Charles Williams - Hell Hath No Fury

I picked her up a little after seven and we drove out into the country and parked the car on a side road. I held her in my arms for a long time, not talking, and at last she stirred a little and looked up at me so hopelessly it was like a knife turning inside me.

“He wanted five hundred dollars,” she said.

“Did you give it to him ? “

“Not yet,” she said dully. “I told him we didn’t have it in the safe, and the bank was closed.”

“Good,” I said. “We’ll think of something.”

“We have to, Harry,” she said. “He said he’d go away. He said he was going out west. If we give it to him, maybe he’ll stay away.”

I wasn’t thinking, or I’d have kept my big mouth shut. “Like hell he will. Blackmailers are all the same. Every bite is always the last—until the next one.”

“I know. But what can we do? He might go.”

“He won’t. And we won’t get anywhere by paying him. The thing to do is stop him.”

“But how?” she asked frantically. Then she thought of something. “Harry, did you do that to his face? I never saw anything so—so horrible.”

“Yes,” I said. “I won’t lie to you. I did it. And a fat lot of good it did.”

“I hate that sort of thing, Harry. You won’t do it again, will you?”

“All right. It didn’t do any good, anyway.”

“We’ll just have to give him what he wants, and hope he’ll leave.”

“He’ll never leave if you give him what he wants,” I said.

“Then you don’t want me to give him the money?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Don’t give him anything till I tell you to.”

“What are you going to do, Harry?”

“I don’t know yet, baby. I just don’t know.”

“Darling, please tell me why you don’t want to give it to him. Isn’t that the best thing to do?”

“It’s the very worst thing we could do. The way to get a blackmailer off your back is to stop him, not pay him.”

“What do you mean? How can we stop him?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But you just leave it to me.”

I took her home around midnight and went back to the rooming house. I lay in bed thinking about it, and after a while I was conscious that I was no longer wondering what to do. I was thinking of how to do it. Sometime during the afternoon or evening I had already arrived at the only answer there could ever be to Sutton. I was going to kill him.

How?

The match flared as I lighted another cigarette. I could see the face of the wrist watch. It was nearly two-thirty.

There was no use trying to kid myself. It was dangerous, It was dangerous as hell. I thought of that Sheriff. Anybody who committed a crime in his county was taking a long, long chance. And I already had one strike on me. He had his eye on me. I was a marked man, and he was probably having me watched. I had to get down there and do it and get back without Tate’s knowing I had left town.

How?

I rolled over on my back and lay staring up at the ceiling. I not only had to get past the Sheriff; I had to fool Gloria. There was no telling what a thing like that would do to her. She’d probably crack up if she ever found it out.

How? How? How?

And what about Sutton himself? I knew by this time I was dealing with no fool. He was plenty smart, and he was armed. I thought about the guns. He had that Junior League automatic, a .11 rifle, and a shotgun. And then I began to get it.

I sat up in bed.

It didn’t come to me all at once. It took a long time to work it all out, step by step, thinking of all the possibilities and when I was through it was dawn. It was a hot, breathless dawn, the way it is before a storm, and as the sun came up I looked out across the back yard at the high board fence splashed with crimson. Red in the morning, I thought, sailor take warning.

It meant nothing except that it would probably rain by tonight. I turned on my side and went to sleep.

* * *

I awoke around noon with a bad taste in my mouth and my body drenched with perspiration. Outside the sun was a brassy glare, and there was no whisper of a breeze. I walked uptown and bought the Houston paper and took it into the restaurant, propping it up before me while I drank some orange juice. I remembered none of the news, even while I was reading it, but this had to look like any other Sunday. I was tight and nervous, for I could feel that cold-eyed Sheriff looking over my shoulder at every move I made. It had to be natural from start to finish, for he had a merciless eye for anything that didn’t fit.

It was a day that would never end. Around five o’clock I drove over to the Robinsons’, but Gloria had gone out about an hour ago, they said. I talked to them for a few minutes, and then left, unable to sit still. Time crawled. Tension was building up already, and I still had hours to go I went back about seven and she was home. She’d gone for a ride to try to cool off, she said. We went over to the county seat to an air-conditioned movie, trying to escape our thoughts and the heat. On the way home she was depressed and silent and nothing I could do would bring her out of it. There was a feeling she was more than usually upset by Sutton and that she wanted to tell me something, but she never did. When we got back to town she said she had a headache and wanted to go to bed early. I left her at the gate.

I parked the car in front of the rooming house and went on through to my room. I was going to stay there all night, just in case Tate had orders to check on me from time to time. Looking at my watch, I saw it was almost eleven. I changed clothes, putting on dark slacks, a blue sports shirt, and black shoes. I left the light burning for a while, as if I were reading, and after about a half hour I turned it out and lay down on the bed. The landlady’s room was directly above mine, and I could see the light from her window shining out into the back yard. In another twenty minutes it went out.

I waited. The whole house was deathly still now. I tried to quiet my nerves by thinking how it would be afterwards, of Galveston and a honeymoon in November, and all the years ahead. It would work for a few minutes and then I’d be tightened up again, thinking of what had to be done first, of Sutton lying there in the cabin, waiting for me maybe, or at least alert and knowing the risk he was running, and of the gun which wouldn’t be very far from his hand. And then I’d think of the Sheriff and the fact that this time the game we were playing wasn’t only for keeps, but forever. It made me cold thinking about it, but there wasn’t any other way. Sutton had asked for it. He’d get it.

I struck a match and looked at my watch. It was an hour since the landlady’s light had gone out. I got softly off the bed and stood up. It was time to go.

18

There was a screen door leading from my room into the backyard. I eased it open, an inch at a time, and slipped out, and closed it very gently. The night was heavily overcast and so dark I couldn’t see the gate. I knew where it was, though, and moved towards it, keeping on the grass to muffle any sound. Then my hands were on the gate, feeling for the latch. I opened it and eased out into the alley.

I went over to the car lot, walking fast and avoiding street lights, and slipped up to it from the rear. I eased around the corner of the shack, put the key in the lock, and stepped inside, closing the door after me. I didn’t need any light to find the cigar box which held the ignition keys; it was in the top drawer of my desk and I located it by feel. Carrying it over to a corner away from the windows, I squatted down so my body would shield the flame, and struck a match. All the keys had round cardboard tags with numbers on them, and it took me only a second or two to find the one I wanted. It was the key to the Ford which was parked down at the end of the line where the shadows were« heaviest and I could pull right out into the cross street without going on to Main at all. I put the others back in the desk and slipped out and closed the door.