Rex Stout: Target Practice

“But the place seems to be in good condition. Couldn’t you sell it?”

The woman laughed — a harsh crackling laugh that gave the paymaster an involuntary shiver of disgust. Then she waved a hand toward the long stretch of white blossoms on either side of the house.

“They look pretty, don’t they?” she said with infinite sarcasm. “Yes, they look pretty all right. But they’re all eat up with worms. There’s something wrong with ’em inside. Of course, I tried to sell out as soon as he was gone. He might have done it himself.”

Again the paymaster made a weak attempt to probe beneath the crust.

“But he was a good boy, Mrs. Martin,” he said. “And from what you say, I judge that he gave you all he had. He did everything he could. And now — now that he is gone—”

For a moment the woman stared at him almost wonderingly. Then she gave a short laugh.

“That’s a fool notion,” she said. “I guess I know what you mean. It sounds just like him. What’s the difference if he’s dead? He’s better off than I am. But then, of course, you was his friend.”

She stopped abruptly and sat gazing at the paymaster in a sort of stupid antagonism.

But the paymaster was silenced. The fruit of life! And he — not knowing — for what had he come? His eyes, as he turned them for the last time on the grave of Jimmie Martin, were eloquent and — if that may be — tender.

But the dust of the grave has no ears — perhaps! He wondered and turned to go.

The woman made no motion to follow or to speak. Was she somehow aware that her harsh and gloomy note had been used by the poet to complete the rhythm of a scheme awful and beautiful? Had she played her part knowing and yet helpless?

She barely glanced up as the paymaster passed her. He moved swiftly. At the log bridge he turned and looked back. She was sitting as he had left her, her head bowed forward, and he shuddered as he conceived her likeness to the hovering form of the bird of death.

It was a week or so later that the pay yeoman of the Helena was seated at his desk, striving valiantly to bring order out of chaos. He was trying to strike a balance from the vague and cryptic entries of a private account-book which the paymaster had asked him to check up.

The paymaster was seated on the edge of the desk, smoking a huge black cigar.

“I don’t know,” said the pay yeoman, scratching his head in perplexity. “Which are receipts and which expenditures?”

“Why, they’re in a sort of chronological order,” said the paymaster vaguely. “But it must be mostly expenditures.”

The yeoman sighed hopelessly and turned over some half-dozen pages. Then he gazed at the book reflectively, tapping his teeth with the end of a penholder.

“Now, here, for instance,” he said. “Here’s an entry: ‘James Martin. To experience supplied — $8000.’ Does that mean you gave him eight thousand, or did he give it to you?”

The paymaster did not reply. Instead, he leaned over the yeoman’s shoulder and gazed at the page for a full minute in silence.

Then he took the book from the yeoman, erased something written on the page in pencil, and taking a pen from the desk, printed across it in big black letters the word “Paid.”

Then he returned the book to the yeoman.

“But was it a receipt or an expenditure?” persisted the other. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means a good deal to me,” said the paymaster.

“And,” he added to himself as he turned to leave the office, “to Jimmie.”

I was first attracted to her by her attitude toward the picture. Taken altogether, it measured up better than that of any other person who had been submitted to the test. I can see even now her gaze of frank interest and curiosity and her quick questioning glance at me as I sat watching her out of the corner of my eye, finding an unusual difficulty in regarding her with that attitude of calm and impartial analysis which, in my opinion, a lawyer should always maintain toward his client.

First of all, perhaps I had better explain about the picture.

It was my own idea. From the day that I opened my law offices on William Street I had been keenly conscious of one of the greatest handicaps under which an attorney labors: the difficulty of getting a line on the character of the client.

This is more important than a layman would suppose — and particularly so with lawyers like myself, who make it a rule never to defend the confessedly or obviously guilty. In many cases it is next to impossible to form a sensibly correct judgment.

When a man is placed in a position where he finds it necessary to seek legal advice and aid, his mind is usually so disturbed and disarranged by his perplexities that all ordinary tests for the reading of character are rendered useless.

The picture was more a happy accident than any result of my own ingenuity or wisdom. I came across it by chance in the studio of an artist friend who was possessed of an extravagant interest in the bizarre and unique.

Its subject has nothing to do with the story, and I shall not attempt to describe it. It is enough to say that it portrayed with frank naturalism and a taste of genius one of the most fundamental of the elements of human nature and experience, without being either distasteful or offensive.

No sooner had I seen it, and realized the effect of the shock which I had felt in every corner of my brain, than I knew that here at last was the very thing I wanted. My friend was loath to part with it until I explained the reason for my desire; and men, flattered by my recognition of its peculiar merit, he wished to make me a gift of it.

The thing was incredibly successful from the very first.

The chair in which I seat my clients is placed directly at my elbow on the right, in front of the arm slide on my rolltop desk. I placed the picture inside the desk, opposite this chair, so that it was invariably the first thing that caught the eye of the visitor after being seated.

The effect was always interesting and profitable; in some instances even startling.

A study of the different sensations and expressions it has caused to appear on the faces of my unsuspecting clients would fill a volume. Frank or affected modesty, involuntary horror, open curiosity, sudden fear — it has shown them all. I became an adept at reading the signs — the temperature of this human thermometer.

By its very crudity, its primality, the thing was infallible, never failing to shock the mind into a betrayal of its most carefully hidden secrets. Of course, its main strength lay in its unexpectedness. I believed then, and I believe now, that no will, however strong, could have held itself neutral against the test without being forewarned.

And yet — I often wonder — how could she possibly have known?

On the morning of her first call I was alone in the office, having sent James uptown on some errand, while it was too early for the stenographer to have arrived.

Thus it was that I myself greeted her in the outer room, and inquired the nature of her business.

“I came to see Mr. Moorfield,” she said in a voice which, naturally gentle and refined, was rendered rough and harsh by a very evident anxiety and uneasiness. “I wish to see him concerning a personal matter. It is very important.”

You will have some idea of the manner of her appearance and bearing when I confess that they almost persuaded me — me, the coolest and least impressionable lawyer at the New York bar — to forego what I had come to call the “picture test,” and interview her in the outer room. Would to Heaven I had!

As she stood by the door looking up into my face with a half-hopeful, half-fearful expression, her rich, cherry lips trembling with the emotion she could not conceal, her eyes glowing and moist, her figure swaying in mute appeal — well, the angels themselves have seen no more delightful picture.