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because if I were sober I might get sensible and decide not to go, and I
didn't want to decide not to go.
Smith had settled back in his chair, not looking at me, so I looked at
him, and wondered what I was doing even to listen to the absurd story he'd
told me about Vorpal Blades and the old Wentworth house.
He wasn't the escaped lunatic, but that didn't mean he wasn't a
screwball, and that I wasn't a worse one. What the hell were we going to do
out there? Try to fish a Bandersnatch out of limbo? Or break through a
looking-glass or dive down a rabbit hole to go hunting one in its native
element?
Well, as long as I didn't get sober enough to spoil things, it was
wonderful. Crazy or not, I was having a marvelous time. The best time I'd
had since the Halloween almost forty years ago when weґ But never mind that;
it's a sign of old age to reminisce about the things you did when you were
young, and I'm not old yet. Not very, anyway.
Yes, my eyes were focusing all right again now, but the mistiness in
the room was still there, and I realized that it wasn't mistiness but smoke.
I looked across at the window and wondered if I wanted it open badly enough
to get up and open it.
The window. A black square framing the night.
The midnight. Where were you at midnight? With Yehudi. Who's Yehudi? A
little man who wasn't there. But I have the card. Let's see it, Doc. Hmmm.
What's your bug number? My bug number?
And the black rook takes the white knight.
The smoke was definitely too thick, and so was I. I walked to the
window and threw up the bottom sash. The lights behind me made it a mirror.
There was my reflection. An insignificant little man with graying hair, and
glasses, and a necktie badly askew.
He grinned at me and straightened his necktie. I remembered the verse
from Carroll that Al Grainger had quoted at me early in the evening:
"You are old, Father William," the young man said
"And your hair has become very white
And yet you incessantly stand on your head.
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
And that made me think of Al Grainger. I wondered if there was still
any chance of his showing up. I'd told him to come around any time up to
midnight and it was that now. I wished now that he would come. Not for
chess, as we'd planned, but so he could go along an our expedition. Not that
I was exactly afraid, but ґ well, I wished that Al Grainger would show up.
It occurred to me that he might have come or phoned and that Yehudi had
failed to mention it. I asked him.
He shook his head, "No, Doc. Nobody came and the only phone call was
the one you yourself made just before you came home."
So that was that, unless Al showed up in the next half hour or unless I
phoned him. And I didn't want to do that. I'd been enough of a coward
earlier in the evening.
Just the same I felt a little hollowґ
My God, I was hollow. I'd had a sandwich late in the afternoon, but
that had been eight hours ago and I hadn't eaten anything since. No wonder
the last couple of drinks had hit me.
I suggested to Yehudi that we raid the icebox and he said it sounded
like a wonderful idea to him. And it must have been, for it turned out that
he was as hungry as I. Between us we killed a pound of boiled ham, most of a
loaf of rye and a medium-sized jar of pickles.
It was almost half past-twelve when we finished. There was just time
for a stirrup cup, and we had one. With food in my stomach, it tasted much
better and went down much more smoothly than the last one had. It tasted so
good, in fact, that I decided to take the bottle ґ we'd started the second
one by then ґ along with us. We might, after all, run into a blizzard.
"Ready to go?" Smith asked.
I decided I'd better put the window down. In its reflecting pane, over
my shoulder I could see Yehudi Smith standing by the door waiting for me.
The reflection was clear and sharp; it brought out the bland roundness of
his face, the laughter-tracks around his mouth and eyes, the rotund
absurdity of his body.
And an impulse made me walk over and hold out my hand to him and shake
his hand when he put it into mine rather wonderingly. We hadn't shaken hands
when we'd introduced ourselves on the porch and something made me want to do
it now. I don't mean that I'm clairvoyant. I'm not, or I'd never have gone.
No, I don't know why I shook hands with him.
Just an impulse, but one I'm very glad I followed. Just as I'm glad I'd
given him food and drink instead of letting him go to his strange death
sober or on an empty stomach.
And I'm even gladder that I said, "Smitty, I like you."
He looked pleased; but somehow embarrassed. He said, "Thanks, Doc," but
for the first time his eyes didn't quite meet mine.
We went out and walked up the quiet street to where he'd left his car,
and got in.
It's odd how clearly you remember some things and how vague others are.
I recall that there was a push button radio on the dashboard and that the
button for WBBM was pushed in, and I recall that the gear shift knob was
brightly polished onyx. But I don't recall whether the car was a coupe or a
sedan, and haven't the vaguest idea what make or color it was. I recall that
the engine was quite noisy ґ my only clue as to whether it was an old car or
a new one, that and the fact that the gear shift was on the floor and not on
the steering wheel post.
I remember that he drove well and carefully and talked little, probably
because of the noisiness of the motor.
I directed him, but I don't recall now, not that it matters, what route
we took. I remember, though, that I didn't recognize the driveway of the old
Wentworth place ґ the house itself was set quite far back from the road and
you couldn't see it through the trees even in daylight ґ but a little
farther on I recognized the farm that an aunt and uncle of mine had lived in
many years ago and knew we'd passed our objective.
He turned back, then, and this time I spotted the driveway and we
turned in and followed the drive back among the trees to the house itself.
We parked alongside it.
"First ones here," Smith said in the sudden silence as he turned off
the engine.
I got out of the car and ґ I don't know why; or do I? ґ I took the
bottle with me. It was so dark outside that I couldn't see the bottle in
front of my eyes as I tilted it upward.
Smith had turned out the headlights and was getting out of his side of
the car. He had a flashlight in his hand and I could see again as he came
around to my side of the car. I held out the bottle to him and said, "Want
one?" and he said, "You read my mind, Doc," and took one. My eyes were
getting a little used to the dark now and I could see the outlines of the
house, and I thought about it.
God, but the place must be old, I realized. I knew it well from the
weeks in summer when, as a kid, I'd visited my aunt and uncle just down the
road for a taste of farm life ґ as against the big city of Carmel City,
Illinois.
That had been over forty years ago and it had been old then, and
untenanted. It had been lived in since, but for brief intervals. Why the few
people who had tried to live there had left, I didn't know. They'd never
complained ґ publicly, at least ґ of its being haunted. But none had ever
stayed there for long. Perhaps it was merely the house itself; it really was
a depressing place. A year or more ago the Clarion had carried an ad for the
rental of it ґ and at a very reasonable price ґ but no one had taken it.
I thought of Johnny Haskins, who lived on the farm between my uncle's
place and this one. He and I had explored the place several times together,
in daylight. Johnny was dead now. He'd been killed in France in 1918, near
the end of the first world war. In daytime, I hope, for Johnny had always
been afraid of the dark ґ just as I was afraid of heights and as Al Grainger
was afraid of fire and as everyone is afraid of something or other.
Johnny had been afraid of the old Wentworth place, too ґ even more
afraid than I was, although he was several years older than I. He'd believed
in ghosts, a little; at least he'd been afraid of them, although not as
afraid as he was of the dark. And I'd picked up a little of that fear from
him and I'd kept it for quite a few years after I grew up.
But not any more. The older you get the less afraid of ghosts you are ґ
whether you believe in them or not. By the time you pass the fifty mark
you've known so many people who are now dead that ghosts, if there are any
such, aren't all strangers. Some of your best friends are ghosts; why should
you be afraid of them? And it's not too many years before you'll be on the
other side of the fence yourself.
No, I wasn't afraid of ghosts or the dark or of the haunted house, but
I was afraid of something. I wasn't afraid of Yehudi Smith, I liked him too
well to be afraid of him. Undoubtedly, I was a fool to come here with him,
knowing nothing at all about him. Yet I would have bet money at long odds
that he wasn't dangerous. A crackpot, maybe, but not a dangerous one.
Smith opened the car door again and said, "I just remembered I brought
candles; they told me the electricity wouldn't be on. And there's another
flashlight in here, if you want one, Doc."
Sure I wanted one. I felt a little better, a little less afraid of
whatever I was afraid of once I had a flashlight of my own and was in no
sudden danger of being alone in darkness.
I ran the beam of the flashlight up on the porch, and the house was
just as I remembered it. It had been lived in just often enough for it to
have been kept in repair, or at least in fairly good shape.
Yehudi Smith said, "Come on, Doc. We might as well wait inside," and
led the way up the porch steps. They creaked as we walked up them but they
were solid.
The front door wasn't locked. Smith must have known that it wouldn't
be, from the confident way he opened it.
We went in and he closed the door behind us. The beams of our
flashlights danced ahead of us down the long dimness of the hallway. I
noticed with surprise that the place was carpeted and furnished; it had been
empty and bare at the time I'd explored it as a kid. The most recent tenant
or owner who had lived here, for whatever reason he had moved away, had left
the place furnished, possibly hoping to rent or sell it that way.
We turned into a huge living room on the left of the hallway. There was
furniture there, too, white-sheeted. Covered fairly recently, from the fact
that the sheets were not too dirty nor was there a great amount of dust
anywhere.
Something made the back of my neck prickle. Maybe the ghostly
appearance of that sheeted furniture.
"Shall we wait here or go up in the attic?" Smith asked me.
"The attic? Why the attic?"
"Where the meeting is to be held."
I was getting to like this less and less. Was there going to be a
meeting? Were others really coming here tonight?
It was five minutes of one o'clock already.
