darkness.
The beam of a flashlight hit the ground a few feet
to my left. He walked forward. He was nearly on top
of me now. The beam flipped upward toward the car,
and then swung back. It hit me right in the face. I
stared into it, blinded.
“What are you doing here?” a voice growled. “You
hurt? Or drunk?” Then I heard the sharp intake of
breath. “Hey!”
I came off the ground, right into the light. He
hadn’t had time to pull the gun. I caught part of his
uniform, pulling him down to me and clubbing for
his face with my fist. We were in the sand together.
He kicked backward. I followed, swarming over him,
wild now, my breath sobbing in my throat. I located
his face at last, and swung. He jerked. I held him by
the collar and swung again.
I snatched up the light, my hands shaking and
dropped it. I clawed it up out of the sand again and
flashed it in his face. He was out cold. I ran to the
patrol car, jerked the keys out, and threw them far
away in the darkness. I heaved the flashlight after
them, lunged toward my own car, and fled.
I’d got away from him, but I was just buying time.
And there wasn’t much more to buy. They would
know now that I was here in town.
But even as I gunned the car wildly along the
beach in the darkness, I was conscious that my mind
was clearing, becoming colder now, and I could
think.
An idea began to take shape. I could still win. I
could get that money, all of it. I’d beat her yet.
And the way to beat her was to let her think she
had won.
It was after five and the sky was reddening in the
east when I parked the car a block away from the
apartment on a cross street. No one saw me go in. I
ran up the stairs. This was the last day. Only a few
more hours now and we’d be gone.
A Touch of Death — 188
No, I thought. I’d be gone.
She was in the bedroom. I put on a pot of coffee
and went into the bath. I took a shower, as hot as I
could stand it and then as cold as it would run,
shocking myself awake.
I went into the kitchen. The coffee was almost
done. I poured two quick drinks of the whisky and
downed them. They burned through five days’
accumulation of exhaustion and fear and numbness,
clearing my mind. I poured a cup of coffee and lit a
cigarette.
I waited. There was no use waking her up. The
banks wouldn’t open until ten.
At a little after seven I heard her in the bath. In a
few minutes she came out. She was wearing the
blouse and skirt again. It was odd that with that
traveling case she hadn’t grabbed up two changes
while she was at it.
“Good morning,” she said sweetly. “Did you sleep
well?”
I walked over in front of her. “Have you got those
names figured out yet?”
She gave me a teasing, half-mocking smile. “I’m
not absolutely certain—”
I caught her by the shoulders and shook her.
“Have you?”
“What is the hurry, dear? We have the rest of the
month.”
I turned away from her without a word and walked
over to the stove. I poured her a cup of coffee and
another for myself. We sat down.
I lit her cigarette. “All right,” I said harshly. “You
win. What do you want?”
Her eyebrows lifted. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean,” I said. “You wore me out.
I can’t take it any longer. We’ve got to get out.
They’re closing in on me.” I lit my own cigarette and
dropped the match in the tray. Then I looked back at
A Touch of Death — 189
her face. “You know they’re looking for me instead
of you, don’t you?”
She nodded. “I suspected it.”
“All right. I thought I could wait you out. But I
can’t. I’ve taken the heat for four days but I can’t
take it any longer. One of ‘em almost got me out
there on the beach two hours ago, and I’ve had it.
We’ve got to get out.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. Then she added, “But
excuse me for interrupting you. I believe you had
something else to say, didn’t you?”
“All right,” I said savagely. “I did. How much do
you want? Half? Don’t go any higher than that,
because I’ve still got one thing in my favor. I’ve got
the keys, and if I don’t get half nobody gets
anything.”
She leaned back a little in the chair and smiled.
“That sounds eminently fair to me. But did it ever
occur to you that possibly there was another facet to
it, aside from the money? Remember? It was
something I told you.”
“What?”
“That I have a deep-seated aversion to being
played for a fool. You could have saved yourself all
this if you’d told me the news to begin with.”
Everybody who wanted to believe that could line
up on the right. But I went along with her.
