Mediterranean Nights Read online

  ‘Funny, though! I knew my way round that little old burg, all right; yes, Sirr, an’ seein’ it was cocktail time, I recollected the date I had with that priestess kid—so I hit the trail for the street of the Melon Sellers.

  ‘Well, I hadn’t gone more than a couple of blocks when I saw a real interesting example of what Carthaginian culture could be; trussed up away over against a row of columns was a line of Roman soldiers—prisoners of war, I guess, and in front was a hoary old bud, dishing out arrows at three the quarter to a bunch of women and kids. Merry as a New York holiday crowd on Coney Island, they were; an’ every one that bit a Roman got another arrow free—but if they killed him it was a dollar fine. I figured it to be the original of the Aunt Sally game.

  ‘D’you know, folks, such a real powerful thing is the business instinct that I darn near put up a proposition to that bird ‘bout making a corner in the arrow market; then I came to again, thought of wiring the League of Nations about it as a gross infringement of international law, but there weren’t none, and I recollected I’d be late for my date if I didn’t hustle.

  ‘I found the little bit of soft goods, all right; she was some baby, and no mistake. This Carthaginian business didn’t seem so bad, somehow, when she was around, and she let on that it was part of her religious duties to entertain a stranger to the town. We beat it hand-in-hand to the Temple of Astoroth—it seemed she hall-roomed there, and she gave me the pass right in.

  ‘Well, I’ll say it was some dive, that Temple. There were lots more cuties just like mine, and all the swell boys of that ancient village seemed to have happened along.

  ‘It was a cross between a cathedral on Christmas day and a gala night at the Ziegfeld Follies, if you get my meaning; lots of incense and chanting—they had religion bad—but the dancers! They were some good-lookers, all right. You certainly didn’t have to ask why little Fanny left home, either, when you saw those Carthaginian dandy boys standing treat right and left. We’ve got nothing to touch it in little old Noo York, and that’s goin’ some.

  ‘Well, the Mother Superior came and handed us her blessing—in return for which same piece of politeness I begged her to accept a contribution to the Temple funds, and the moon-faced cutie took me along to her hall-room.

  ‘Now, people, I’d just hate you to get any wrong ideas of Benjamin P. Hooker—I’m pretty highly thought of in my home town, and I’m a banner-bearer in the Brothers of the Spread the Word and Lift the People Movement, but this thing was different. I was living two hundred and fifty years before the Christian era—see? So there weren’t no word to spread—anyhow, I’m tellin’ you the facts just as they happened to me.

  ‘There was only one fly in my ointment that night—she asked me what I’d take to drink, and I got stuck. I wanted to say, “Dry Martini.” I tried that hard I thought I’d burst something, but would you believe it, there ain’t no word for dry Martini in the Punic tongue. I had to make do with some sweet muck instead—like orangeade gone alcoholic.

  ‘But to get along, I hadn’t been more than maybe a couple of hours sayin’ how-de-do to the candy kid when the curtain was pulled aside—they hadn’t got no doors. A great big burly, hook-nosed guy, all tricked out in clinky plates of gold, comes in—say, he certainly was some swell—I figured out that he must be some big noise in the sacred Legion gang; it seemed I’d got his pet girl.

  ‘ “Get out o’ here,” he said to me. “Come on, you mutt—beat it.” I tell you he handed me the frozen mitt, all right. But I wasn’t handin’ in my interest with the cutie that way. No, Sirr.

  ‘I said, “Get out yourself!”

  ‘He scowled at me like a senator who’s mistaken for a hotel clerk. “Swine—skunk—pigface—hedgehog,” he yelled at me. “Get to hell out of here before I throw you out.”

  ‘Well, I got up, and I reckon I was abusive some—then I planted him one right on his ugly face—yes, Sirr, slick on his nasal organ. After that things sure began to hum; the big boy called for his flunkey men, and in they came, about a dozen of them. I hadn’t a darned earthly—I kicked one in the region of the solar plexus and bit another in the leg, but there weren’t no hope from the beginning for yours truly.

  ‘They ran me out that Temple dive in no time and along the street to the Palace of the Suffet—he was a kind of chief magistrate they have.

