Charles Williams - Hell Hath No Fury

“Maybe I’m thinking of getting a divorce.”

It was something about the way she said it. She didn’t mean divorce. Or I didn’t think she did. It was just an awful feeling that I was very close to knowing, for the first time, what she was really driving at. She could have left him any time, and he’d probably give her a divorce whenever she asked for it. Maybe she was waiting for more. He’d had two heart attacks—It was a little sickening.

“All right,” I said. “Get a divorce. But not on my account. I’ve told you what I’m going to do.”

“You think I’m bluffing, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“What do you suppose the Sheriff’ll do when he finds out what really happened that day?”

“So you’re going to tell him?”

“Certainly I am.”

“And have you thought over what’s going to happen when you do?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll go to jail.”

“Who do you think you’re kidding?”

“Nobody. If I committed a crime, you’re an accessory to it. I say if I committed one. You don’t know, you see. But if I did, now you’re as guilty as I am. You not only withheld evidence, but you lied about it.”

“I don’t believe you.” She was still loud and defiant and angry, but I could hear a little note of uncertainty creeping in.

“Well, I’ve told you,” I said. “But if you’re such a hotshot hard guy, go ahead and try it. Personally, I don’t think they could convict either one of us of anything, but it’d certainly give people something to talk about. Such as, why did you lie about seeing me there in the first place? And what’s been going on, girls, that we didn’t know anything about?”

“Why you dirty—“

“Well, I just thought I’d tell you, pal, before your neck got out another foot. You’d better reel it in.”

“So that’s the way it is?”

“That’s exactly the way it is.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I think of it. And you. And everything about you. And her.”

She told me.

She was still telling me when she slid the wheels to slow down a little to let me out three blocks away from the rooming house. I didn’t mind walking. It gave my ears a chance to stop ringing, and gave me a breather to let the fact soak in that I was through with her at last. It was wonderful. Everything was wonderful.

It was a happy few hours. The next morning at ten o’clock Sutton walked into the office to see me.

* * *

Gulick was up the street having coffee. I was at my desk doing some paper-work when I heard the car stop outside on the lot. I’d just shoved the papers aside and started to get up to see who it was when he walked in the door. He pulled a chair over and sat down in front of the desk. His face was still a mess, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. I was watching his hands. He didn’t have on a coat and I couldn’t see any place he could be carrying a gun, but if he did have one I didn’t have a chance, with that desk between us. By the time I got to him it wouldn’t make any difference whether I got there or not.

He fished in the breast pocket of his shirt for a cigarette and then reached down. I waited, scarcely breathing. When the hand came out of his pants pocket it held nothing but a big kitchen match. He raked it along the edge of the desk and lighted his cigarette.

“Don’t mind the way my face looks,” he said. “I fell out of bed. I was having a funny dream.”

“What’s on your mind?” I asked.

“That’s the way to do business,” he said, with what might have been a grin. His face was so puffed and cut not much of it moved. “Always get right to the point. Well, I’ll tell you. I’m thinking of buying another car pretty soon.”

“How about just paying for the one you’ve got now?” I said.

“Oh. That’s all right. I’ll trade it in on the new one.”

“Like perpetual motion, huh? You want to trade in a car you don’t own for another one you can’t pay for. You ought to be in the government.”

“It must rub off on you,” he said. “You’ve been a big shot less than a week and you sound just like Harshaw already.”

“Maybe I was wrong,” I said. ‘You ought to work for the newspaper.”

“Oh, I take an interest in things. But how about the car? I’ve kind of got my eye on that Buick up there at the end.”

“That’s twenty-four hundred dollars worth of car. Eight hundred down. What are you using for money?”

“I told you. I’ll trade mine.”

I was beginning to get fed up with it. It didn’t look as if he had a gun or was looking for trouble, and I couldn’t figure out what he was getting at.

“Cut it out,” I said. “If you haven’t got anything to do, I have. Your equity in that Ford is about three hundred dollars, and we both know how you got that much in it. And just to jog your memory, that gravy-train has quit running.” I stopped and looked at him. “Incidentally, your next note is two or three days overdue, so unless you’ve got fifty-five dollars on you you’d better start thinking about walking home. Thanks for bringing it in.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” he said. “But you still don’t catch on. Why should I make another payment on it when I’m going to turn it back? On that Buick. Let’s go take a ride in it. We can work out the down payment then.”

I started to tell him to beat it when I looked up and saw Gulick coming back. There was no use letting him get an earful. “O.K.,” I said. I got the key out of the drawer. “Let’s take a ride.”

We went out to the car. “Mind if I drive?” he asked.

“No. Go ahead.”

I climbed in beside him and he eased it out into Main. “Nice car,” he said. “Radio and everything, huh?”

“Now listen, you stupid bastard,” I said, “I don’t know what you’re driving at, but I can get a bellyful of you quicker than most people. So why don’t you get wise and shove? You fall out of that bed about once more and the grasshoppers’ll start talking to you.”

“You know,” he said, “I been thinkin’ about that.” He turned right beyond the bank and started down the street where the Taylor building had been. “Thought I might go out to the Coast.”

“Now you’re getting smart.”

He jerked his head towards the charred rubble and the ashes. “Quite a fire they had, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said. I’ll never know why I didn’t begin to tumble then. Maybe it was that silly, half-witted act he was putting on.

He turned again at the second cross street and started around the block. And just after he’d made the last turn he pulled to the curb and stopped. We were facing up the street towards what had been the rear of the Taylor building. There was a big elm hanging out over the curb and we were in the shade. There was something awfully familiar about it. And then the warning began to go off in my head at last. This was the exact spot where I’d parked the car that day of the fire. The chill was going all over me now in spite of the midmorning heat. There wasn’t one chance in a thousand he’d stumbled on this spot accidentally. And the only way he could have known about it—I didn’t want to think about that.

“You know, it’s funny about this place,” he said. “Familiar, sort of; ain’t it? You ever get that feeling? You know, that you’ve been in a place before.”

“Break it up,” I said. “What are you talking about?”

“That day they had the fire. Seems to me I was walking along here, going back to town, about a half hour after it started. I’d been over there watching it, see, but I’m kind of funny; fires bore me after a while. The way I see it, there’s no money in ‘em. Or at least that’s what I thought then. That just shows you how stupid a man can be when he don’t use his head. Now, you take a smart son-of-a-bitch like you, a real big-shot sort of guy, he knows there’s money in fires.”