“Well, I’m sorry,” I said. “But that’s all past now.
So the fifty-fifty split is O.K. with you?”
She didn’t answer for a moment. She was looking
thoughtfully down at her coffee cup. Then she said,
“Yes. If we still feel we want to separate when we
get to the West Coast, that sounds quite fair to me.”
I glanced quickly at her. “What do you mean?” She
raised her eyes then. There was more Susie than
Madelon Butler in them. “You don’t make it very
easy for me to say, do you? But I meant just that.
Maybe we won’t want to separate by the time we get
there.”
A Touch of Death — 190
“It’s funny,” I said slowly. “I had thought of that
too.” There was a faint, tantalizing smile about her
lips. “Changing into someone else isn’t a thing that
happens only from the skin out. I told you I wasn’t
acting Susie Mumble. I am Susie. And I’m becoming
fascinated with her. For the past few days I’ve been
increasingly conscious of unsuspected possibilities
in Susie, and I was rather hoping you were too.”
A Touch of Death — 191
Twenty
I started to get up.
She shook her head, smiling. “No, Lee. Don’t rush
me. Remember, Susie is something so foreign to my
entire life up to this time that I can’t hurry her. She
has to do her own developing, in her own way. You
understand, don’t you?”
She stopped abruptly, and before I could say
anything, she added, “But enough of this. We’ve got
work to do.”
We went in and sat down on the sofa. She was
excited now. I put the three keys on the glass top of
the coffee table. She separated them, pushing them
out one at a time.
“Third National,” she murmured happily, “Mrs.
Henry L. Carstairs. Merchants Trust, Mrs. James R.
Hatch. Seaboard Bank and Trust, Mrs. Lucille
Manning.”
It was easy now that she had won. Well, almost
won. I put the keys back in my wallet.
She looked at her watch. “It’s a quarter of eight.
The banks won’t open until ten. I’ve got to go to the
beauty shop first, and buy some clothes.”
A Touch of Death — 192
I exploded. “Hold it! Don’t you realize we haven’t
got time for that? They know I’m here in town. Every
minute of delay is dangerous.”
She broke in on me. “Not while you’re here in the
apartment. And I can’t go into those banks like this.
My hair may look all right to you, but to another
woman it’s as ragged as if it had been chewed off.
And these clothes are terrible. I look like a
ragpicker. People would notice, and that’s the one
thing we can’t risk. I have to look like someone who
conceivably might have a safe-deposit box.”
In the end I gave in. I had to. As she pointed out,
she’d be back by twelve, which was a delay of only
two hours. And I didn’t want to queer it by starting a
fight now.
She called a number of beauty shops until she
found one that would take her right away. I gave her
two hundred dollars of the bankroll. She called a cab
and left.
Just before she opened the door to go out she
turned and faced me. That same tantalizing smile
was on her face.
“I just happened to think,” she said. “When I came
in this door I was Madelon Butler. And now I’m
going out for the first time as Susie Mumble. Would
you like to help me set the mood?”
I helped her. Not that she needed much. The way
Susie’s mouth felt on mine, they could pour her into
the mold any time now. She was a finished product.
She clung to me for a moment. “It won’t be long
now, will it?”
“No,” I said.
It certainly wouldn’t.
But it would be long enough.
I walked the floor. I smoked chain fashion. I
listened for the elevator, going through that same
old hell of waiting every time it stopped. This would
be the time they would come, right at the end when I
had it won. In the last four hours.
In the last three hours. . .
A Touch of Death — 193
In the last two. . .
And now, on top of that, I was tightening up just
thinking of that trip downtown. That was going to be
rugged. The city would be swarming with cops
looking for me.
I’d be in the car all the time, though, and that
would help. Of course, they had an idea now of what
the car looked like, but there were thousands of the
same kind and the cop had no chance to see the
license plates. The main thing in my favor was the
fact that it’s hard to tell the size of a man sitting
down in a car. And it was my size they were
depending on to spot me.
