The Deadly Percheron Read online

  I looked at her and, though I tried hard, I could not keep from smiling. I was enjoying this game. How surprised she would be at what I was going to say next!

  “Who are you?” I asked her. “You tell me who you are first, and then I’ll tell you about him.” I motioned to Felix.

  Her wide mouth lost its smile and her eyes seemed to disappear completely into the shadows of her brows. Her arm dropped onto the bed – away from my shoulders. I missed the familiar pressure.

  “I’m Sonia, darling. Your Sonia. Don’t you really remember? Oh, what a bump you must have had!” She said this last as much to Felix as to me. I could not see the expression on her face, but I could tell from the sound of her voice that she was concerned about me. I found myself wanting to take her into my arms and assure her that I was all right. Instead, I continued to ask questions.

  “But, Sonia, what am I doing here? What are you doing here?”

  She gave me a frightened, non-comprehending look. But when she answered my question she spoke calmly and quietly, the way one talks to an invalid.

  “You live here, John. And I live down the street. You’ve just had a bad fall and you’re still shaken up. Now lie down and forget about everything and when you wake up it will all have come back to you.” She began to fluff the pillows behind my head and to undo my shirt for me. She was putting me to bed.

  “I don’t want to go to sleep,” I said. “I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who you are. Nor how I got here. I’m not even sure I know who I am!” This last was the worst fabrication of all. I knew who I was all right. I was two people: John Brown and George Matthews. But I could not let Felix-Eustace know I had been leading a double life. If he knew, and he really had something to tell about Jacob, he might get suspicious and shut up. At least, that was how I reasoned then.

  Sonia finished taking off my shirt and began to undo my trousers – right in front of Felix and against my protests! She undressed me, took a pair of pajamas out of the bureau and helped me on with them, pulled the covers about me and kissed me on the lips without saying a word. After she kissed me, she said, “I insist that you rest now, John. You may have suffered a concussion, you know. It wouldn’t be good for you to overexert yourself.”

  I sat up in bed abruptly, throwing myself close against her so that she had to embrace me to keep from losing her balance. Her dark hair fell about my face and smelt strangely sweet. I kissed her again.

  “You called me ‘John,’” I said. “That isn’t my right name. My name isn’t John.”

  She laughed at me and laid her head on my shoulder, looking up at me, smiling. “I won’t believe that you’ve lost your memory to that extent! Your name is John Brown and you know it!”

  Felix stared uneasily in his chair. “No, it ain’t, lady,” he said. “That’s Dr George Matthews you’re kissing!”

  Sonia pushed herself away from me. She stared curiously at the little man.

  “You’re kidding,” she said. “He’s John Brown and he works nights at the All-Brite cafeteria.”

  “I don’t know about that, lady,” said Felix. “I only know that when I met him his name was Matthews and he was a doctor.”

  I was not too pleased with this turn in the conversation. I had planned to confuse Felix in an attempt to gain information he might not otherwise let me have – but instead of learning anything myself, Sonia was learning facts about me I would rather she did not know. And there was little I could do about it.

  Sonia looked at me. She was still smiling, but her smile now seemed to say, “You’re trying to fool me, but why?”

  “Are you a doctor, John? You never told me that.”

  “I’m a psychiatrist,” I said. I hesitated, not knowing what to say next. Then I decided that, having gone this far, I had better try to continue the deception – until Felix left. “What I want to know,” I continued, “is what am I doing here? The last I remember I was having a fainting spell in the Canal Street station of the IRT.”

  Sonia stopped smiling. “John, to the best of my knowledge you haven’t been out of Coney Island in the past month. You go to work and you come home, then you go back to work again. The only relaxation you get is after work nights at the cafeteria. Why should you go to Manhattan today? And what business would you have on Canal Street?”

