I eased my way down the steps slowly, perspiration running down my back in a shallow film. I stood, my limbs as rigid as steel, waiting. Nothing happened, and I began to breathe again. I had nothing but my own nerves to fear, I told myself.
The gymnasium was in the basement. Cautiously, sliding one foot silently before the other, inching my way along to keep from colliding with Indian clubs, horizontal bars, or medicine balls, I made my way across the floor.
I eased Phineas Slack to the rubbing table.
I didn’t move for a moment, weak from reaction. On the table, he began to snore faintly. I pressed my hand over his mouth to stop the sound, which thundered in my cars; then I knew that would never do, and withdrew by hand.
From one window to the other I went, closing the blinds, until the room was totally black. Then I switched on a light.
He looked grotesque, lying there on the rubbing table in the corner, in his purple striped pajamas. I went to a small dressing room at the east end of the gyro, opened a locker, and took out his swimming trunks.
It was not an easy job, getting him out of pajamas into those trunks. He rolled loosely on the table, his arms dangling. I laid the pajamas on the floor near the table. When I was through with him, I would return the pajamas to his room.
I set the two huge lamps up beside the table and turned the switches. The strong rays of the lamps beat down upon him.
I was trembling now, weak and a little sick. I would have liked to go to the living room and wait until it was over; but I had to watch the operation during every moment. I had to regulate the rays, changing the positions of the lamps now and then. He had a very deep tan, which would keep the lamps from changing the hue of his skin, but I would not take chances. I didn’t want him to be cooked in one spot.
We were together like that for three hours and forty-seven minutes. Then he was dead.
That’s all there was to it, no spasms, no disturbance. His heart, and I, had killed him.
Throughout this time I had not smoked, not wanting ashes to be found on the floor. My nerves were crying for a cigarette, but I knew if I paused now, I could never have finished.
With his bulk over my shoulder again, I left the gym by a door that opened on the back yard. I carried him down to his own private strip of beach. Not knowing the time of the tide, I placed his body well back from the water’s edge. Face downward, arms outspread, he lay on the white, pure sand. I shuddered and started back toward the bulk of the house that reared in the darkness, unrelieved by moon or stars.
Tomorrow they would find him. His absence would give Higgins no immediate cause for alarm, as he was often absent. Tomorrow afternoon, Wednesday afternoon, would be about the time. No, this afternoon, for it was now past midnight.
Back in the gym, I replaced the lamps in their accustomed spots, gathered up the purple striped pajamas, switched off the lights, and raised the blinds. The gym was now exactly as I had entered it.
This afternoon they would find him. Very regrettable, they would say, shaking their heads. But he should have steered clear of the things his doctor had warned him against. Only four days ago he had almost killed himself by getting tight and going to sleep in the sun. Now he had. done exactly that! What other conclusions could they draw?
On tiptoe, I climbed the stairs and left his pajamas on the floor beside the bed, the way he would leave them.
Then I returned to the living room, picked up the phone, and softly called a cab. “I’ll be waiting in front,” I said, “don’t blow your horn.”
Now I smoked three cigarettes, dragging on them until they became soggy with heat. Death lay on the beach, and the house was chill and clammy, as if that death were making its presence felt here in the living room.
There was a flash of light through the window. The cab was coming to take me away.
At nine o’clock Wednesday night Vivian and I had our dinner sent to our suite in our Savannah hotel. I’d just got in, and I was tired from the long train trip up from Landan, but inside me there was deep elation.
Vivian was radiant in a black gown, her blond hair piled on the top of her head.
We’d been talking of Uncle Phineas, and I’d told her nothing. I realized that Vivian, too, would have to be watched closely. She’d sworn to get even with the old man...
We had just sat down when there was a knock at the door.
“I’ll get it,” I said. The telegram!
But it wasn’t. I opened the door and saw the slouching, lean figure of Sheriff Hunk Slocum. He twirled his hat in his hand, awkwardly, as I’d first seen it.
“Can I come in, son?”
“Why... why, of course.” Behind me, Vivian had risen from the table. I stepped aside to let the sheriff in.
“Your uncle is dead, son,” he said gently.
“Dead?” I sounded surprised, but not pained. I’d already decided how to play it. People knew how we had felt about each other. If I adopted a sorrowful role, it might strike a false note.
“Dead?” I repeated. “Well, I can’t say that I’m exactly sorry.”
“No,” he said, coming on into the room, “I didn’t think you’d be. We found him on the beach. It looked like he got drunk, wandered down there, and went to sleep in the sun.”
“Nice of you to come up to tell me in person, sheriff. But a telegram would have done just as well.”
“Maybe not. I came in an airplane.”
Slivers of cold gathered in my stomach. Why? Why had he taken a plane, hard as it was to fly these days?
“Yes,” he repeated, “it looked like your uncle got drunk and went to the beach and went to sleep in the sun and died.”
“Looked like?” My voice was thick.
He nodded. “Just looked like. Want to hear what happened?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “I’ll tell you, son. You made your uncle drunk. He was just a lost old man, and deep down he loved you better than life. So you could make him drunk. Then you carried him down to the gymnasium and put him under them ultra-violet ray lamps. The alcohol and the heat and his blood pressure and weak heart knocked him off. You killed him.”
My lips felt dry and cracked. At his every word I was reliving the three hours and forty-seven minutes, walking down the stairs, bent under my uncle’s weight, seeing the purple striped pajamas, blinking in the glare of the lamps, feeling the icy hand of death creeping out from the beach to wrap its fingers about the house.
“You’ll never prove it,” I said hoarsely. “You...”
“But I can, son.” He moved quickly toward me, his hand digging for handcuffs in his rear pocket. The cuffs gleamed, but I was quicker. I had sprung back, my own hand darting into my coat pocket, and now Hunk Slocum drew up stiffly at the sight of the small automatic in my hand.
“All right,” I said, “you’re a pretty smart old geezer. I did kill him. How you reconstructed it I’ll never know, but I think your reconstructing days are over.”
His leathery old cheeks whitened, but he said nothing. And suddenly I didn’t want to kill him. I didn’t want to kill anyone, not any more.
What was it Uncle Phineas had said? “Crooked money is sorrow money, Robert.” I knew now it was so. My gaze flicked to Vivian, who stood frozen beside the table. She’d crooked her way to where she now would get the money, if Slocum took me in. I wondered how long she would keep it, who would take it from her, and with what sorrow...
“I hate to do this, Sheriff,” I said. “But I’m going to wrap a towel around this gun and pull the trigger.” I glanced at Vivian, and my voice caught. “I might even pull it twice.”
Then the hard end of a gun-barrel jabbed me in the spine, and a voice said, “Drop it.”