ALTHOUGH NOT a household name, in spite of the acclaim given to her by fellow mystery writers and critics, Charlotte Armstrong (1905-1969) enjoyed a long and successful career. She found a highly specialized niche when she wrote frequently about peril to the young and to the elderly, creating stories and novels of suspense that focused on that theme.
In no work is this characterized more graphically than in Mischief (1950), in which a psychopathic hotel babysitter gradually becomes unglued as she contemplates killing her young charge. Filmed as Don’t Bother to Knock (1952), it starred the young and beautiful Marilyn Monroe in a rare villainous role. Directed by Roy Baker, it also starred Richard Widmark, Anne Bancroft, and Elisha Cook, Jr.
Another of Armstrong’s powerful suspense novels to be filmed was The Unsuspected (1946), a controversial novel that was both praised by critics for its writing skill but lambasted for disclosing the identity of the killer almost at the outset. A famous radio narrator steals money from his ward’s inheritance and, when his secretary discovers his thievery, he kills her. More deaths follow before he confesses—on air. It was filmed under the same title and released in 1947 to excellent reviews. Directed by Michael Curtiz, it starred Claude Rains, Joan Caulfield, and Audrey Totter.
During the filming of The Unsuspected, Armstrong and her family permanently moved from New York to California, where she continued to write stores and more than twenty novels, one of which, A Dram of Poison (1956), won the Edgar as the best novel of the year. She also wrote television scripts, including several that were produced by Alfred Hitchcock.
“The Enemy” was originally published in the May 1951 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; it was first collected in The Albatross by Charlotte Armstrong (New York, Coward-McCann, 1957).
By Charlotte Armstrong
THEY SAT late at the lunch table and afterward moved through the dim, cool, high-ceilinged rooms to the Judge’s library where, in their quiet talk, the old man’s past and the young man’s future seemed to telescope and touch. But at twenty minutes after three, on that hot, bright, June Saturday afternoon, the present tense erupted. Out in the quiet street arose the sound of trouble.
Judge Kittinger adjusted his pince-nez, rose, and led the way to his old-fashioned veranda from which they could overlook the tree-roofed intersection of Greenwood Lane and Hannibal Street. Near the steps to the corner house, opposite, there was a surging knot of children and one man. Now, from the house on the Judge’s left, a woman in a blue house dress ran diagonally toward the excitement. And a police car slipped up Hannibal Street, gliding to the curb. One tall officer plunged into the group and threw restraining arms around a screaming boy.
Mike Russell, saying to his host, “Excuse me, sir,” went rapidly across the street. Trouble’s center was the boy, ten or eleven years old, a towheaded boy, with tawny-lashed blue eyes, a straight nose, a fine brow. He was beside himself, writhing in the policeman’s grasp. The woman in the blue dress was yammering at him. “Freddy! Freddy! Freddy!” Her voice simply did not reach his ears.
“You ole stinker! You rotten ole stinker! You ole nut!” All the boy’s heart was in the epithets.
“Now, listen . . .” The cop shook the boy who, helpless in those powerful hands, yet blazed. His fury had stung to crimson the face of the grown man at whom it was directed.
This man, who stood with his back to the house as one besieged, was plump, half-bald, with eyes much magnified by glasses. “Attacked me!” he cried in a high whine. “Rang my bell and absolutely leaped on me!”
Out of the seven or eight small boys clustered around them came overlapping fragments of shrill sentences. It was clear only that they opposed the man. A small woman in a print dress, a man in shorts, whose bare chest was winter-white, stood a little apart, hesitant and distressed. Up on the veranda of the house the screen door was half-open, and a woman seated in a wheelchair peered forth anxiously.
On the green grass, in the shade, perhaps thirty feet away, there lay in death a small brown-and-white dog.
The Judge’s luncheon guest observed all this. When the Judge drew near, there was a lessening of the noise. Judge Kittinger said, “This is Freddy Titus, isn’t it? Mr. Matlin? What’s happened?”
The man’s head jerked. “I,” he said, “did nothing to the dog. Why would I trouble to hurt the boy’s dog? I try—you know this, Judge—I try to live in peace here. But these kids are terrors! They’ve made this block a perfect hell for me and my family.” The man’s voice shook. “My wife, who is not strong . . . My stepdaughter, who is a cripple . . . These kids are no better than a slum gang. They are vicious! That boy rang my bell and attacked . . .! I’ll have him up for assault! I . . .”
The Judge’s face was old ivory and he was aloof behind it.
On the porch a girl pushed past the woman in the chair, a girl who walked with a lurching gait.
Mike Russell asked, quietly, “Why do the boys say it was you, Mr. Matlin, who hurt the dog?”
The kids chorused. “He’s an ole mean . . .” “He’s a nut . . .” “Just because . . .” “. . . took Clive’s bat and . . .” “. . . chases us . . .” “. . . tries to put everything on us . . .” “. . . told my mother lies . . .” “. . . just because . . .”
He is our enemy, they were saying; he is our enemy.
“They . . .” began Matlin, his threat thick with anger.
“Hold it a minute.” The second cop, the thin one, walked toward where the dog was lying.
“Somebody,” said Mike Russell in a low voice, “must do something for the boy.”
The Judge looked down at the frantic child. He said, gently, “I am as sorry as I can be, Freddy . . .” But in his old heart there was too much known, and too many little dogs he remembered that had already died, and even if he were as sorry as he could be, he couldn’t be sorry enough. The boy’s eyes turned, rejected, returned. To the enemy.
Russell moved near the woman in blue, who pertained to this boy somehow. “His mother?”
“His folks are away. I’m there to take care of him,” she snapped, as if she felt herself put upon by a crisis she had not contracted to face.
“Can they be reached?”
