Frank Herbert Read online

  “She had a cancer,” he added. “That was almost two years ago. I couldn’t afford good doctors.”

  I had to take George home to his hotel room that night, and it was almost like old times. Only there was no Gladys waiting for us at the door. It filled me with deadening nostalgia. When I’d tucked him in, I went out and got myself plastered good.

  The next day I had a lot of business to do explaining things to our new manager, and I didn’t get a chance to see George or Wilfred before they left for Seattle.

  It was a month later and I was back home when I learned that George had died in Chicago. I was reading a copy of Variety on my way to the office and almost skipped over the item. His name wasn’t even in the headline. The only reason there was a story was because he’d been Donet’s accompanist. The obit said he’d had a heart attack.

  I was in pretty rotten shape for work that day. George had been … well, I’d thought a lot of him. I found out the funeral was to be in his hometown and wired a Cincinnati florist. One of the saddest damn feelings I ever had, sending those flowers.

  It’s funny how you pick up the loose ends on a story such as this one. Reading about George’s death caused me unhappiness—oh, it had been deep enough—but when you’re alive, you soon forget about the dead. They come back to you only when they’re prompted by some little thing with which you’ve associated the one who’s gone. George had faded out of my mind, and I hadn’t thought about him for six months when one day down at the office …

  It was one of those bright San Francisco days, and I felt less like working than … well, than almost anything. But I had the Farber Fisheries copy to get out, and it had to be done. My secretary interrupted the second skull session over the layouts.

  “There’s a man here to see you about a fine arts campaign,” she said.

  I looked at the card she handed me. “Reuben M. Feldman.” The name didn’t mean anything at first, and then it clicked. Feldman, the fellow who’d taken over when George got the sack. I dismissed the gang and told her to send Feldman in.

  It was the same fellow, all right. And the funny part of it was, he didn’t recognize me. I was merely another advertising executive and had been patted into the conventional shape—a little thicker here and grayer there.

  Feldman came bouncing across the room on the balls of his feet. “How do you do?” he said.

  “Hello, Reub,” I greeted him, rising from my chair.

  He stopped in midstride and took a closer look. I could see he recognized me but couldn’t remember my name.

  “Felix Jacobsen,” I said.

  “Felix Jacobsen,” he repeated. “Brunswick, wasn’t it?”

  “Sure,” I said, motioning toward a chair. “Business can wait. Sit down and give me the news from the big burg.”

  He sat down in the leather chair across the desk from me. “Well, I don’t know where to start. How long’s it been?”

  “I’d hate to say,” I said, and we both grinned.

  “You hear about George Bates?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you remember Louis Donet, of course.”

  Did I remember Louis Donet?

  “He and the Moran just got divorced,” Feldman said.

  “No! When’d that happen?”

  “Shortly after Bates died. She went to Reno.”

  “Where’s Donet now?”

  “Down in Florida someplace. He’s singing tenor in a road show. Another dame … and you know the romantic parts those tenors get.”

  “He can’t sing tenor,” I said.

  “You’re right,” Feldman agreed. “I’ve heard him, and you’re right. Such music shouldn’t be, but he does it. He sings Pagliacci. You wouldn’t believe it. A second Caruso he thinks he is yet. The new blonde thinks tenors are wonderful, though.”

  “He change his name?” I asked.

  “No, but you should see him. He’s shaved off his beard. Remember the beard? And what with no hair on top, he’s a sight to scare little kiddies. He’s got some more weight, too. Looks like Humpty Dumpty. The people are laughing themselves sick.” Feldman threw up his hands and laughed.

  I had a great reunion with Feldman. We hadn’t known each other too well, but we’d known all the same people. It was like meeting each one of them again. I took him home to dinner, and the kids loved him. He knew some stories about a little pig who wanted to grow up and scrub the pigpen bright and shiny; the pig became toothbrush bristles. It shocked Lisa, but the kids loved it. I was really sorry to see him go.

