He put it down again and went upstairs to the room where it had happened, and lit up and looked around for the last time. Under the bed and on top of it and all over, to make sure nothing had been overlooked. There wasn’t a speck of anything. He went to her jewel case and rummaged through it. Most of the gadgets just had initials, but there was a wrist-watch there that had her name in full on the inside of the case. He slipped that in his pocket. He also took a powder compact, and slipped a small snapshot of herself she’d had taken in an automatic machine under the lid, just for luck. He wanted to make it as easy for them as he could.
He put out the lights and went downstairs. He opened the front door wide and went back in again. “From now on,” he told himself, “I don’t think; I let my reflexes work for me!” He picked the long cylinder up with both arms, got it to the porch, and propped it upright against the side of the door for a minute while he closed the door after him. Then he heaved it up onto his right shoulder and kept it in place with one upraised arm, and that was all there was to it. It dipped a little at both ends, but any rolled-up rug would have. Cleopatra had gone to meet Caesar like this, he remembered. The present occupant was going to keep a blind date with her murderer — three or four hours after her own death.
Someone on the porch of the next cottage was strumming Here Comes Cookie on a ukulele as he stepped down to the sidewalk level with the body transverse to his own. He started up the street with it, with his head to one side to give it room on his shoulder. He came to the first street-light and its snowy glare picked him out for a minute, then handed him back to the gloom. He wasn’t walking fast, just trudging along. He was doing just what he’d said he’d do: not thinking about it, letting his reflexes work for him.
“This is a rug,” he kept repeating. “I’m taking it to the cleaners. People taking rugs to the cleaners don’t go along scared of their shadows.”
A rocking chair squeaked on one of the wooden platforms and a woman’s nasal voice said: “Good evening, Larry. What on earth are you doing, trying to reduce?”
He showed his teeth in the gloom. “Gotta get this rug to the cleaners.”
“My stars, at this hour?” she queried.
“I’ll catch it if I don’t,” he said. “I was filling my fountain pen just now and I got ink all over it.” He had deliberately stopped for a moment, set the thing down, shifted it to his other shoulder. He gave her another flash of his teeth. “See you later,” he said, and was on his way again.
She gave a comfortable motherly laugh. “Nice young fellow,” he heard her say under her breath to someone beside her. “But that stepmother of his—” The sibilant whispers faded out behind him.
So Doris was already getting a bad name among the summer residents — good. “Go to it!” he thought. “You’ll have more to talk about in a little while.”
Every porch was tenanted. It was like running the gauntlet. But he wasn’t running, just strolling past like on any other summer evening. He saw two glowing cigarette ends coming toward him along an unlighted stretch of the sidewalk. As they passed under the next light he identified one — a girl he knew, a beach acquaintance, and her escort. He’d have to stop. He would have stopped if he only had a rug with him, so he’d have to stop now. The timing wasn’t quite right though. Instead of coming up to them in one of the black stretches between lights, the three of them met face to face in one of the glaring white patches right at the foot of a street lamp.
“Hello old timer.”
“Hello babe.” He tilted his burden forward, caught it with both arms, and eased it perpendicularly to the pavement.
“Johnny, this is Larry.” Then she said: “What in the world have you got there?”
“Rug,” he said. “I just got ink all over it, and I thought I could get it taken out before I get bawled out.”
“Oh, they’ll charge like the dickens for that,” she said helpfully. “Lemme look, maybe I could do it for you, we’ve got a can of wonderful stuff over at our house.” She put out her hand toward the top opening and felt one of the wedged-in cushions.
He could feel his hair going up. “Nah, I don’t want to undo it,” he said. “I’ll never get it together again if I do.” He didn’t, however, make the mistake of pushing her hand away, or immediately trying to tip the thing back on his shoulders again. He was too busy getting his windpipe open.
“What’s that in the middle there?” she said, poking her hand at the cushion.
“Sofa pillows,” he said. “They got all spotted, too.” He didn’t follow the direction of her eyes in time.
“How come you didn’t get it all over your hands?” she said innocently.
“I was holding the pen out in front of me,” he said, “and it squirted all over everything.” He didn’t let a twitch get past his cuff and shake the hand she was looking at, although there were plenty of them stored up waiting to go to work.
Her escort came to his aid; he didn’t like it because Larry’d called her “babe.” “Come on, I thought you wanted to go to the movies—”
He started to pull her away.
Larry tapped his pockets with his free hand; all he felt was Doris’s wrist-watch. “One of you got a cigarette?” he asked. “I came out without mine.” The escort supplied him, also the match. Larry wanted them to break away first. They’d put him through too much, he couldn’t afford to seem anxious to get rid of them.
“My, your face is just dripping!” said the girl, as the orange glare swept across it.
Larry said: “You try toting this on a warm night and see how it feels.”
“ ’Bye,” she called back, and they moved off into the shadows.
He stood there and blew a long cloud of smoke to get into gear again. “That was the closest yet,” he thought. “If I got away with that, I can get away with anything.”
He got back under the thing again and trudged on, cigarette in mouth. The houses began to thin out; the paved middle of the street began to turn into the road that led out toward Pine Tree Inn, shorn of its two sidewalks. But it was still a long hike off, he wasn’t even half-way there yet. He was hugging the side of the roadway now, salt marshes spiked with reeds on all sides of him as far as the eye could reach. A car or two went whizzing by. He could have got rid of her easy enough along here by just dropping her into the ooze. But that wasn’t the answer, that wouldn’t be making him pay for his party.
There was another thing to be considered though. Those occasional cars tearing past. Their headlights soaked him each time. It had been riskier back further where the houses were, maybe, but it hadn’t looked so strange to be carrying a rug there. The surroundings stood for it. It was a peculiar thing to be doing this far out. The biggest risk of all might be the safest in the end; anything was better than attracting the attention of each separate driver as he sped by. A big rumbling noise came up slowly behind him, and he turned and thumbed it with his free hand.
The truck slowed down and came to a stop a foot or two ahead; it only had a single driver. “Get in,” he said facetiously. “Going camping?” But it had been a rug back further, so it was still going to be a rug now, and not a tent or anything. Switching stories didn’t pay. Only instead of going to the cleaners it would have to be coming from there now; there weren’t any cottages around Pine Tree Inn.
“Nah,” Larry said. “I gotta get this rug out to Pine Tree Inn, for the manager’s office. Somebody got sick all over it and he had to send it in to be cleaned. Now he’s raising hell, can’t wait till tomorrow, wants it back right tonight.”
He handed it up to the driver and the man stood it upright against the double seat. Larry fallowed it in and sat down beside it, holding it in place with his body. It shook all over when the truck got going and that wasn’t any too good for the way it was rolled up. Nor could he jump down right in front of the inn with it, in the glare of all the lights and under the eyes of the parking attendants.