“No,” she said decisively.
The young man put his stranger’s hand on the boy’s rigid little shoulder. But he too was rejected. Freddy’s eyes, brilliant with hatred, clung to the enemy. Hatred doesn’t cry.
“Listen,” said the tall cop, “if you could hang onto him for a minute . . .”
“Not I . . .” said Russell.
The thin cop came back. “Looks like the dog got poison. When was he found?”
“Just now,” the kids said.
“Where? There?”
“Up Hannibal Street. Right on the edge of ole Matlin’s back lot.”
“Edge of my lot!” Matlin’s color freshened again. “On the sidewalk, why don’t you say? Why don’t you tell the truth?”
“We are! We don’t tell lies!”
“Quiet, you guys,” the cop said. “Pipe down, now.”
“Heaven’s my witness, I wasn’t even here!” cried Matlin. “I played nine holes of golf today. I didn’t get home until . . . May?” he called over his shoulder. “What time did I come in?”
The girl on the porch came slowly down, moving awkwardly on her uneven legs. She was in her twenties, no child. Nor was she a woman. She said in a blurting manner, “About three o’clock, Daddy Earl. But the dog was dead.”
“What’s that, Miss?”
“This is my step-daughter . . .”
“The dog was dead,” the girl said, “before he came home. I saw it from upstairs, before three o’clock. Lying by the sidewalk.”
“You drove in from Hannibal Street, Mr. Matlin? Looks like you’d have seen the dog.”
Matlin said with nervous thoughtfulness, “I don’t know. My mind . . . Yes, I . . .”
“He’s telling a lie!”
“Freddy!”
“Listen to that,” said May Matlin, “will you?”
“She’s a liar, too!”
The cop shook Freddy. Mr. Matlin made a sound of helpless exasperation. He said to the girl, “Go keep your mother inside, May.” He raised his arm as if to wave. “It’s all right, honey,” he called to the woman in the chair, with a false cheeriness that grated on the ear. “There’s nothing to worry about, now.”
Freddy’s jaw shifted and young Russell’s watching eyes winced. The girl began to lurch back to the house.
“It was my wife who put in the call,” Matlin said. “After all, they were on me like a pack of wolves. Now, I . . . I understand that the boy’s upset. But all the same, he cannot . . . He must learn . . . I will not have . . . I have enough to contend with, without this malice, this unwarranted antagonism, this persecution . . .”
Freddy’s eyes were unwinking.
“It has got to stop!” said Matlin almost hysterically.
“Yes,” murmured Mike Russell, “I should think so.” Judge Kittinger’s white head, nodding, agreed.
“We’ve heard about quite a few dog-poisoning cases over the line in Redfern,” said the thin cop with professional calm. “None here.”
The man in the shorts hitched them up, looking shocked. “Who’d do a thing like that?”
A boy said, boldly, “Ole Matlin would.” He had an underslung jaw and wore spectacles on his snub nose. “I’m Phil Bourchard,” he said to the cop. He had courage.
“We jist know,” said another. “I’m Ernie Allen.” Partisanship radiated from his whole thin body. “Ole Matlin doesn’t want anybody on his ole property.”
“Sure.” “He doesn’t want anybody on his ole property.” “It was ole Matlin.”
“It was. It was,” said Freddy Titus.
“Freddy,” said the housekeeper in blue, “now, you better be still. I’ll tell your Dad.” It was a meaningless fumble for control. The boy didn’t even hear it.
Judge Kittinger tried, patiently. “You can’t accuse without cause, Freddy.”
“Bones didn’t hurt his ole property. Bones wouldn’t hurt anything. Ole Matlin did it.”
“You lying little devil!”
“He’s a liar!”
The cop gave Freddy another shake. “You kids found him, eh?”
“We were up at Bourchard’s and were going down to the Titus house.”
“And he was dead,” said Freddy.
“I know nothing about it,” said Matlin icily. “Nothing at all.”
The cop, standing between, said wearily, “Any of you people see what coulda happened?”
“I was sitting in my backyard,” said the man in shorts. “I’m Daugherty, next door, up Hannibal Street. Didn’t see a thing.”
The small woman in a print dress spoke up. “I am Mrs. Page. I live across the corner, Officer. I believe I did see a strange man go into Mr. Matlin’s driveway this morning.”
“When was this, Ma’am?”
“About eleven o’clock. He was poorly dressed. He walked up the drive and around the garage.”
“Didn’t go to the house?”
“No. He was only there a minute. I believe he was carrying something. He was rather furtive. And very poorly dressed, almost like a tramp.”
There was a certain relaxing, among the elders. “Ah, the tramp,” said Mike Russell. “The good old reliable tramp. Are you sure, Mrs. Page? It’s very unlikely . . . .”
But she bristled. “Do you think I am lying?”
Russell’s lips parted, but he felt the Judge’s hand on his arm. “This is my guest, Mr. Russell . . . Freddy.” The Judge’s voice was gentle. “Let him go, Officer. I’m sure he understands, now. Mr. Matlin was not even at home, Freddy. It’s possible that this . . . er . . . stranger . . . Or it may have been an accident . . .”
“Wasn’t a tramp. Wasn’t an accident.”
“You can’t know that, boy,” said the Judge, somewhat sharply. Freddy said nothing. As the officer slowly released his grasp, the boy took a free step, backwards, and the other boys surged to surround him. There stood the enemy, the monster who killed and lied, and the grown-ups with their reasonable doubts were on the monster’s side. But the boys knew what Freddy knew. They stood together.
“Somebody,” murmured the Judge’s guest, “somebody’s got to help the boy.” And the Judge sighed.