  Well, the years went by as they do. There were … let me see, about seven, I’d guess. I remember this day very well, though. It was a Friday, and I’d been up the whole damn night with Hank—he’s the youngest. I was reading the paper on the way to work, or at least I was pretending to read it. One of the pictures on an inside page caught my eye. There was a face in it that looked familiar in spite of the German uniform. “Reich Musik Führer Wilfred Long at the opening of the Berlin opera season,” the caption said.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” I thought. “So he’s changed his name back to the original.” The fact that he was tied up with the national socialists and that new chancellor, Hitler, didn’t seem strange at all. I guess I’d gotten to the stage where nothing Wilfred did could surprise me. My education had started abruptly the day he’d burst into the studio and bowled George over. Good old George.

  I put the whole thing out of my mind, and there followed some years when the past just became more remote. I didn’t think about Wilfred again until the spring of 1942. We were invited to a cocktail party that evening. Lisa and I hadn’t been out of the house since before the war, so we hired a YWCA girl to sit with the kids and decided to make a night of it. The party was at Lawrence Coulard’s. He’s an executive with a pineapple import company we handle.

  It was a bracing spring night with just a little breeze coming in from the bay and maybe a touch of fog in the air. We put the car top down and enjoyed the breeze. The Coulards live out toward Bolinas—quite a drive, but it didn’t seem as though it was any time at all before we were there. At that, we were late. Lights and noise were bubbling out of the house. We parked the car at the end of a long line, got out, and walked up the stone steps and through the open doors. The butler took our wraps and announced us to a room that seemed to pay no attention. I noticed Lawrence coming toward us down a hall. He grinned and waved his hand.

  Suddenly I was startled by a voice calling my name. “Felix! Felix, dear boy!”

  I turned around, and there was Eugenia Moran plowing her way across the room with a drink in one bejeweled hand. She looked a good deal older and somewhat more painted than I remembered, but there was no mistaking that long, lovely face.

  “Felix, it’s been so long,” she said as she came up. “But perhaps I shouldn’t mention that. Hello, Lisa.”

  Eugenia grabbed my arm and began dragging me toward the punch bowl. I made futile signs to Lisa, but she waved and wandered away with Coulard. She knew all about Eugenia Moran. I finally wound up in an alcove corner with the ex–Mrs. Donet. She still had her grip on my arm.

  “Felix, where have you been keeping yourself?” she demanded. “I was back in New York last month and saw all sorts of our old friends. They all asked about you, but of course I couldn’t tell them a thing.”

  Like hell, I thought.

  “My, you still look so handsome,” she rattled on. “Time hasn’t changed you a bit. Still the same old dashing Felix.”

  She broke off her monologue, put a hand to her hair, and looked at me in what she must have imagined was an arch manner. It was my cue, I suppose, to say she hadn’t changed a bit either. I decided to break it up by being politely rude.

  “Say, whatever happened between you and Wilfred Long or Louis Donet or whatever you want to call him?” I asked.

  Eugenia pouted. “You’re a rude boy,” she said. “But I adore you anyway.” She reached out and patted my cheek with that cold, diamond-studd
ed hand. “So I’ll tell you.”

  Looking out the window beside us, she paused for a long minute. When she began to speak, it was as though another person had control of her body; her voice and manner both changed.

  “We were in Chicago, you know,” she said. “Louis had just finished his engagement there. It was a dreary night—rainy and cold.” She shivered. “Louis went up to the room, and I stayed in the bar to have a nightcap with George. Poor boy, he grieved so over his wife’s death. Drank constantly. He got quite drunk that night and kept referring to Louis as Wilfred. He swore a great deal—really dreadful words. I didn’t know what to do. Finally, I left him and went upstairs.”

  She pursed her lips before continuing.

  “Louis was lying on the bed with all his clothes on. He looked … well, he wasn’t a handsome man, you know. He’d opened his belt and thrown back his coat. I sat down at the dressing table to take off my dress. But it was rather difficult—buttoned in the back. It was too late to call a maid, so I asked Louis if he would unbutton me.”

  Eugenia paused again, and when she continued, her voice was lower. “Only I said, ‘Wilfred, will you come unbutton me, please?’”

  She was silent for so long a time that I thought she wasn’t going to continue.