  From now on the game got wilder and wilder. I regretted ever having begun the gambit. But now I was in too deep. I had to continue to lie and hope I could explain it away later. “I had to see Lieutenant Anderson,” I said. “Miss Bulkely awakened me this morning and said Jacob was being held for the murder of Frances Raye. I was home then in my own bedroom in New Jersey. What I want to know is how I got here?”

  Sonia was being motherly – and the attitude did not suit her too well. She put her hand on my forehead. “I’m going to take your temperature. You’re certainly delirious and that’s a sure sign of fever.”

  I put my hands on her shoulders and shook her gently. “I am not delirious!” I said. “Please listen and try to understand what I’m saying to you!” Then I spoke slowly and emphatically, hoping that she would see that I meant more than I said, and keep quiet. “I don’t know you, Sonia. I don’t remember ever having seen you before. I’ve never even seen this room before!”

  Felix still had his hat on his head, but instead of leaving the room he came closer to my bed. He was looking at me and I saw that his forehead was even more wrinkled than was natural. His eyes betrayed his bewilderment. Sonia was regarding me too, but at last she had nothing to say. Her dark eyes had disappeared again into the hollows of her brows and her mouth quivered slightly. She reminded me of a disappointed child who does not realize why she has been disappointed.

  “Frances Raye was killed the twelfth of last October,” said Felix. He put his finger to the brim of his diminutive derby as if to apologize for mentioning this fact. “I know because they had me up as a material witness. I was in j ail three weeks. I was in the Tombs.”

  Sonia looked at Felix and then back at me. She moistened her lips with her tongue, but did not try to smile. I knew that she did not know what we were talking about, but the implications frightened her.

  “Frances Raye was murdered no longer ago than last night!” I contradicted Felix. “Not more than six hours after I left you with that crazy horse of yours on Third Avenue. What sort of a hoax are you trying to bring off now?”

  I should not have raised my voice to the little man. He straightened up so that he seemed to have gained inches of height and his eyes became cold chips of marble. Yet, perhaps, if he got angry enough he would talk.

  “You’ve just lost about ten months someplace, chum!” he said. “Ain’t no business of mine if that’s the way you want it. I came here friendly because I wanted to talk to you to explain how things were – ” He paused and stared at me. “Because I figured you might have been handled a little rough somewhere along the line, and maybe I knew something you oughtta know…and maybe you could tell me some things, too…” He stopped and glanced at Sonia, then shrugged his shoulders and began to move towards the door. “But I see I’m intruding between you and the lady here…”

  I stopped him just before he reached the door. “Don’t leave now, Eustace!” I cried, without realizing until I said it that I had called him by the name I first knew. “I have to get straightened out somehow, don’t I?”

  He came back and sat down again on the chair. “That’s why I’ve been keeping an eye open for you all along,” he said. “I figured there were still some things you were mixed up about.”

  Sonia squeezed my arm and wrinkled her eyes at me. “What are you two talking about? Sonia hasn’t the vaguest notion!”

  “I seem to have forgotten a lot of things,” I said, ignoring her question. “Both of you will have to help me out.”

  Felix and Sonia were watching me. The little man was perplexed; his mouth was straight and his forehead wrinkled. Sonia’s face was expressionless. She was either dissimulating or deeply
puzzled, possibly hurt. I did not know which.

  “You want us to tell you? Is that it?” asked Felix.

  I nodded my head.

  “I’ll start off,” Felix said. “The only time I ever saw you before was on the twelfth of October, last year. A fellow named Jacob Blunt had hired me to do a crazy job for him. I was to pretend I was a leprechaun, whatever that is. He had me memorize some lines I was to say to a man I would meet that night, silly lines that made no sense. I took the job because he paid me well…” And he went on to tell about meeting Jacob and me in the bar off Third Avenue. He left out some of the details. He did not mention the percheron. But what he did say fitted what I remembered–all except the first part. When he had finished, I had some questions to ask.

  I sat on the bed across from the chair on which he was sitting. I watched him while he talked. It was a queer feeling sitting there earnestly regarding a midget, hanging onto his words, trying to discover some key to the bewildering maze of my mysterious past. I realized with a start that the more I looked at him, the less I knew about him. In fact, the more he said, the less I knew.

