The girl across the net from Barbara Anson was playing with taut despair. They were into the second set after Barbara’s 6–1 win in the first. It was four games to one, Barbara’s favor and she had this game at deuce. Barbara’s serve. She softened the serve and let the opponent return it. She forced herself to place her own return within easy reach of the younger woman’s powerful forehand. Barbara made herself lose the return, smacking it into the net. She walked back to serve. It would have looked silly to win without giving up a single point in any game. Yet she knew she could do it. She had always loved the tense competition of the game. Now it was like playing with children, humoring them along, encouraging them. She wondered if she should give up the game — for good. The old thrill was gone.
The seventeenth had always bothered him. Four hundred and sixty-five yards, par four. Before, it had been a case of getting the second wood close enough so that the approach could be played up to one putt the green for a possible par. The only chance of a birdie was to sink the approach. Now he was alone on the hole in the graying dusk. He teed the ball, took a limbering swing and then addressed it. He swung with every ounce of effort and speed at his command, breaking his wrists at the right point for that final snap. Club head against ball made the deepest, heaviest crack he had ever heard on a golf course. The ball went out and it looked slow to him, but it rose, floating, fading. When at last he walked up to it he saw that he was not more than thirty yards from the edge of the green. He looked at it for a long time and then picked the ball up and trudged back in the direction of the clubhouse.
And all over the country, sports figures, doing at last, with ease, the things of which they had so long dreamed, became discontented. Now the ability was there, and yet it had been gained too easily, with too little effort. It was suspect, as are all gifts. Records were broken. The sports writers talked about ‘the new crop of immortals’ and when they talked among each other they marveled at the comebacks that had been made. They speculated. They did not guess the answer. There were new champions. Bored champions. Wealthy, yawning champions. Restless and lonely. They were the new strangers in a strange land. There was no need to train, to practice. The only goal was to refrain from winning too flagrantly. There was no competition for them. And thus all the games became work.
Sam Banth spent less and less time on the property and more time in the city. Linda’s devotion bored him. He would not have said that he was in any way a moralist, and yet he was oddly troubled that Linda was so unaffected by the death of her father. She had planned it with him and had correctly given her testimony which made it all the more obvious that it had been an accident.
Sam felt no special guilt at having committed the crime with his own hands. It bad been absurdly easy, once the plan had been made. And Tomlinson, at best, had very few years left to him. It was not like killing a young person — hardly, to Sam, like killing a person at all.
Yet there was something almost obscene about the placid and untroubled way that Linda treated it, as though it were an unfortunate incident.
When she was — unattainable she had been an excitement to him. Now she cloyed and stated and smothered him.
Two factors entered into his planning. The apparatus was portable and could just as well be set up in New York. Without Linda the entire take would be his. He woke up often in the middle of the night thinking about those two factors. The puzzling additional factor was Howard Dineen. How would Dineen react if he and Linda made their marriage public? Linda wanted it made public. Sam had demurred with the reason that to do so would alienate Dineen. But now Linda knew how to run the apparatus. In fact, she had treated two “students” with almost no supervision from Dineen. She was growing more insistent in her demands.
From a practical point of view it would be wise to publicize their relationship before Linda met with an “accident.” Then the marriage licence, reposing in his safe deposit box, would not be in the least suspect. It would be accepted as a legitimate document, which it was.
But to alienate Dineen might mean his running to the newspapers with the full account. It might cut the throat of the golden goose. “Graduates” might be barred from competition.
He worried the problem around in his mind for several weeks. The golden flow of money from the “graduates” increased. Instead of sating his needs it merely seemed to increase his itch to gather in all of it, not forty-nine percent.
And at last he had his plan, and it pleased him. It depended on how trusting Linda was. He covered his motive by a confusing monologue on tax structure.
“If you say so, dear,” Linda said. There was no suspicion in her now. She signed over her own stock and that which she had inherited from her father for the consideration of one dollar. The forms were duly notarized and recorded. Prader wore a wise look. Sam made a private vow to unload Prader and take on a new accountant-attorney.
The next day he went to a cheap rooming house and paid in advance for a room. That night, at dinner, he said to Howard and Linda, “I’ve got a pretty special customer who doesn’t want to be seen coming out here. It’s a profitable deal. Maybe we could take the thing into town. You said you could make it run on a house circuit.”
“It will take a few hours’ work.”
“Could you do that tonight? Then we can take it in in the morning.”
“Okay with me.” Dineen said.
Linda said just what Sam had hoped and expected. “Oh, can I come along?”
“If you want to, Linda. Sure.” He smiled at her. Inside he was laughing.
The furnished room was on East Ninety-third. It was dismal, with rug, walls, one overstuffed chair in varying shades of dirty brown. The two windows looked out onto an airshaft. No sun ever reached it. The low-wattage bulbs had to he kept on at all times.
“Charming setup,” Linda said.
Sam carried the iron maiden over by the table He unwrapped the blankets from around it. Howard busied himself with the connections. Sam sat on the bed and smoked until at last Howard sighed and backed away “All set.”
“When will this Important Person be along?” Linda asked.
“Any minute now.”
He put his hand in his pocket and, as he stepped close to Howard Dineen. he pulled out a worn leather sap. Back in hungrier days he had taken it away from a recalcitrant bookie customer. He planted the lead weight delicately behind Howard Dineen’s ear. Dineen sagged and fell.
Linda stood, her mouth open, her eyes wide. Horror and realization replaced surprise as Sam swung at her. The lead struck the corner of her jaw. He caught her as she fell.
It was awkward getting her inside the tubular iron maiden. He shut the hinged front of it and she slumped down inside it until her knees struck the front and she remained partially propped up. He pulled the control box toward him, set it at an approximation of her weight and twisted the other dial. As he did so he leaned against the front of the case to keep her from bursting it open. She began to move around inside so rapidly that she was blurred. He could not focus on her. If Dineen had not been lying it should take only a few moments before she became still, dead of thirst. At times he could see her and he guessed that she slept. When he was certain she was dead he would haul her out and put Dineen in there. It would be a mystery the police would never solve. Two people dead of thirst after a dozen witnesses had seen them alive earlier the same day.