I looked around and wondered whether. I'd rather stay here or go on up
into the attic. Either alternative seemed crazy. Why didn't I go home? Why
hadn't I stayed there?
I didn't like that spectral white-covered furniture. I said, "Let's go
on up into the attic. Might as well. I guess."
Yes, I'd come this far. I might as well see it through the rest of the
way. If there was a looking-glass up there in the attic and he wanted us to
walk through it, I'd do that, too. Provided only that he went first.
But I wanted another short nip out of that bottle I was carrying. I
offered it to Smith and he shook his head so I went ahead and took the nip
and it slightly warmed the coldness that was beginning to develop in my
stomach.
We went up the stairs to the second floor and we didn't meet any ghost
or any snarks. We opened the door that led to the steps to the attic.
We walked up them, Smith in the lead and I following, his plump
posterior just ahead of me.
My mind kept reminding me how ridiculous this was. How utterly insane
it was for me to have come here at all.
Where were you at one o'clock? In a haunted house. Doing what? Waiting
for the Vorpal Blades to come. What are these Vorpal Blades? I don't know.
What were they going to do? I don't know, I tell you. Maybe anything. Get
with child a mandrake root. Hold court to see who stole the tarts or put the
white knight back on his horse. Or maybe only read the minutes of the last
meeting and the treasurer's report, by Benchley. Who's Benchley? WHO'S
YEHUDI?
Who's your little whoozis?
Doc, I hate to say this, butґ
I'm afraid thatґ
Very pitying, and oh, so sensibly true. You were drunk, weren't you,
Doc? Well, not exactly, butґ
Yehudi Smith's plump posterior ascending the attic stairs. A horse's
posterior ascending after him.
We reached the top and Smith asked me to hold my flashlight aimed at
the post of the stair railing until he got a candle lighted there. He took a
short, thick candle from his pocket ґ one that would balance easily by
itself without a holder ґ and got it lighted.
There were trunks and a few pieces of broken or worn-out furniture
scattered about the sides of the attic; the middle of it was clear. The only
window was at the back and it was boarded up from the inside.
I looked around and, although the furniture here wasn't sheeted, I
didn't like the place any better than I'd liked the big room downstairs. The
light of one candle was far too dim to dispel the darkness, for one thing,
in so large a space. And I didn't like the flickering shadows it cast. They
might have been Jabberwocks or anything your imagination wanted to name
them. There ought to be Rorschach tests with flickering shadows; what the
mind would make out of them ought to be a lot more revealing than what the
mind makes out of ink blots.
Yes, I could have used more light, a lot more light. But Smith had put
his flashlight in his pocket and I did the same with the other one; it was
his, too, and I didn't have any excuse to wear out the battery keeping it
on. And besides it didn't do much good in so large a room.
"What do we do now?" I asked.
"Wait for the others. What time is it, Doc?"
I managed to read my watch by the light of the candle and told him that
it was seven minutes after one.
He nodded. "We'll give them until a quarter after. There's something
that I must do then, at that exact time, whether they're here or not.
Listen, isn't that a car?"
I listened and I thought it was. Way up here in the attic, it wasn't
clearly audible, but I thought I heard a car that could have been coming
back from the main road to the house. I was pretty sure of it.
I uncorked the bottle again and offered it. This time Smith took a
drink, too. Mine was a fairly long pull. I was getting sober. I thought, and
this was no time or place to get sober. It was silly enough to be here,
drunk.
I couldn't hear the car any more, and then suddenly ґ as though it had
stopped and then started again ґ I could hear it, and louder than before.
But the sound seemed to diminish, as though the car had driven back from the
road, stopped a minute, and then headed for the main road again. The sound
died out.
The shadows flickered. There was no sound from downstairs.
I shivered a little.
Smith said, "Help me look for something, Doc. It's supposed to be here
somewhere, ready. A small table."
"A table?"
"Yes, but don't touch it if you find it."
He had his flashlight out again and was working his way along one wall
of the attic, and I went the other way, glad of a chance to use my
flashlight on those damned shadows. I wondered what the hell kind of a table
I was looking for. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine
enemies, I thought. But there weren't any of my enemies here, I hoped.
I found it first. It was in the back corner of the attic.
It was a small, three-legged, glass-topped table, and there were two
small objects lying on it.
I started laughing. Ghosts and shadows or not. I laughed out loud. One
of the objects on the table was a small key and the other was a small vial
with a tag tied to it.
The glass-topped table Alice had found in the hall at the bottom of the
rabbit hole ґ the table on which had been the key that opened the little
door to the garden and the bottle with the paper label that said "DRINK ME"
tied around its neck.
I'd seen that table often ґ in the John Tenniel illustration of it in
Alice in Wonderland.
Smith's footsteps coming up behind me made me stop laughing. After all,
this ridiculous flummery might be something of a ritual to him. It was funny
to me, but I liked him and I didn't want to hurt his feelings.
He wasn't even smiling. He said, "Yes, that's it. Is it one- fifteen
yet?"
"Almost on the head."
"Good." He picked up the key with one hand and the bottle with the
other. "The others must be delayed, but we shall take the first step. This,
keep." He dropped the key into my pocket. "And this, I drink." He took the
cork out of the bottle. "I apologize for not being able to share it with you
ґ as you have so generously shared your drinks with me ґ but you understand,
until you have been fully initiatedґ"
He seemed genuinely embarrassed, so I nodded understanding and
forgiveness.
I wasn't afraid any more, now. It had become too ridiculous for fear.
What was that "drink me" bottle supposed to do? Oh, yes, he'd shrink in size
until he was only a few inches high ґ and then he'd have to find and use a
little box labeled ґ "EAT ME" and eat the cake inside and he'd suddenly grow
so big thatґ
He lifted the bottle and said, "To Lewis Carroll."
Since that was the toast, I said, "Wait!" and got the cork quickly out
of the bottle of whisky I was still carrying, and raised it, too. There
wasn't any reason why I couldn't and shouldn't get in on that toast as long
as my lips, as a neophyte's, didn't defile whatever sacred elixir the "drink
me" bottle held.
He clinked the little bottle lightly against the big one I held, and
tossed it off ґ I could see from the corner of my eye as I tilted my bottle
ґ in that strange conjuring trick again, the bottle stopping inches away
from his lips and the drink keeping on going without the loss of a drop.
I was putting the cork into the whisky bottle when Yehudi Smith died.
He dropped the bottle labeled "DRINK ME" and started to clutch at his
throat, but he died, I think, even before the bottle hit the floor. His face
was hideously contorted with pain, but the pain couldn't have lasted over a
fraction of a second. His eyes, still open, went suddenly blank, utterly
blank. And the thud of his fall shook the floor under my feet, seemed to
shake the whole house.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
I think I must have done nothing but stand there and jitter for
seconds. Finally I was able to move.
I'd seen his face and I'd seen and heard him fall; I didn't have the
slightest doubt that he was dead. But I had to be sure. I got down on my
knees and groped my hand inside his coat and shirt, hunting for a heartbeat.
There wasn't any.
I made even surer. The flashlight he'd given me had a round flat lens;
I held it over his mouth and in front of his nostrils for a while and there
was no slightest trace of moisture.
The small empty bottle from which he'd drunk was of fairly heavy glass.
It hadn't broken when he'd dropped it, and the tag tied around its neck had
kept it from rolling far. I didn't touch it, but I got on my hands and knees
and sniffed at the open end. The smell was the smell of good whisky, nothing
else that I could detect. No odor of bitter almonds, but if what had been in
that whisky hadn't been prussic acid, it had been some corrosive poison just
about as strong. Or could it have been prussic, and would the smell of
whisky have blanketed the bitter almond smell? I didn't know.
I stood up again and found that my knees were shaking. This was the
second man I'd seen die tonight. But I hadn't so much minded about George.
He'd had it coming, for one thing, and for another his body had been inside
the crumpled-up car; I'd not actually seen him die. Nor had I been alone
then; Smiley had been with me. I'd have given my whole bank account, all
three hundred and twelve dollars of it, to have Smiley with me there in the
attic.
I wanted to get out of there, fast, and I was too scared to move. I
thought I'd be less scared if I could figure out what it was all about, but
it was sheerly mad. It didn't make sense that even a madman would have
brought me out here under so weird a pretext so that I could be an audience
of one to his suicide.
In fact, if I was sure of anything, I was sure that Smith hadn't killed
himself. But who had, and why? The Vorpal Blades? Was there such a group?
Where were they? Why hadn't they come?
A sudden thought put shivers down my spine. Maybe they had. I'd thought
I heard a car come and go, while we'd waited. Why couldn't it have dropped
off passengers? Waiting for me downstairs ґ or even now creeping up the
attic steps toward me.
I looked that way. The candle flickered and the shadows danced. I
strained my ears, but there wasn't any sound. No sound anywhere.
I was afraid to move, and then gradually I found that I was afraid not
to move. I had to get out of here before I went crazy. If anything was
downstairs I'd rather go down and meet it than wait till it decided to come
up here after me.
I wished to hell and back that I hadn't given Smiley that revolver, but
wishing didn't get me the revolver back.
Well, the whisky bottle was a weapon of sorts. I shifted the flashlight
to my left hand and picked up the whisky bottle, by its neck, in my right.
It was still more than half full and heavy enough for a bludgeon.