  ‘That Suffet was a beery-looking guy—a cross between a Sheenie and a Wop. They trussed me up like a Noo Year’s goose, and threw me on the floor before his sitdown as if I were a sack of flour. My friend of the tinplate readymades coughed up his yarn quick enough, but not a darned word would they let me say—no, Sirr—they kicked my shins every time I tried to open my mouth. I’ll tell the world there weren’t no sort of justice about that place at all.

  ‘ “These Barbarian guys sure get more fresh every day,” said the Suffet man. “Shove him in boilin’ oil.” It’s a fact what I’m tellin’ you—and if that’s culture, you can cut me out.

  ‘Then a lean, cadaverous-looking rube got up; he had a bright little suggestion of his own to make.

  ‘ “Take a pull, nunk,” he says to the Suffet man. “Have him flayed alive instead; he sure has a nice white skin, and I want another to finish off my book.” Can you beat it?—he wanted my skin to finish his blasted book!

  ‘Well, that young Carthaginian highbrow gave the word to the guards and they undid my bonds. I wasn’t slow to attain an upright position, you may guess, but he started in running his finger up and down my spine, “Say, nunk,” he cries, all gleeful, “I could write five thousand words on this guy’s back—let me have him.”

  ‘Now, I wasn’t goin’ to let that bunch of stiffs take my skin without a struggle, and a vague sort of notion came to me how the Professor man had said that the ancients regarded the mad folks as sacred—sort of inhabited by the gods—so I tell you what I did. I started to dance an American can-can right there around that so-called hall of justice in the hope they’d figure I was daft.

  ‘I never got wise to it if that brainwave fetched them, for all of a sudden pandemonium broke loose—that place became like Wall Street on a settling day. Folks burst into the hall hollering for all they were worth. “Make your get-away, boys—the Romans are coming—beat it right now.”

  ‘I tell you, people, I didn’t wait for no special invitation—all them clever dicks were behaving like they’d gone potty—runnin’ round that hall like chickens do when you come in to pick one for your Sunday dinner. I managed to trip the literary gent who’d took a fancy to my skin, and the others trampled on him, they were that anxious to get out. After that I struck a side door and got into the street.

  ‘Crikey, what a picture—them Carthaginians were footing it in all directions—and down the street came the Roman Legions, eight abreast. There weren’t no stoppin’ ’em. Shoulder to shoulder, their shields held up in front and torches lighting up their armour. They had taken the little old burg of Carthage by surprise, and no mistake.

  ‘Say, I was almost sorry for those Cathaginians—it was a merry little hell for them. Tough as they were, them Romans weren’t no better; they hacked and stabbed with their little short swords, the blood ran ankle-deep down the side-walk; yes, Sirr—they sacked that town good, proper and complete.

  ‘They beat up every Temple and Palace in the place—looting and killing as they went. I saw one guy with half a dozen ropes of pearls strung over his arm, and his hands cram full of precious gems. The inhabitants were slaughtered wholesale by the light of the burning houses—they didn’t spare the women, either; they ripped off their purple raiment and flung ’em into the flames—they didn’t even spare the kids: they were throwing them off the rooftops and out of the windows for the other guys to trample on in the streets below. I just can’t recount to you the horror of that night in Carthage.’

  . . . . .

  ‘What happened to you?’ I asked curiously.

  Benjamin P. Hooker shook his head. ‘I guess I wasn’t killable, somehow. I ma
naged to fight my way back to the ramparts, and I happened on my old nook by the wall. I sat down to take a spell, and my hand fell on that thing I’d had earlier in the day. As I picked it up the whole place faded out, and I heard the Professor man say:

  ‘ “You’ll excuse me, Mr. Hooker, but if there’s anything left in that bottle, I’m just a trifle dry.”’

  ‘You must have passed into some previous existence,’ said the girl with the protruding teeth.

  He nodded. ‘Yep—that’s what the Professor man seemed to think—but it may have been the sun and the Bollinger—Very Dry.’

  ‘You had hypnotised yourself?’ I suggested.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Mr. Hooker, ‘but it was a damn sight too realistic for me to wish I’d lived in those days—give me this dull and sordid age of commerce every time.’

