Rex Stout - Target Practice

“I was in front of the Century,” said the driver to the police lieutenant, “when two guys took me. One of ’em, a short, red-faced guy, told me to hit it up for Shoney’s cabaret. I got ’em there as quick as I could, of course bein’ careful, but when I pulled up in front of Shoney’s the red-faced guy leaned out of the window and said they’d changed their minds and guessed they’d drive around a little. ‘Maybe an hour,’ he said, and told me to go up the Avenue to the Park. So I beat it for the Park.

“I drove around till I got dizzy, nearly two hours, and it seemed funny I wasn’t hearing sounds of voices inside. They had the front curtains pulled down. Finally I slowed down and took a peep around the corner through the side window. I couldn’t see no one. I stopped and jumped down and opened the door. The red-faced guy was gone and the other guy was sprawled out half on the seat and half on the floor. I yelled at him and shook him around, but he was dead to the world. So I brought him—”

“All right, that’ll do,” the lieutenant interrupted. “You’ve got a license, I suppose?”

“Sure I have. I’ve been three years with the M. B. Company—”

“And you don’t know when the red-faced man left the cab?”

“No. Unless it was at Sixth Avenue and Forty-second Street. They was a jam there and we was held up a long time; He might of ducked then—”

“All right.” The lieutenant turned to a policeman. “See if that man is able to talk yet.”

As the policeman turned to obey, a door leading into an inner room opened and Rick Duggett, champion roper of Eastern Arizona, appeared on the threshold. His face was pale and his eyes were swollen and dull, like those of a man roused from a long sleep; his necktie was on one side and his hair was rumpled into a tangled mass.

“Here he is now,” said the policeman.

“Oh, so you’ve come to.” The lieutenant looked the newcomer over. “What’s the matter with you? What kind of a game is this?”

Rick Duggett approached the desk.

“Listen here,” he said, gazing at the lieutenant with a melancholy eye. His voice was slow and labored, but he made it distinct. “Listen here,” he repeated. “I see by the clock yonder that it’s after three. So I’ve been knocked out for three hours. I came to in there fifteen minutes ago, and they told me where I was. I guess I’m straightened out now. A gazabo named Henderson gave me a drink of something from Kansas, and when I closed my eyes because I enjoyed it so much he lifted a roll of eight hundred dollars and a return ticket to Arizona from my pants pocket. You got to watch everybody in New York. It was Henderson said that. Perhaps he meant—”

“Wait a minute.” The lieutenant arranged the blotter and dipped his pen in the ink. “What’s your name?”

Rick achieved a weary smile. “My name is Billy Boob. Write it down and let me see how it looks. That’s all you’ll get, because I’m not exactly anxious to get myself in the papers in this connection. My name is Billy Boob, and I come from Ginkville on Sucker Creek. If that’s all I guess I’ll trot along.”

“I guess you won’t,” said the lieutenant sharply. “How do you expect us to get your money back for you if you don’t tell us anything? What kind of a looking man was this Henderson? Where did you meet him?”

“Nothing doing.” Again Rick smiled wearily. “Strange to say, I forgot to brand him. He wore a gray suit of clothes, and he had a red face and white teeth, and I met him somewhere talking about nonrefillable bottles. No use writing anything down, because I’m not making any holler. I’ve always had a theory that if a man can’t take care of himself he’s not fit to have anyone else do the job. The boys would run me off the ranch if they heard of this. I guess I’ll trot along.”

The policeman grinned. The lieutenant expostulated and argued. But Rick was firm.

“No, Cap, nothing doing on the complaint. You wouldn’t catch him, anyway. I’m going home and get some sleep. So long and much obliged.”

He made for the door. But on the threshold he hesitated, then turned.

“There’s one thing I’d like to know,” he said slowly. “Henderson took a drink just before I did, and it didn’t seem to make him sleepy. Is it a general practice around here to carry two kinds of booze in one horn?”

At that the lieutenant grinned, too. “Oh, that’s one of our eastern refinements,” he explained. “You see, the flask is divided in the middle. If you press the button on the right side you get Scotch and if you press the one on the left you get something else. Men like Mr. Henderson have them made to order.”

“I see,” said Rick. “Much obliged.”

And with a farewell nod he turned again and disappeared into the street.

It was noon when he awoke the next day in his room at the hotel. He first felt a vague sense of depression, then suddenly everything came back to him. He jumped out of bed, filled the washbowl with cold water and ducked his head in it, then washed and dressed. That done, he descended to the dining room and ate six eggs and two square feet of ham. After he had paid the breakfast check he went into the lobby and sank into a big leather chair.

“Let’s see,” he said to himself, “that leaves me fourteen dollars and twenty cents. Thank heaven Henderson didn’t look in my vest pocket, though he did take my watch out of the other one. That watch would have got me back to Honeville. The fare is fifty-eight dollars. I’ll starve before I’ll telegraph Fraser. Well, let’s see.”

He spent the entire afternoon loitering about the hotel, trying to get his mind to work. How to make some money? The thing appeared impossible. They don’t hold roping contests in New York. He considered everything from sweeping streets to chauffeuring. Could he drive a car around New York? No money in it, anyway, probably. But surely a man could do something.

By evening he had decided on nothing. After dinner he strolled up Broadway and bought a ticket for the revue. He was determined to find it amusing, for Mr. Henderson had said it was a bum show. It really bored him to death. But he stayed till the final curtain. Then he found himself on Broadway again.

Just how he got into Dickson’s is uncertain. He wanted a drink, and he wandered into the place and found himself in the presence of “the most famous cabaret in America.” Rick sat at a small table at one end of the immense, gorgeous room, watching the antics of the dancers and singers and other performers on the platform, and it was there that his idea came to him. Before he went to bed that night he had decided to give it a trial the very next day.

Accordingly the following morning he sought out a hardware store on Sixth Avenue and purchased thirty yards of first grade hemp rope and a gallon of crude oil. The cost was eight dollars and sixty cents. These articles he took back to the hotel, and for three hours he sat in his room rubbing the oil into the rope to bring it to the required degree of pliancy and toughness.

Then he spliced a loop in one end, doubled it through and made a six-foot noose — the size of the room would not permit a larger one — and began whirling it about his head. A sigh of satisfaction escaped him. Ah, the nimble wrist! And the rope would really do very well; a little limbering up and he would ask nothing better.

He pulled his traveling bag from under the bed, dumped out its contents and put the rope, carefully coiled, in their place. Then, with the bag in his hand, he descended to the street and made his way uptown to Dickson’s. At the entrance he halted a moment, then went boldly inside and accosted one of the young women at the door of the cloakroom.

“I want to speak to the manager of the show,” said he, hat in hand.