Hell Hath No Fury Part 4

5

"Harry?"

"What?"

"You want another drink?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I've had enough. I've got a headache."

"It couldn't be the whisky. It's straight Bourbon. It wouldn't give you a headache."

Nothing but the best, I thought. "All right. It's not the whisky."

"I like you," she said. "You don't drink much, but you're all right. Harry, you know what?"

"What?"

"You're all right."

"You said that."

"Well, G.o.dsakes, I'll say it again if I want to. You're all right. You're sweet. You're a big ugly b.a.s.t.a.r.d with a face that'd stop a clock, but you're sweet. You know what I mean?"

"No." I lighted a cigarette and lay on my back staring up at the ceiling. It must be nearly midnight. My head throbbed painfully and very slowly, like a big flywheel turning over, and the taste of whisky was sour in my mouth. She must bathe in cologne, I thought; the room was drenched with it. "Harry?"

"What is it?"

"You don't think I'm fat, do you?"

"Of course not."

"You wouldn't kid 'ninnocent young girl, would you?"

"No." I turned and looked at her. Moonlight from the window had moved up the bed and now it fell diagonally across her from the waist up to the big spread-out breast which rocked a little as she shook the ice in her gla.s.s. I thought of a full and slightly bruised peach beginning to spoil a little. She was somewhere between luscious and full-bloom and in another year or so of getting all her exercise lying down and lifting the bottle she'd probably be blowzy.

"Well?" she said sarcastically. "Maybe I ought to turn on the light."

"You asked me a question. Did you want it answered or didn't you?"

She giggled. "Oh, don't be so touchy. I was just kidding you. I don't mind. Pour me another drink."

She didn't need any more, but I reached down beside the bed for the bottle. Anything to get her to shut up, I thought. The bottle was empty.

"There's not any more," I said.

"The h.e.l.l there's not. What became of it?"

"Maybe it leaks," I said wearily.

"Nuts. We got to have a drink." She sat up in bed and climbed out unsteadily, whisky-and-cologne smelling and s.e.xy, bosom aswing, and humming "You'd Be So Easy To Love," under her breath. "I got some more hid in the kitchen. Have to keep it hid from him because he don't drink and won't let me, when he's home. Him and his lousy ulcers."

I heard her b.u.mp into something in the living room and swear. She had a bos'n's vocabulary. My head felt worse and I wondered why I didn't get out of there. She was already on the edge of being sloppy drunk, kittenish one minute and belligerent the next. G.o.d knows I've always had some sort of affinity for gamey babes, but she was beginning to be a little rough even for me. She had a lot of talent, but it was highly specialized and when you began to get up to date in that field you were wasting your time just hanging around for the conversation. You could do without it.

In a few minutes she came back carrying what looked like a tray of ice cubes and another bottle of whisky. She set the ice cubes on the dresser and I could see her fumbling around on the top of it for something.

"Harry, we're going to have a drink," she said thickly.

"Good old Harry ... Harry is a girl's best friend...Oh, where'd I put those dam cigarettes? Harry, switch on that light, will you? I got to have a smoke."

I reached up and turned on the reading lamp. She found what she was looking for and turned around, the cigarette hanging out of her mouth and that gold chain around her ankle, looking at me with a lazy, half-drunken smile.

"Harry, you don't think I'm fat, do you?"

Here we go again, I thought. "No," I said.

She smiled again. "Well, you sure ought to know." She had the bottle of whisky in her hands and was trying to twist the cap off. She paused for a moment, apparently thinking hard about something, and laughed. "Say, you really had a nerve, didn't you?"

"Why?"

"Coming into the house the way you did. And right into my room."

Maybe it was risky, I thought. I might have got caught in the traffic.

"What would you of done if I'd screamed?"

"I don't know," I said. "Run, I suppose."

"But you didn't think I would, did you?"

"I didn't know."

"But you was pretty sure of it, wasn't you?" There was a little edge to her voice.

"I told you I didn't know."

"The h.e.l.l you didn't." She quit working on the bottle and glared at me. "I know what you thought. And you know what?"

"What?"

"I don't give a d.a.m.n. What do you know about that?"

"Oh, knock it off," I said.

"I know what you think, all right."

"You said that."

"Think I'm some lousy tramp that you can walk right into her room, will you? Well, I'll tell you what you can do-"

"You're drunk," I said. "Why don't you shut up?"

"Shut up, will I? Why don't you make me?"

"Who hasn't?" I said.