I tiptoed to the head of the steps. I don't know why I tiptoed unless
it was to avoid scaring myself worse by making noise; we hadn't been quiet
up here before and Smith's fall had shaken the whole house. If anyone was
downstairs, he knew he wasn't alone in the building.
I looked at the square post at the top of the railing and the short,
thick candle still burning on top of it. I didn't want to touch it; I wanted
to be able to say that I hadn't touched anything at all, except to feel for
a heartbeat that wasn't there. Yet I couldn't leave the candle burning,
either; it might set the house afire if it fell over, as Smith hadn't
anchored it down with molten wax, but had merely stood it on its base.
I compromised by blowing it out but not touching it otherwise.
My flashlight showed me there was nothing or no one on the stairs
leading down to the second floor and that the door at the bottom of them was
still closed, as we had left it. Before I started down them I took one last
look around the attic with my flash. The shadows jumped as the beam swept
around the walls, and then, for some reason, I brought the circle of light
to rest on Yehudi Smith's body lying sprawled there on the floor, eyes wide
open and still staring unseeingly at the rafters overhead, his face still
frozen in the grimace of that horrible, if brief, pain in which he'd died.
I hated to leave him alone there in the dark. Silly and sentimental as
the thought was, I couldn't help feeling that way. He'd been such a nice
little guy. Who the hell had killed him, and why, and why in such a bizarre
manner, and what was it all about? And he'd said it was dangerous to come
here tonight, and he was dead right, as far as he himself was concerned. And
Iґ?
With that thought, I was afraid again. I wasn't out of here yet. Was
someone or something waiting downstairs?
The attic stairs were uncarpeted and they squeaked so loudly that I
gave up trying to walk quietly and hurried. The attic door creaked, too, but
nothing was waiting for me on the other side of it. Or downstairs. I flashed
my light into the big living room as I passed the doorway and got a
momentary fright as I thought something white was coming toward me ґ but it
was only the sheeted table and it had only seemed to move.
The porch and down the porch steps.
The car was still there on the driveway beside the house. It was a
coupe, I noticed now, and the same make and model as mine. My feet crunched
gravel as I walked to it; I was still scared but I didn't dare let myself
run. I wondered if Smith had left the key in the car, and hoped frantically
that he had. I should have thought of it while I was still in the attic and
could have felt in his pockets. I wouldn't go back up there now, I realized,
for anything in the world. I'd walk back to town first.
At least the car door wasn't locked. I slid in under the wheel, and,
flashed my light on the dashboard. Yes, the ignition key was in the lock. I
slammed the door behind me and felt a little more secure inside the closed
car.
I fumed the key and stepped on the starter and the engine started the
first try. I shifted into low gear and then, before I let out the clutch, I
carefully shifted back into neutral again and sat there with the motor
idling.
This wasn't the car in which Yehudi Smith had driven me here. The gear
shift knob was hard rubber with a ridge around it, not the smooth onyx ball
I'd noticed on the gear shift lever of his car. It was like the one on my
car, which was back home in the garage with two flat tires that I hadn't got
around to fixing.
I turned on the dome light, although by then I didn't really have to. I
knew already from the feel of the controls in starting and in shifting, from
the sound of the engine, from a dozen little things.
This was my car.
It was so impossible that I forgot to be afraid, that I was in such a
hurry to get away from the house. Oh, there was a little logic in my lack of
fear, too; if anybody had been laying for me, the house would have been the
place. He wouldn't have let me get this far and he wouldn't have left the
ignition key in the car so I could get away in it.
I got out of the car and looked, with the flashlight, at the two tires
which had been flat this morning. They weren't flat now. Either someone had
fixed them, or someone had simply let the air out of them last night and had
subsequently pumped them up again with the hand pump I keep in my luggage
compartment. The second idea seemed more likely; now that I thought of it,
it was strange that two tires ґ both in good shape and with good tubes in
them ґ should have gone flat, completely flat, at the same time and while
the car was standing in my garage.
I walked all the way around the car, looking at it, and there wasn't
anything wrong with it that I could see. I got back in under the wheel and
sat there a minute with the engine running, wondering if it was even
remotely possible that Yehudi Smith had driven me here in my own car.
No, I decided, not remotely. I hadn't noticed his car at all except for
three things, but those three things were plenty to make me sure. Besides
the gear shift knob, I remembered that push button radio with the button for
WBBM pushed in ґ and my car has no radio at all ґ and there was the fact
that his engine was noisy and mine is quiet. Right then, with it idling, I
could barely hear it.
Unless I was crazyґ
Could I have imagined that other car? For that matter, could I have
imagined Yehudi Smith? Could I have driven out here by myself in my own car,
gone up to the attic aloneґ ?
It's a horrible thing to suspect yourself suddenly of complete
insanity, equipped with hallucinations.
I realized I'd better quit thinking along those lines, here alone in a
car, alone in the night, parked beside a haunted house. I might drive myself
nutty, if I wasn't already.
I took a long drink out of the bottle that was now on the seat beside
me, and then drove out to the highway and back to town. I didn't drive fast,
partly because I was a little drunk ґ physically anyway. The horrible thing
that had happened up in the attic, the fantastic, incredible death of Yehudi
Smith, had shocked me sober, mentally.
I couldn't have imaginedґ
But at the edge of town the doubts came back, then the answer to them.
I pulled to the side of the road and turned on the dome light. I had the
card and the key and the flashlight, those three souvenirs of my experience.
I took the flashlight out of my coat pocket and looked at it. Just a dime
store flashlight; it meant nothing except that it wasn't mine. The card was
the thing. I hunted in several pockets, getting worried as hell; before I
found it in the pocket of my shirt. Yes, J had it, and it still read Yehudi
Smith. I felt a little better as I put it back in my pocket. While I was at
it, I looked at the key, too. The key that had been with the "DRINK ME"
bottle on the glass-topped table.
It was still there in the pocket Smith had dropped it into; I'd not
touched it or looked at it closely. It was, of course, the wrong kind of
key, but I'd noticed that at first glance when I'd seen it on the table in
the attic; that had been part of my source of amusement when I'd laughed. It
was a Yale key, and it should have been a small gold key, the one Alice used
to open the fifteen-inch-high door into the lovely garden.
Come to think of it, all three of those props in the attic had been
wrong, one way or another. The table had been a glass-topped one, but it
should have been an all-glass table; the wooden legs were wrong. The key
shouldn't have been a nickel-plated Yale, and the "DRINK ME" should not have
contained poison. (It had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart,
custard, pine apple, roast turkey, toffy, and hot buttered toast.) ґ
according to Alice. It couldn't have tasted anything like that to Smith.
I started driving again, slowly. Now that I was back in town I had to
make up my mind whether I was going to the sheriff's office or going to call
the state police. Reluctantly I decided I'd better go right to the sheriff.
Definitely this case was in his department, unless he called on the state
police for help. They'd dump it in his lap anyway, even if I called them.
And he hated my guts enough as it was, without my making it any worse by
by-passing him in reporting a major crime. Not that I didn't hate his guts
just as much, but tonight he was in a better position to make trouble for me
than I for him.
So I parked my coupe across the street from the courthouse and took one
more swig from the bottle to give me courage to tell Kates the story I was
going to have to tell him. Then I marched myself across the street and up
the courthouse stairs to the sheriff's office on the second floor. If I was
lucky, I thought, Kates might be out and his deputy, Hank Ganzer, might be
there.
I wasn't lucky. Hank wasn't there at all; and Kates was talking on the
phone. He glared at me when I came in and then went back to his call.
"Hell, I could have done it on the phone from here. Go see the guy.
Wake him up and be sure he's awake enough to remember any little thing that
might have been said. Yeah, then call me again before you start back."
He put the receiver down and his swivel chair squeaked shrilly as he
swung about to face me. He yelled, "There isn't any story on it yet." Rance
Kates always yells; I've never heard him say anything in a quiet tone, or
even a normal one. His voice matches his red face, which always looks angry.
I've often wondered if he looks like that even when he's in bed. Wondered,
but had no inclination to find out.
What he'd just yelled at me, though, made so little sense that I just
looked at him.
I said, "I've come to report a murder, Kates."
"Huh?" He looked interested. "You mean you found either Miles or
Bonney?"
For a minute neither name registered at all. I said, "The man's name is
Smith." I thought I'd better sneak up on the Yehudi part gradually, maybe
let Kates read it himself off the card. "The body is in the attic of the old
Wentworth place out on the pike."
"Stoeger, are you drunk?"
"I've been drinking," I told him. "I'm not drunk." At least I hoped I
wasn't. Maybe that last one I'd taken in the car just before I'd left it had
been one too many. My voice sounded thick, even to me, and I had a hunch my
eyes were looking a trifle bleary from the outside; they were beginning to
feel that way from my side of them.
"What were you doing in the attic of the Wentworth place? You mean you
were there tonight?"
I wished again that Hank Ganzer had been there instead of Kates. Hank
would have taken my word for it and gone out for the body; then my story
wouldn't have sounded so incredible when I'd have got around to telling it.
I said, "Yes, I just came from there. I went there with Smith, at his
request."
"Who is this Smith? You know him?"
"I met him tonight for the first time. He came to see me.
"What for? What were you doing out there? A haunted house!"
I sighed. There wasn't anything I could do but answer his damn
questions and they were getting tougher all the time. Let's see, how could I
put it so it wouldn't sound too crazy?