  “Yes,” I prompted.

  “That’s all,” she said. “I heard the bed spring croak and waited. After a few minutes, I noticed that there was no sound in the room. I turned around, and Louis was gone. I never saw him again. I didn’t learn until the next morning that George had died in the bar. His heart, you know. I waited several weeks and went to Reno. Louis and I hadn’t been getting on so well.”

  She lifted her hands and stared at her fingers. “I often wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t called him Wilfred. I feel quite guilty sometimes. Perhaps he wouldn’t have gone to Germany and become a filthy Nazi.”

  “Perhaps,” I agreed. “But who can say?”

  Well, that’s about all there is to Wilfred’s story—all but the concluding item, which had to wait until the war was over to bring all those things back to me. It was a story in yesterday’s paper that told how Wilfred Long, awaiting trial for treason, hanged himself in his cell with a strip torn from his blanket. Perhaps there’s a moral in this somewhere, but I really didn’t intend that there should be. I just keep going over this thought that ran through my head when I read that story. I thought, Well, Louis Donet is dead.

  The Iron Maiden

  To Pete Waller, coming across the park toward it at 1:28 on a Saturday morning, the Belroc Arms looked sinister—which he knew meant left-handed, and he felt all left-handed at the moment, on a fool’s errand.

  The building towered as a black outline punctured by three golden squares—windows of an apartment on the corner. Not Hal Kerrigan’s apartment, which was toward the center. All the windows were dark there. This fact almost stopped Pete, but he remembered the vow of friendship: “Anytime, pal … anytime.”

  Pete took a deep breath, swallowed. Haloed streetlights fringed the park, and there was a wet smell of dead leaves around him. From up the street on his left came the brush-whirr-rasp of a mechanical sweeper growing louder, muffled motor whispers echoing against the stone buildings. Pete darted across the street, used the key Kerrigan had given him, took the elevator to the top, and let himself into the apartment.

  The door made a thump-click as it closed behind him. The room was sonorous with sleep-breathing, and he tried to determine if it was one person breathing or two. One, he thought. He started across the familiar room, collided at shin level with a harsh edge that made a crash of sound. He barked, “Sonofabitch!” and rubbed his shin.

  The sleep-breathing stopped. Kerrigan’s voice came out of the dark: “Whassat?”

  “I bumped my shin,” Pete said. “Who moved the damn table? Uh … you awake, Hal?”

  “Who’s ’ere?”

  “It’s me, Pete.”

  “Pete?”

  “Yeah, Pete. Is there … I mean, are you alone?”

  “Chrissakes, Pete. You’re about as subtle as a tank. What if I had a … guest?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “I oughta take away your damn key.”

  There came a scratching, fluttering sound, rattling of a lamp chain, a click. Warm yellow light flooded the room, striking golden glints on a red wall. The light revealed an oblong living room jammed with a clutter of both living room and bedroom furniture. Clothing on hangers had been thrown over most surfaces. A rolled rug lay bent across the back of a basket chair.

  In the center, crowded on all sides by the furniture, stood an oversized square bed with golden covers over black silk sheets. Sitting upright in the bed, his hairy chest bare, was the object of Pete’s visit, a darkly tanned black Irishman with blue eyes and hunting hawk features—Hal Kerrigan.

  Pete stared around at the mess—walls, color scheme. It was all different from his last visit less than a week ago. Two of the walls were now red, two black, the ceiling golden. Everything had been grey and cream before. Chinese brocade draperies of black with red-and-gold dragons covered the windows at the end of the room. The dragons undulated to a breeze pouring in from an open window. Through the clutter of furniture, Pete could see little wedges and trapezoids of a grey-and-gold rug.

  Kerrigan reached for a folding alarm clock tucked onto an end table beside his bed with a full pipe rack, a bronze tobacco humidor, and a pair of brown slippers. He peered at the clock, owl-eyed, and muttered, “One thirty-four! For Chrissakes, Pete!”

