McGavock said softly: “I ought to break a chair over your head. Right now.”
Brantner said: “This is my town, Mr. McGavock. I come an’ go, but I like it. I was borned and raised here. Now, unless you fix it up, I’m a-goin’ to have to leave. The law’s got some kinda plan up hit’s sleeve to knock me off. They been actin’ mighty, mighty funny. They searched me, give me back my gun and said fer me to remember I was armed should anything happen to me. That ain’t no way fer the law to act!”
McGavock looked bored. Leisurely he finished his sandwich, and the beer. “Who hired you?”
Brantner took an envelope from the bib of his overalls. “I don’t know much more about it than you do. Ever’ day, fer the last few days I been gittin’ a five dollar bill in the mail. Not a word o’ writin’ along with it. Somehow I got to a-lookin’ forward to it. Well, this morning they was a ten dollar bill an’ a letter.”
McGavock drew out a sheet of paper and unfolded it. It said: “Man named McGavock due on eleven-ten tonight. Give him the works. Fifty dollars in mail tomorrow.”
The words were printed, in neat symmetrical letters, and each individual letter was composed of broken lines and dots. “He’s printed it in pencil over a screen, like a door screen,” McGavock decided. “He’s one smart baby. He’s made it impossible for any handwriting expert in the world to analyze the pressure of his strokes.”
“That’s all,” the overalled man said grimly. “I figgered his credit was all right with me so I follered you from the train to the hotel, an’ from the hotel to the alley — where we had our mixup. That’s all.”
McGavock pushed back his chair, laid change on the table. “If you hear from him again — which will be a miracle — look me up.”
Brantner began to fawn. “I will, Mr. McGavock. You kin trust me, Mr. McGavock. An’ tell that crazy sheriff I’m a-helpin’ you out!”
The lobby of the hotel was dark but for the minuscule bedside lamp which burned bluely on the big, yellow varnished desk. It was as squalid a joint as McGavock had ever stayed at, and you run into some weird hostelries, he reflected, touring small southern towns. He wove his way through wicker, mail-order furniture, across the fibre rug. To the left of the newelpost was an old zinc water-cooler, a shelf of chipped water pitchers and barrel-shaped tumblers. He filled a pitcher, picked up a tumbler, in the self-serve style of the establishment, and climbed the stairs. He was angry and confused and out on his feet with weariness.
His room was at the front of the hall, to the right of the stairwell. It was shaped like an orange crate stood up on its end, about eight feet square and twelve feet high; the walls were papered with a pattern of brown bamboo shoots and green parrots. The September heat came in waves through the open window, from the metal and tarpaper roofs across the street, from the dark street below.
He placed the pitcher of ice-water on the table, took his revolver from his Gladstone and thrust it under his pillow. He then stripped, slipped on a terrycloth robe, gathered up his pajamas under his arm, took soap and towels, and stepped out into the hall.
The bathroom was at the end of the corridor. He bolted the door, turned on the water and climbed into the claw-footed tub. The water was as cool as spring-water and after his bath he felt better. He reviewed the case three times carefully in his mind and all he could boil it down to was that someone wanted him out of the picture and had tried to kill him. Railroad Brantner had lied. That letter hand said — “give him the works” — and that was exactly what Brantner had tried to do.
Back in his room, he reached for the pitcher and tumbler — and then he noticed something. The water in the pitcher was half gone. Someone had swigged half of his ice-water while he was bathing.
He locked his door and put a chair under the knob. He went to the towel-rack, took down a large turkish towel and stuffed it into the pitcher. When it had absorbed the remaining water, he hung it wet and dripping on the rack with its fellows.
For a long moment he stood in the center of the room, rubbing the stubble on his chin. Finally, he climbed into bed.
He’d just had his second escape from death, and a close one it was. The water was poisoned, of course, and half of it had been removed to increase the poison’s potency.
Sleep came hard. He kept thinking about Landru and his girl friends.
Chapter Two
Water, Air, Earth, and Fire
The courthouse clock, striking nine against his hotel window, awoke McGavock to a gray morning of sullen clouds and clean, cool mist. He caught a quick breakfast at a corner lunchroom and left his towel with an elderly druggist on a backstreet who promised to make a solution and analysis. There was the promise of rain in the air and Main Street was deserted but for a few stragglers, hillmen in from the uplands and house-wives, in print dresses and carrying woven baskets, bent on their day’s marketing. It was the kind of a day he liked; the colors were deep and soft and pleasant in the moist air, sidewalks shone like slate and the trees along the curb were beaded and dripping. He turned from Main onto Center and went out Center to Oak Lane.
Oak Lane circled Oak Hill and Cushman Mapes’ big brick-and-stucco mansion was the first residence out of town.
He could see it through the tree boles, a huge cumbersome hulk on the hillside, with its gables and latticed trelliswork. Stucco was peeling from its face and rambler roses climbed the gingerbread scrollwork of the front porch, making a curtain between the occupants and the street. The grass in the yard was uncut; the place looked completely abandoned.
A little spray of rain rattled like buckshot through the dry oak leaves and splattered against the floorboards of the broad porch as McGavock yanked the T-shaped brass doorpull. He heard the sound of footsteps from within, echoing in a cavernous hall, and the door opened. To his surprise his summons was answered by two persons, not one, and they stood in the doorway, shoulder to shoulder. He realized instantly that he was being confronted by the entire household, by Mr. Cushman Mapes, himself, and by his housekeeper, Mrs. Kirkland.
Cushman Mapes was in his middle-sixties, slender and pale. He wore a black suit and Congress gaiters. His hair and eyebrows and imperial were snow white. A man doesn’t wear a little goatee like that, McGavock reflected, without spending a good many hours before the mirror trimming it. He seemed actually relieved at the sight of McGavock; he said calmly: “Mr. McGavock, suh? The gentleman from Memphis? Step inside, please, we’d like a little talk with you.”
Mrs. Kirkland smiled. First at McGavock, and then at Cushman Mapes. She was a drab little woman with tousled gray hair; her bright little eyes were cheerful and inquiring and her splotched hands were hard calloused from years of work. She said shyly: “Oh, Cushman. There’s no need—”
McGavock said: “The next time I come to town, I’ll wear a disguise and bring a pair of clippers, good strong ones for telephone wires.”
McGavock followed them into a bare, dim hall, past big panelled doors with china knobs, parlor, library, dining room, into a small music room.
If this was a sample of the rest of the mansion, McGavock didn’t wonder that Cushman Mapes had difficulty in retaining female assistance. Light filtered grayly through the rosebushes which tangled the big bow window. A vase of wax flowers sat on an ancient piano. There were a few red plush chairs, mildewed and decrepit, a battered fireplace, and a Victorian rolltop desk. The place reeked with long imprisoned staleness and the green carpet on the floor was literally rotting to tatters and shreds. When everyone was uncomfortably seated, Cushman Mapes fiddled a moment with his goatee, said: “For some time there have been unpleasant rumors circulating about me. I understand you’ve come to town to prove, or disprove them. Right, suh?”