I set the last of it in my mind. I’d tell her we were
going to go right on out the highway the minute she
came out of the last bank. That would ease her mind
as to why I insisted on going along instead of letting
her do it alone now that we were all lovey-dovey. But
then, at the last minute, I’d think of some reason we
had to come back here before we shoved. And when
I left here I’d be alone. I wondered if she really
thought I was stupid enough to go for that Susie
Mumble act. When we had all the money out of the
banks, together in one bundle in a suitcase, and I
was the last person on earth who knew she was still
alive?
The first time my eyes closed I’d grow a pair of
scissors out of my throat.
But I had her stopped now.
I went to the desk and wrote out the note to the
police. I put the note inside an envelope, addressed
and stamped it, and slipped it into the inside pocket
of the coat I was going to wear. I’d mail it at some
outlying box on my way out of town to be sure it
wasn’t delivered for at least twelve hours. That
would be better than mailing it a day or so later from
some other city. That way, they’d know which
direction I’d gone.
Twelve hours would do.
A Touch of Death — 194
If you had $120,000 in your pocket and were no
longer being sought for murder, twelve hours’ start
was fair enough.
When we came back to the apartment all I had to
do was take all her clothes, including the ones she
had on, and throw them down the garbage chute,
and leave her. She wouldn’t be likely to go anywhere
naked. She’d still be here when the police showed
up to collect her.
Of course she would scream her head off and give
them, a good description and tell them who I was,
but they had practically all that already. And the big
heat would be off. Even if they caught me, they
couldn’t lean very hard. Not like murder.
My nerves were so tight now they were singing. I
couldn’t sit still at all. It was eleven. It was elevenfifteen.
I had to fight myself to get my eyes off the
clock long enough to give it a chance to move. Every
time I heard the elevator stop I would stand there
for an eternity, waiting for the knock on the door.
Then I remembered that when she came back she
would have to knock on the door to get in. I
wondered if I would be able to open it.
She came. It was ten minutes of twelve, and
somehow I got the door open.
They’d done a job on her hair. It was like polished
copper rings. She was excited and gurgling, carrying
a big hatbox and three other bundles.
“Wait till you see me dressed up,” she said.
“Hurry it up. For God’s sake, hurry.”
She disappeared into the bedroom. I waited,
feeling my insides tie up in knots. Being so near the
end of it made it terrible.
Ten minutes later she came out, walked past me
into the center of the room without saying a word,
and turned slowly, like a model.
She was Susie, all right. And Susie was a
confection, with frosting.
The big floppy picture hat was perched on the side
of her head as if it had been nailed to the shining
A Touch of Death — 195
curls. She had on just a shade too much lipstick
across a mouth just a shade too wide. The flowery
summer dress was short-sleeved and it snuggled
lovingly against Susie’s natural resources and scenic
high points as if it couldn’t bear to be torn away. The
white shoes were only straps and three-inch heels,
and the nylons were ultrasheer with elaborate
clocks. She was wearing long white gloves, which
showed up the tan of her arms.
Susie was right off the barracks wall.
“Well,” she asked coyly, “how do you like your
creation?”
“Brother!” I said. Then time came running back
and fell in on me again. “Look, I can drool later.
Let’s get going.”
“All right,” she said. Then she glanced quickly at
my face. “Lee! You haven’t shaved.”
I’d forgotten that. I’d meant to after that shower,
but it had slipped my mind. That was what pressure
could do. “Well, the hell with it. We haven’t got
time.”
Then I put a hand up to my face, remembering. I
not only hadn’t shaved. I hadn’t shaved for three
days.
I cursed. But there was no use just asking people
to stare at me. I ran into the bathroom, yanking off
the shirt and tie. While I lathered and scraped I
heard her rustling around in the bedroom.
I came out. She was waiting.
“I’ll need something to put the money in,” she
said. “There’s a lot of it. Physically, I mean.”
“We’ll stop somewhere and buy a briefcase,” I said
impatiently. “No, wait. How about that overnight
bag of yours?”
“Certainly. I hadn’t thought of that. It’ll do nicely,
and I’m not taking the old clothes anyway.” She
went into the bedroom and came out carrying the
bag.
