“He asked me to leave,” I said.
“No, he didn’t, Martin. He ordered you out and told you not to come back again.”
I stopped and whirled toward him. “Who told you that?”
“Marie,” he said. “She was the only one who heard him. She didn’t want to say it before because she was afraid Ruth would keep her from seeing you. That little kid has a crush on you and she didn’t think that had any bearing on the case.”
“Well, it hasn’t, has it?”
“Maybe not,” snapped Duff Ryan, “but he did chase you out, didn’t he? He threatened to use his cane on you?”
“I won’t answer,” I said.
“You don’t have to,” he told me. “But I wish you’d told the truth about it in the first place.”
“Why?” We started walking again. “You don’t think I killed him, do you?” I shot a quick glance in his direction and held my breath.
“No,” he said, “nothing like that, only—”
“Only what?”
“Well, Martin, haven’t you been kicked out of about every school in the state?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say every school.”
Duff said, “Quite a few though, eh?”
“Enough,” I said.
“That’s what I thought.” He went on quietly, “I went over and had a look at your record, Martin. I wish I had thought of doing that sooner.”
“Listen —”
“Oh, don’t get excited,” he said, “this may give us new leads, that’s all. We’ve nothing against you. But when you were going to school at Hadden, you took the goat, which was a class mascot, upstairs with you one night and then pushed him down the stairs so that he broke all his legs. You did that, didn’t you?”
“The goat slipped,” I said.
“Maybe,” whispered Duff. He lit a cigarette, holding on to the crippled cat with one hand. “But you stood at the top of the stairs and watched the goat suffer until somebody came along.”
“I was so scared I couldn’t move.”
“Another time,” Duff continued, “at another school, you pushed a kid into an oil hole that he couldn’t get out of and you were ducking him — maybe trying to kill him — when someone came along and stopped you.”
“He was a sissy. I was just having some fun!”
“At another school you were expelled for roping a newly born calf and pulling it up on top of a barn where you stabbed it and watched it bleed to death.”
“I didn’t stab it! It got caught on a piece of tin from the drain while I was pulling it up. You haven’t told any of this to Marie, have you?”
“No,” Duff said.
“All those things are just natural things,” I said. “Any kid is liable to do them. You’re just nuts because you can’t pin the guilt on anybody but the guy who is going to die Friday and you’re trying to make me look bad!”
“Maybe,” Duff answered quietly, and we came into the chapel now and stopped. He dropped his cigarette, stepped on it, then patted the cat. Moonlight shone jaggedly through the rotting pillars. I could see the cat’s eyes shining. “Maybe,” Duff breathed again, “but didn’t you land in a reform school once?”
“Twice,” I said.
“And once in an institution where you were observed by a staff of doctors? It was a state institution, I think. Sort of a rest home.”
“I was there a month,” I said. “Some crab sent me there, or had me sent. But my dad got me out.”
“Yes,” Duff replied, “the crab had you sent there because you poisoned two of his Great Dane dogs. Your dad had to bribe somebody to get you out, and right now he pays double tuition for you here at Clark’s.”
I knew all this but it wasn’t anything sweet to hear coming from a detective. “What of it?” I said. “You had plenty of chance to find that out.”
“But we weren’t allowed to see your records before,” Duff answered. “As a matter of fact I paid an orderly to steal them for me, and then return them.”
“Why, you dirty crook!”
I could see the funny twist of his smile there in the moonlight. His face looked pale and somehow far away. He looked at the cat and petted it some more. I was still shaking. Scared, I guess.
He said, “Too bad we have to kill you, kitten, but it’s better than that pain.”
Then, all at once I thought he had gone mad. He swung the cat around and began batting its head against the pillar in the chapel. I could see the whole thing clearly in the moonlight, his arm swinging back and forth, the cat’s head being battered off, the bright crimson blood spurting all over.
He kept on doing it and my temples began to pound. My heart went like wildfire. I wanted to reach over and help him. I wanted to take that little cat and squeeze the living guts out of it. I wanted to help him smash its brains all over the chapel. I felt dizzy. Everything was going around. I felt myself reaching for the cat.
But I’m smart. I’m no dummy. I’m at the head of my class. I’m in high school. I knew what he was doing. He was testing me. He wanted me to help him. The son of a-wasn’t going to trick me like that. Not Martin Thorpe. I put my arms behind me and grabbed my wrists and with all my might I held my arms there and looked the other way.
I heard the cat drop with a thud to the cement, then I looked up, gasping to catch my breath. Duff Ryan looked at me with cool gray eyes, then he walked off. I stood there, still trying to get my breath and watching his shadow blend with the shadows of the dark study hall. I was having one hell of a time getting my breath.
But I slept good all night. I was mad and I didn’t care about Tommy anymore. Let him hang. I slept good but I woke up ten minutes before reveille remembering that it was Pushton’s turn at the bugle again. He and Myers traded off duty every other day.
I felt pretty cocky and got up putting on only my slippers and went down to the eleven-year-old wing. Pushton was sitting on the edge of the bed working his arms back and forth and yawning. The fat little punk looked like an old man. He took himself that seriously. You would have thought maybe he was a general.
“What you want, Thorpe?” he said.
“I want your bugle. I’m going to break the damn thing.”
“You leave my bugle alone,” he said. “My folks aren’t as rich as yours and I had to save all my spending money to buy it.” This was true. They furnished bugles at school but they were awful and Pushton took his music so seriously that he had saved up and bought his own instrument.
“I know it,” I said, “so the school won’t be on my neck if I break it.” I looked around. “Where is it?”
“I won’t tell you!”
I looked under the bed, under his pillow, then I grabbed him by the nose. “Come on, Heinie. Where is it?”
“Leave me alone!” he wailed. “Keep your hands off me.” He was talking so loud now that half the wing was waking up.
“All right, punk,” I said. “Go ahead and blow that thing, and I hope you blow your tonsils out.”
I went back to my bed and held my ears. Pushton blew the bugle all right, I never did find out where he had the thing hidden.
I dressed thinking, well, only two more days and Tommy gets it. I’d be glad when it was over. Maybe all this tension would ease up then and Marie wouldn’t cry so much because once he was dead there wouldn’t be anything she could do about it. Time would go by and eventually she would forget him. One person more or less isn’t so important in the world anyway, no matter how good a guy he is.
Everything went swell Wednesday right through breakfast and until after we were marching out of the chapel and into the schoolroom. Then I ran into Pushton, who was trotting around with his bugle tucked under his arm. I stopped and looked him up and down.
His little black eyes didn’t flicker. He just said, “Next time you bother me, Thorpe, I’m going to report you.”
“Go ahead, punk,” I said, “and see what happens to you.”