I said, "We were there because it is supposed to be a haunted house,
Kates. This Smith was interested in the occult ґ in psychic phenomena. He
asked me to go out there with him to perform an experiment. I gathered that
some other people were coming, but they didn't."
"What kind of an experiment?"
"I don't know. He was killed before we got around to it."
"You and him were there alone?"
"Yes," I said, but I saw where that was leading so I added, "But I
didn't kill him. And I don't know who did. He was poisoned."
"Poisoned how?"
Part of my brain wanted to tell him, "Out of a little bottle labeled
`DRINK ME' on a glass table, as in Alice in Wonderland." The sensible part
of my brain told me to let him find that out for himself. I said, "Out of a
bottle that was planted there for him to drink. By whom, I don't know. But
you sound like you don't believe me. Why don't you go out and see for
yourself, Kates? Damn it, man, I'm reporting a murder." And then it occurred
to me there wasn't really any proof of that so I amended it a little: "Or at
least a death by violence."
He stared at me and I think he was becoming convinced, a little. His
phone rang and his swivel chair screamed again as he swung around. He barked
"Hello. Sheriff Kates," into it.
Then his voice tamed down a little. He said, "No, Mrs. Harrison,
haven't heard a thing. Hank's over at Neilsville, checking up at that end,
and he's going to watch the road again on his way back. I'll call you the
minute I learn anything at all. But don't worry; it can't be anything
serious."
He turned back. "Stoeger, if this is a gag, I'm going to take you
apart." He meant it, and he could do it, too. Kates is only a medium-sized
man, not too much bigger than I, but he's tough and hard as a rock
physically. He can handle men weighing half again as much as he does. And
he's got enough of a sadistic streak to enjoy doing it whenever he has a
good excuse for it.
"It's no gag," I said. "What's this about Miles Harrison and Ralph
Bonney?"
"Missing. They left Neilsville with the Bonney pay roll a little after
half past eleven and should have been back here around midnight. It's almost
two o'clock and nobody knows where they are. Look, if I thought you were
sober and there was a stiff out on the pike, I'd call the state cops. I got
to stay here till we find what happened to Miles and Bonney."
The state cops were fine, as far as I was concerned. I'd reported it
where it should have been reported, and Kates would have no kickback if he
himself called the state police. I was just opening my mouth to say that
might be a good idea when the phone rang again.
Kates yelled into it, and then, "As far as the teller knew, they were
heading right back, Hank? Nothing unusual happened at that end, huh? Okay,
come back, and watch both sides of the road all the way in case they ran off
it or something... Yeah, the pike. That's the only way they could've come.
Oh, and listen, stop at the Wentworth place on your way and take a look in
the attic... Yeah. I said the attic. Doc Stoeger's here, drunk as a coot,
and he says there's a stiff in the attic there. If there is one, I'll worry
about it."
He slammed the receiver down and started shuffling papers on his desk,
trying to look busy. Finally he thought of something to do and phoned the
Bonney Fireworks Company to see if Bonney had showed up there yet, or called
them. Apparently, from what I could hear of the conversation, he hadn't done
either.
I realized that I was still standing up and that now, since Kates had
given that order to his deputy, nothing was going to happen until Hank got
back ґ at least half an hour if he drove slowly to watch both sides of the
road. So I found myself a chair and sat down. Kates shuffled papers again
and paid no attention to me.
I got to wondering about Bonney and Miles, and hoped they hadn't had an
accident. If they had had one, and were two hours overdue, it must have been
a bad one. Unless both were seriously hurt, one of them would have reached a
phone long before this. Of course they could have stopped somewhere for a
drink, but it didn't seem likely, not for two hours at least. And, come to
think of it, they couldn't have; the closing hour for taverns applied to the
whole county, not just to Carmel City. Twelve o'clock had been almost two
hours ago.
I wished that it wasn't. Not that I either needed or wanted a drink
particularly at that moment, but it would have been much more pleasant to do
my waiting at Smiley's instead of here in the sheriff's office.
Kates suddenly swiveled his chair at me. "You don't know anything about
Bonney and Harrison, do you?"
"Not a thing," I told him.
"Where were you at midnight?"
With Yehudi. Who's Yehudi? The little man who wasn't there.
I said, "Home, talking to Smith. We stayed there until I half past
twelve."
"Anybody else there?"
I shook my head. Come to think of it, nobody but myself had, as far as
I knew, even seen Yehudi Smith. If his body wasn't in the attic at the
Wentworth place, I was going to have a hell of a time proving he'd ever
existed. A card and a key and a flashlight.
"Where'd this Smith guy come from?"
"I don't know. He didn't say."
"What was his first name?"
I stalled on that one. I said, "I don't remember. I've got his card
somewhere. He gave me one." Let him think the card was probably out at the
house. I wasn't ready to show it to him yet.
"How'd he happen to come to you to go to a haunted house with him if he
didn't even know you?"
I said, "He knew of me, as a Lewis Carroll fan."
"A what?"
"Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking-Glass,"
And a "DRINK ME" bottle on a glass table, and a key, and Bandersnatches and
Jabberwocks. But let Kates find that out for himself, after he'd found a
body and knew that I wasn't either drunk or crazy.
He said, "Alice in Wonderland!" and sniffed. He glared at me a full ten
seconds and then decided, apparently, that he was wasting his time on me and
swiveled back to his paper shuffling.
I felt in my pockets to make sure that the card and the key were still
there. They were. The flashlight was still in the car, but the flashlight
didn't mean anything anyway. Maybe the key didn't either. But that card was
my contact with reality, in a sense. As long as it still said Yehudi Smith,
I knew I wasn't stark raving mad. I knew that there'd really been such a
person and that he wasn't a figment of my imagination.
I slipped it out of my pocket to look at it again. Yes, it still said
"Yehudi Smith," although my eyes had a bit of trouble focusing on it
clearly. The printing looked fuzzy, which meant I needed either one more
drink or several less.
Yehudi Smith, in fuzzy-edged type. Yehudi, the little man who wasn't
there.
And suddenly ґ don't ask me how I knew, but I knew. I didn't see the
pattern, but I saw that much of it. The little man who wasn't there.
Wouldn't be there.
Hank was going to come in and say, "What's this about a stiff in the
Wentworth attic? I couldn't find one."
Yehudi. The little man who wasn't there. I saw a man upon the stair, A
little man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today; Gee, I wish he'd
go away.
It was preordained; it had to be. That much of the pattern I saw. The
name Yehudi hadn't been an accident. I think that almost, just then, I had a
flash of insight that would have shown me most of the pattern, if not all of
it. You know how it is sometimes when you're drunk, but not too drunk, you
think you're trembling on the verge of understanding something important and
cosmic that has eluded you all your life? And ґ just barely possible ґ you
really are. I think I was, at that moment.
Then I looked up from the card and the thread of my thought was lost
because Kates was staring at me. He'd turned just his head this time instead
of the squeaking swivel chair he was sitting on. He was looking at me
speculatively, suspiciously.
I tried to ignore it; I was trying to recapture my thoughts and let
them lead me. I was close to something. I saw a man upon the stair. Yehudi
Smith's plump posterior ascending the attic stairs, just ahead of me.
No, the dead body with the contorted face ґ the poor piece of cold clay
that had been a nice little guy with laughter lines around his eyes and the
corners of his mouth ґ wouldn't be there in the attic when Hank Ganzer
looked for it. It couldn't be there; its presence there wouldn't fit the
pattern that I still couldn't see or understand.
Squeal of the swivel chair as Rance Kates turned his body to match the
position of his head. "Is that the card that guy gave you?"
I nodded.
"What's his full name?"
The hell with Kates. "Yehudi," I said. "Yehudi Smith."
Of course it wasn't really; I knew at least that much now. I got up and
walked to Kates' desk. Unfortunately for my dignity, I weaved a little. But
I made it without falling. I put the card down in front of him and went back
and sat down again, managing to walk straight this time.
He looked at the card and then at me and then at the card and then at
me.
And then I knew I must be crazy.
"Doc," he asked ґ and his voice was quieter than I'd ever heard it
before ґ "What's your bug number?"
"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant runt
Shall we be trotting home again?"
But answer came there noneґ
I just stared at him. Either he was crazy or I was ґ and several times
in the last hour I'd been wondering about myself. What's your bug number?
What a question to ask a man in the spot I was in. What's yours?
Finally I managed to answer. "Huh?" I said.
"Your bug number. Your label number."
I got it then. I wasn't crazy after all. I knew what he meant.
I run a union shop, which means that I've signed a contract with the
International Typographical Union and pay Pete, my only employee, union
wages. In a town as small as Carmel City, you can get by with a non-union
shop, but I happen to believe in unions and to think the typographical union
is a good one. Being a union shop, we put the union label on everything we
print. It's a little oval-shaped dingus, so small you can barely read the
type if you've got good eyesight. And alongside it is an equally tiny number
which is the number of my particular shop among the other union shops in my
area. By the combination of the place name which is part of the label itself
and the number of the shop beside it, you can tell where any given piece of
union printing has been done.
But that little oval logotype is known to non-union printers as "the
bug." It does, I'll admit, look rather like a tiny bug crawling across the
bottom corner of whatever it's put on. And non-union printers call the shop
number alongside the "bug" the "bug number." Kates wasn't a printer, union
or otherwise, but I remember now that two of his brothers, both living in
didn't want to decide not to go.
