Fredrick Brown - Night of the Jabberwock

He walked back to the door of the staircase. He looked carefully at the front windows to be sure nobody was looking in and then he reached inside and picked up the revolver from the step on which he'd placed it.

He came walking over to my table. He said, "Doe, if you are a ho — homi — what you said, you might want to kill somebody else tonight. That's loaded. I even replaced the two bullets I shot out of it, earlier."

He put it down on the table in front of me, turned his back to me and went back to the stairs. I watched him go, marveling. I'd never yet seen a man in a nightshirt who hadn't looked ridiculous. Until then. What more can a man do to prove he doesn't think you're insane than give you a loaded gun and then turn his back and walk away. And when I thought of all the times I'd razzed Smiley and ridden him, all the cracks I'd made at him, I wanted—

Well, I couldn't answer when he said "Goodnight, Doc," just before he closed the door behind him. Something felt a little wrong with my throat, and if I'd tried to say anything, I might have bawled.

My hand shook a little as I poured myself another drink, a short one. I was beginning to feel them and this had better be my last one, I knew.

I had to think more clearly than I'd ever thought before. I couldn't get drunk, I didn't dare.

I tried to get my mind back to what I'd been thinking about — what I'd been talking about to the little man who wasn't there — before Smiley's coming downstairs and Kates' knocking had interrupted me.

I looked across the table where Yehudi Smith, in my mind, had been sitting. But he wasn't there. I couldn't bring him back. He was dead, and he wouldn't come back. The quiet room in the quiet night. The dim light of the single twenty-watt bulb over the cash register. The creaking of my thoughts as I tried to turn them back into the groove. Connect facts.

Lewis Carroll and bloody murder.

Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.

What had Alice found there?

Chessmen, and a game of chess. And Alice herself had been a pawn. That was why, of course, she'd crossed the third square by railroad. With the smoke alone worth a thousand pounds a puff — almost as expensive as the smoke from my cigar might have been had not Smiley taken it out of my hand and claimed it as his own.

Chessmen, and a game of chess.

But who was the player?

And suddenly I knew. Illogically, because he didn't have a shadow of a motive. The Why I did not see, but Yehudi Smith had told me the How, and now I saw the Who.

The pattern. Whoever had arranged tonight's little chess problem played chess all right, and played it well. Looking- glass chess and real chess, both. And he knew me well — which meant I knew him, too. He knew my weaknesses, the things I'd fall for. He knew I'd go with Yehudi Smith on the strength of that mad, weird story Smith had told me.

But why? What had he to gain? He'd killed Miles Harrison, Ralph Bonney and Yehudi Smith. And he'd left the money Miles and Ralph had been carrying in that brief case and put it in the back of my car, with the two bodies.

Then money hadn't been the motive. Either that, or the motive had been money in such large quantity that the couple of thousand dollars Bonney had been carrying didn't matter.

But wasn't a man concerned who was one of the richest men in Carmel City? Ralph Bonney. His fireworks factory, his other investments, his real estate must have added up to — well, maybe half a million dollars. A man shooting for half a million dollars can well abandon the proceeds of a two thousand dollar holdup and leave them with the bodies of the men he has killed, to help pin the crime on the pawn he has selected to divert suspicion from himself.

Connect facts.

Ralph Bonney was divorced today. He was murdered tonight.

Then Miles Harrison's death was incidental. Yehudi Smith had been another pawn.

A warped mind, but a brilliant mind. A cold, cruel mind. And yet, paradoxically, a mind that loved fantasy, as I did, that loved Lewis Carroll, as I did.

I started to pour myself another drink and then remembered that I still had only part of the answer, and that even if I had it all, I hadn't the slightest idea what I could do with it, without a shred of evidence, or an iota of proof.

Without even an idea, in my own mind, of the reason, the motive. But there must be one; the rest of it was too well planned, too logical.

There was one possibility that I could see.

I sat there listening a while to be sure there was no car approaching; the night was so quiet that, I could have heard one at least a block away.

I looked at the gun Smiley had given me back, hesitated, and finally put it in my pocket. Then I went into the back room and let myself out of the window into the dark alley.

Carl Trenholm's house was three blocks away. Luckily, it was on the street next to Oak Street and parallel to it. I could make all of the distance through the alley except for the streets I'd have to cross.

I heard a car coming as I approached the second street and I ducked down and hid behind a garbage can until it had gone by. It was going slowly and it was probably either Hank and the sheriff or the two deputies. I didn't look out to see for fear they might flash a spotlight down the alley.

I waited until the sound of it died away completely before I crossed the street.

I let myself in the back gate of Carl's place. With his wife away, I wasn't positive which bedroom he'd be sleeping in, but I found pebbles and tossed them at the most likely window and it was the right one.

It went up and Carl's head came out. I stepped close to the house so I wouldn't have to yell. I said, "It's Doc, Carl. Don't light a light anywhere in the house. But come down to the back door."

"Coming, Doc." He closed the window. I went up on the back porch and waited until the door opened and I went in. I closed the door behind me and the kitchen was as black as the inside of a tomb.

Carl said, "Damned if I know where a flashlight is, Doc. Can't we put on a light? I feel like hell."

"No, leave it off," I told him. I struck a match, though, to find my way to a chair and it showed me Carl in rumpled pajamas, his hair mussed and looking like he was in for the grandfather of all hangovers.

He sat down, too, while the match flared. "What's it about, Doc? Kates and Ganzer were here looking for you. Waked me up a while ago, but they didn't tell me much. Are you in a jam, Doc? Did you kill somebody?"

"No," I said. "Listen, you're Ralph Bonney's lawyer, aren't you? I mean on everything, not just the divorce today."

"Yes."

"Who's his heir, now that he's divorced?"

"Doc, I'm afraid I can't tell you that. A lawyer isn't supposed to tell his clients' business. You know that as well as I do."

"Didn't Kates tell you Ralph Bonney is dead, Carl? And Miles Harrison? They were murdered on their way back from Neilsville with the payroll, somewhere around midnight."

"My God," Carl said. "No, Kates didn't tell me."

I said, "I know you're still not supposed to tell his business until a will is probated, if there is one. But listen, let me make a guess and you can tell me if I'm wrong. If I guess right, you won't have to confirm it; just keep your mouth shut."

"Go ahead, Doc."

"Bonney had an illegitimate son about twenty-three years ago. But he supported the boy's mother all her life until she died recently; she worked, too, as a milliner but he gave her enough extra so that she lived better than she would have otherwise, and she sent the boy to college and gave him every break."

I stopped there and waited and Carl didn't say anything.

I went on. "Bonney still gave the boy an allowance. That's how he — hell, let's call him by name — that's how Al Grainger has been living without working. And unless he knows he's in Bonney's will, he's got proof of his parentage and can claim the bulk of the estate anyway. And it must be half a million."