottle and key on the glass-topped table. I just couldn't help it. It was funny."

"Sure, Doc. But I had to play it straight. It was part of the act. But it was corny; I don't blame you for acting amused. And Doc, I'm sorry I did it. I didn't know the whole score — you've got proof of that. If I had, I wouldn't have drunk what was in that bottle. I didn't look like a man who wanted to die, did I, Doc?"

I shook my head slowly, looking at the laughter-lines around his eyes and his mouth. He didn't look like a man who wanted to die.

But he had died, suddenly and horribly.

"I'm sorry, Smitty," I told him. "I'm sorry as hell. I'd give a hell of a lot to bring you back, to have you really sitting there."

He chuckled. "Don't get maudlin, Doc. It'll spoil your thinking. You're trying to think, you know."

"I know," I said. "But I had to get it out of my system. All right, Smitty. You're dead and I can't do anything about it. You're the little man who isn't there. And I can't ask you any questions I can't answer myself, so really you can't help me."

"Are you sure, Doc? Even if you ask the right questions?"

"What do you mean? That my subconscious mind might know the answers even if I don't?"

He laughed. "Let's not get Freudian. Let's stick to Lewis Carroll. I really was a Carroll enthusiast, you know. I was a fast study, but not that fast. I couldn't have memorized all that about him just for one occasion."

The phrase struck me, "a fast study." I repeated it and went on where it led me, "You were an actor, Smitty? Hell, don't answer it. You must have been. I should have guessed that. An actor hired to play a part."

He grinned a bit wryly. "Not too good an actor, then, or you wouldn't have guessed it. And pretty much of a sucker, Doc, to have accepted the role. I should have guessed that there was more in it than what he told me." He shrugged. "Well, I played you a dirty trick, but I played a worse one on myself. Didn't I?"

"I'm sorry you're dead, Smitty. God damn it, I liked you."

"I'm glad, Doc. I haven't liked myself too well these last few years. You've figured it out by now so I can tell you — I was pretty down and out to take a booking like that, and at the price he offered me for it. And damn him, he didn't pay me in advance except my expenses, so what did I gain by it? I got killed. Wait, don't get maudlin about that again. Let's drink to it."

We drank to it. There are worse things than getting killed. And there are worse ways of dying than suddenly when you aren't expecting it, when you're slightly tight and—

But that subject wasn't getting us anywhere.

"You were a character actor," I said.

"Doc, you disappoint me by belaboring the obvious. And that doesn't help you to figure out who Anybody is."

"Anybody?"

"That's what you were calling him to yourself when you were thinking things out, in a half-witted sort of way, not so long ago. Remember thinking that Anybody could have got into your printing shop and Anybody could have set up one line of type and figured out how to print one good card on that little hand press, but why would Anybody—"

"Unfair," I said. "You can get inside my mind, because — because, hell, that's where you are. But I can't get into yours. You know who Anybody is. But I don't."

"Even I, Doc, might not know his real name. In case something went wrong, he wouldn't have told me that. Something like — well, suppose you'd grabbed that `Drink Me' bottle when you first found the table and tossed it off before I could tell you that it was my prerogative to do so. Yes, there were a lot of things that could have gone wrong in so complicated a deal as that one was."

I nodded. "Yes, suppose Al Grainger had come around for that game of chess and we'd taken him along. Suppose — suppose I hadn't lived to get home at all. I had a narrow squeak earlier in the evening, you know."

"In that case, Doc, it never would have happened. You ought to be able to figure that out without my telling you.. If you'd been killed, you and Smiley, earlier in the evening, then — at least if Anybody had learned about it, as he probably would have — Ralph Bonney and Miles Harrison wouldn't have been killed later. At least not tonight. A wheel would have come off the plans and I'd have gone back to — wherever I came from. And everything would have been off."

I said, "But suppose I'd stayed at the office far into the night working on one of those big stories I thought I had — and was so happy about. How would Anybody have known?"

"Can't tell you that, Doc. But you might guess. Suppose I had orders to keep Anybody posted on your movements, if they went off schedule. When you left the house, saying you'd be back shortly, I'd have used your phone and told him that. And when you phoned that you were on your way back I'd have let him know, while you were walking home, wouldn't I?"

"But that was pretty late."

"Not too late for him to have intercepted Miles Harrison and Ralph Bonney on their way back from Neilsville — under certain circumstances — if his plans had been held in abeyance until he was sure you'd be home and out of circulation before midnight."

I said, "Under certain circumstances," and wondered just what I meant by it.

Yehudi Smith smiled. He lifted his glass and looked at me mockingly over the rim of it before he drank. He said, "Go on, Doc. You're only in the second square, but your next move will be a good one. You go to the fourth square by train, you know."