  STORY III

  THIS little piece was written shortly after the end of the Second World War. Straight murder stories are not really my line; but, as a minor psychological study of a small-time city crook whom circumstances have compelled to live in the country, I think it has its interest.

  THE WORM THAT TURNED

  ARTY SUGDON was a truculent little man with a cocky expression but he was not looking quite so sure of himself as usual, because he was being held by the police in connection with the violent death of his uncle by marriage. The Inspector had said that there were just a few questions they would like to ask him; then at the station they had told him that they were afraid they would have to detain him overnight, and had courteously shown him into a quite comfortably furnished cell. As he sat on the edge of the bed that night before undressing, his reflections were as follows:

  . . . . .

  “I’ve got nothing to worry about. I’ve been far too clever for them. They can’t possibly have anything on me. They’re only keeping me here for the night so that they need lose no time in putting me through another routine check-up when the bloke they are expecting arrives from London. It’s the farm being over eight miles away, and naturally they don’t want to have to go that distance to fetch me again in the morning.

  ‘There is nothing that Minnie can give away, except having planted that haversack; and even if she blabs about that, it wouldn’t incriminate me. She’s far too stupid to suspect that I did the old boy in myself. Her type always takes for gospel anything you tell them. She’s that stupid there have been times in the past three years when I’ve wanted to bash her face in, and she’s lucky to have got off with an occasional cuff over the ear.

  ‘Our marriage has certainly had its ups and downs. There was the time she caught me out with that land-girl in the barn; but she came to heel all right when I told her that if a city chap like me didn’t have his bit of fun now and again, living on a farm would send him barmy. I’ve acted pretty decent by her, too, about that young Corporal from the camp who comes to buy our eggs. Most hubbies wouldn’t stop at poking fun at their wives if they found them looking all goofy over the teacups at such a likely lad. Anyhow she played up well enough when I broke it to her that her uncle was a gonner; and, as things are at the moment, it’s a comfort to think that I married a girl who can’t even put two and two together.

  ‘Of course, it was only natural that she should show more concern for me than about him, seeing that I’ll always be the big thing in her life. I wouldn’t be if she wasn’t so dumb ever to have tumbled to it that I married her only for her bit of money; but she had no idea how near broke I was, and being a simple country girl she thought me no end of a catch. When I took her to Newmarket and introduced her to all the boys, I can see her again now, a bit shy but so excited—and how her big eyes opened at the sight of the champagne and oyster supper we knocked back after our good day.

  ‘That cash her father had left her kept us going for quite a while—and the going was good while it lasted. If only I hadn’t had to welsh on account of that big double I took on the Lincoln! After that, there was nothing for it but to accept her Uncle Sid’s offer to come down and live at the farm. Him being a widower and Minnie having been brought up as a farm lass, it was a piece of cake for him to have her run the house. I don’t owe him nothing neither, seeing that his heart had gone groggy and I had to take all the worst chores off his shoulders.

  ‘God, how I hate that farm! What with getting up on icy mornings while it’s still dark, being out in all weathers, not a soul fit to talk to within miles, the whiskey being locked up in a cupboard as medicine, and looking after those blasted animals day in day out; it’s my idea of hell. No wonder that, come Christmas, I felt I couldn’t stick it a week longer. I wouldn’t have, neither, if the idea hadn’t come to me of doing the old man in.

  ‘That was Boxing Day—after he’d shown us the new will he’d made leaving the farm to Minnie—and by then I knew it needed only a sudden shock to make his heart conk out. Now he’s had it, we’ll sell up; then heigh-ho for good old London. Pity I’m finished as a bookie, but I think I’ll start one of those amusement parlours—slot machines and all that—somewhere off the Edgware Road. Plenty of easy money to be made in one of them, and no risks attached.

  ‘Cooking the old boy’s goose proved more of a conundrum than I’d thought. What a comfort now, though, to think how leery I was about not starting anything before I’d got the whole job worked out. I suppose it was his bad driving that gave me the idea of rigging a car smash.