  “You say Jacob hired you to pretend that you were a leprechaun. Why did he do that?” I asked him.

  The little man shook his head. “Don’t ask me, chum. He didn’t tell me. I only worked for him.”

  “Where did you meet Jacob?” I asked. “And how did he come to hire you?”

  “I answered an ad in the Times,” said Felix. “Then he told me his proposition. It sounded like easy money so I agreed. All I had to do was to be at a particular bar at a particular time and say a few lines to a guy he would bring with him. That was you.”

  “But what about the percheron?” I asked. “Where did it come from?”

  Felix looked blankly at me. “What percheron?” he asked innocently.

  “The big horse out in the street. The horse you told Jacob he would get twenty-five dollars for delivering to Frances Raye.”

  The small man clapped his derby with his hand. “Oh, that horse!” he said. “Oh, I didn’t have anything to do with that! Jacob supplied the horse.”

  I had a feeling that Felix was pulling my leg. He was too bland about this, too eager to be helping and in helping – confuse. “I suppose you know nothing about the flower-wearing or the whistling-at-Carnegie Hall either,” I said sarcastically.

  He shook his head from side to side. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “And neither do I!” said Sonia. “John, you must have a fever! You’re making no sense at all. Who is this Jacob you keep referring to?” Still looking at Felix, I answered her. “Just listen now, I’ll explain later.”

  “What did Jacob and you have to do with the murder of Frances Raye?” I asked the little man.

  Again he shook his head. “Nothing. Nothing at all. That was an accident.”

  “You mean she wasn’t murdered? That she was killed accidentally?”

  “No, no.” He put his pudgy hand to his forehead. “She was killed all right, but they’ve never found out who did it. The accident was that they had me in jail for three weeks as a material witness thinking I knew something about the murder.”

  “What happened to Jacob ? Where is he?”

  “He disappeared completely. I don’t know where he is.”

  “Then what did you do after they released you?” I asked.

  “I went back to work at Coney Island. I’m still working here. But I’ve been spending my spare time looking for you. I thought that maybe it was my fault you lost yourself. I thought you might be in hiding. I wanted to tell you that you were safe – that they couldn’t pin it on you.”

  My mind was whirling. How much of what Felix-Eustace was telling me was true I did not know. If Jacob had been deluding me, what was his motive? Could it be that Jacob had killed Franees Raye and had used me in some way to help him with his crime? I could only question.

  Sonia was standing beside me, frowning. “Darling, please tell me what this is all about?”

  I looked at her, for the first time really critically. She was not a beautiful woman, but I liked the way she looked. There was an honest strength in her features and in her direct gaze. The mannish clothes she wore added to the severe simplicity of her long lines, accentuated them. I realized that few tall women could dress the way she did, successfully. Right now her hand felt soft on my arm, but I sensed that she could be hard if she wanted to…

  “Tell me what you know about me,” I said to her. Her hand tightened on my arm. Felix stood up to go.

  “Don’t leave us yet, Mr Mather,” said Sonia. “I want you to hear this, too.” She loosened her grasp on my arm, and stood up. She looked away from both of us.

  “Your name is John Brown,” she said, as if speaking to the wall. Her voice was quiet, self-contained. I was afraid it was cold. “I met you about a month ago. You worked then, as you work now, in a cafeteria.” She stopped, turned around, her dark eyes seemed to be on fire as she stared at me. “I’ve been sleeping with you for sometime now.”

  Felix made an embarrassed movement towards the door. Sonia jerked her head in his direction. “Don’t leave,” she said, “just as the party’s getting rough.”

  Felix sat down – uncomfortably.

  Sonia, impulsively, put her arm around me. I could feel her warmth through the thin cloth of my pajamas. I wanted to let go, to lean back hard against her, to hold her to me. I did not want to try to think it out.