Smith had settled back in his chair, not looking at me, so I looked at
him, and wondered what I was doing even to listen to the absurd story he'd
told me about Vorpal Blades and the old Wentworth house.
He wasn't the escaped lunatic, but that didn't mean he wasn't a
screwball, and that I wasn't a worse one. What the hell were we going to do
out there? Try to fish a Bandersnatch out of limbo? Or break through a
looking-glass or dive down a rabbit hole to go hunting one in its native
element?
Well, as long as I didn't get sober enough to spoil things, it was
wonderful. Crazy or not, I was having a marvelous time. The best time I'd
had since the Halloween almost forty years ago when weґ But never mind that;
it's a sign of old age to reminisce about the things you did when you were
young, and I'm not old yet. Not very, anyway.
Yes, my eyes were focusing all right again now, but the mistiness in
the room was still there, and I realized that it wasn't mistiness but smoke.
I looked across at the window and wondered if I wanted it open badly enough
to get up and open it.
The window. A black square framing the night.
The midnight. Where were you at midnight? With Yehudi. Who's Yehudi? A
little man who wasn't there. But I have the card. Let's see it, Doc. Hmmm.
What's your bug number? My bug number?
And the black rook takes the white knight.
The smoke was definitely too thick, and so was I. I walked to the
window and threw up the bottom sash. The lights behind me made it a mirror.
There was my reflection. An insignificant little man with graying hair, and
glasses, and a necktie badly askew.
He grinned at me and straightened his necktie. I remembered the verse
from Carroll that Al Grainger had quoted at me early in the evening:
"You are old, Father William," the young man said
"And your hair has become very white
And yet you incessantly stand on your head.
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
And that made me think of Al Grainger. I wondered if there was still
any chance of his showing up. I'd told him to come around any time up to
midnight and it was that now. I wished now that he would come. Not for
chess, as we'd planned, but so he could go along an our expedition. Not that
I was exactly afraid, but ґ well, I wished that Al Grainger would show up.
It occurred to me that he might have come or phoned and that Yehudi had
failed to mention it. I asked him.
He shook his head, "No, Doc. Nobody came and the only phone call was
the one you yourself made just before you came home."
So that was that, unless Al showed up in the next half hour or unless I
phoned him. And I didn't want to do that. I'd been enough of a coward
earlier in the evening.
Just the same I felt a little hollowґ
My God, I was hollow. I'd had a sandwich late in the afternoon, but
that had been eight hours ago and I hadn't eaten anything since. No wonder
the last couple of drinks had hit me.
I suggested to Yehudi that we raid the icebox and he said it sounded
like a wonderful idea to him. And it must have been, for it turned out that
he was as hungry as I. Between us we killed a pound of boiled ham, most of a
loaf of rye and a medium-sized jar of pickles.
It was almost half past-twelve when we finished. There was just time
for a stirrup cup, and we had one. With food in my stomach, it tasted much
better and went down much more smoothly than the last one had. It tasted so
good, in fact, that I decided to take the bottle ґ we'd started the second
one by then ґ along with us. We might, after all, run into a blizzard.
"Ready to go?" Smith asked.
I decided I'd better put the window down. In its reflecting pane, over
my shoulder I could see Yehudi Smith standing by the door waiting for me.
The reflection was clear and sharp; it brought out the bland roundness of
his face, the laughter-tracks around his mouth and eyes, the rotund
absurdity of his body.
And an impulse made me walk over and hold out my hand to him and shake
his hand when he put it into mine rather wonderingly. We hadn't shaken hands
when we'd introduced ourselves on the porch and something made me want to do
it now. I don't mean that I'm clairvoyant. I'm not, or I'd never have gone.
No, I don't know why I shook hands with him.
Just an impulse, but one I'm very glad I followed. Just as I'm glad I'd
given him food and drink instead of letting him go to his strange death
sober or on an empty stomach.
And I'm even gladder that I said, "Smitty, I like you."
He looked pleased; but somehow embarrassed. He said, "Thanks, Doc," but
for the first time his eyes didn't quite meet mine.
We went out and walked up the quiet street to where he'd left his car,
and got in.
It's odd how clearly you remember some things and how vague others are.
I recall that there was a push button radio on the dashboard and that the
button for WBBM was pushed in, and I recall that the gear shift knob was
brightly polished onyx. But I don't recall whether the car was a coupe or a
sedan, and haven't the vaguest idea what make or color it was. I recall that
the engine was quite noisy ґ my only clue as to whether it was an old car or
a new one, that and the fact that the gear shift was on the floor and not on
the steering wheel post.
I remember that he drove well and carefully and talked little, probably
because of the noisiness of the motor.
I directed him, but I don't recall now, not that it matters, what route
we took. I remember, though, that I didn't recognize the driveway of the old
Wentworth place ґ the house itself was set quite far back from the road and
you couldn't see it through the trees even in daylight ґ but a little
farther on I recognized the farm that an aunt and uncle of mine had lived in
many years ago and knew we'd passed our objective.
He turned back, then, and this time I spotted the driveway and we
turned in and followed the drive back among the trees to the house itself.
We parked alongside it.
"First ones here," Smith said in the sudden silence as he turned off
the engine.
I got out of the car and ґ I don't know why; or do I? ґ I took the
bottle with me. It was so dark outside that I couldn't see the bottle in
front of my eyes as I tilted it upward.
Smith had turned out the headlights and was getting out of his side of
the car. He had a flashlight in his hand and I could see again as he came
around to my side of the car. I held out the bottle to him and said, "Want
one?" and he said, "You read my mind, Doc," and took one. My eyes were
getting a little used to the dark now and I could see the outlines of the
house, and I thought about it.
God, but the place must be old, I realized. I knew it well from the
weeks in summer when, as a kid, I'd visited my aunt and uncle just down the
road for a taste of farm life ґ as against the big city of Carmel City,
Illinois.
That had been over forty years ago and it had been old then, and
untenanted. It had been lived in since, but for brief intervals. Why the few
people who had tried to live there had left, I didn't know. They'd never
complained ґ publicly, at least ґ of its being haunted. But none had ever
stayed there for long. Perhaps it was merely the house itself; it really was
a depressing place. A year or more ago the Clarion had carried an ad for the
rental of it ґ and at a very reasonable price ґ but no one had taken it.
I thought of Johnny Haskins, who lived on the farm between my uncle's
place and this one. He and I had explored the place several times together,
in daylight. Johnny was dead now. He'd been killed in France in 1918, near
the end of the first world war. In daytime, I hope, for Johnny had always
been afraid of the dark ґ just as I was afraid of heights and as Al Grainger
was afraid of fire and as everyone is afraid of something or other.
Johnny had been afraid of the old Wentworth place, too ґ even more
afraid than I was, although he was several years older than I. He'd believed
in ghosts, a little; at least he'd been afraid of them, although not as
afraid as he was of the dark. And I'd picked up a little of that fear from
him and I'd kept it for quite a few years after I grew up.
But not any more. The older you get the less afraid of ghosts you are ґ
whether you believe in them or not. By the time you pass the fifty mark
you've known so many people who are now dead that ghosts, if there are any
such, aren't all strangers. Some of your best friends are ghosts; why should
you be afraid of them? And it's not too many years before you'll be on the
other side of the fence yourself.
No, I wasn't afraid of ghosts or the dark or of the haunted house, but
I was afraid of something. I wasn't afraid of Yehudi Smith, I liked him too
well to be afraid of him. Undoubtedly, I was a fool to come here with him,
knowing nothing at all about him. Yet I would have bet money at long odds
that he wasn't dangerous. A crackpot, maybe, but not a dangerous one.
Smith opened the car door again and said, "I just remembered I brought
candles; they told me the electricity wouldn't be on. And there's another
flashlight in here, if you want one, Doc."
Sure I wanted one. I felt a little better, a little less afraid of
whatever I was afraid of once I had a flashlight of my own and was in no
sudden danger of being alone in darkness.
I ran the beam of the flashlight up on the porch, and the house was
just as I remembered it. It had been lived in just often enough for it to
have been kept in repair, or at least in fairly good shape.
Yehudi Smith said, "Come on, Doc. We might as well wait inside," and
led the way up the porch steps. They creaked as we walked up them but they
were solid.
The front door wasn't locked. Smith must have known that it wouldn't
be, from the confident way he opened it.
We went in and he closed the door behind us. The beams of our
flashlights danced ahead of us down the long dimness of the hallway. I
noticed with surprise that the place was carpeted and furnished; it had been
empty and bare at the time I'd explored it as a kid. The most recent tenant
or owner who had lived here, for whatever reason he had moved away, had left
the place furnished, possibly hoping to rent or sell it that way.
We turned into a huge living room on the left of the hallway. There was
furniture there, too, white-sheeted. Covered fairly recently, from the fact
that the sheets were not too dirty nor was there a great amount of dust
anywhere.
Something made the back of my neck prickle. Maybe the ghostly
appearance of that sheeted furniture.
"Shall we wait here or go up in the attic?" Smith asked me.
"The attic? Why the attic?"
"Where the meeting is to be held."
I was getting to like this less and less. Was there going to be a
meeting? Were others really coming here tonight?
It was five minutes of one o'clock already.