The cops went up Hannibal Street, toward Matlin’s back lot, with Mr. Daugherty. Matlin lingered at the corner talking to Mrs. Page. In the front window of Matlin’s house the curtain fell across the glass.
Mike Russell sidled up to the housekeeper. “Any uncles or aunts here in town? A grandmother?”
“No,” she said, shortly.
“Brothers or sisters, Mrs. . . .?”
“Miz Somers. No, he’s the only one. Only reason they didn’t take him along was it’s the last week of school and he didn’t want to miss.”
Mike Russell’s brown eyes suggested the soft texture of velvet, and they were deeply distressed. She slid away from their appeal. “He’ll just have to take it, I guess, like everybody else,” Mrs. Somers said. “These things happen.”
He was listening intently. “Don’t you care for dogs?”
“I don’t mind a dog,” she said. She arched her neck. She was going to call to the boy.
“Wait. Tell me, does the family go to church? Is there a pastor or a priest who knows the boy?”
“They don’t go, far as I ever saw.” She looked at him as if he were an eccentric.
“Then school. He has a teacher. What grade?”
“Sixth grade,” she said. “Miss Dana. Oh, he’ll be okay.” Her voice grew loud, to reach the boy and hint to him. “He’s a big boy.”
Russell said, desperately, “Is there no way to telephone his parents?”
“They’re on the road. They’ll be in some time tomorrow. That’s all I know.” She was annoyed. “I’ll take care of him. That’s why I’m here.” She raised her voice and this time it was arch and seductive. “Freddy, better come wash your face. I know where there’s some chocolate cookies.”
The velvet left the young man’s eyes. Hard as buttons, they gazed for a moment at the woman. Then he whipped around and left her. He walked over to where the kids had drifted, near the little dead creature on the grass. He said softly, “Bones had his own doctor, Freddy? Tell me his name?” The boy’s eyes flickered. “We must know what it was that he took. A doctor can tell. I think his own doctor would be best, don’t you?”
The boy nodded, mumbled a name, an address. That Russell mastered the name and the numbers, asking for no repetition, was a sign of his concern. Besides, it was this young man’s quality—that he listened. “May I take him, Freddy? I have a car. We ought to have a blanket,” he added softly, “a soft, clean blanket.”
“I got one, Freddy . . .” “My mother’d let me . . .”
“I can get one,” Freddy said brusquely. They wheeled, almost in formation.
Mrs. Somers frowned. “You must let them take a blanket,” Russell warned her, and his eyes were cold.
“I will explain to Mrs. Titus,” said the Judge quickly.
“Quite a fuss,” she said, and tossed her head and crossed the road.
Russell gave the Judge a quick nervous grin. He walked to the returning cops. “You’ll want to run tests, I suppose? Can the dog’s own vet do it?”
“Certainly. Humane officer will have to be in charge. But that’s what the vet’ll want.”
“I’ll take the dog, then. Any traces up there?”
“Not a thing.”
“Will you explain to the boy that you are investigating?”
“Well, you know how these things go.” The cop’s feet shuffled. “Humane officer does what he can. Probably, Monday, after we identify the poison, he’ll check the drug stores. Usually, if it is a cranky neighbor, he has already put in a complaint about the dog. This Matlin says he never did. The humane officer will get on it, Monday. He’s out of town today. The devil of these cases, we can’t prove a thing, usually. You get an idea who it was, maybe you can scare him. It’s a misdemeanor, all right. Never heard of a conviction, myself.”
“But will you explain to the boy . . .?” Russell stopped, chewed his lip, and the Judge sighed.
“Yeah, it’s tough on a kid,” the cop said.
When the Judge’s guest came back, it was nearly five o’clock. He said, “I came to say goodbye, sir, and to thank you for the . . .” But his mind wasn’t on the sentence and he lost it and looked up.
The Judge’s eyes were affectionate. “Worried?”
“Judge, sir,” the young man said, “must they feed him? Where, sir, in this classy neighborhood is there an understanding woman’s heart? I herded them to that Mrs. Allen. But she winced, sir, and she diverted them. She didn’t want to deal with tragedy, didn’t want to think about it. She offered cakes and cokes and games.”
“But my dear boy . . .”
“What do they teach the kids these days, Judge? To turn away? Put something in your stomach. Take a drink. Play a game. Don’t weep for your dead. Just skip it, think about something else.”
“I’m afraid the boy’s alone,” the Judge said gently, “but it’s only for the night.” His voice was melodious. “Can’t be sheltered from grief when it comes. None of us can.”
“Excuse me, sir, but I wish he would grieve. I wish he would bawl his heart out. Wash out that black hate. I ought to go home. None of my concern. It’s a woman’s job.” He moved and his hand went toward the phone. “He has a teacher. I can’t help feeling concerned, sir. May I try?”
The Judge said, “Of course, Mike,” and he put his brittle old bones into a chair.
Mike Russell pried the number out of the Board of Education.
“Miss Lillian Dana? My name is Russell. You know a boy named Freddy Titus?”
“Oh, yes. He’s in my class.” The voice was pleasing.
“Miss Dana, there is trouble. You know Judge Kittinger’s house? Could you come there?”
“What is the trouble?”
“Freddy’s little dog is dead of poison. I’m afraid Freddy is in a bad state. There is no one to help him. His folks are away. The woman taking care of him,” Mike’s careful explanatory sentences burst into indignation, “has no more sympathetic imagination than a broken clothes-pole.” He heard a little gasp. “I’d like to help him, Miss Dana, but I’m a man and a stranger, and the Judge . . .” He paused.
“. . . is old,” said the Judge in his chair.
“I’m terribly sorry,” the voice on the phone said slowly. “Freddy’s a wonderful boy.”
“You are his friend?”
“Yes, we are friends.”