  ‘I puzzled over the snags to that—the chance that the shock might not kill him after all; and how, if I’d been seen in the car with him, I might have some very awkward moments explaining things afterwards. My real brain-wave was about his driving into market and collecting the farm wages from the Bank every Thursday. I saw how easy it would be for me to have him pick me up on the way back, one time when there was nobody about, then if the crash didn’t do the trick it would be thought that he had given a hiker a lift and the chap had coshed him in order to rob him of his money.

  ‘Laying in wait for him down in the valley was a bit of a strain, in spite of the two doubles I had broken open the medicine cupboard to get down me before I started out. Still, I felt calm as a cucumber once the car came in sight and I was flagging him for a lift. I can see it all again as clear as clear, from the moment he picked me up.

  ‘I waited till the car had reduced speed going up the hill, then used my elbow to jab him in the ribs with all my force. As he doubled up his hands lost their grip on the wheel. The car swerved and ran into the ditch. His head shot forward and splintered the windscreen, but I was braced ready for the crash, so suffered no harm. It was a nasty moment when I felt his heart and found it still going. That meant I’d got to go through with the whole business and count on the hiker set-up. Pulling on a pair of gloves, I yanked the tyre-lever out from under the seat and gave him a crack on the back of the head. The one blow settled his hash all right; so I dropped the blunt instrument into the back of the car, whisked his wallet and scrambled out into the road.

  ‘A quick look round showed me that there was no one about, and I intended to go home as though nothing had happened; but I still had fifty yards to cover to the farm-yard when I spotted a lorry in the distance. Its driver might have seen that I was walking away from the ditched car, so I had to play for safety by running up to the house and breaking the news to Minnie myself.

  ‘I told her that I had come on the car with the old boy dead in it as I was walking home from the four acre. Naturally she went a bit white, and whiter still when I added: “It wasn’t an accident. His wallet’s gone with tomorrow’s wages. Some roughneck that he gave a lift to slogged him on the head. It looks like the work of one of those tough young conscripts up at the camp—probably he done it to get money to desert with.”

  ‘ “Why d’you think that?” she asked after a moment. “Did whoever done it leave anything behind?”

  ‘ “No,” I said, “I wish they had, though; or that someone else had been the first to find your uncle. As we’re the gainers by his death it’s just on the cards that th
e police may think I had a hand in it.”

  ‘Selling her that line was typical of smart little Arty. My saying that I might be suspected was a cert for killing any faint suspicion of me that she might have herself. She reacted instantly, and exclaimed:

  ‘ “Oh, Arty, that would be awful! They’re so clever it’s certain they’d twist whatever you say against you. Couldn’t we do something to take their minds off even getting the idea that it might have been you?” Then I could almost see her poor brain creaking before she stammered: “Couldn’t… couldn’t we put something in the back of the car as though it had been left by whoever done it—some old thing that doesn’t belong to us?”

  ‘The notion of laying a false trail hadn’t occurred to me; but it seemed a good one and exceptionally bright for her. But the very next moment she showed how damn’ stupid she really is by anteing up a suggestion which might quite well frame her own boy-friend for the murder. A few evenings before, the corporal had made her a present of a few tinned things from the N.A.A.F.I. He’d forgotten to take away the old haversack in which he’d brought them and it was hanging up there in the hall, where we were talking. Pulling it off the peg she said:

  ‘ “Here, take this! It might belong to any soldier, so you couldn’t have nothing better.”

  ‘She hadn’t the sense to realise that it would have the Corp’s name and number in it. How far the two of them have gone together when I’ve been out of the way, I don’t know—or care; but if he can’t prove an alibi, he’s going to pay plenty for having fooled around with another chap’s wife.

  ‘I had hardly agreed to her suggestion when there came a knock on the door. It was the driver of the lorry. On coming up the hill he had seen the ditched car, got out to have a look, then walked through the yard to the farm. I explained about it being my wife’s uncle and that I’d just broken the news to her. He gave me a lift into the town and I told my story to the police. They brought me back to the scene of the crash in one of their cars and when we got there I saw the haversack lying on the back seat behind Uncle Sid’s battered head. I give Minnie full marks for having put it there when she saw I wouldn’t have the chance to do so myself.