he would understand that if I used these keys to get into his shack, that I
had not done it in a spirit of maliciousness, or of idle curiosity, but to
try to attain that knowledge he had tried to share with me.
No one had ever been in Stiffy’s shack. He had built it through the
years, out at the edge of town, beside a swamp in the corner of Jack
Dickson’s pasture, and he had built it out of lumber he had picked up and
out of flattened tin cans and all manner of odd junk he had run across. At
first it had been little more than a lean-to, a shelter from the wind and
rain. But bit by bit, year by year, he had added to it until it was a
structure of wondrous shape and angles, but it was a home.
I made up my mind and gave the keys a final toss and caught them and
put them in my pocket. Then I went out of the house and got into the car.
6
A thin fog of ghostly white lay just above the surface of the swamp and
curled about the foot of the tiny knoll on which Stiffy’s shack was set.
Across the stretch of whiteness loomed a shadowed mass, the dark shape of a
wooded island that rose out of the marsh.
I stopped the car and got out of it and as I did, my nostrils caught
the rank odour of the swamp, the scent of old and musty things, the smell of
rotting vegetation, and ochre coloured water. It was not particularly
offensive and yet there was about it an uncleanliness that set one’s skin to
crawling. Perhaps, I told myself, a man got used to it. More than likely
Stiffy had lived with it so long that he never noticed it.
I glanced back toward the village and through the darkness of the
nightmare trees I could catch an occasional glimpse of a swaying street
lamp. No one, I was certain, could have seen me come here. I’d switched off
the headlights before I turned off the highway and had crawled along the
twisting cart track that led in to the shack with no more than a sickly
moonlight to help me on my way.
Like a thief in the night, I thought. And that, of course, was what I
was – except I had no intent of stealing.
I walked up the path that led to the crazy door fashioned out of uneven
slabs of salvaged lumber, dosed by a metal hasp guarded by a heavy padlock.
I tried one of the padlock keys and it fitted and the lock snicked back. I
pushed on the door and it creaked open.
I pulled the flashlight I had taken from the glove compartment of the
car out of my pocket and thumbed its switch. The fan of light thrust out,
spearing through the doorway. There was a table and three chairs, a stove
against one wall, a bed against another.
The room was clean. There was a wooden floor, covered by scraps of
linoleum carefully patched together. The linoleum was so thoroughly scrubbed
that it fairly shone. The walls had been plastered and then neatly papered
with scraps of wallpaper, and with a complete and cynical disregard for any
colour scheme.
I moved farther into the room, swinging the light slowly back and
forth. At first it had been the big things I had seen -the stove, the table
and the chairs, the bed. But now I began to become aware of the other things
and the little things.
And one of these smaller things, which I should have seen at once, but
hadn’t, was the telephone that stood on the table.
I shone the light on it and spent long seconds making sure of what I’d
known to start with – for it was apparent at a glance that the phone was
without a dial and had no connection cord. And it would have done no good if
it had had a cord, for no telephone line had ever been run to this shack
beside the swamp.
Three of them, I thought – three of them I knew of. The one that had
been in my office and another in Gerald Sherwood’s study and now this one in
the shack of the village bum.
Although, I told myself, not quite so much a bum as the village might
believe. Not the dirty slob most people thought he was. For the floor was
scrubbed and the walls were papered and everything was neat.
Me and Gerald Sherwood and Stiffy Grant – what kind of common bond
could there be among us? And how many of these dialless phones could there
be in Millville; for how many others of us did that unknown bond exist?
I moved the light and it crept across the bed with its patterned quilt
– not rumpled, not messed up, and very neatly made. Across the bed and to
another table that stood beyond the bed. Underneath the table were two
cartons. One of them was plain, without any lettering, and the other was a
whisky case with the name of an excellent brand of Scotch writ large across
its face.
I walked over to the table and pulled the whisky case out from
underneath it. And in it was the last thing in the world I had expected. It
was not an emptied carton packed with personal belongings, not a box of
junk, but a case of whisky.
Unbelieving, I lifted out a bottle and another and another, all of them
still sealed. I put them back in the case again and lowered myself carefully
to the floor, squatting on my heels. I felt the laughter deep inside of me,
trying to break out – and yet it was, when one came to think of it, not a
laughing matter.
This very afternoon Stiffy had touched me for a dollar because, he’d
said, he’d not had a drink all day. And all the time there had been this
case of whisky, pushed underneath the table.
Were all the outward aspects of the village bum no more than
camouflage? The broken, dirty nails; the rumpled, thread-bare clothing; the
unshaven face and the unwashed neck; the begging of money for a drink; the
seeking of dirty little piddling jobs to earn the price of food – was this
all a sham?
And if it were a masquerade, what purpose could it serve? I pushed the
case back underneath the table and pulled out the other carton. And this one
wasn’t whisky and neither was it junk. It was telephones.
I hunkered, staring at them, and it now was crystal clear how that
telephone had gotten on my desk. Stiffy had put it there and then had waited
for me, propped against the building. Perhaps he had seen me coming down the
street as he came out of the office and had done the one thing that would
seem entirely natural to explain his waiting there. Or it might equally well
have been just plain bravado. And all the time he has been laughing at me
deep inside himself.
But that must be wrong, I told myself. Stiffy never would have laughed
at me. We were old and trusted friends and he’d never laugh at me, he. would
never do anything to fool me.
This was a serious business, too serious for any laughing to be done.
If Stiffy had put the phone there, had he also been the one who had
come back and taken it? Could that have been the reason he had come to my
place – to explain to me why the phone was gone?
Thinking of it, it didn’t seem too likely.
But if it had not been Stiffy, then there was someone else involved.
There was no need to lift out the phones, for I knew exactly what I’d
find. But I did lift them out and I wasn’t wrong.
They had no dials and no connection cords.
I got to my feet and for a moment stood uncertain, staring at the phone
standing on the table, then, making up my mind, strode to the table and
lifted the receiver.
‘Hello,’ said the voice of the businessman. ‘What have you to report?’
‘This isn’t Stiffy,’ I said. ‘Stiffy is in a hospital. He was taken
sick.’
There was a moment’s hesitation, thenthe voice said, ‘Oh, yes, it’s Mr
Bradshaw Carter, isn’t it. So nice that you could call.’
‘I found the phones,’ I said. ‘Here in Stiffy’s shack. And the phone in
my office has somehow disappeared. And I saw Gerald Sherwood. I think
perhaps, my friend, it’s time that you explained.’
‘Of course,’ the voice said. ‘You, I suppose, have decided that you
will represent us.’
‘Now,’ I said, ‘just a minute, there. Not until I know about it. Not