Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 12, December 1956
- Автор: Дил Борден, Томпсон Джим
- Год: 1956
- Язык: английский
- Год: H.S.D. Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 12, December 1956». Краткое содержание книги:
He stopped, frowning into his glass. He looked at Wallace, saw his glass was still supplied, and went on. His voice rolled soft and slow in the still, cool air, Wallace sitting forward in his chair listening, and The Judge knew that he was no longer afraid.
“Grace was my secretary,” he said. She was young and very efficient and as beautiful as dawn and old brandy. I didn’t know her folks, for she was new-people in town. But within a week I had fallen in love with her. Before Grace I would have said that such a thing was impossible.
“But Grace was very smart, as well as beautiful. She knew the usual relationship between a confirmed old bachelor and his secretary. She wasn’t having any of that.” He paused, adding the new words carefully. “I didn’t know at the time that she was sleeping with a young clerk who worked down the hall. Of course, even if I had known, I don’t think it would have mattered to me then.”
He saw the shock in Wallace’s face, saw him start to rise. “I don’t want to listen to...” Wallace said stiffly.
He waved him down. “She’s not like that any more,” The Judge said. “She’s changed and learned in ten years. God, how she’s changed and learned. And she was never a slut.”
There was silence again while he thought, remembered. Wallace sat back in his chair now, his momentary anger quelled, waiting for The Judge to continue. The Judge drank thoughtfully, tastefully, from his glass of old wine.
“It was pretty bad for me,” he said. “I loved her. I lusted after her. I was old and incredible and crazy. I wanted her any way I could take her. And she was bright and efficient in fending me off. I groveled, almost, in her tracks for one willing smile from her lips. I gave her raises in pay and paid vacations.” He paused, sighing. “It went on for a year that way. A full year — an interminably long time, to me.”
He took the bottle again and lifted it to the light and watched the amber liquid sparkle. Then he poured the glasses full again and listened up the stairs. This time he heard a thump and a rustle.
“It won’t be too long now,” he said. “Before she’s ready. You see, she knew what she wanted. Marriage. To me... fifty years old. But there was money, not much money but enough, and the good name. She was new in town, and I never knew where her family came from. She’ll never tell you. I doubt if she even knows herself any longer. Women can forget at will things like origins and birthdays.
“Age? It didn’t matter. I doubt if she ever saw me as a man, with passion in my body. I was The Judge, I was Carter, I was Cartersville. She loved me, not for me but for the freedom from her past. And I loved her though she had no pity for my love.”
He frowned. “I didn’t know this then, understand. I learned it slowly and painfully over the years and she will still deny every word of it. I won’t tell you how we agreed to marry... it was an afternoon in my office that I still don’t like to remember and certainly not discuss. She waited a full year, moving her womanness before me every day, and then she ruthlessly closed her bargain.”
He saw Wallace watching him. “You find it hard to believe, don’t you?”
The young man’s voice was uncertain. “It’s different...”
“Yes,” The Judge cut in. “She is different now. She was desperate then, you understand. She was twenty-five, and that clerk is still a clerk. She knew then he would always be a clerk. She’s not desperate any more. She hasn’t been desperate for a long time.”
“But you had ten years,” Wallace said, his voice brave in the silence. “You think of her now with bitterness and anger but you had ten years.”
“Bitterness?” The Judge said. He smiled. “Anger? She made her bargain and she fulfilled it. She was mine, all mine and all the time, and I did not share her with anybody, not for years. She gave me the love my old heart and body wanted, in full measure and running over. She even gave me a son...”
Wallace moved in surprise. It was apparent that this fact was something Grace hadn’t told him.
“You didn’t know she had a son? Yes. His name is Bobby. He’s away in school now. I wanted a son and we had one, though she insisted on a Caesarean. Just one. And now I am sixty, and she is going away.”
“I do love her,” Wallace said. “You may not be able to understand it or believe it, but I love her like I—”
“Of course,” The Judge said. “Grace is all woman, and she can use all of it. I knew that you loved her. And you’re not the first.” He stopped again and looked at the bottle. This time Wallace handed him his glass without waiting for invitation.
“There’s just enough for one more,” The Judge said. “She should be through by then. Drink it slowly, for there’s no other wine like this. No other wine at all.”
He poured gracefully, ceremoniously, his dark, craggy face stooped over the glasses. They were both leaning forward watching the topaz richness flow in a live stream, then pool into beauty again in the glasses.
The Judge sat back and lifted his glass. “She began to drift about two years ago,” he said. “I was fifty-eight then. I saw it coming and there was no way of stopping it. I knew it would come to this when she found the right one. I have been waiting for you, Wally.” He looked at him over the rim of his glass. “I wonder what it is you have that she wants, Wally. I wonder.”
Wallace was watching him, holding his glass still. His handsome face was as still as his hands, watching the old Judge, not knowing exactly what to say. And so he said nothing, waiting for The Judge to go on.
“And I believe I know,” The Judge said. He laughed, a startling sound in the hushed, cool room. “It’s youth, Wally. She wants the youngness of you, just as I wanted her youngness a long time ago. How old are you, Wally? She’s thirty-five.”
Wally moved. The Judge knew his words had touched him, stirred him. “I love her, sir. You know that. I love her. Whatever I’ve got, I’ll give her. Youth or money or...”
“Yes,” The Judge said softly. “Yes, I know you do. I know you will.”
Wally straightened his young body. “I’m glad I came now,” he said. “I’m glad I talked to you. I was afraid. Any man would be, in a situation like this. Not physically, but of a scene. Now that I’ve seen your reasonableness, your intelligent approach...”
The Judge listened critically to the young, fumbling words. The fast-drunk wine was strong in Wallace. The Judge did not feel it at all. “You don’t have to say it,” he said. “I know what you mean. You’re trying to say that we needed to drink a bottle of old wine between us.” He lifted his glass and swallowed. “Drink up. There’s just a taste of it left. Just a taste of illicit wine, after ten years.”
Wallace lifted the glass and drank. While he did it, The Judge shifted his weight off the 38 in his hip pocket. He shot Wallace in the head as he put his glass down, empty. There was a momentary surprise on Wallace’s face at the impact of the bullet, a shocked surprise as he looked at The Judge, and saw, and slumped forward on the old, worn rug between the two friendly chairs.
The Judge was surprised, too. He hadn’t believed he was going to do it until the last moment, until he saw the last drop of old wine disappear down the young man’s throat.
The single shot echoed wildly, reverberatingly, in the old house. The sound filled the house like the cry of a baby, and he knew that Grace had heard. He rose and picked up the wine bottle in his left hand, still holding the gun with the other.
He moved toward the stairs, hearing the sudden hysterical flurry of her footsteps in the hall. He looked up into her downward-peering face, white and stricken. Even in the dimness of the stairwell he could see the harsh stricken lines there. Yes, he thought. Now you’re thirty-five.