“Then, could you come? You see, we’ve got to get a terrible idea out of his head. He thinks a man across the street poisoned his dog on purpose. Miss Dana, he has no doubt! And he doesn’t cry.” She gasped again. “Greenwood Lane,” he said, “and Hannibal Street—the southeast corner.”
She said, “I’ll come. I have a car. I’ll come as soon as I can.”
Russell turned and caught the Judge biting his lips. “Am I making too much of this, sir?” he inquired humbly.
“I don’t like the boy’s stubborn conviction.” The Judge’s voice was dry and clear. “Any more than you do. I agree that he must be brought to understand. But . . .” the old man shifted in the chair. “Of course, the man, Matlin, is a fool, Mike. There is something solemn and silly about him that makes him fair game. He’s unfortunate. He married a widow with a crippled child, and no sooner were they married than she collapsed. And he’s not well off. He’s encumbered with that enormous house.”
“What does he do, sir?”
“He’s a photographer. Oh, he struggles, tries his best, and all that. But with such tension, Mike. That poor misshapen girl over there ties to keep the house, devoted to her mother. Matlin works hard, is devoted, too. And yet the sum comes out in petty strife, nerves, quarrels, uproar. And certainly it cannot be necessary to feud with children.”
“The kids have done their share of that, I’ll bet,” mused Mike. “The kids are delighted—a neighborhood ogre, to add the fine flavor of menace. A focus for mischief. An enemy.”
“True enough.” The Judge sighed.
“So the myth is made. No rumor about ole Matlin loses anything in the telling. I can see it’s been built up. You don’t knock it down in a day.”
“No,” said the Judge uneasily. He got up from the chair.
The young man rubbed his dark head. “I don’t like it, sir. We don’t know what’s in the kids’ minds, or who their heroes are. There is only the gang. What do you suppose it advises?”
“What could it advise, after all?” said the Judge crisply. “This isn’t the slums, whatever Matlin says.” He went nervously to the window. He fiddled with the shade pull. He said, suddenly, “From my little summer house in the backyard you can overhear the gang. They congregate under that oak. Go and eavesdrop, Mike.”
The young man snapped to attention. “Yes, sir.”
“I . . . think we had better know,” said the Judge, a trifle sheepishly.
The kids sat under the oak, in a grassy hollow. Freddy was the core. His face was tight. His eyes never left off watching the house of the enemy. The others watched him, or hung their heads, or watched their own brown hands play with the grass.
They were not chattering. There hung about them a heavy, sullen silence, heavy with a sense of tragedy, sullen with a sense of wrong, and from time to time one voice or another would fling out a pronouncement, which would sink into the silence, thickening its ugliness . . .
The Judge looked up from his paper. “Could you . . .?”
“I could hear,” said Mike in a quiet voice. “They are condemning the law, sir. They call it corrupt. They are quite certain that Matlin killed the dog. They see themselves as Robin Hoods, vigilantes, defending the weak, the wronged, the dog. They think they are discussing justice. They are waiting for dark. They speak of weapons, sir—the only ones they have. B.B. guns, after dark.”
“Great heavens!”
“Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to stop it.”
Mrs. Somers was cooking supper when he tapped on the screen. “Oh, it’s you. What do you want?”
“I want your help, Mrs. Somers. For Freddy.”
“Freddy,” she interrupted loudly, with her nose high, “is going to have his supper and go to bed his regular time, and that’s about all Freddy. Now, what did you want?”
He said, “I want you to let me take the boy to my apartment for the night.”
“I couldn’t do that!” She was scandalized.
“The Judge will vouch . . .”
“Now, see here, Mr. what’syourname—Russell. This isn’t my house and Freddy’s not my boy. I’m responsible to Mr. and Mrs. Titus. You’re a stranger to me. As far as I can see, Freddy is no business of yours whatsoever.”
“Which is his room?” asked Mike sharply.
“Why do you want to know?” She was hostile and suspicious.
“Where does he keep his B.B. gun?”
She was startled to an answer. “In the shed out back. Why?”
He told her.
“Kid’s talk,” she scoffed. “You don’t know much about kids, do you, young man? Freddy will go to sleep. First thing he’ll know, it’s morning. That’s about the size of it.”
“You may be right. I hope so.”
Mrs. Somers slapped potatoes into the pan. Her lips quivered indignantly. She felt annoyed because she was a little shaken. The strange young man really had hoped so.
Russell scanned the street, went across to Matlin’s house. The man himself answered the bell. The air in this house was stale, and bore the faint smell of old grease. There was over everything an atmosphere of struggle and despair. Many things ought to have been repaired and had not been repaired. The place was too big. There wasn’t enough money, or strength. It was too much.
Mrs. Matlin could not walk. Otherwise, one saw, she struggled and did the best she could. She had a lost look, as if some anxiety, ever present, took about nine-tenths of her attention. May Matlin limped in and sat down, lumpishly.
Russell began earnestly, “Mr. Matlin, I don’t know how this situation between you and the boys began. I can guess that the kids are much to blame. I imagine they enjoy it.” He smiled. He wanted to be sympathetic toward this man.
“Of course they enjoy it.” Matlin looked triumphant.
“They call me The Witch,” the girl said. “Pretend they’re scared of me. The devils. I’m scared of them.”
Matlin flicked a nervous eye at the woman in the wheelchair. “The truth is, Mr. Russell,” he said in his high whine, “they’re vicious.”
“It’s too bad,” said his wife in a low voice. “I think it’s dangerous.”
“Mama, you mustn’t worry,” said the girl in an entirely new tone. “I won’t let them hurt you. Nobody will hurt you.”
“Be quiet, May,” said Matlin. “You’ll upset her. Of course nobody will hurt her.”