I looked around and wondered whether. I'd rather stay here or go on up
into the attic. Either alternative seemed crazy. Why didn't I go home? Why
hadn't I stayed there?
I didn't like that spectral white-covered furniture. I said, "Let's go
on up into the attic. Might as well. I guess."
Yes, I'd come this far. I might as well see it through the rest of the
way. If there was a looking-glass up there in the attic and he wanted us to
walk through it, I'd do that, too. Provided only that he went first.
But I wanted another short nip out of that bottle I was carrying. I
offered it to Smith and he shook his head so I went ahead and took the nip
and it slightly warmed the coldness that was beginning to develop in my
stomach.
We went up the stairs to the second floor and we didn't meet any ghost
or any snarks. We opened the door that led to the steps to the attic.
We walked up them, Smith in the lead and I following, his plump
posterior just ahead of me.
My mind kept reminding me how ridiculous this was. How utterly insane
it was for me to have come here at all.
Where were you at one o'clock? In a haunted house. Doing what? Waiting
for the Vorpal Blades to come. What are these Vorpal Blades? I don't know.
What were they going to do? I don't know, I tell you. Maybe anything. Get
with child a mandrake root. Hold court to see who stole the tarts or put the
white knight back on his horse. Or maybe only read the minutes of the last
meeting and the treasurer's report, by Benchley. Who's Benchley? WHO'S
YEHUDI?
Who's your little whoozis?
Doc, I hate to say this, butґ
I'm afraid thatґ
Very pitying, and oh, so sensibly true. You were drunk, weren't you,
Doc? Well, not exactly, butґ
Yehudi Smith's plump posterior ascending the attic stairs. A horse's
posterior ascending after him.
We reached the top and Smith asked me to hold my flashlight aimed at
the post of the stair railing until he got a candle lighted there. He took a
short, thick candle from his pocket ґ one that would balance easily by
itself without a holder ґ and got it lighted.
There were trunks and a few pieces of broken or worn-out furniture
scattered about the sides of the attic; the middle of it was clear. The only
window was at the back and it was boarded up from the inside.
I looked around and, although the furniture here wasn't sheeted, I
didn't like the place any better than I'd liked the big room downstairs. The
light of one candle was far too dim to dispel the darkness, for one thing,
in so large a space. And I didn't like the flickering shadows it cast. They
might have been Jabberwocks or anything your imagination wanted to name
them. There ought to be Rorschach tests with flickering shadows; what the
mind would make out of them ought to be a lot more revealing than what the
mind makes out of ink blots.
Yes, I could have used more light, a lot more light. But Smith had put
his flashlight in his pocket and I did the same with the other one; it was
his, too, and I didn't have any excuse to wear out the battery keeping it
on. And besides it didn't do much good in so large a room.
"What do we do now?" I asked.
"Wait for the others. What time is it, Doc?"
I managed to read my watch by the light of the candle and told him that
it was seven minutes after one.
He nodded. "We'll give them until a quarter after. There's something
that I must do then, at that exact time, whether they're here or not.
Listen, isn't that a car?"
I listened and I thought it was. Way up here in the attic, it wasn't
clearly audible, but I thought I heard a car that could have been coming
back from the main road to the house. I was pretty sure of it.
I uncorked the bottle again and offered it. This time Smith took a
drink, too. Mine was a fairly long pull. I was getting sober. I thought, and
this was no time or place to get sober. It was silly enough to be here,
drunk.
I couldn't hear the car any more, and then suddenly ґ as though it had
stopped and then started again ґ I could hear it, and louder than before.
But the sound seemed to diminish, as though the car had driven back from the
road, stopped a minute, and then headed for the main road again. The sound
died out.
The shadows flickered. There was no sound from downstairs.
I shivered a little.
Smith said, "Help me look for something, Doc. It's supposed to be here
somewhere, ready. A small table."
"A table?"
"Yes, but don't touch it if you find it."
He had his flashlight out again and was working his way along one wall
of the attic, and I went the other way, glad of a chance to use my
flashlight on those damned shadows. I wondered what the hell kind of a table
I was looking for. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine
enemies, I thought. But there weren't any of my enemies here, I hoped.
I found it first. It was in the back corner of the attic.
It was a small, three-legged, glass-topped table, and there were two
small objects lying on it.
I started laughing. Ghosts and shadows or not. I laughed out loud. One
of the objects on the table was a small key and the other was a small vial
with a tag tied to it.
The glass-topped table Alice had found in the hall at the bottom of the
rabbit hole ґ the table on which had been the key that opened the little
door to the garden and the bottle with the paper label that said "DRINK ME"
tied around its neck.
I'd seen that table often ґ in the John Tenniel illustration of it in
Alice in Wonderland.
Smith's footsteps coming up behind me made me stop laughing. After all,
this ridiculous flummery might be something of a ritual to him. It was funny
to me, but I liked him and I didn't want to hurt his feelings.
He wasn't even smiling. He said, "Yes, that's it. Is it one- fifteen
yet?"
"Almost on the head."
"Good." He picked up the key with one hand and the bottle with the
other. "The others must be delayed, but we shall take the first step. This,
keep." He dropped the key into my pocket. "And this, I drink." He took the
cork out of the bottle. "I apologize for not being able to share it with you
ґ as you have so generously shared your drinks with me ґ but you understand,
until you have been fully initiatedґ"
He seemed genuinely embarrassed, so I nodded understanding and
forgiveness.
I wasn't afraid any more, now. It had become too ridiculous for fear.
What was that "drink me" bottle supposed to do? Oh, yes, he'd shrink in size
until he was only a few inches high ґ and then he'd have to find and use a
little box labeled ґ "EAT ME" and eat the cake inside and he'd suddenly grow
so big thatґ
He lifted the bottle and said, "To Lewis Carroll."
Since that was the toast, I said, "Wait!" and got the cork quickly out
of the bottle of whisky I was still carrying, and raised it, too. There
wasn't any reason why I couldn't and shouldn't get in on that toast as long
as my lips, as a neophyte's, didn't defile whatever sacred elixir the "drink
me" bottle held.
He clinked the little bottle lightly against the big one I held, and
tossed it off ґ I could see from the corner of my eye as I tilted my bottle
ґ in that strange conjuring trick again, the bottle stopping inches away
from his lips and the drink keeping on going without the loss of a drop.
I was putting the cork into the whisky bottle when Yehudi Smith died.
He dropped the bottle labeled "DRINK ME" and started to clutch at his
throat, but he died, I think, even before the bottle hit the floor. His face
was hideously contorted with pain, but the pain couldn't have lasted over a
fraction of a second. His eyes, still open, went suddenly blank, utterly
blank. And the thud of his fall shook the floor under my feet, seemed to
shake the whole house.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
I think I must have done nothing but stand there and jitter for
seconds. Finally I was able to move.
I'd seen his face and I'd seen and heard him fall; I didn't have the
slightest doubt that he was dead. But I had to be sure. I got down on my
knees and groped my hand inside his coat and shirt, hunting for a heartbeat.
There wasn't any.
I made even surer. The flashlight he'd given me had a round flat lens;
I held it over his mouth and in front of his nostrils for a while and there
was no slightest trace of moisture.
The small empty bottle from which he'd drunk was of fairly heavy glass.
It hadn't broken when he'd dropped it, and the tag tied around its neck had
kept it from rolling far. I didn't touch it, but I got on my hands and knees
and sniffed at the open end. The smell was the smell of good whisky, nothing
else that I could detect. No odor of bitter almonds, but if what had been in
that whisky hadn't been prussic acid, it had been some corrosive poison just
about as strong. Or could it have been prussic, and would the smell of
whisky have blanketed the bitter almond smell? I didn't know.
I stood up again and found that my knees were shaking. This was the
second man I'd seen die tonight. But I hadn't so much minded about George.
He'd had it coming, for one thing, and for another his body had been inside
the crumpled-up car; I'd not actually seen him die. Nor had I been alone
then; Smiley had been with me. I'd have given my whole bank account, all
three hundred and twelve dollars of it, to have Smiley with me there in the
attic.
I wanted to get out of there, fast, and I was too scared to move. I
thought I'd be less scared if I could figure out what it was all about, but
it was sheerly mad. It didn't make sense that even a madman would have
brought me out here under so weird a pretext so that I could be an audience
of one to his suicide.
In fact, if I was sure of anything, I was sure that Smith hadn't killed
himself. But who had, and why? The Vorpal Blades? Was there such a group?
Where were they? Why hadn't they come?
A sudden thought put shivers down my spine. Maybe they had. I'd thought
I heard a car come and go, while we'd waited. Why couldn't it have dropped
off passengers? Waiting for me downstairs ґ or even now creeping up the
attic steps toward me.
I looked that way. The candle flickered and the shadows danced. I
strained my ears, but there wasn't any sound. No sound anywhere.
I was afraid to move, and then gradually I found that I was afraid not
to move. I had to get out of here before I went crazy. If anything was
downstairs I'd rather go down and meet it than wait till it decided to come
up here after me.
I wished to hell and back that I hadn't given Smiley that revolver, but
wishing didn't get me the revolver back.
Well, the whisky bottle was a weapon of sorts. I shifted the flashlight
to my left hand and picked up the whisky bottle, by its neck, in my right.
It was still more than half full and heavy enough for a bludgeon.
