During dinner, I led up to it slowly. Then, over the coffee, my wife said: “I’ll never forget Twiford’s face that night when he came to the door to ask to use the phone. And Molly the Third — how she growled. She was usually so friendly”
James said: “Molly the Third?”
“Twiford’s poodle he had then. Harry, here, missed it. He was out in the back garden playing with his tomato plants, and then I think he took the car — didn’t you, Harry? — and went down to the drugstore to get something to read.”
I said: “Yes.” Then: “James, there’s still some light left. How would you like to leave the ladies to discuss nylons and meat prices, and stroll over to see the locus criminis?”
James agreed, so we went down the street to the dead end, to where the path cuts across the Higgins meadow to the road. On the way we passed Twiford Warner with Molly the Sixth on a leash, and he flourished his cane at us as he turned in at his place.
Halfway up Round Hill I showed James the pole into which the police said Oast’s car had been forced, and, a little further up, the dirt road where Twiford had come upon the car and bodies. Standing there in the twilight, watching James pull his lower lip and bring his judicial mind to bear on the problem, I had a very, very strange sensation, as though something inside of me, something alive, was trying to get out. It made me quite shaky, and my vision blurred. I seemed to be losing control of myself. Next thing I know, I was steering James to the dirt road, then down through the underbrush to Lost Creek. I peered about. The flat rock was still there; so large that I wondered how Twiford Warner and I had ever managed to lift it.
“That,” I heard myself saying huskily, “is Molly the Third’s grave.”
Said James, in an odd tone: “Just when was she buried there?”
“That night,” I said. And as I said it, I knew the live thing was going to get out.
“Is this Warner a close friend of yours?” asked James thoughtfully.
“Just a neighbor — an acquaintance.”
That was all a part of the unreality of the thing. As I began to talk, it all came back so clearly — why, I could even smell the warm, wet smell of the tomato plant around which I was rooting for cutworms at the moment when Twiford Warner called to me from the grape arbor. He had come in the back way. I could even see his white face, hear his voice as he said: “Harry, I wonder if you’d mind helping me clean up a mess?”
I said: “Sure, I’ll help,” and followed him, wondering what had got into the guy and where Molly the Third was.
Twiford led me across lots and up Round Hill to where the limousine stood sniffing the telephone pole. After a moment I said: “My Lord!”
“Yes,” said Twiford, in a flat voice.
The whitish object crushed between bumper and pole was Molly the Third. Across the ditch, a man lay on his back, his head against a rock. That, I learned later, was Machine-gun Larkin. Beside the car, one arm on the running board, was a big, blond man who later turned out to be Speed Oast, and the body subsequently identified as Chicago Lon Ucci was half in the ditch — a chunky man, face masked with drying blood.
“The car wasn’t damaged?” asked James in that same voice.
“Not a bit, outside of the bumper.” I had my eyes shut. I could hear Twiford Warner’s voice again; no inflections: “They swerved at Molly and me — just for fun, to make me jump into the ditch, I suppose. I jumped. Then I heard brakes. Molly got caught. I went up to the driver and told him to get out, that I was going to have the lot of them arrested. I was extremely angry.
“The driver got out and said, ‘The hell you are, buddy,’ and smacked my face. I hit him with my cane — it’s pretty heavy, you know — and he fell across the ditch and hit his head on that stone. When the blond man got out with a gun in his hand. I picked up a good-size rock. He shot — he must have been quite drunk, because...” Here Twiford showed me a rip along the collar of his coat. “Anyhow, I hit him with the rock as hard as I could while the third man was climbing out. The third man” — Twiford pointed to Chicago Lon Ucci’s body — “said he was going to kill me. He quite obviously meant it. I was still terribly angry and more than a little frightened, and I still had the rock, so...”
I swallowed hard. “You asked me to help you clean up, Twiford. Just what...? That is, the police...”
“I’ve thought it all over, Harry. No.”
For a second I thought Twiford was going to add me to this massacre. This queer little man, killing these three brutes... Then I realized he was quite calm and sane. “These three men,” he said, “are obviously criminals of some sort. I acted in self-defense, of course. But think of the fuss. And Sesame. Life with Sesame is difficult enough now, Harry. I don’t think I could bear to have her lionizing me as a hero, or playing the martyred wife, or — worst of all — going moral on me. Besides, I might lose out at Miller’s — the publicity, you know. No, Harry. I’m sorry to drag you into this, but I can’t lift this blond man...”
He was quite right about Sesame and Miller’s. Looking at him there in the deep gray dusk, spare, precise, controlled, I heard myself saying: “O.K., Twiford, what do we do?”
“Besides,” he said, as though he hadn’t been listening, “they killed my dog.” The words dropped heavily.
So that (I told James) was why we loaded them into the car. Twiford backed it into the dirt road. We washed his cane, threw the rock away, and buried Molly the Third by the creek. Then I went home and got the car out and made a record trip to the kennels and came back with Molly the Fourth. She was a shade lighter than Molly the Third, but Twiford said Sesame wouldn’t notice — she wouldn’t allow the dog in the house anyhow. He said this there on the road while he was snapping the leash on Molly the Fourth.
Then he said: “Thanks a lot, Harry. Good night.” And I said: “Oh, that’s all right, Twiford,” and went on home and fiddled in the garden, although it was just about dark. And a little later he showed up at the house and asked Amy if he could use the phone...
James said: “Very interesting, Harry.” That’s all he ever said on the subject. So we went on home. As we passed the Warner house, we could hear Sesame in the living room lecturing Twiford about something, and Twiford — he’s quite white now; must be near sixty, I guess — was looking up from his magazine and nodding vaguely.
Twiford’s heart isn’t too good, he told me the other evening. Some day, shortly after he dies, I’ll take my revenge on Sesame. I’ll tell her all about it.
Red Christmas
by George F. Kull
The girl who walked into Carlo’s Beanery on Christmas Eve was in a holiday mood. And she had a few love letters of the leaden variety for anyone who didn’t share her festive spirit.
It was Christmas Eve in Reno. Soft fat snowflakes were coming down with little thuds. The Salvation Army Santas were just about through banging away with their little bells in front of the big department stores. Their iron kettles were pretty well loaded.
The attendant at the Silver City gas station on the corner of Arroyo and Virginia figured he was just about through too. There might be a few more customers straggling in, of course, but he wasn’t going to wait for them — not on Christmas Eve.