“Yes, it is dangerous, Mrs. Matlin,” said Russell quietly. “That’s why I came over.”
Matlin goggled. “What? What’s this?”
“Could I possibly persuade you, sir, to spend the night away from this neighborhood . . . and depart noisily?”
“No,” said Matlin, raring up, his ego bristling, “no, you cannot! I will under no circumstances be driven away from my own home.” His voice rose. “Furthermore, I certainly will not leave my wife and step-daughter.”
“We could manage, dear,” said Mrs. Matlin anxiously.
Russell told them about the talk under the oak, the B.B. gun.
“Devils,” said May Matlin, “absolutely . . .”
“Oh, Earl,” trembled Mrs. Matlin, “maybe we had all better go away.”
Matlin, red-necked, furious, said, “We own this property. We pay our taxes. We have our rights. Let them! Let them try something like that! Then, I think the law would have something to say. This is outrageous! I did not harm that animal. Therefore, I defy . . .” He looked solemn and silly, as the Judge had said, with his face crimson, his weak eyes rolling.
Russell rose. “I thought I ought to make the suggestion,” he said mildly, “because it would be the safest thing to do. But don’t worry, Mrs. Matlin, because I . . .”
“A B.B. gun can blind . . .” she said tensely.
“Or even worse,” Mike agreed. “But I am thinking of the . . .”
“Just a minute,” Matlin roared. “You can’t come in here and terrify my wife! She is not strong. You have no right.” He drew himself up with his feet at a right angle, his pudgy arm extended, his plump jowls quivering. “Get out,” he cried. He looked ridiculous.
Whether the young man and the bewildered woman in the chair might have understood each other was not to be known. Russell, of course, got out. May Matlin hobbled to the door and as Russell went through it, she said, “Well, you warned us, anyhow.” And her lips came together, sharply.
Russell plodded across the pavement again. Long enchanting shadows from the lowering sun struck aslant through the golden air and all the old houses were gilded and softened in their green setting. He moved toward the big oak. He hunkered down. The sun struck its golden shafts deep under the boughs. “How’s it going?” he asked.
Freddy Titus looked frozen and still. “Okay,” said Phil Bourchard with elaborate ease. Light on his owlish glasses hid the eyes.
Mike opened his lips, hesitated. Supper time struck on the neighborhood clock. Calls, like chimes, were sounding.
“. . . ‘s my Mom,” said Ernie Allen. “See you after.”
“See you after, Freddy.”
“Okay”
“Okay”
Mrs. Somers’s hoot had chimed with the rest and now Freddy got up, stiffly.
“Okay?” said Mike Russell. The useful syllables that take any meaning at all in American mouths asked, “Are you feeling less bitter, boy? Are you any easier?”
“Okay,” said Freddy. The same syllables shut the man out.
Mike opened his lips. Closed them. Freddy went across the lawn to his kitchen door. There was a brown crockery bowl on the back stoop. His sneaker, rigid on the ankle, stepped over it. Mike Russell watched, and then, with a movement of his arms, almost as if he would wring his hands, he went up the Judge’s steps.
“Well?” The Judge opened his door. “Did you talk to the boy?”
Russell didn’t answer. He sat down.
The Judge stood over him. “The boy . . . The enormity of this whole idea must be explained to him.”
“I can’t explain,” Mike said. “I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.”
“Perhaps I had better . . .”
“What are you going to say, sir?”
“Why, give him the facts,” the Judge cried.
“The facts are . . . the dog is dead.”
“There are no facts that point to Matlin.”
“There are no facts that point to a tramp, either. That’s too sloppy, sir.”
“What are you driving at?”
“Judge, the boy is more rightfully suspicious than we are.”
“Nonsense,” said the Judge. “The girl saw the dog’s body before Matlin came . . .”
“There is no alibi for poison,” Mike said sadly.
“Are you saying the man is a liar?”
“Liars,” sighed Mike. “Truth and lies. How are those kids going to understand, sir? To that Mrs. Page, to the lot of them, Truth is only a subjective intention. ‘I am no liar,’ sez she, sez he, ‘I intend to be truthful. So do not insult me.’ Lord, when will we begin? It’s what we were talking about at lunch, sir. What you and I believe. What the race has been told and told in such agony, in a million years of bitter lesson. Error, we were saying. Error is the enemy.”
He flung out of the chair. “We know that to tell the truth is not merely a good intention. It’s a damned difficult thing to do. It’s a skill, to be practiced. It’s a technique. It’s an effort. It takes brains. It takes watching. It takes humility and self-examination. It’s a science and an art . . .
“Why don’t we tell the kids these things? Why is everyone locked up in anger, shouting liar at the other side? Why don’t they automatically know how easy it is to be, not wicked, but mistaken? Why is there this notion of violence? Because Freddy doesn’t think to himself, ‘Wait a minute. I might be wrong.’ The habit isn’t there. Instead, there are the heroes—the big-muscled, noble-hearted, gun-toting heroes, blind in a righteousness totally arranged by the author. Excuse me, sir.”
“All that may be,” said the Judge grimly, “and I agree. But the police know the lesson. They . . .”
“They don’t care.”
“What?”
“Don’t care enough, sir. None of us cares enough—about the dog.”
“I see,” said the Judge. “Yes, I see. We haven’t the least idea what happened to the dog.” He touched his pince-nez.
Mike rubbed his head wearily. “Don’t know what to do except sit under his window the night through. Hardly seems good enough.”
The Judge said, simply, “Why don’t you find out what happened to the dog?”
The young man’s face changed. “What we need, sir,” said Mike slowly, “is to teach Freddy how to ask for it. Just to ask for it. Just to want it.” The old man and the young man looked at each other. Past and future telescoped. “Now,” Mike said. “Before dark.”