I tiptoed to the head of the steps. I don't know why I tiptoed unless
it was to avoid scaring myself worse by making noise; we hadn't been quiet
up here before and Smith's fall had shaken the whole house. If anyone was
downstairs, he knew he wasn't alone in the building.
I looked at the square post at the top of the railing and the short,
thick candle still burning on top of it. I didn't want to touch it; I wanted
to be able to say that I hadn't touched anything at all, except to feel for
a heartbeat that wasn't there. Yet I couldn't leave the candle burning,
either; it might set the house afire if it fell over, as Smith hadn't
anchored it down with molten wax, but had merely stood it on its base.
I compromised by blowing it out but not touching it otherwise.
My flashlight showed me there was nothing or no one on the stairs
leading down to the second floor and that the door at the bottom of them was
still closed, as we had left it. Before I started down them I took one last
look around the attic with my flash. The shadows jumped as the beam swept
around the walls, and then, for some reason, I brought the circle of light
to rest on Yehudi Smith's body lying sprawled there on the floor, eyes wide
open and still staring unseeingly at the rafters overhead, his face still
frozen in the grimace of that horrible, if brief, pain in which he'd died.
I hated to leave him alone there in the dark. Silly and sentimental as
the thought was, I couldn't help feeling that way. He'd been such a nice
little guy. Who the hell had killed him, and why, and why in such a bizarre
manner, and what was it all about? And he'd said it was dangerous to come
here tonight, and he was dead right, as far as he himself was concerned. And
Iґ?
With that thought, I was afraid again. I wasn't out of here yet. Was
someone or something waiting downstairs?
The attic stairs were uncarpeted and they squeaked so loudly that I
gave up trying to walk quietly and hurried. The attic door creaked, too, but
nothing was waiting for me on the other side of it. Or downstairs. I flashed
my light into the big living room as I passed the doorway and got a
momentary fright as I thought something white was coming toward me ґ but it
was only the sheeted table and it had only seemed to move.
The porch and down the porch steps.
The car was still there on the driveway beside the house. It was a
coupe, I noticed now, and the same make and model as mine. My feet crunched
gravel as I walked to it; I was still scared but I didn't dare let myself
run. I wondered if Smith had left the key in the car, and hoped frantically
that he had. I should have thought of it while I was still in the attic and
could have felt in his pockets. I wouldn't go back up there now, I realized,
for anything in the world. I'd walk back to town first.
At least the car door wasn't locked. I slid in under the wheel, and,
flashed my light on the dashboard. Yes, the ignition key was in the lock. I
slammed the door behind me and felt a little more secure inside the closed
car.
I fumed the key and stepped on the starter and the engine started the
first try. I shifted into low gear and then, before I let out the clutch, I
carefully shifted back into neutral again and sat there with the motor
idling.
This wasn't the car in which Yehudi Smith had driven me here. The gear
shift knob was hard rubber with a ridge around it, not the smooth onyx ball
I'd noticed on the gear shift lever of his car. It was like the one on my
car, which was back home in the garage with two flat tires that I hadn't got
around to fixing.
I turned on the dome light, although by then I didn't really have to. I
knew already from the feel of the controls in starting and in shifting, from
the sound of the engine, from a dozen little things.
This was my car.
It was so impossible that I forgot to be afraid, that I was in such a
hurry to get away from the house. Oh, there was a little logic in my lack of
fear, too; if anybody had been laying for me, the house would have been the
place. He wouldn't have let me get this far and he wouldn't have left the
ignition key in the car so I could get away in it.
I got out of the car and looked, with the flashlight, at the two tires
which had been flat this morning. They weren't flat now. Either someone had
fixed them, or someone had simply let the air out of them last night and had
subsequently pumped them up again with the hand pump I keep in my luggage
compartment. The second idea seemed more likely; now that I thought of it,
it was strange that two tires ґ both in good shape and with good tubes in
them ґ should have gone flat, completely flat, at the same time and while
the car was standing in my garage.
I walked all the way around the car, looking at it, and there wasn't
anything wrong with it that I could see. I got back in under the wheel and
sat there a minute with the engine running, wondering if it was even
remotely possible that Yehudi Smith had driven me here in my own car.
No, I decided, not remotely. I hadn't noticed his car at all except for
three things, but those three things were plenty to make me sure. Besides
the gear shift knob, I remembered that push button radio with the button for
WBBM pushed in ґ and my car has no radio at all ґ and there was the fact
that his engine was noisy and mine is quiet. Right then, with it idling, I
could barely hear it.
Unless I was crazyґ
Could I have imagined that other car? For that matter, could I have
imagined Yehudi Smith? Could I have driven out here by myself in my own car,
gone up to the attic aloneґ ?
It's a horrible thing to suspect yourself suddenly of complete
insanity, equipped with hallucinations.
I realized I'd better quit thinking along those lines, here alone in a
car, alone in the night, parked beside a haunted house. I might drive myself
nutty, if I wasn't already.
I took a long drink out of the bottle that was now on the seat beside
me, and then drove out to the highway and back to town. I didn't drive fast,
partly because I was a little drunk ґ physically anyway. The horrible thing
that had happened up in the attic, the fantastic, incredible death of Yehudi
Smith, had shocked me sober, mentally.
I couldn't have imaginedґ
But at the edge of town the doubts came back, then the answer to them.
I pulled to the side of the road and turned on the dome light. I had the
card and the key and the flashlight, those three souvenirs of my experience.
I took the flashlight out of my coat pocket and looked at it. Just a dime
store flashlight; it meant nothing except that it wasn't mine. The card was
the thing. I hunted in several pockets, getting worried as hell; before I
found it in the pocket of my shirt. Yes, J had it, and it still read Yehudi
Smith. I felt a little better as I put it back in my pocket. While I was at
it, I looked at the key, too. The key that had been with the "DRINK ME"
bottle on the glass-topped table.
It was still there in the pocket Smith had dropped it into; I'd not
touched it or looked at it closely. It was, of course, the wrong kind of
key, but I'd noticed that at first glance when I'd seen it on the table in
the attic; that had been part of my source of amusement when I'd laughed. It
was a Yale key, and it should have been a small gold key, the one Alice used
to open the fifteen-inch-high door into the lovely garden.
Come to think of it, all three of those props in the attic had been
wrong, one way or another. The table had been a glass-topped one, but it
should have been an all-glass table; the wooden legs were wrong. The key
shouldn't have been a nickel-plated Yale, and the "DRINK ME" should not have
contained poison. (It had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart,
custard, pine apple, roast turkey, toffy, and hot buttered toast.) ґ
according to Alice. It couldn't have tasted anything like that to Smith.
I started driving again, slowly. Now that I was back in town I had to
make up my mind whether I was going to the sheriff's office or going to call
the state police. Reluctantly I decided I'd better go right to the sheriff.
Definitely this case was in his department, unless he called on the state
police for help. They'd dump it in his lap anyway, even if I called them.
And he hated my guts enough as it was, without my making it any worse by
by-passing him in reporting a major crime. Not that I didn't hate his guts
just as much, but tonight he was in a better position to make trouble for me
than I for him.
So I parked my coupe across the street from the courthouse and took one
more swig from the bottle to give me courage to tell Kates the story I was
going to have to tell him. Then I marched myself across the street and up
the courthouse stairs to the sheriff's office on the second floor. If I was
lucky, I thought, Kates might be out and his deputy, Hank Ganzer, might be
there.
I wasn't lucky. Hank wasn't there at all; and Kates was talking on the
phone. He glared at me when I came in and then went back to his call.
"Hell, I could have done it on the phone from here. Go see the guy.
Wake him up and be sure he's awake enough to remember any little thing that
might have been said. Yeah, then call me again before you start back."
He put the receiver down and his swivel chair squeaked shrilly as he
swung about to face me. He yelled, "There isn't any story on it yet." Rance
Kates always yells; I've never heard him say anything in a quiet tone, or
even a normal one. His voice matches his red face, which always looks angry.
I've often wondered if he looks like that even when he's in bed. Wondered,
but had no inclination to find out.
What he'd just yelled at me, though, made so little sense that I just
looked at him.
I said, "I've come to report a murder, Kates."
"Huh?" He looked interested. "You mean you found either Miles or
Bonney?"
For a minute neither name registered at all. I said, "The man's name is
Smith." I thought I'd better sneak up on the Yehudi part gradually, maybe
let Kates read it himself off the card. "The body is in the attic of the old
Wentworth place out on the pike."
"Stoeger, are you drunk?"
"I've been drinking," I told him. "I'm not drunk." At least I hoped I
wasn't. Maybe that last one I'd taken in the car just before I'd left it had
been one too many. My voice sounded thick, even to me, and I had a hunch my
eyes were looking a trifle bleary from the outside; they were beginning to
feel that way from my side of them.
"What were you doing in the attic of the Wentworth place? You mean you
were there tonight?"
I wished again that Hank Ganzer had been there instead of Kates. Hank
would have taken my word for it and gone out for the body; then my story
wouldn't have sounded so incredible when I'd have got around to telling it.
I said, "Yes, I just came from there. I went there with Smith, at his
request."
"Who is this Smith? You know him?"
"I met him tonight for the first time. He came to see me.
"What for? What were you doing out there? A haunted house!"
I sighed. There wasn't anything I could do but answer his damn
questions and they were getting tougher all the time. Let's see, how could I
put it so it wouldn't sound too crazy?
