Dudley Stone paused and noticed my look of general confusion.
«All this to lead up to my murder,» he said. «For it was John Oatis Kendall who, in 1930, traded a few old clothes and some remaindered copies of his books for a gun and came out to this house and this room.»
«He really meant to kill you?»
«Meant to, hell! He did! Bang! Have some more wine? That's better.»
A strawberry shortcake was set upon the table by Mrs. Stone, while he enjoyed my gibbering suspense. Stone sliced it into three huge chunks and served it around, fixing me with his kindly approximation of the Wedding Guest's eye.
«There he sat, John Oatis, in that chair where you sit now. Behind him, outside, in the smokehouse, seventeen hams; in our wine cellars, five hundred bottles of the best; beyond the window open country, the elegant sea in full lace, overhead a moon like a dish of cool cream, everywhere the full panoply of spring, and Lena across the table, too, a willow tree in the wind, laughing at everything I said or did not choose to say, both of us thirty, mind you, thirty years old, life our magnificent carousel, our fingers playing full chords, my books selling well, fan mail pouring upon us in crisp white founts, horses in the stables for moonlight rides to coves where either we or the sea might whisper all we wished in the night. And John Oatis seated there where you sit now, quietly taking the little blue gun from his pocket.»
«I laughed, thinking it was a cigar lighter of some sort,» said his wife.
«But John Oatis said quite seriously: „I'm going to kill you, Mr. Stone.“»
«What did you do?»
«Do? I sat there, stunned, riven; I heard a terrible slam! the coffin lid in my face! I heard coal down a black chute; dirt on my buried door. They say all your past hurtles by at such times. Nonsense. The _future_ does. You see your face a bloody porridge. You sit there until your fumbling mouth can say, „But why, John, what have I _done_ to you?“
«„Done!“ he cried.
«And his eyes skimmed along the vast bookshelf and the handsome brigade of books drawn stiffly to attention there with my name on each blazing like a panther's eyes in the Moroccan blackness. „Done!“ he cried, mortally. And his hand itched the revolver in a sweat. „Now, John,“ I cautioned. „What do you want?“
«„One thing more than anything else in the world,“ he said, „to kill you and be famous. Get my name in headlines. Be famous as you are famous. Be known for a lifetime and beyond as the man who killed Dudley Stone!“
«„You can't mean that!“
«„I do. I'll be very famous. Far more famous than I am today, in your shadow. Oh, listen here, no one in the world knows how to hate like a writer does. God, how I love your work and God, how I hate you because you write so well. Amazing ambivalence. But I can't take it any more, not being able to write as you do, so I'll take my fame the easy way. I'll cut you off before you reach your prime. They say your next book will be your finest, your most brilliant!“
«„They exaggerate.“
«„My guess is they're right!“ he said.
«„I looked beyond him to Lena who sat in her chair, frightened, but not frightened enough to scream or run and spoil the scene so it might end inadvertently.
«„Calm,“ I said. „Calmness. Sit there, John. I ask only one minute. Then pull the trigger.“
«„No!“ Lena whispered.
«„Calmness,“ I said to her, to myself, to John Oatis.
«I gazed out the open windows, I felt the wind, I thought of the wine in the cellar, the coves at the beach, the sea, the night moon like a disc of menthol cooling the summer heavens, drawing clouds of flaming salt, the stars, after it in a wheel toward morning. I thought of myself only thirty, Lena thirty, our whole lives ahead. I thought of all the flesh of life hung high and waiting for me to really start banqueting! I had never climbed a mountain, I had never sailed an ocean, I had never run for Mayor, I had never dived for pearls, I had never owned a telescope, I had never acted on a stage or built a house or read all the classics I had so wished to read. All the _actions_ waiting to be done!
«So in that almost instantaneous sixty seconds, I thought at last of my career. The books I had written, the books I was writing, the books I intended to write. The reviews, the sales, our huge balance in the bank. And, believe or disbelieve me, for the first time in my life I got free of it all. I became, in one moment, a critic. I cleared the scales. On one hand I put all the boats I hadn't taken, the flowers I hadn't planted, the children I hadn't raised, all the hills I hadn't looked at, with Lena there, goddess of the harvest. In the middle I put John Oatis Kendall with his gun―the upright that held the balances. And on the empty scale opposite I laid my pen, my ink, my empty paper, my dozen books. I made some minor adjustments. The sixty seconds were ticking by. The sweet night wind blew across the table. It touched a curl of hair on Lena's neck, oh Lord, how softly, softly it touched…
«The gun pointed at me. I have seen the moon craters in photographs, and that hole in space called the Great Coal Sack Nebula, but neither was as big, take my word, as the mouth of that gun across the room from me.
«„John,“ I said at last, „do you hate me _that_ much? Because I've been lucky and you not?“
«„Yes, damn it!“ he cried.
«It was almost funny he should envy me. I was not that much better a writer than he. A flick of the wrist made the difference.
«„John,“ I said quietly to him, „if you want me dead, I'll _be_ dead. Would you like for me never to write again?“
«„I'd like nothing better!“ he cried. „Get ready!“ He aimed at my heart!
«„All right,“ I said, „I'll never write again.“
«„What?“ he said.
«„We're old old friends, we've never lied to each other, have we? Then take my word, from this night on I'll never put pen to paper.“
«„Oh _God_,“ he said, and laughed with contempt and disbelief.
«„There,“ I said, nodding my head at the desk near him, „are the only original copies of the two books I've been working on for the last three years. I'll burn one in front of you now. The other you yourself may throw in the sea. Clean out the house, take everything faintly resembling literature, burn my published books, too. Here.“ I got up. He could have shot me then, but I had him fascinated. I tossed one manuscript on the hearth and touched a match to it.
«„No!“ Lena said. I turned. „I know what I'm doing,“ I said. She began to cry. John Oatis Kendall simply stared at me, bewitched. I brought him the other unpublished manuscript. „Here,“ I said, tucking it under his right shoe so his foot was a paper weight. I went back and sat down. The wind was blowing and the night was warm and Lena was white as apple-blossoms there across the table.