  “You haven’t talked to me very much,” she was saying. “That’s partly my fault, I suppose, since I haven’t asked many questions. I don’t believe in asking questions.”

  She hesitated, looked around the room, her gaze coming to rest on Felix. He fidgeted under her inspection. Then she went on, “A girl gets curious sometimes… I got curious. I saw where you had been saving money, a lot of money on your salary. I looked through your pockets. I found a slip of paper that had ‘City Hospital’ printed on it – a slip introducing you to the manager of the cafeteria. I knew then that you had been sick… possibly hurt…” Her voice continued, a quiet voice, a soothing voice, a voice that was nice to hear in a nightmare. I stared at the cheap color prints above the bureau, at the well-dressed midget sitting on the rickety chair fondling his derby hat. And as I stared, I had a recurrence of the feeling – the perception of two realities – that I had experienced upon first regaining consciousness a half hour or less before. One level of my mind seemed to be dealing with the present: I was thinking about the little man, Felix Mather he had said his name was… a funny name…I had known him earlier as Eustace, a leprechaun…an even funnier name. But as my eyes kept wandering around the tiny, cramped room looking at the net curtains over the unwashed window, at the reflections of a streetlamp on the dark, streaked glass – another aspect of reality seemed to be lurking on the fringe of my awareness, I had the feeling that something important, something that had great bearing on the here and now which I had been forgetting, lingered on the tip of my tongue. And then my sight settled on the door, focused on the calendar hanging on it, on the large, prominent figures – 1944.

  “…I knew there were many things about you that I didn’t know,” the quiet voice was saying. “I knew that you were still sick…I guessed that there were some things you had forgotten… some things you could not remember. But that made no difference. Just as it makes no difference now that I know… some things. I still feel the same way about you. I still love you just the same, even if I have never told you that I love you until now. Those things that you forgot…those things that I guess you still don’t remember…they don’t make any difference…”

  1944 – those numbers were all I could see. From October, 1943 to August, 1944 was almost a year – ten months that were dark, at least seven that were completely lost. Time that had disappeared, that could not be retrieved and reexamined like a looking glass from which a fragment is missing that will not reflect a full view of your face. A face? A lost mirror? My face? T
he memory that had been lurking just beyond the edge of recall rushed back. A mirror? Why wasn’t there a mirror in my room? Why hadn’t I seen a mirror at the hospital? A child’s voice taunted me with words I could not understand – I heard the voice clearly (I could see the face of the child), but I could not define their meaning. And in this confusion of previous experience, this stretto of trauma like the mingling of voices before the final cadence of a mighty fugue, I returned to the confusion that always lay awaiting me below the topmost layer of my mind.

  Yet out of this welter of images, sounds, ideas, emotions, came one cogent desire that was indeed a drive, a compulsion. I wanted to look into a mirror. I had to see myself in a mirror.

  “I want a mirror,” I said.

  I felt Sonia drop her arm from around me. I saw Felix jump to his feet, take one step backwards. I saw Sonia watching me, looking as if she wanted to cry. “I want a mirror,” I said again.

  “You stay there,” said the girl. She went over to the bureau and opened her purse. She took a small vanity mirror from it. She looked at me for a moment, as if she had not decided what to do about my request, and then handed the small square of silvered glass to me. “It doesn’t make any difference,” she said. “I don’t want you to think that makes any difference. How many times am I going to have to tell you that I never see it anymore?”

  I was looking into the mirror, seeing again my face and the ripe scar, remembering my first sight of it – not too long ago – the curiosity and revulsion that had changed to apprehension and dread and then to acceptance and disgust. And now I heard again and understood the little boy’s words: “Mama, how did he get like that?”

  I walked over to Felix. He stood up to meet me, but even so I had to stoop to get at him. I grabbed his throat in my hands and began to shake him back and forth. He was choking. I was wringing his neck as I might a damp rag.

  “How did you know me? If you hadn’t seen me since last October, how did you know me? I didn’t look like that before!”