Philip Wylie - The Other Horseman

Sarah said, “You’re really weak, aren’t you, Jimmie? You can’t tell what I’m going to do! That’s your misfortune. All you can be sure of is—that you’ve got to knuckle under.”

“You wouldn’t do the decent thing? I mean, just forget you ever saw those books?

Erase it from your mind? Lock it all up? Never mention it to anybody? Never show a trace of the effect of what you have found out? You couldn’t feel ashamed you read ’em and do the sporting thing of—skipping it?”

“I suppose you would,” she said acidly.

“I think so. And I think you will, Sarah.”

She laughed shortly. “You do? Why?”

“Because I say so.”

She laughed again. “You say so and I just—obey. Is that it?”

“Yes. That’s it.” Jimmie stood up. He was pale again. He towered over his sister.

His lean shoulders stooped down. His eyes looked into hers. “You’re eighteen. You’re adult. I’m not going to lecture you about right and wrong, good and evil. Maybe you wouldn’t understand if I did. But you do seem to understand power and violence. So I’m just going to threaten you, Sarah. By threaten, I mean I am going to make a holy pledge to you that I’d follow to the end of time, at any cost and at all costs. My pledge is about you—in the event that you ever do in any way use the knowledge you now have.”

Sarah did not like what she saw in his eyes—a shadow, a gleam, roving together behind the steady pupils, implacable as death. Nevertheless, she managed to laugh again.

“You can’t scare me, Jimmie. Not now you can’t, and you know it!”

“I can scare you,” he answered. He took hold of her arm, halfway between her wrist and her elbow. She tried to twist away. His fingers came down like machinery. She gasped and bit her lip. He relaxed his grip and went on. “I am going to scare you now, Sarah, and you will stay scared—because you are going to know what I mean—and you are going to know that I am not bluffing. I have learned, by watching others learn, that nothing matters in this life except integrity. In this case, we can call it honor. That is the one precious thing. My work—what I am trying to do—is very important to the honor of the world. It is not any more important, however, than my own integrity to myself. That, in fact, comes first, because everything else in the world is founded on it.”

“Let go! You said you weren’t going to lecture me! You’re hurting!”

“I’ve seen a great many people die, Sarah. People of all ages. They died haphazardly—but all of them in the line of maintaining honor. In the same cause I am no longer afraid to take the same punishment—and I am not afraid to dish it out. Do you understand that?”

The girl blanched. “Jimmie! That’s insane! Let—go!”

“Have you forgotten you read those diaries, Sarah?”

She writhed and tugged. “Let go! You’ll make marks on me! Just because you can torture me this minute, doesn’t help you. When you let go, I’ll do it sooner—and worse!”

He forced her to her feet and pushed her back on the bed. She tried, suddenly, to rake his face. He slapped her with his free hand. Sarah shuddered but she did not cry. He held her on the edge of the bed; his fingers grew tighter and tighter, slowly, while he talked. “You have just made a perfect, small-scale example of the hideous thing that has come alive all over the world, Sarah. The corrupt use of force. And I can see what must be done to crush it. I can see now why decent people so passionately detested to take the step. And you will have to see that I have learned how to take it. I am ashamed of us all, that this is necessary.” He paused. His voice was solemn. “Sarah, if you breathe a word of this business, I will kill you.”

She began losing her nerve. She forgot the pain in her arm. She met his eye with unstable hostility. “You’d be hung for it!”

He shook his head slowly. “I’m a chemist, Sarah. In the business of killing. I could kill you any time, anywhere, a hundred ways—painfully or quickly—and no one could find me for it. I want you to know that I will do this. And I want you to know, also, that I would not hesitate, even if I knew I’d hang.”

Her chin sagged. “I believe—you would!” she whispered.

“For the purpose of spreading ruin, you’ll have to agree to die. Do you want to?”

“I don’t want to die.”

“Be very sure. It might be worth it. Is it?”

“You’re insane!”

“Maybe. I’m telling you what will happen.”

“All right.”

“Quit?”

“Yes, Jimmie.” Her chest heaved. Her voice was hoarse.

“You won’t forget?”

“No.”

“Or make a slip?”

“No. My arm is—pulp.”

He let go of her. She sat still, rubbing the place where he had held her. Her breathing was repressed, stertorous. Her pompadour had come apart and tumbled. A wetness that did not run as tears blurred the blue-black make-up around her eyes. Jimmie began to collect the diaries that lay around her on the bed. He stacked them neatly and in order—unconsciously noting the years imprinted on the back of each book.

Sarah began a hollow-voiced monologue. “It’ll be very strange, knowing we have a murderer in the house-a potential one, anyway! Maybe I can’t talk, but I will think! You won’t stop that! I’ve always been beaten. I should have known you’d beat me again. I was entitled to one moment of the upper hand—one little season when I had my say and my way in this town. But I don’t get that, now. I don’t get that! I don’t get even that.” Her lip quivered. Jimmie was facing the closed door, stuffing the books under his arm. “If I had gone away with Harry, when he wanted me to, and told them all to go to hell, I wouldn’t be in this prison now!”

She said, “My arm hurts.” She threw herself down sideways on the bed and commenced to sob.

Jimmie whirled around. “Who’s Harry?”

“Never you mind,” she answered brokenly.

“Why didn’t you go away with Harry—if you felt like it?”

“People don’t go away with clarinet players. Not people like us.”

“Where’s Harry now?”

“Chicago.”

“Married?”

She shook her head.

“Did you love him?”

She shook it the other way and cried harder.

“He love you?”

“Of course he did, you fool! He loved me until Mother talked to him, and Dad—on and on, day after day—and he went to Chicago.”

“When did all this happen?”

“It all ended—last spring. Go away, Jimmie. I don’t want to talk about it. Least of all—to you.”

“I think I’d like to look up Harry someday—if you ever want to see him again, and if you’ll tell me more about him.”

Sarah sat up and sniffled. “You mean you’d help me—against the whole family? ”

“Is he a nice guy, sis?”

“He’s wonderful!”

“If he is—if you’re serious, if he’s serious—I’ll certainly help you. Against the family. Against the world.” She was staring at him with widening eyes. He opened the door. “I don’t like people being pushed around,” he said. “Except as an extreme defense measure.”

When he walked into Mr. Corinth’s office he was busy with the reflection that it took intense misery to bring the truth up out of the hearts of most people. He set down the books and smiled at the old man. “Sorry I was gone so long. Your truckman had quite a nap. You see—I caught Sarah reading these things.” He kept smiling in spite of the startled look in the old man’s eyes. “Sarah’s first notion was that she could use her information as a sort of club. I had a hard time dissuading her.”

Mr. Corinth’s alarm did not abate. “She’ll betray you, Jimmie! That’s a terrible thing! The girl is unhappy—and bitter! I’ve seen her about a good deal—!”