I put on the coat, which had been hanging on the
back of a chair.
A Touch of Death — 196
We were ready.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”
When we stepped out onto the street I could feel
the skin along my back draw up hard and tight with
chill. But by the time we had casually walked the
block to the car and got in, it wasn’t so bad. I took
the sunglasses out of the glove compartment and put
them on.
I drove slowly. Traffic was heavy. It was a hot, still
day, and I could feel myself sweating beneath the
coat.
I watched the traffic lights. I watched the other
cars. If we had an accident now. . .
But we didn’t. Nothing happened. Once a squad
car pulled up alongside us in the other lane and I
could feel my nerves knot up, but the two cops paid
no attention to us. They went on past and turned the
corner.
We were downtown now, in the thick of traffic. I
couldn’t turn left into Avalon, where the Seaboard
Bank and Trust and the Third National were, so I
had to go around the block.
The first time through there wasn’t a parking
place anywhere in the two blocks between the
banks. Next time our luck was better. I found one
just a half block beyond the Seaboard. There was a
half hour on the meter.
I took out the first two keys and handed them to
her. “I’ll wait right here while you make both of
them. After you come out of the Seaboard, walk on
down to the Third National. When you’re finished
there, walk back this way and stand diagonally
across on the corner up there. I’ll see you. I can turn
left there, so I’ll pick you up and we’ll be headed for
the Merchants Trust.”
She smiled, crinkling up her eyes. “Watch Susie’s
walk,” she said. She was as cool as a mint bed.
She got out, carrying the little suitcase.
I watched her. I saw her cross the street behind
me. She went up the steps into the bank.
A Touch of Death — 197
I waited.
My nerves crawled. It was almost physically
impossible to sit still. I lit cigarettes. I threw them
out after two puffs. I pretended to be looking for
something in the glove compartment, to keep my
face down. Another patrol car went slowly past in
the traffic. It was a black shark, cruising, deadly, not
quite noticing, easing past, gone. I unclenched my
hands.
It was hot. I became aware that I was counting. I
didn’t know what I was counting; I was just saying
numbers. I tried to follow her in my mind. Where
was she now? She had to go through the bank to the
rear, down the steps, through the massive doorway.
She signed the card, she gave her key to an
attendant in the shiny corridors between walls of
steel honeycomb. Now she was going into one of the
booths, closing the door, sliding the lid off the box,
transferring the money to the overnight bag, coming
out. . .
Up the steps, through the bank, out the doorway,
down the steps outside. . .
I stared into the rear-view mirror.
There she was.
She came out. She flowed down the steps with the
sexy indolence of Susie and sauntered across the
street behind me. She came up the sidewalk, and as
she passed the car she turned her face and smiled.
One eye closed ever so slightly in a wink.
One away.
I waited again. I was watching the parking meter
now. It was getting close. I wished I had asked her
to put a nickel in it. If the flag dropped I had to get
out and do it. I didn’t want to get out. I felt in my
pocket.
I didn’t have a nickel.
I watched the meter. Sweat ran slowly down my
face.
A Touch of Death — 198
It had three minutes left on it when I saw her cross
the street ahead of me and stand on the corner,
waiting.
I picked her up. My shirt was wet. My hands
trembled. I couldn’t wait for her to get the door
closed. “Did you get it?” I demanded. “Was it all
right? Did you have any trouble?”
She laughed softly. “Not a bit. Take it slowly, so
you’ll miss that next light. I want to show you
something.”
The light caught us. I stopped. “Open it,” I
whispered. I felt as if I were being strangled. “Open
it!”
She had the overnight bag in her lap. She
unsnapped the two latches, smiling at me out of the
corners of her eyes. “Look.”
She raised the lid just a couple of inches. I looked
in. I forgot everything else. It was worth it. It was
worth everything I had gone through. It was
beautiful. I saw twenties, fifties, hundreds, in
bundles. In fat bundles girdled with paper bands.
I wanted to plunge my hands into it.
