“Get out,” Ardis said. “Both of you get out.”
“Please, Mrs. Clinton. Believe me, this isn’t a trick. I haven’t wanted to alarm you, but—”
“And you haven’t,” she said. “You haven’t scared me even a little bit, mister. Now, clear out!”
She closed her eyes, kept them closed firmly. When, at last, she reopened them, Powers and the doctor — if he really had been a doctor — were gone. And the room was in darkness.
She lay smiling to herself, congratulating herself. In the corridor outside, she heard heavy footsteps approaching; and she tensed for a moment. Then, remembering, she relaxed again.
Not Bill, of course. She was through with that jerk forever. He’d driven her half out of her mind, got her to the point where she couldn’t have taken another minute of him if her life depended on it. But now...
The footsteps stopped in front of her door. A key turned in the lock, the door opened and closed.
There was a clatter of a lunchpail being set down; then a familiar voice — maddeningly familiar words:
“Well. Another day, another dollar.”
Ardis’ mouth tightened; it twisted slowly, in a malicious grin. So they hadn’t given up yet! They were pulling this one last trick. Well, let them; she’d play along with the gag.
The man plodded across the room, stooped, and gave her a halfhearted peck on the cheek. “Long time no see,” he said. “What we havin’ for supper?”
“Bill...” Ardis said. “How do I look, Bill?”
“Okay. Got your lipstick smeared, though. What’d you say we was having for supper?”
“Stewed owls! Now, look, mister. I don’t know who you—”
“Sounds good. We got any hot water?”
“Of course, we’ve got hot water! Don’t we always have? Why do you always have to ask if... if—”
She couldn’t go through with it. Even as a gag — even someone who merely sounded and acted like he did — it was too much to bear.
“Y-you get out of here!” she quavered. “I don’t have to stand for this! I c-can’t stand it! I did it for fifteen years, and—”
“So what’s to get excited about?” he said. “Well, guess I’ll go splash the chassis.”
“Stop it! STOP IT!” Her screams filled the room... silent screams ripping through silence. “He’s... you’re dead! I know you are! You’re dead, and I don’t have to put up with you for another minute. And... and—!”
“Wouldn’t take no bets on that if I was you,” he said mildly. “Not with a broken neck like yours.”
He trudged off toward the bathroom, wherever the bathroom is in Eternity.
H. A. Derosso
(1917–1960)
Henry Andrew DeRosso was primarily a writer of grim, objectively realistic Western fiction, a genre in which he produced hundreds of short stories and novelettes as well as five novels over a twenty-year span. His output was not limited to Westerns, however. He also published some forty dark-suspense tales, in such pulps as Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine and Thrilling Detective, and in such digest-size periodicals as Manhunt, Hunted, Mystery Tales, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine.
Like his Western stories, DeRosso’s crime fiction is offbeat and character-oriented, with more depth of feeling — and substance — than the typical magazine fare of its time. “The Old Pro,” which first appeared in Manhunt in December 1960, is a prime example.
In many respects, DeRosso’s life and vision approximate those of Cornell Woolrich. Both men were loners, DeRosso having spent his entire life in a small town in the remote iron-mining country of northeastern Wisconsin. Both wrote introspective, sometimes crude, often violent, and predominately visceral prose unlike that produced by any of their peers. Both were obsessed with what they perceived to be the ultimate futility of human existence and yet, paradoxically, with a man’s constant need to strive for some sense of meaning and salvation in his own existence. And both understood and wrote feelingly about unrequited love, lost innocence, and loneliness.
B. P.
The Old Pro
(1960)
It seemed rather strange and chilling to him because he had never contracted for another man’s death before. But it was something that had to be done and he could not do it himself because he wanted to remain clean. Direct involvement, if discovered, would destroy all that he had built these past few years. He might even lose Loretta and she meant too much to him to risk that. So he made a long distance call and entered into the contract.
“Mike? This is Burn. Remember me?”
“Burn?” Sargasso’s voice over the phone sounded as coarse and rasping as it had always been. “Oh, yes. It’s been a long time. Four years, isn’t that right?”
“About that.”
“How’s retirement?”
“Good. Never had it better. Until something came up.”
“Oh? Is that why you’re calling?”
“Yes. I was wondering if you couldn’t refer someone to me, a... an engineer experienced in removing obstructions. It’s a ticklish matter and I need a good man. You know of someone like that around?”
There was a short silence. Then from Sargasso’s end of the line there came a soft, grating chuckle.
“Is something funny?” he asked with a touch of anger in his tone.
“In a way, yes,” Sargasso said. “I mean, you of all people—” The chuckle sounded again.
He flushed in the privacy of the phone booth. “Well, do you have the man?” he asked testily.
“Sure, Burn, sure.” Amusement still lingered in Sargasso’s voice. “You were always the hasty one. Take it easy. When do you want the engineer?”
“This weekend. Sometime Saturday. At my place out at Walton Lake. I’ll have the job all set up for him. Can you get him up here in that time?”
“Now, Burn, you know I always guarantee results.” The humor still teased in Sargasso’s tone. “Well, luck.”
“Thanks, Mike. So long.”
The line clicked dead at Sargasso’s end before he had even started to hang up...
The name on his mailbox spelled Ralph Whitburn. He had a comfortable home here on the edge of the small town with a nice view of the curving river that was the boundary between Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Beyond the river stretched the vast, second-growth forest. He had fallen in love with the view the first time he had seen it. He enjoyed the cool green colors of summer and the tartan hues of autumn, he even enjoyed the bleak look of winter with the trees standing dark and dead among the silent snow. It was so far removed from the squalor and stench of all the cities he had once known.
This was the good life. He could hear Loretta humming in the kitchen. The aroma of cooking was pleasant in his nostrils. He stood on the lawn and watched some swallows wheeling and darting not far overhead in their swift pursuit of summer insects. Yes, this was the good life and he was not going to let anything destroy it. That was why he had contracted for a man’s death.
“Chow’s ready, Ralph.”
His eyes feasted on Loretta as he sat down at the table in the dining nook. She was tall and red-headed with a pert, saucy face spattered with freckles that also spread over her bare shoulders and arms. She was wearing halter and shorts that set off her good figure, which was high-breasted, lean-hipped and long-legged. Once he had thought that love was an emotion he would never experience but that had been before he had met Loretta.