Джеймс Кейн - Mignon

That, some kind of way but fairly clearly, I think, is what went through my mind as I crouched there holding my breath. But then, in one blazing second, it all got out of hand, and the smoke that filled the room could not be stuffed back in the shells. The shadow darted. It was suddenly close to the bed. Then the room filled with light and there came a crash — the ear-splitting crash a gun makes when it’s fired indoors. And then self-preservation, which seems to be stronger somehow than any plan you can make — for getting hunk or otherwise — got into it. While china still clattered around from the shot smashing the head, I fired by reflex action, not knowing I would. Then I fired again, on purpose. You can’t sight a gun in the dark, but your hand will do it for you, and the thud on the floor told me I’d found my mark. I circled the bed, felt around with my bare toe, touched a gun. I picked it up, shook what was lying there to see if it still lived. It didn’t move, so I knew I had to — and move by the book, quick. I made my way to the sitting room, threw up the window, and called: “Corporal of the Guard, help! ” I did it three times, each time banging a shot in the night, in the prescribed military way. Then I got a military answer: “Corporal of the Guard — yo! We hear you! Who are you who call? Locate yourself and we’ll come!”

“Schmidt store, second floor, Front Street!”

“On our way, coming up!”

I ducked for the bedroom again, but in the hall came a whisper from the dark: “Willie! Are you all right?”

“Mignon! For God’s sake, where are you?”

“Here! Can’t you see?”

Something touched my head, and when I grabbed it it was her hand, reaching down from the skylight. For a moment, one tremendous moment, her fingers locked with mine, and then she repeated, “Willie! Are you all right? ”

“Yes, but will you go? I’ve had to kill a man, Burke, I think. The Provost Guard’s on its way — and they must not find you here!”

“I almost died when I heard those shots!”

“ Heard them? Where the hell have you been?”

“Home! Where do you think?”

“Then why didn’t you answer Burke’s knock?”

“With Father not home? I wouldn’t answer anyone ’ s knock! It’s the one protection I have, and—”

“You answered my knock, though.”

“Well? I knew it was you... As for Frank—”

“Never mind about him. He’s dead.”

“I’ve been trying to tell you: I don’t care.”

I shook her hand, as a mother shakes a child, to make it listen. I said: “Mignon, you have to care, or everything’s in the soup! Things have been going on that I can’t take time to explain — terrible things that you can’t know about, or you wouldn’t be talking this way! Things that can land you on the gallows, and not only you but your father! We have to cover up! I do, you do, your father does, especially about those papers in Burke’s house! So if you hear me talking funny, don’t you undercut me, don’t you get in it, giving your two cents’ worth! I’ll have my reasons, and your life is at stake! Mignon, do you hear what I say?”

“My, but you sound funny.”

“Do you understand?”

“Yes, Willie, but are you all right?”

“I am! Now, will you go? ”

“You don’t even sound like yourself.”

“Mignon, here comes the Provost Guard!”

At last, she pulled back her head and lowered the frame as footsteps sounded outside. My heart raced as I went to the door, and my head was spinning around because, of course, from her failure to answer Burke and the way she acted with me, she’d never lived up with him and had had no part of his scheme — at least any scheme leading to Powell’s murder. It put a different light on everything.

I opened to the corporal, who was carrying a bull’s-eye lantern, and two of his men, then led at once to the bedroom. But when he threw his beam I got my first jolt. The thing on the floor wasn’t Burke, but Pierre Legrand, the gippo. The corporal took both guns, which by then I had in one hand, sniffed them, and put them on the night table. Then he opened Pierre’s reefer and felt around in his pockets, perhaps for some identification. He didn’t seem to find any, which suddenly tipped me off that he wasn’t known to soldiers just recently here, and mightn’t be, at least right away, if I played my cards right. So when I was asked, I told everything just as it happened, except that I used the word prowler and gave no clue that could be followed up. In other words, I told the truth, but not quite all of the truth. The corporal shook his head, said “This damned place is so full of jayhawkers, bushwhackers, and swine of all different kinds, they’d steal our goddam boats if they wasn’t tied fast to the bank.” He posted a man to stand guard, said he’d get the captain, told me dress if I wanted to, but there was really no need, “as give us a half hour, and we ought to be off your neck, with him outen the way too.”

He was all ready to leave when suddenly, at the door, he turned to his other man, asked: “You see what I see, soldier?”

“Well Corporal, gimme some light.”

“That hat, under the bed!”

“Brother!”

He strode over, picked it up, and stared at the red pompon. “It’s him,” he whispered, “the one that killed Lieutenant Powell! That’s what the bosun said, the one on duty with him — he saw the man’s hat plain, it was one like the French Navy wears and had a red tassel on it!”

“That there’s a tuft, not a tassel.”

“Whatever it is, it’s red.”

“Corporal, you could be letting the Navy know.”

“You bet I’m letting the Navy know.”

In so short a time that I barely had my clothes on, I was a bigger hero than I’d ever been in my life, and I’ve had my share of praise. The Navy got there: Ball, Sandy, and three ensigns from the Eastport ; a two-striper from the flag boat, and seamen from other boats. They piled in with a Captain Hager from the Provost Guard, the corporal, more privates, a stretcher, and so many bull’s-eye lanterns the place was bright as day. They closed in on the corpse like staghounds, and all kowtowed to me as the one who had made the kill. None of them, as yet, seemed to know who Pierre was, except that he’d murdered Powell, and I certainly didn’t enlighten them, though I avoided direct statements, one way or the other, by pretending “a bad reaction — don’t ask me to look at this man.” Hager, though, when he made me admit I was the one who had asked for a bodyguard earlier on in the evening, at once began boring in, but I told him: “ That was just a precaution I felt I should take, from carrying a large sum of money, and had no connection with this — that I know of, unless this fellow had heard rumors about me.” That seemed to satisfy him; he even returned me my gun. “Obviously,” he said, “under the circumstances, in this godawful, lawless place, you may need it.”

Then he had the privates clean the room up, and Ball ordered the seamen to help. They found a pan and brooms in the kitchen, and swept up the china that was crunching underfoot, then brushed off the bed and made it up fresh. They did a bang-up policing job, and while it was going on, Sandy drew me into the hall. “Boy!” he growled. “Did you fall into the cream pot!”

“... Cream pot? What are you talking about?”

“Your receipt! We’ll have to sign it now!”

“Sandy! I don’t have a receipt!”

“I know you don’t! You don’t even have any cotton, but this is your chance to get it! Bill, don’t you see? The Navy couldn’t refuse you now and still look you in the eye — and we wouldn’t want to! After all, we look out for our friends, and you’ve just settled the hash of the killer we were looking for! You get some cotton, Bill! From your hombre if you can — the one holding the other half of your torn fifty-dollar bill! But if he doesn’t show, forget him — go buy up stock of your own, from whoever holds any titles to that cotton we took from the warehouse! You’re the only one who can get a receipt, you got a monopoly, you’ll be the only bidder, they’ll have to take what you offer, you can get hold of that stock for a song! Don’t you see, Bill? Stop arguing with me! Here I’ve been racking my brains all night for some scheme you could pull to make that twenty-five thousand dollars, and now when it’s right in your hand, you stand there—”