“Watch,” she whispered. She slid a white-gloved
hand in under the lid and broke one of the bands and
stirred the loosened bundle with a caressing
slowness that was almost sexual. I watched, gripping
the wheel until my fingers hurt.
She snapped the lid shut. I took the other key out
of my wallet and gave it to her. We were still waiting
for the light. When she had put the key in her purse
I reached over and took her hand. I squeezed it. She
squeezed back.
“Look,” I whispered, “after we’ve finished this last
one, let’s go back to the apartment. Just for a few
minutes, before we start. Susie wouldn’t mind,
would she?”
She gave me a sidelong glance and said, “I don’t
think she would. Not for just a few minutes.”
She had slid the bag back a little in her lap and
she was straightening the seams of her stockings,
A Touch of Death — 199
doing it deliberately and very slowly, one long lovely
leg at a time. She turned her face just slightly so her
eyes were smiling obliquely up at me from under the
curving lashes.
“After all,” she said softly, “it was Venus, wasn’t it,
who breathed life into Galatea?”
It was wonderful. Oh, Lord, it was wonderful.
I could hardly hear her now. The whisper was
tremulous, catching in her throat. “This is
shameless, isn’t it? In brilliant sunlight, in the
middle of town. I— I think Susie is going to be a
revelation to both of us. Oh, won’t that light ever
change?”
If she didn’t shut up and stop it I’d go crazy right
there in the street. I had to look away from her.
It was terrific. If you lived twenty consecutive life
times you’d never run across anything quite like it. I
almost missed the light, just thinking of the beauty
of it.
She had outguessed them all, and she thought she
had outguessed me. And now we were going back to
the apartment, we were going to launch the
tremulous and smoldering Susie, and I was going to
walk out when it was done with $120,000 I’d never
have to divide with anybody. And not only that. The
thing that made it an absolute masterpiece was the
fact that now I wouldn’t even have any battle to get
those clothes so I could throw them down the
garbage chute. She’d help me. She’d help me all the
way.
You would never beat it. You would never
approach it again.
Horns were blasting behind us. I snapped out of it.
The street the Merchants Trust was on was one of
the main drags, and I couldn’t turn left into it either.
I had to go around the block again.
We were shot with luck. A man pulled out of a
parking place less than fifty feet beyond the ornate,
marble-columned entrance. I slid into it. She patted
my hand and got out.
A Touch of Death — 200
I turned my head and watched her. I watched the
slow, seductive tempo of Susie’s walk. She went
along the sidewalk in the sun looking like something
the censors had cut out of a sailor’s dream. She went
into the bank.
It was only a few minutes more.
I tried to light a cigarette. My hands shook. A cop
came by on a motor tricycle, looking at meters. My
whole back turned to ice. He went on, not even
looking at me. I breathed again.
I set the rear-view mirror so I could watch the
entrance without craning my neck. I put my hands
down on the seat and clenched them tightly to stop
the trembling. It was being so near that made it
awful. I thought of the money. I thought of the
apartment bedroom, the Venetian blinds drawn, and
Susie. I tried to quit thinking of both, before I
exploded.
It had to be less than five minutes now. She’d been
gone—how long? I didn’t know. Time had lost all
meaning. The whole world was holding its breath.
Then I saw her.
She came out of the bank. She walked down the
steps and diagonally across the sidewalk toward the
car. I could feel the sigh coming right up from the
bottom of my lungs.
It was made now. There was only that short drive
back to the apartment. I started the motor and
reached out a hand to open the door for her. She
saw me watching her, and smiled.
But she didn’t stop.
She went right on by. The white-gloved left hand,
which was carrying the purse down beside her thigh,
made a little gesture as she went by the window.
Three of the fingers waved.
Good-by!
I lunged for the door handle. Then I stopped, the
absolute horror of it beginning to break over me. I
was sick. I couldn’t move. I was empty inside, and
cold, and somewhere far back in the recesses of my
A Touch of Death — 201
mind I thought I could hear myself screaming. But
there was no sound except the traffic and the shuffle
of feet along the sidewalk.
She went slowly on down the street, her hips
swaying.