I said, "We were there because it is supposed to be a haunted house,
Kates. This Smith was interested in the occult ґ in psychic phenomena. He
asked me to go out there with him to perform an experiment. I gathered that
some other people were coming, but they didn't."
"What kind of an experiment?"
"I don't know. He was killed before we got around to it."
"You and him were there alone?"
"Yes," I said, but I saw where that was leading so I added, "But I
didn't kill him. And I don't know who did. He was poisoned."
"Poisoned how?"
Part of my brain wanted to tell him, "Out of a little bottle labeled
`DRINK ME' on a glass table, as in Alice in Wonderland." The sensible part
of my brain told me to let him find that out for himself. I said, "Out of a
bottle that was planted there for him to drink. By whom, I don't know. But
you sound like you don't believe me. Why don't you go out and see for
yourself, Kates? Damn it, man, I'm reporting a murder." And then it occurred
to me there wasn't really any proof of that so I amended it a little: "Or at
least a death by violence."
He stared at me and I think he was becoming convinced, a little. His
phone rang and his swivel chair screamed again as he swung around. He barked
"Hello. Sheriff Kates," into it.
Then his voice tamed down a little. He said, "No, Mrs. Harrison,
haven't heard a thing. Hank's over at Neilsville, checking up at that end,
and he's going to watch the road again on his way back. I'll call you the
minute I learn anything at all. But don't worry; it can't be anything
serious."
He turned back. "Stoeger, if this is a gag, I'm going to take you
apart." He meant it, and he could do it, too. Kates is only a medium-sized
man, not too much bigger than I, but he's tough and hard as a rock
physically. He can handle men weighing half again as much as he does. And
he's got enough of a sadistic streak to enjoy doing it whenever he has a
good excuse for it.
"It's no gag," I said. "What's this about Miles Harrison and Ralph
Bonney?"
"Missing. They left Neilsville with the Bonney pay roll a little after
half past eleven and should have been back here around midnight. It's almost
two o'clock and nobody knows where they are. Look, if I thought you were
sober and there was a stiff out on the pike, I'd call the state cops. I got
to stay here till we find what happened to Miles and Bonney."
The state cops were fine, as far as I was concerned. I'd reported it
where it should have been reported, and Kates would have no kickback if he
himself called the state police. I was just opening my mouth to say that
might be a good idea when the phone rang again.
Kates yelled into it, and then, "As far as the teller knew, they were
heading right back, Hank? Nothing unusual happened at that end, huh? Okay,
come back, and watch both sides of the road all the way in case they ran off
it or something... Yeah, the pike. That's the only way they could've come.
Oh, and listen, stop at the Wentworth place on your way and take a look in
the attic... Yeah. I said the attic. Doc Stoeger's here, drunk as a coot,
and he says there's a stiff in the attic there. If there is one, I'll worry
about it."
He slammed the receiver down and started shuffling papers on his desk,
trying to look busy. Finally he thought of something to do and phoned the
Bonney Fireworks Company to see if Bonney had showed up there yet, or called
them. Apparently, from what I could hear of the conversation, he hadn't done
either.
I realized that I was still standing up and that now, since Kates had
given that order to his deputy, nothing was going to happen until Hank got
back ґ at least half an hour if he drove slowly to watch both sides of the
road. So I found myself a chair and sat down. Kates shuffled papers again
and paid no attention to me.
I got to wondering about Bonney and Miles, and hoped they hadn't had an
accident. If they had had one, and were two hours overdue, it must have been
a bad one. Unless both were seriously hurt, one of them would have reached a
phone long before this. Of course they could have stopped somewhere for a
drink, but it didn't seem likely, not for two hours at least. And, come to
think of it, they couldn't have; the closing hour for taverns applied to the
whole county, not just to Carmel City. Twelve o'clock had been almost two
hours ago.
I wished that it wasn't. Not that I either needed or wanted a drink
particularly at that moment, but it would have been much more pleasant to do
my waiting at Smiley's instead of here in the sheriff's office.
Kates suddenly swiveled his chair at me. "You don't know anything about
Bonney and Harrison, do you?"
"Not a thing," I told him.
"Where were you at midnight?"
With Yehudi. Who's Yehudi? The little man who wasn't there.
I said, "Home, talking to Smith. We stayed there until I half past
twelve."
"Anybody else there?"
I shook my head. Come to think of it, nobody but myself had, as far as
I knew, even seen Yehudi Smith. If his body wasn't in the attic at the
Wentworth place, I was going to have a hell of a time proving he'd ever
existed. A card and a key and a flashlight.
"Where'd this Smith guy come from?"
"I don't know. He didn't say."
"What was his first name?"
I stalled on that one. I said, "I don't remember. I've got his card
somewhere. He gave me one." Let him think the card was probably out at the
house. I wasn't ready to show it to him yet.
"How'd he happen to come to you to go to a haunted house with him if he
didn't even know you?"
I said, "He knew of me, as a Lewis Carroll fan."
"A what?"
"Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking-Glass,"
And a "DRINK ME" bottle on a glass table, and a key, and Bandersnatches and
Jabberwocks. But let Kates find that out for himself, after he'd found a
body and knew that I wasn't either drunk or crazy.
He said, "Alice in Wonderland!" and sniffed. He glared at me a full ten
seconds and then decided, apparently, that he was wasting his time on me and
swiveled back to his paper shuffling.
I felt in my pockets to make sure that the card and the key were still
there. They were. The flashlight was still in the car, but the flashlight
didn't mean anything anyway. Maybe the key didn't either. But that card was
my contact with reality, in a sense. As long as it still said Yehudi Smith,
I knew I wasn't stark raving mad. I knew that there'd really been such a
person and that he wasn't a figment of my imagination.
I slipped it out of my pocket to look at it again. Yes, it still said
"Yehudi Smith," although my eyes had a bit of trouble focusing on it
clearly. The printing looked fuzzy, which meant I needed either one more
drink or several less.
Yehudi Smith, in fuzzy-edged type. Yehudi, the little man who wasn't
there.
And suddenly ґ don't ask me how I knew, but I knew. I didn't see the
pattern, but I saw that much of it. The little man who wasn't there.
Wouldn't be there.
Hank was going to come in and say, "What's this about a stiff in the
Wentworth attic? I couldn't find one."
Yehudi. The little man who wasn't there. I saw a man upon the stair, A
little man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today; Gee, I wish he'd
go away.
It was preordained; it had to be. That much of the pattern I saw. The
name Yehudi hadn't been an accident. I think that almost, just then, I had a
flash of insight that would have shown me most of the pattern, if not all of
it. You know how it is sometimes when you're drunk, but not too drunk, you
think you're trembling on the verge of understanding something important and
cosmic that has eluded you all your life? And ґ just barely possible ґ you
really are. I think I was, at that moment.
Then I looked up from the card and the thread of my thought was lost
because Kates was staring at me. He'd turned just his head this time instead
of the squeaking swivel chair he was sitting on. He was looking at me
speculatively, suspiciously.
I tried to ignore it; I was trying to recapture my thoughts and let
them lead me. I was close to something. I saw a man upon the stair. Yehudi
Smith's plump posterior ascending the attic stairs, just ahead of me.
No, the dead body with the contorted face ґ the poor piece of cold clay
that had been a nice little guy with laughter lines around his eyes and the
corners of his mouth ґ wouldn't be there in the attic when Hank Ganzer
looked for it. It couldn't be there; its presence there wouldn't fit the
pattern that I still couldn't see or understand.
Squeal of the swivel chair as Rance Kates turned his body to match the
position of his head. "Is that the card that guy gave you?"
I nodded.
"What's his full name?"
The hell with Kates. "Yehudi," I said. "Yehudi Smith."
Of course it wasn't really; I knew at least that much now. I got up and
walked to Kates' desk. Unfortunately for my dignity, I weaved a little. But
I made it without falling. I put the card down in front of him and went back
and sat down again, managing to walk straight this time.
He looked at the card and then at me and then at the card and then at
me.
And then I knew I must be crazy.
"Doc," he asked ґ and his voice was quieter than I'd ever heard it
before ґ "What's your bug number?"
"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant runt
Shall we be trotting home again?"
But answer came there noneґ
I just stared at him. Either he was crazy or I was ґ and several times
in the last hour I'd been wondering about myself. What's your bug number?
What a question to ask a man in the spot I was in. What's yours?
Finally I managed to answer. "Huh?" I said.
"Your bug number. Your label number."
I got it then. I wasn't crazy after all. I knew what he meant.
I run a union shop, which means that I've signed a contract with the
International Typographical Union and pay Pete, my only employee, union
wages. In a town as small as Carmel City, you can get by with a non-union
shop, but I happen to believe in unions and to think the typographical union
is a good one. Being a union shop, we put the union label on everything we
print. It's a little oval-shaped dingus, so small you can barely read the
type if you've got good eyesight. And alongside it is an equally tiny number
which is the number of my particular shop among the other union shops in my
area. By the combination of the place name which is part of the label itself
and the number of the shop beside it, you can tell where any given piece of
union printing has been done.
But that little oval logotype is known to non-union printers as "the
bug." It does, I'll admit, look rather like a tiny bug crawling across the
bottom corner of whatever it's put on. And non-union printers call the shop
number alongside the "bug" the "bug number." Kates wasn't a printer, union
or otherwise, but I remember now that two of his brothers, both living in