The bottle slid out of her hands. She picked up the tray of ice cubes and let fly. It bounced off my ribs and ice slid all over me. I got off the bed and started for her. She was a sight, arm drawn back and bristling with drunken rage and as nude as a calendar girl. I grabbed her arm and swung her, and she shot backwards and fell across the bed. All the fight went out of her and she crumpled and began to cry.

"Harry," she sobbed, turning on her back and looking up at me with her eyes swimming." Where you going, Harry?"

"Nuts," I said.

The moon was almost down now, and the streets were deserted and dark with shadow. Two blocks away on Main a car went past now and then, but here beside the old Taylor building there was no light or movement. I stopped and stared at it, trying to fight off the disgust and the headache and escape the cloying perfume.

Across the weed-filled vacant lot on this side, next to the cross street, I could just make out the small window at the rear, the one I had unlocked. It might be weeks or months before anybody discovered it and fastened the latch. I had plenty of time to make up my mind about it, but what was I waiting for? Didn't I know what was going to happen as surely as sunrise if I went on living in the same town with that s.e.xy lush?

Oh, sure, I'd stay away from her, all right. Didn't I always? What was my batting average so far in staying out of trouble when it was baited with that much tramp? It was an even zero, and I didn't see anything in the situation here that promised I'd improve very much. And the way she soaked up the booze, and as crazy as she was when she was drunk, she was about as safe to be mixed up with in a town like this as a rattlesnake. You didn't know what she'd do.

The smart thing was to get out of here and let her happen to somebody else.

But I had to wait, unless I wanted to give up the idea which was going around in my mind. It would take at least a month. No, it would take longer, because you couldn't just come in here, pull off something like that, and then run. It would put the finger on you. I looked at the building again. It was perfect for what I wanted-unoccupied, and not too near any of the few inhabited shacks along the street. The only hitch was that I had to get into it and out again without being seen, when the time came, and now the moon was working against me. I couldn't take a chance on it until it started to wane, unless we happened to get an overcast or a rainy night. There were two or three shacks on the opposite side of the cross street which had a view of the side of the building, and you could never tell when somebody might be awake and looking out from one of them.

I went on back to the rooming house and lay awake a long time still thinking about it. Sometime before I dropped off I got to wondering what was on that street next to the bank, the one the side door opened on to. I had been right there on the corner a couple of times, but I couldn't remember. If there were a store on the opposite side with a door or show windows facing the side of the bank it would be too dangerous. That was something I had to find out before I could even consider it, but it could wait until morning.

The next day was Sunday. I awoke around ten with a hang-over and feeling as if I'd been beaten up in a fight, listless and only half alive. I went downtown for some orange juice and coffee, bought a paper at the drugstore, and then walked slowly around the whole block the bank was on.

It was all right. In fact, it was very good. The cross street was blind as far as seeing the side door of the bank was concerned. There was a store across there, all right, but it faced only on Main and this side was a blank brick wall. I went on around, as if out for an aimless Sunday morning stroll. Directly behind the bank there was an alley cutting all the way through the block, and where it came out into the next street the only business establishments again faced on Main. All right, I thought; so far, so good.

Tuesday, when the draft had gone through, I went back to the bank and cashed a check for fifty dollars. While I was inside I looked it over again, very thoroughly. There were four men at work, one in each of the two cages, an officer of some kind at the railed-in desk, and a book-keeper busy over the tabulating machines. They were all young or in early middle age except the Mr. Chips type I'd talked to before. He would be the one who'd always get left there because he was too old and frail to belong to the volunteer fire department. The door at the rear was partly open this time and I could see it led into a washroom, all right. And it opened inward.

I was beginning to get it all into place in my mind now. The tough part was going to be the waiting. Right now I had to work out the idea for the machine, and I already had a pretty good idea about that. I had to go out of town to buy the things I needed, however. It would be too risky to do it around here, or keep it in my room while I was working on it. You lived in a gla.s.s bowl in a town this small. On Thursday I told Harshaw I was going to take the next day off to drive down to Houston and try to collect some money a man owed me.

I hadn't seen any more of Dolores Harshaw at all, but Thursday afternoon I ran into Gloria Harper in the drug store. I had gone in for a c.o.ke at three o'clock and she was sitting alone in a booth. She looked up and smiled, and I went over and sat down.

"Are you doing anything tonight?" I asked.

She shook her head. "Not tonight."

"Well, I hear they're playing 'The Birth of a Nation' at the movie. Why don't we go see it?"

"It isn't really that bad, is it?" she asked. "But I'd love to go." Her smile was something to see; and I noticed I was beginning to look for it when I was around her.