I didn’t know what I was doing now. I yanked the
wheel and lurched out of the parking place. A car
behind almost hit me. The driver slammed on his
brakes and leaned out to curse me. I was out in
traffic. Everything was unreal, like a bad dream. I
was abreast of her. I hit the horn. She strolled
casually on. Somebody else turned and looked. I
cringed. I wanted to hide.
I crawled ahead. Cars behind me were honking. I
came to the corner. The light was red. I stopped. She
stopped on the sidewalk in the crowd waiting for the
light. I beeped the horn, hesitantly, timidly. It
roared.
She turned her face slowly and glanced in my
direction, cool and imperturbable and utterly serene.
I formed the words with my mouth: Please, please,
please. . . Her gaze swept on.
The light changed. She stepped off the curb. I
started across the intersection. Then she stepped
back on the sidewalk, and turned right, down the
cross street. I had gone too far into the intersection
to turn. I turned anyway.
I was being engulfed in madness. Everything was
distorted, and dark, and wild, and I had the
sensation of being caught and buffeted by some
howling wind. My left fender raked the fender of a
car stopped at the crosswalk for the light. A whistle
shrilled. I swung on around. I crashed against the
side of the car that had made the right turn inside
me.
Whistles were blowing everywhere. I saw a cop
running toward me from the opposite corner. I
slammed ahead, tearing a fender from the car on my
right. Both lanes were blocked by cars stopped for
the light at the next corner. I saw her walking coolly
along the sidewalk.
A Touch of Death — 202
I slammed on the brakes and lunged for the door. I
was out in the street. Two cops in uniform were
coming down on me. Men jumped from both the cars
I had hit. The whistles were blowing again. I lunged
toward the curb. Running men were crashing into
me, trying to hold me. But now it all faded away, and
I could see nothing except her. There was nothing
else in the world except a foaming, dark madness,
and Madelon Butler walking serenely along the
street, going away. She had the money. And if she
got away they’d hang me. I was shouting. I was
trying to point. I was raging.
“Madelon Butler! That’s Madelon Butler!”
Nobody listened. Nobody paid any attention.
Couldn’t they see her?
Hands were grabbing me. Arms tightened about
my neck and around my legs. I felt the weight of
bodies. Everybody was yelling. A siren wailed shortly
and ground to a stop somewhere behind me. Halfseen
faces bobbed in front of me and I swung my
fists and they disappeared, to be replaced by even
more. I plowed on. I went on toward the curb, taking
them with me. She was nearly abreast. I could see
the coppery curls glinting in the sunlight and the
slow, seductive roll of her hips and thighs the way
she had practiced it, and the small overnight bag
with $ 120,000 in it swinging gently in her other
hand.
Something landed on my head and knocked me to
my knees. I got off the pavement and went between
two parked cars and up onto the curb, peeling them
off behind me like a bunch of grapes pulled through
the slats of a Venetian blind.
“Stop her! Stop her! Stop Madelon Butler stop
madelon butler madelonbutler—”
They went around and over and piled onto me
again. Nobody could shoot. Saps were swinging and
I could feel them just faintly, like rain falling on my
head and shoulders as I fought, and fell, and crawled
toward her.
A Touch of Death — 203
She sauntered past just as we got up onto the
sidewalk, swinging wide to avoid the seething
whirlpool of us, and just after she had gone by she
turned her face and looked around, right into mine,
her eyes cool and patrician and just faintly curious.
Then she picked up the lazy beat of Susie again and
went on.
Saliva ran out of my mouth. I was screaming. I
could hear myself. Somewhere above the sound of
the blows and the cursing and the mad scraping of
shoes against pavement and the gasp of labored
breathing and the crash of splintering glass as
somebody sailed into a store window I could hear
myself screaming.
Blood was running down into my face. Just before I
went down for the last time under the sea of bodies I
saw her again.
She was at the corner. With one last swing of her
hips she went around it and she was gone.
A Touch of Death — 204
Twenty-one
I’m not crazy. I tell you I’m as sane as you are.
Listen.
I tell you Madelon Butler is still alive. Alive, you
understand? Alive. She’s out there somewhere. She’s
laughing. She’s free.
