A full hour passed. Miss Ball was tired; her getup was a wreck. Her handbag felt like a large stone. She knew she didn’t look as crisp as she had when she arrived. A man likes freshness and vitality in a woman. If much more time passed Miss Ball knew that she would be able to offer none of these.
Then a man appeared at the back door. Miss Ball pressed her lips together. She trembled. The man was white, wearing a blue suit with a matching cap, rimless glasses and a badge. He looked like a bus conductor. But he was a bank guard, and he certainly had a dozen more rolls in the hay left in him. He shuffled out the door with a shopping bag, then went inside and got another bundle and put that beside the shopping bag. After one more trip inside he deposited an umbrella and a pair of rubbers beside the other bundles.
Miss Ball took one step toward the man. She eyed him, fluttered her eyelashes, and said hoarsely, “That’s an awful lot of gear for a little man.”
“Par’ me?” said the man. He squinted through his glasses and coughed. Miss Ball corrected her false impression: the man did not have a dozen rolls in the hay left in him. He had one perhaps, at the most two. Also he was down at the heel and out at the elbow. But it made no difference. He knew the bank inside out. He had the information they wanted.
“Give you a hand?”
The man took another look at Miss Ball. The look cost the man a great effort. He shrugged.
Miss Ball smiled, took the shopping bag and umbrella and led the way. The man picked up the other bundles and the rubbers and followed. Success, thought Miss Ball.
They walked along Mount Holly Boulevard and attracted considerable attention.
The man glanced at her once or twice, then cleared his throat and asked her if she minded carrying the bag.
Miss Ball said that she didn’t mind doing anything. She winked again.
The man said that he lived across town. Miss Ball said she knew a shortcut. She walked along as briskly as her little legs would move her and finally got to her house. With a sigh she dropped the bags and said that she could go no further.
“That’s okay,” said the man. “I’ll carry the stuff. I was planning to anyways.”
Then Miss Ball shrieked. The man dropped what he was carrying.
“For golly sake!” she said. “Look where we are!”
The man said he didn’t recognize the place.
“It’s my house! Well, isn’t that the limit! God help us — it’s a miracle.”
The man said that he had to be going. He had the week’s shopping in the bags, not to mention his wife’s umbrella (he called it a bumbershoot).
“You just take your brolly and your shopping and come in. We’ll have a little tea. I’m weak. I don’t think I can make it into the house.”
The man tried to carry Miss Ball into the house. He struggled and panted. Miss Ball remarked that he must have been a very strong man in his youth. The man said he was.
Miss Ball poured a large tumbler full of whisky and handed it to the man. The man drank it and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Red-eye,” he said.
“Oo! You like your tea, don’t you now?”
The man said he didn’t mind a spot now and then. He put his arm around Miss Ball and began pinching her breast.
“Not here, darling,” said Miss Ball. She tossed her head in the direction of upstairs. Then she stood up and took his hand and pulled him upstairs.
Mr. Gibbon and Mrs. Gneiss tiptoed out of the kitchen and upstairs after them. They listened, their ears against the door.
Inside the room bodies fell, groans resounded, flesh met flesh with slaps and shrieks. Miss Ball squealed, the man roared. Furniture fell and glass broke.
“Lotta spunk left in her!” Mr. Gibbon whispered.
“They’re having fun!” Mrs. Gneiss said. She squeezed Mr. Gibbon’s knee.
“Clever little woman,” Mr. Gibbon said. “See, she must have learned that in one of the books. She’ll get him naked and helpless and then turn on the heat. She’ll get him talking about the bank and find out. The man goes away happy and doesn’t suspect a thing. Nice as you please.”
But there was no talking. The noise had ceased, and now Miss Ball could be heard crying softly. Mr. Gibbon wanted to go right in, but he waited five minutes, and when nothing had changed (the only sound was Miss Ball sniffing) he drew out his pistol and broke the door down.
The room was covered with blood. Sheets and curtains were torn and hanging in shreds, the mirror was shattered, and on the floor lay the bank guard, a large knife-handle sticking out of his back. Bloody handprints were smeared all over the walls and floor. In the corner, a murderous look in his eye, was Juan. His shirt was torn and bloody, his hair bristled. He glowered.
“Dobble cross me! Dat agli gringo bestid don’t know what heet heem. I been seeting that share for two jowers.”
“Warren!” screamed Miss Ball. He turned. Mr. Gibbon took aim and fired. The impact sent Juan into the wall like a swatted fly. Then he fell, his head making a loud bump on the floor.
“There’s two commies out of the way,” said Mr. Gibbon. “Get a mop! See if anyone heard! Lock the front door! This is it, boys! It’s war! We won a battle but we haven’t won the war yet! Fall to, get this mess cleaned up, load the guns!”
Neither Miss Ball nor Mrs. Gneiss moved a muscle. They looked at Mr. Gibbon with horror.
“Hurry up!” said Mr. Gibbon. “You all deef?”
11
Mrs. Gneiss’s empty suitcases came in handy for storing the dismembered bodies of Juan and the bank guard. At first, Mrs. Gneiss was all in favor of getting the bank guard’s fingerprints on the gun and calling the police. They would tell the police that there had been a terrible fight between the two men. Juan had stabbed the guard and then the guard had shot Juan for stabbing him. Tit for tat, so to speak. It made some sense. But Mr. Gibbon saw that if the guard had been stabbed he wouldn’t have been able to shoot Juan. Or if Juan were shot the guard would have survived. The murder was without precedent if it was to be believed. They gloomily hacked up the bodies with Mr. Gibbon’s hunting knife, stuffed them into Mrs. Gneiss’s suitcases and put the suitcases and the clothes into the attic. Miss Ball’s Stay-Kleen and Surfy Suds took care of the gore on the rug.
Good Old Providence had done them a turn. The neighbors had miraculously not heard “The Fracas,” as Miss Ball called the double murder. The three comrades had stayed up all night keeping a vigil over the bodies in case the police should come. Then they would have said, yes, we killed the lousy commies. But the police never came. And just as well, the two ladies thought. Mr. Gibbon thought differently: he was convinced that Juan and the bank guard were “in cahoots” (the bank guard more than anyone was a stoolie and a cheat, working for coons as he did). Mr. Gibbon was, as he put it, “pleased as punch” to have plugged Juan, a man he suspected to have been spying on him for nearly a year.
But they had to make short-range plans. The morning after the fracas the three sat around the table (the news was on, but spoke only of the gallstones and the war, both with fervor; the disappearance of a certain bank guard was not mentioned). They looked haggard and mussed, having stayed up all night keeping their vigil. They tried to think of a way to cover up the murder for the time being. They knew that afterward, when the truth about the Mount Holly Trust Company was known (a Communist Front Organization filled with black pinkoes), the murder would be laughed off and their fortune would be secure. Meanwhile, they would have to think of a way to pacify the bank guard’s wife. Unless he had been lying when he told Miss Ball that he had to take the groceries home to his wife; maybe he didn’t have a wife at all. But how could they find out?