Supper time, for the kids, was only twenty minutes long. When the girl in the brown dress with the bare blonde head got out of the shabby coupé, the gang was gathered again in its hollow under the oak. She went to them and sank down on the ground. “Ah, Freddy, was it Bones? Your dear little dog you wrote about in the essay?”
“Yes, Miss Dana.” Freddy’s voice was shrill and hostile. I won’t be touched! it cried to her. So she said no more, but sat there on the ground, and presently she began to cry. There was contagion. The simplest thing in the world. First, one of the smaller ones, whimpering. Finally, Freddy Titus, bending over. Her arm guided his head, and then he lay weeping in her lap.
Russell, up in the summer house, closed his eyes and praised the Lord. In a little while he swung his legs over the railing and slid down the bank. “How do? I’m Mike Russell.”
“I’m Lillian Dana.” She was quick and intelligent, and her tears were real.
“Fellows,” said Mike briskly, “you know what’s got to be done, don’t you? We’ve got to solve this case.”
They turned their woeful faces.
He said, deliberately, “It’s just the same as murder. It is a murder.”
“Yeah,” said Freddy and sat up, tears drying. “And it was ole Matlin.”
“Then we have to prove it.”
Miss Lillian Dana saw the boy’s face lock. He didn’t need to prove anything, the look proclaimed. He knew. She leaned over a little and said, “But we can’t make an ugly mistake and put it on Bones’s account. Bones was a fine dog. Oh, that would be a terrible monument.” Freddy’s eyes turned, startled.
“It’s up to us,” said Mike gratefully, “to go after the real facts, with real detective work. For Bones’s sake.”
“It’s the least we can do for him,” said Miss Dana, calmly and decisively.
Freddy’s face lifted.
“Trouble is,” Russell went on quickly, “people get things wrong. Sometimes they don’t remember straight. They make mistakes.”
“Ole Matlin tells lies,” said Freddy.
“If he does,” said Russell cheerfully, “then we’ve got to prove that he does. Now, I’ve figured out a plan, if Miss Dana will help us. You pick a couple of the fellows, Fred. Have to go to all the houses around and ask some questions. Better pick the smartest ones. To find out the truth is very hard,” he challenged.
“And then?” said Miss Dana in a fluttery voice.
“Then they, and you, if you will . . .”
“Me?” She straightened. “I am a schoolteacher, Mr. Russell. Won’t the police . . .?”
“Not before dark.”
“What are you going to be doing?”
“Dirtier work.”
She bit her lip. “It’s nosey. It’s . . . not done.”
“No,” he agreed. “You may lose your job.”
She wasn’t a bad-looking young woman. Her eyes were fine. Her brow was serious, but there was the ghost of a dimple in her cheek. Her hands moved. “Oh, well, I can always take up beauty culture or something. What are the questions?” She had a pad of paper and a pencil half out of her purse, and looked alert and efficient.
Now, as the gang huddled, there was a warm sense of conspiracy growing. “Going to be the dickens of a job,” Russell warned them. And he outlined some questions. “Now, don’t let anybody fool you into taking a sloppy answer,” he concluded. “Ask how they know. Get real evidence. But don’t go to Matlin’s—I’ll go there.”
“I’m not afraid of him.” Freddy’s nostrils flared.
“I think I stand a better chance of getting the answers,” said Russell coolly. “Aren’t we after the answers?”
Freddy swallowed. “And if it turns out . . .?”
“It turns out the way it turns out,” said Russell, rumpling the tow head. “Choose your henchmen. Tough, remember.”
“Phil. Ernie.” The kids who were left out wailed as the three small boys and their teacher, who wasn’t a lot bigger, rose from the ground.
“It’ll be tough, Mr. Russell,” Miss Dana said grimly. “Whoever you are, thank you for getting me into this.”
“I’m just a stranger,” he said gently, looking down at her face. “But you are a friend and a teacher.” Pain crossed her eyes. “You’ll be teaching now, you know.”
Her chin went up. “Okay kids. I’ll keep the paper and pencil. Freddy, wipe your face. Stick your shirt in, Phil. Now, let’s organize . . .”
It was nearly nine o’clock when the boys and the teacher, looking rather exhausted, came back to the Judge’s house. Russell, whose face was grave, reached for the papers in her hands.
“Just a minute,” said Miss Dana. “Judge, we have some questions.”
Ernie Allen bared all his heap of teeth and stepped forward. “Did you see Bones today?” he asked with the firm skill of repetition. The Judge nodded. “How many times and when?”
“Once. Er . . . shortly before noon. He crossed my yard, going east.”
The boys bent over the pad. Then Freddy’s lips opened hard. “How do you know the time, Judge Kittinger?”
“Well,” said the Judge, “hm . . . let me think. I was looking out the window for my company and just then he arrived.”
“Five minutes of one, sir,” Mike said.
Freddy flashed around. “What makes you sure?”
“I looked at my watch,” said Russell. “I was taught to be exactly five minutes early when I’m asked to a meal.” There was a nodding among the boys, and Miss Dana wrote on the pad.
“Then I was mistaken,” said the Judge, thoughtfully. “It was shortly before one. Of course.”
Phil Bourchard took over. “Did you see anyone go into Matlin’s driveway or back lot?”
“I did not.”
“Were you out of doors or did you look up that way?”
“Yes, I . . . When we left the table. Mike?”
“At two-thirty, sir.”
“How do you know that time for sure?” asked Freddy Titus.
“Because I wondered if I could politely stay a little longer.” Russell’s eyes congratulated Miss Lillian Dana. She had made them a team, and on it, Freddy was the How-do-you-know-for-sure Department.
“Can you swear,” continued Phil to the Judge, “there was nobody at all around Matlin’s back lot then?”