And she’s got $120,000.
Why do I think she’s got it? Why? Look. When hell
freezes over and you can skate across the Styx she’ll
still have it. Five people tried to take it away from
her, and now two of us are dead and two are in the
state prison and I’m in here with these people.
That’s why she’s got it.
They could find her if they’d look and quit just
shaking their heads when I try to tell them she’s still
alive. She’s a redhead now, and God knows what her
name is, and she looks like something on a
barbershop calendar and walks and talks like all the
itch since Eve, but she’s Madelon Butler.
They sweated me for twenty-four hours after they
brought me in while I sat under a big light and they
walked around in the dark outside it asking
questions, questions, questions, one after the other,
hour after hour, sometimes one man, sometimes
two, and sometimes three of them at once asking me
A Touch of Death — 205
what I had done with the money until I finally quit
begging and pleading and yelling for them to block
the airport and the railroad stations and the bus
depot so they could catch her before she got away,
until I finally just gave up and went to sleep with
them barking at me. I went to sleep sitting under a
big white light on a stool.
I knew she was gone by then. But I could still
prove I hadn’t killed her.
Sure I could.
They finally got a lawyer for me and I told him so
many times he began to believe me. He got the
police to send some men out to the apartment so
they could see for themselves she had been there.
The lawyer went along and they took a photographer
and a fingerprint man from the lab.
Her robe and the pajamas and those fur-trimmed
slippers weren’t cheap stuff. They could be traced
back to the store where she had bought them. That
would convince the knuckleheads that the girl who’d
been there in the apartment wasn’t just any girl, but
Madelon Butler herself.
The only trouble was there wasn’t anything there.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The pajamas and the
robe and the slippers were gone. The boxes her
other clothes had come in were gone. There wasn’t a
cigarette butt with lipstick on it, or a single
fingerprint on the whisky bottles or any of the
glasses. There wasn’t a trace of lipstick on a towel or
a pillow, nothing left of the permanent wave outfit,
or even the bottle of bleach.
It went into the court record just the way they said
it when they came back.
There hadn’t been any girl in that apartment.
I began to see it.
She couldn’t have gone back there after she had
ditched me, because she had no key to get in. She
had done it before we came downtown, while I was
shaving. She had cleaned up, and she had thrown all
her clothes down the garbage chute.
A Touch of Death — 206
Well, that was what I was going to do, but she just
beat me to it.
They found the letter in my coat, the one I’d never
had a chance to mail. They asked me if that was
right, that I was hiding Madelon Butler in my
apartment to keep the police from finding her but
that I’d written them a letter telling them where she
was.
I tried to explain it. But the deal about the money
loused up everything.
That was the reason they wouldn’t go for a court
order to exhume the body of Diana James for
identification. The thing about the money had
already convinced them I was mad.
That and a few other things.
The trouble was that nobody had ever seen
Madelon Butler again after that instant the cop had
flashed his light on her face on the lawn behind the
house, just before I slugged him. Charisse Finley
testified that Madelon Butler and I had left the
fishing camp together and that it was a foregone
conclusion, with two such people as us after the
same thing, that one would kill the other before the
day was over. The other cop and the kid in the filling
station testified that I’d been alone when I came
through that little town four hours after the fire. So
there it was.
But that wasn’t even half of it.
The cop who had jumped me out on the beach
testified he had found me sleeping on a sand dune at
five o’clock in the morning.
Two traffic cops, two patrol-car crews, and three
plainclothes men testified it took the seven of them
plus the drivers of the two cars I’d hit to subdue me
after I’d gone berserk in traffic under the delusion I
had seen Madelon Butler walking along the curb. I
was big, but I wasn’t that big. I was a maniac.
They rounded up twenty witnesses and every one
of them said there hadn’t been anybody there that
A Touch of Death — 207
looked anything at all like Madelon Butler. I pleaded.
I raged. I described her.
