After the transaction, Horace surveyed the scene around him. About seventy people were crowded into his front yard. Cars and pickup trucks lined both sides of the street for two blocks. His classified ad in the newspaper for the yard sale had paid off. That or the cardboard notices they’d tacked onto every telephone pole in the neighborhood.
Horace looked at the sky. Overcast, but no rain yet. When he’d first looked outside this morning and seen the grey blanket that stretched from horizon to horizon, Horace had feared that the sale would have to be cancelled. If it had been, they would’ve been out the cost of the newspaper ad and the time they had spent yesterday afternoon and evening getting things ready. But not a drop yet.
“Excuse me,” said a woman’s voice.
Horace turned and saw a dumpy, middle-aged woman in a faded red dress motioning toward him. He walked over to her.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Yes. This clock...” She was looking at the huge mantel clock that had once belonged to his Aunt Ruth. He wanted to keep it, but June insisted that it go. She’d been trying to force him to get rid of that clock for a dozen years, and had finally worn him down.
“What about it?”
“Well, it’s beautiful. Mahogany, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Swiss?”
“German.”
“My, my... Does it work?”
“No. It stopped working years ago. A clock repairman might be able to fix it, although I can’t swear to that. I never took it in to have it examined.”
“Why not?”
“We don’t have a mantel or anyplace else for a clock like that,” said Horace. “I wish we did.”
“How much?”
“Since it doesn’t work and I’m not absolutely sure it can be made to work although I think it can, only ten dollars.”
The woman stared at the clock for a minute, then gave one vigorous nod. “I’ll take it,” she said.
“Good.” Horace saw a man looking toward him, obviously wanting him to come over, and looked to see if June or his daughter were at the table. June was. “If you’ll take the clock to the table, my wife will take care of you.”
“Thank you.”
Horace walked over to the man who had been looking at him. He was a tall, well-dressed, lanky fellow in a grey suit. He was holding Horace’s old office stapler.
“Does this work?” he asked when Horace reached him.
“Yes, although occasionally it’ll jam up.”
“How much?”
“A dollar.”
A young woman in shorts strolled over carrying the bust of George Washington that Horace had bought a year ago during a warehouse auction. That moment of weakness had led to several days of complaining and belittling from June, and frequent barbed comments ever since from her and other family members. He had no hope that selling the bust would end their jokes, but at least the physical evidence would be gone.
“How much for this?” asked the woman.
Horace thought of the forty-two dollars he’d paid for it. “Forty dollars,” he said.
“How much?”
“Just joking. Five dollars.”
“Well, that’s a bit steep.”
“All right, for you, three.”
“I’ll give you two.”
Horace sighed. “Done,” he said.
Horace guided her to the table, where they completed the transaction. He wanted to handle it personally so that June wouldn’t know that he’d lost forty dollars on the venture. After the woman left, he altered the carbon copy of the receipt, turning the two dollars into twenty-five. He hoped he would get away with it. He had to press the five directly onto the carbon paper, and it looked darker than the two dollars on the receipt. He would also have to add twenty-three dollars to the till.
After he finished, he was signaled by a thin young man in denim. The man was unshaven and had a greasy appearance. He was holding Horace’s old Remington rifle.
“Does this work?” the man asked.
“Sure does. I went hunting just three years ago and got an eight-point buck with it.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding,” said Horace. “One of the best rifles I’ve ever owned.”
“Why’re you selling it then?”
“I have another rifle that’s even better. I don’t do much hunting or target shooting any more. One gun’s about all I can handle now. No sense in letting a fine gun like this one go to waste.”
“How powerful is it?”
“Plenty powerful,” said Horace. “It’ll bring down a full-grown stag at a hundred yards with one shot.”
The man balanced the rifle in his hands, then put the butt to his shoulder and aimed at the grey sky. He squinted his left eye, looking through the telescopic sights, then drew back his right index finger without actually touching the trigger. He brought the gun down again, caressing its stock with his right palm while he balanced the rifle in his left hand.
“What would this do to a person?” asked the man.
“Hurt.”
“Say you shot someone in the head with it.”
“It would blow his head apart like an exploding melon,” said Horace.
“Really?”
“Yes.” Horace smiled. “I never tried it, of course, but I know that’s what would happen.”
“I see... Are these sights accurate?”
“Sure are.”
“If a fellow were to lie up on a hill and look through these sights at the highway, could he hit people through the car windows? I mean, what with the distance — about eighty yards — and them moving along at fifty-five?”
“Sure. All he’d have to do is get those crosshairs in the sights right on their heads, a little toward the front, and squeeze the trigger.”
“And the car windows’ plastic glass wouldn’t deflect the bullets?”
“Not from a gun like that,” said Horace.
“How much?”
“Two hundred.”
“I’ll take it.”
Horace and the young man walked over to the table and completed the transaction.
Afterward, Horace looked up again. The overcast was still threatening, but no rain yet.
He saw a woman examining the old redwood chest that had been in the garage for ten years. He hurried over to her.
The Key in Michael
by Elsa Barker
If I had not happened to say to Dexter Drake one evening that I had often been surprised by the strain of childlike gaiety in the tragic Russian temperament, I suppose I should never have heard the remarkable story of Prince Boris Vorontsov and the Key in Michael.
My friend the detective had just finished the strenuous case of the Jade Earring, and was idling after dinner, his slim athletic length stretched out on our sitting room couch.
“Yes, Howard!” Drake looked round at me with his keen black eye. “And it was that childlike strain in the tragic Russian soul which brought me one of the oddest problems I was ever called upon to solve. Indeed, I have rarely been more puzzled than I was for those few days in Paris, Nice, and Monte Carlo. I’ll tell you about it.”
Drake swung his feet off the couch and sat up. His lethargy was gone now; his bronzed aquiline face had come suddenly alive.
“Just a moment, Howard.” He rose to his feet. “I’ll need that curious paper I found in the Paris studio, and the diagram I worked out from it; they’re in my filing cabinet.”
He turned and strode down the corridor to his study.
It was seldom that I caught the great criminal expert in a storytelling mood, seldom that he had time for storytelling. But with his immense experience in so many parts of the earth, he could have gone right on and on, I suppose, like Scheherazade, for a thousand and one nights.
In three minutes he was back in the sitting room, with a large yellow envelope in his hand. Suppose I leave out the quotation and double quotation marks, and just let you imagine Dexter Drake sitting there on the couch and telling the story to me...