“As far as my view goes,” answered the Judge cautiously.
Freddy said promptly, “He couldn’t see much. Too many trees. We can’t count that.”
They looked at Miss Dana and she marked on the pad. “Thank you. Now, you have a cook, sir? We must question her.”
“This way,” said the Judge, rising and bowing.
Russell looked after them and his eyes were velvet again. He met the Judge’s twinkle. Then he sat down and ran an eye quickly over some of the sheets of paper, passing each on to his host.
Startled, he looked up. Lillian Dana, standing in the door, was watching his face.
“Do you think, Mike . . .?”
A paper drooped in the Judge’s hand.
“We can’t stop,” she challenged.
Russell nodded, and turned to the Judge. “May need some high brass, sir.” The Judge rose. “And tell me, sir, where Matlin plays golf. And the telephone number of the Salvage League. No, Miss Dana, we can’t stop. We’ll take it where it turns.”
“We must,” she said.
It was nearly ten when the neighbors began to come in. The Judge greeted them soberly. The Chief of Police arrived. Mrs. Somers, looking grim and uprooted in a crêpe dress, came. Mr. Matlin, Mrs. Page, Mr. and Mrs. Daugherty, a Mr. and Mrs. Baker, and Diane Bourchard who was sixteen. They looked curiously at the tight little group, the boys and their blonde teacher.
Last of all to arrive was young Mr. Russell, who slipped in from the dark veranda, accepted the Judge’s nod, and called the meeting to order.
“We have been investigating the strange death of a dog,” he began. “Chief Anderson, while we know your department would have done so in good time, we also know you are busy, and some of us,” he glanced at the dark window pane, “couldn’t wait. Will you help us now?”
The Chief said, genially, “That’s why I’m here, I guess.” It was the Judge and his stature that gave this meeting any standing. Naïve, young, a little absurd it might have seemed had not the old man sat so quietly attentive among them.
“Thank you, sir. Now, all we want to know is what happened to the dog.” Russell looked about him. “First, let us demolish the tramp.” Mrs. Page’s feathers ruffled. Russell smiled at her. “Mrs. Page saw a man go down Matlin’s drive this morning. The Salvage League sent a truck to pick up rags and papers which at ten forty-two was parked in front of the Daughertys’. The man, who seemed poorly dressed in his working clothes, went to the tool room behind Matlin’s garage, as he had been instructed to. He picked up a bundle and returned to his truck. Mrs. Page,” purred Mike to her scarlet face, “the man was there. It was only your opinion about him that proves to have been, not a lie, but an error.”
He turned his head. “Now, we have tried to trace the dog’s day and we have done remarkably well, too.” As he traced it for them, some faces began to wear at least the ghost of a smile, seeing the little dog frisking through the neighborhood. “Just before one,” Mike went on, “Bones ran across the Judge’s yard to the Allens’ where the kids were playing ball. Up to this time no one saw Bones above Greenwood Lane or up Hannibal Street. But Miss Diane Bourchard, recovering from a sore throat, was not in school today. After lunch, she sat on her porch directly across from Mr. Matlin’s back lot. She was waiting for school to be out, when she expected her friends to come by.
“She saw, not Bones, but Corky, an animal belonging to Mr. Daugherty, playing in Matlin’s lot at about two o’clock. I want your opinion. If poisoned bait had been lying there at two, would Corky have found it?”
“Seems so,” said Daugherty. “Thank God Corky didn’t.” He bit his tongue. “Corky’s a show dog,” he blundered.
“But Bones,” said Russell gently, “was more like a friend. That’s why we care, of course.”
“It’s a damned shame!” Daugherty looked around angrily.
“It is,” said Mrs. Baker. “He was a friend of mine, Bones was.”
“Go on,” growled Daugherty, “What else did you dig up?”
“Mr. Matlin left for his golf at eleven thirty. Now, you see, it looks as if Matlin couldn’t have left poison behind him.”
“I most certainly did not,” snapped Matlin. “I have said so. I will not stand for this sort of innuendo. I am not a liar. You said it was a conference . . .”
Mike held the man’s eye. “We are simply trying to find out what happened to the dog,” he said. Matlin fell silent.
“Surely you realize,” purred Mike, “that, human frailty being what it is, there may have been other errors in what we were told this afternoon. There was at least one more.
“Mr. and Mrs. Baker,” he continued, “worked in their garden this afternoon. Bones abandoned the ball game to visit the Bakers’ dog, Smitty. At three o’clock, the Bakers, after discussing the time carefully, lest it be too late in the day, decided to bathe Smitty. When they caught him, for his ordeal, Bones was still there. . . . So, you see, Miss May Matlin, who says she saw Bones lying by the sidewalk before three o’clock, was mistaken.”
Matlin twitched. Russell said sharply, “The testimony of the Bakers is extremely clear.” The Bakers, who looked alike, both brown outdoor people, nodded vigorously.
“The time at which Mr. Matlin returned is quite well established. Diane saw him. Mrs. Daugherty, next door, decided to take a nap, at five after three. She had a roast to put in at four thirty. Therefore, she is sure of the time. She went upstairs and from an upper window, she, too, saw Mr. Matlin come home. Both witnesses say he drove his car into the garage at three ten, got out, and went around the building to the right of it—on the weedy side.”
Mr. Matlin was sweating. His forehead was beaded. He did not speak.
Mike shifted papers. “Now, we know that the kids trooped up to Phil Bourchard’s kitchen at about a quarter of three. Whereas Bones, realizing that Smitty was in for it, and shying away from soap and water like any sane dog, went up Hannibal Street at three o’clock sharp. He may have known in some doggy way where Freddy was. Can we see Bones loping up Hannibal Street, going above Greenwood Lane?”