  Pete hobbled farther into the room, still rubbing his shin, then stopped, confronted by a tall mirror leaning against a chair. The mirror was pitiless, revealing a tired, hatless man with dun brown hair, brown eyes, a rather round face with a small nose and skin that looked decidedly pink. It always looked pink—baby skin. He tore himself away from the mirror, flopped down on a corner of the bed.

  “What’s all the mess?” he asked.

  “I met a dame—interior decorator. What you doing bumbling in here at this ungodly hour?”

  Pete looked up at the black marble fireplace behind the bed, noting something that hadn’t been changed by Hal’s interior decorator—a pair of holstered .45 automatics with Marine Corps insignia, each with a name burnt into the leather: Pete and Hal. They always struck him as out of place in this room.

  “Hal, I got a problem,” Pete said.

  Kerrigan fumbled an open pack of cigarettes from the floor beside the bed, lit one, and tossed the pack across the golden blanket toward Pete, who ignored it.

  “What’s her name?” Kerrigan asked.

  Abruptly, Pete got up, threaded his way across to the automatics above the fireplace, returned to the bed with the one bearing his name, and began field stripping it. His fingers worked with a casual, deceptive rapidity: snick, click, swish, click, swish, click, snick.

  Kerrigan smoked silently, knowing there was no hurrying Pete in this mood.

  Presently, the gun lay disassembled, spread out on the blanket. Pete began reassembling it, spoke without looking up. “You’re in bed kinda early tonight.”

  “We were at a house party until 4:00 AM yesterday, and decided to play some tennis. Afterward we went sailing, and I just didn’t get to bed until 9:00 PM.”

  “Whatta life you lead!”

  “What’s the problem, Pete? Tell your old Uncle Hal. You didn’t come all the way up here at this hour to show me how fast you can strip that .45.”

  “I don’t know how to say it,” Pete said.

  “You got some babe in trouble?”

  “Nothing like that.”

  “Is it your job? I could have my old man transfer you anywhere in the company you—”

  “No! I’m happy in the shipping department. If I learn enough, maybe I can be boss there someday, but …”

  “You wanta be promoted tomorrow?”

  “Hal, you embarrass me. Sometimes I’m …” Pete broke off, shrugged.
>
  “You sorry you saved my skin there in that rice paddy?”

  “Don’t say that! I’d have …”

  “You’d’ve done it for anybody, I know. But you did it for me. What you want, Pete?” He waved an arm. “Take it.”

  “All I need’s some advice … from your experience. I just … don’t know. Maybe I better skip it.” He started to get up.

  Kerrigan snaked out an arm, dragged him back. “Oh, no you don’t! You don’t wander in here in the middle of the damn night and then leave without saying why.”

  Pete shook his head. “This is … well … I dunno.”

  “Look! Petey boy, it’s Hal. What’s mine is yours. Anytime. Advice? That I provide at no extra cost. So give.”

  “Hal, I dunno what to do about her.”

  “Which her?”

  “Virgie.”

  “Virgie?”

  Pete took out his wallet, extracted a photograph. He gazed at it a moment. It showed a blonde young woman in a bikini, proportions about 40-28-36. He sighed. She didn’t make him feel sinister at all—just left-handed.

  Kerrigan pulled the photograph from Pete’s hand, whistled softly. “Mmmmmmmmmm,” he said, then peered more closely at the photo. “Oh, no! Not that Virgie!”

  “I thought you’d recognize her,” Pete said. “She’s in shipping, too, as you know, and …”

  “Ahh, Pete.” Kerrigan threw the photograph face up on the golden blanket.

  Pete stared at him. “You … uh … know her?”

  “Before I went out and got myself that nice green uniform. I dated her once, just once. I know others who’ve tried. Give it up, Pete. That’s the original iron maiden.”

  “Hal, I just gotta …”

  “You in love or some crazy thing?”

  “Maybe. I guess so. I dunno.”

  “That figures. With Virginia, you never know anything.”

  “Hal, don’t say that. You don’t know what happened.”

  “The hell I don’t! You went out on a date with her and afterwards a little parking somewhere and …”

  “What’s unusual about that?”

  “Wait a minute, son,” Kerrigan said. “You parked. One thing led to the next thing, and pretty soon you’re getting eager.”