I picked her up around seven. The picture wasn't too bad, but we ran out on the second feature. As we were walking back up the street to the car she stopped and bought a pencil from the old blind Negro, the one who had come into the bank. He had a little stand there on the sidewalk.

"How are you tonight, Uncle Mort?" she asked.

"Jes' fine, Miss Gloahia," he said. "Thank you."

He'd recognized her by her voice. "Who is he?" I asked as we went on and got in the car.

"Just Mort. He's been there in that spot fifteen hours a day six days a week since I was in rompers. Maybe he's been there forever," she said.

"Did you need a pencil?"

She blushed. "Well, you can always use one."

We drove around for a while and when I took her home the house was dark. The Robinsons were gone somewhere. We stood by the gate for a moment in the moonlight. I was conscious of thinking she wasn't merely pretty; she was one of the loveliest girls I had ever seen in my life. For a moment I was like an awkward kid; I wanted to kiss her and I was afraid to.

"Well, good night," I said.

"Good night," she said. "And thank you. I enjoyed the picture very much."

Well, if you're not a silly b.a.s.t.a.r.d, I thought. Why didn't you ask her to go to the church supper?

I shoved off around ten the next morning, but I didn't go to Houston. I drove over to a fair-sized town about a hundred miles away, a place I'd never been before. I got a room at a tourist court and then went shopping.

At a drugstore I picked up a hand-wound alarm clock. Then I bought two rolls of surgical cotton at another one, and went around to two or three five-and-ten-cent stores for the rest. I got a cheap soldering-iron, a little solder, a pair of pliers, a short piece of heavy copper wire, and some big sheets of 00 sandpaper. I mentally checked it off the list. That was about all except some thread and a small flashlight. After I bought those I dropped into a market and bought a carton of canned beer and a box of big kitchen matches and got the clerk to give me a cardboard box about a foot wide and eighteen inches long. I went back to the motel, put the beer in the little refrigerator to keep cold, drew the blinds, and went to work on the clock.

I took the bell cover off, exposing the clapper or striker. After plugging in the soldering-iron, I cut off two pieces of the copper wire just a little shorter than the thickness of the clock from front to back. When the iron was hot enough, I soldered them side by side on top of the clapper, putting on lots of solder and making it as rigid as I could. Then I wound the clock, set the alarm, and tried it out. The wire cross-arm vibrated nicely and held together all right.

Going out to the kitchenette, I opened a can of beer and came back to look at what I'd done so far. I'd know in a few minutes whether I could depend on it or not. I took a drink of the beer, lighted a cigarette, and went on with the job. First, I wrapped a sheet of sandpaper around each of the two rolls of cotton and made it fast with some of the thread. Then I took four of the big kitchen matches, laid them together with two pointing each way and overlapping a little in the center, and placed them on the cross-arm I'd soldered on to the bell clapper. I secured them with several turns of the thread, letting them stick out about a half inch over the clock in front and back. After winding and setting the alarm, I placed the clock upright in the bottom of the box the market clerk had given me, and put in the two sandpaper covered rolls, one on each side. It didn't fit right; the rolls were too large and tended to bind the clapper cross-arm so it couldn't move freely. It had to have just the right amount of tension; that was the reason I'd used cotton to back up the sandpaper instead of something solid. A block of wood or something like that would do if you got the s.p.a.cing absolutely correct to within a sixty-fourth of an inch or so, but if you didn't the matches might not touch at all or it might be too close and bind.

I took out the rolls of cotton, pulled some of it off, and re-wrapped them with the sandpaper. This time it was just right. The match heads pressed with just the right tension against the slightly yielding wall of sandpaper. Good, I thought. I took another drink of beer and sat back to wait. In a minute there was a click and the alarm went off, the cross-arm vibrating wildly. The match heads whirred against the sandpaper and all four of them burst into flame.

I tried it twelve times, and it never failed once. I took off the burnt matches for the last time and sat back with my beer to look at it. And that was when it really came home to me what I was about to do. I was going to rob a bank, committing the additional crime of arson in the process, and if I got caught I'd go to prison.

Well, I thought, go on selling second-hand jalopies for another forty years and maybe somebody'll give you a testimonial and a forty-dollar watch.

6

When I got back I left the whole thing in the trunk of the car. If I took it into my room the nosy old girl who ran the place would probably be in it the first time she cleaned, and it was crazy enough to start her wondering. I already had a blanket in the car, an old one which had been in it when I bought it eight months ago. That was safe enough; n.o.body would ever trace it. I still had to have a piece of line, though, and I didn't want to buy it because something like that was too easy for a clerk to remember. If I kept my eyes open I should find a short length around somewhere.