“We can,” said Daugherty. He was watching Matlin. “Besides, he was found above Greenwood Lane soon after.”
“No one,” said Mike slowly, “was seen in Matlin’s back lot, except Matlin. Yet, almost immediately after Matlin was there, the little dog died.”
“Didn’t Diane . . .?”
“Diane’s friends came at three-twelve. Their evidence is not reliable.” Diane blushed.
“This . . . this is intolerable!” croaked Matlin. “Why my back lot?”
Daugherty said, “There was no poison lying around my place, I’ll tell you that.”
“How do you know?” begged Matlin. And Freddy’s eyes, with the smudges under them, followed to Russell’s face. “Why not in the street? From some passing car?”
Mike said, “I’m afraid it’s not likely. You see, Mr. Otis Carnavon was stalled at the corner of Hannibal and Lee. Trying to flag a push. Anything thrown from a car on that block, he ought to have seen.”
“Was the poison quick?” demanded Daugherty. “What did he get?”
“It was quick. The dog could not go far after he got it. He got cyanide.”
Matlin’s shaking hand removed his glasses. They were wet.
“Some of you may be amateur photographers,” Mike said. “Mr. Matlin, is there cyanide in your cellar darkroom?”
“Yes, but I keep it . . . most meticulously . . .” Matlin began to cough.
When the noise of his spasm died, Mike said, “The poison was embedded in ground meat which analyzed, roughly, half-beef and the rest pork and veal, half and half.” Matlin encircled his throat with his fingers. “I’ve checked with four neighborhood butchers and the dickens of a time I had,” said Mike. No one smiled. Only Freddy looked up at him with solemn sympathy. “Ground meat was delivered to at least five houses in the vicinity. Meat that was one-half beef, one-quarter pork, one-quarter veal, was delivered at ten this morning to Matlin’s house.”
A stir like an angry wind blew over the room. The Chief of Police made some shift of his weight so that his chair creaked.
“It begins to look . . .” growled Daugherty.
“Now,” said Russell sharply, “we must be very careful. One more thing. The meat had been seasoned.”
“Seasoned!”
“With salt. And with . . . thyme.”
“Thyme,” groaned Matlin.
Freddy looked up at Miss Dana with bewildered eyes. She put her arm around him.
“As far as motives are concerned,” said Mike quietly, “I can’t discuss them. It is inconceivable to me that any man would poison a dog.” Nobody spoke. “However, where are we?” Mike’s voice seemed to catch Matlin just in time to keep him from falling off the chair. “We don’t know yet what happened to the dog.” Mike’s voice rang. “Mr. Matlin, will you help us to the answer?”
Matlin said thickly, “Better get those kids out of here.”
Miss Dana moved, but Russell said, “No. They have worked hard for the truth. They have earned it. And if it is to be had, they shall have it.”
“You know?” whimpered Matlin.
Mike said, “I called your golf club. I’ve looked into your trash incinerator. Yes, I know. But I want you to tell us.”
Daugherty said, “Well? Well?” And Matlin covered his face.
Mike said, gently, “I think there was an error. Mr. Matlin, I’m afraid, did poison the dog. But he never meant to, and he didn’t know he had done it.”
Matlin said, “I’m sorry . . . It’s . . . I can’t . . . She means to do her best. But she’s a terrible cook. Somebody gave her those . . . those herbs. Thyme . . . thyme in everything. She fixed me a lunch box. I . . . couldn’t stomach it. I bought my lunch at the club.”
Mike nodded.
Matlin went on, his voice cracking. “I never . . . You see, I didn’t even know it was meat the dog got. She said . . . she told me the dog was already dead.”
“And of course,” said Mike, “in your righteous wrath, you never paused to say to yourself, ‘Wait, what did happen to the dog?’”
“Mr. Russell, I didn’t lie. How could I know there was thyme in it? When I got home, I had to get rid of the hamburger she’d fixed for me—I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. She tries . . . tries so hard . . .” He sat up suddenly. “But what she tried to do today,” he said, with his eyes almost out of his head, “was to poison me!” His bulging eyes roved. They came to Freddy. He gasped. He said, “Your dog saved my life!”
“Yes,” said Mike quickly, “Freddy’s dog saved your life. You see, your step-daughter would have kept trying.”
People drew in their breaths. “The buns are in your incinerator,” Mike said. “She guessed what happened to the dog, went for the buns, and hid them. She was late, you remember, getting to the disturbance. And she did lie.”
Chief Anderson rose.
“Her mother . . .” said Matlin frantically, “her mother . . .”
Mike Russell put his hand on the plump shoulder. “Her mother’s been in torment, tortured by the rivalry between you. Don’t you think her mother senses something wrong?”
Miss Lillian Dana wrapped Freddy in her arms. “Oh, what a wonderful dog Bones was!” She covered the sound of the other voices. “Even when he died, he saved a man’s life. Oh, Freddy, he was a wonderful dog.”
And Freddy, not quite taking everything in yet, was released to simple sorrow and wept quietly against his friend . . .
When they went to fetch May Matlin, she was not in the house. They found her in the Titus’s back shed. She seemed to be looking for something.
Next day, when Mr. and Mrs. Titus came home, they found that although the little dog had died, their Freddy was all right. The Judge, Russell, and Miss Dana told them all about it.
Mrs. Titus wept. Mr. Titus swore. He wrung Russell’s hand. “. . . for stealing the gun . . .” he babbled.
But the mother cried, “. . . for showing him, for teaching him. . . . Oh, Miss Dana, oh, my dear!”
The Judge waved from his veranda as the dark head and the blonde drove away.
“I think Miss Dana likes him,” said Ernie Allen.
“How do you know for sure?” said Freddy Titus.