Eight of them said sure, they’d seen the cupcake in
the big hat, and that if I thought she looked anything
like Madelon Butler there was no hope for me. Four
of them were women, who’d been looking at her
clothes. And there was no point in even asking the
men what they’d been looking at.
Then those two kids who had seen me throw away
the radio told the court that when they took it to a
repair man he’d said the only way he could figure it
had got in the mess it was in was that somebody had
stabbed it with a knife. The repair man repeated it
under oath.
Driven mad by guilt, they said. I had stabbed the
radio because it kept talking about the woman I had
killed. And I had been sleeping out on the beach
because I was suffering from a delusion she was
there in my apartment. Then I had finally blown my
stack downtown in the traffic in broad daylight
because I had reached the point where any woman
was beginning to look like Madelon Butler to me.
But that still wasn’t it. It was the money.
This was after they had come back from that trip
to the apartment, and they were already beginning
to shake their heads while they listened to my
raving, if they listened at all. But when I told them
for the fiftieth time what I was doing downtown, and
about the banks, and how she’d run out on me after
getting the money out of the last one, they said
they’d check it out.
And they said this was going to be the last, if it
was as crazy as the rest. They were getting tired of
it. But that was all right. I knew I had them this
time.
They investigated. They got sworn testimony from
all the vault employees in all three banks.
No boxes had ever been rented to Mrs. Henry L.
Carstairs, Mrs. James R. Hatch, or Mrs. Lucille
Manning. They had never even heard of the names.
And no woman even remotely answering the
A Touch of Death — 208
description I gave them had ever come into any of
the vaults that day.
But, they said, Mrs. Madelon Butler herself, as
president of the historical society she had founded,
had had a box in each of the banks for years for the
storage of documents and family papers.
When they came back and told me that, they had
to call the guards.
And sometimes even now I can feel it boiling
around there inside me, that yell or scream or laugh
or whatever it is, when I think that for four days and
nights that $120,000 was there in the bedroom of
my apartment, either in that little overnight bag or
under the mattress of the bed.
She’d had it all the time. But she really hadn’t
heard the news over the radio before I butched it up,
and she wasn’t completely sure she was off the hook
until I told her. She had a good idea she was, but she
wanted to be certain, and she wanted to finish the
job on Susie Mumble before she scrammed.
And maybe. . .
But that’s why I wake up screaming.
Maybe she was on the level with that Susie
Mumble play for me. It would add up that way, too.
Maybe she did want the two of us to go away
together, but she didn’t want me to know she had
been lying about the banks and had to go through
with the act of getting it out.
That’s it, you see. I’ll never know. There’s no way I
can ever know. Because she could very easily have
seen that letter addressed to the police in the pocket
of my coat while I was shaving.
It figures, all right. It checks out with the way she
did it there at the end. That first bank, the Seaboard
Trust, is on a corner, and she could merely have
gone on out a side door and left me waiting there in
the car forever. It would have been easier that way,
and less dangerous. But if she had seen that letter to
the police? She wanted me to have a good look at
that money and one last, lingering glimpse of the
A Touch of Death — 209
potentialities of Susie Mumble, so I’d have
something to remember in case I ever find it dull
around this place.
You see why I wake up that way? It’s a dream I
have.
I’m sitting there in the car watching her come out
of that last bank and swing toward me across the
sidewalk in the sun with the coppery hair shining
and that tantalizing smile of Susie’s on her face and
all that unhampered Susie running loose inside that
summer dress, seeing her and thinking that in only a
few minutes we’ll be in the apartment with the
blinds drawn, in the semigloom, with a small
overnight bag open on the floor beside the bed with
$120,000 in fat bundles of currency inside it and
maybe one nylon stocking, a sheer nylon with clocks,
draped carelessly across one corner, as if it had
been dropped hurriedly by someone who didn’t care
where it fell. . .
And then in this dream she waves three fingers of
her left hand and saunters on down the street, past
me, and she’s gone, and I’m trapped in a car in
traffic at high noon in the middle of a city of
400,000, where two hundred cops are just waiting
for me to step out on the street so they can spot me.
I wake up.
Scream?
Who wouldn’t?
A Touch of Death — 210
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