All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [136]
In the middle of the room was a table with a wine-colored velvet cover, and on the table a dish of poisonously colored hard candies, a glass of water, and a couple of long narrow horns or trumpets apparently made of pewter. I sat well back from the table. On the other side, Miss Littlepaugh studied me from the red eyes, then said, in a voice surprisingly strong, “Shall we begin?”
She continued to study me, then said, half as though to herself. “If Mrs. Dalzell sent you, I reckon–”
“She sent me.” She had sent me. It had cost me twenty-five dollars.
“I reckon it’s all right.”
“It’s all right,” I said.
She got up and went to the candle on the little table, watching me all the while as tough, in the last flicker of the light before she blew it out, I might turn out to be distinctly not all right. Then she blew out the candle and made her way back to the chair.
After that, there were wheezings and moaning for a bit, the chink of metal which I took to be from one of the trumpets, some conversation, not very enlightening or edifying, from Princess Spotted Deer, who was Miss Littlepaugh’s control, and some even more unenlightening remarks, given in a husky guttural, from somebody on the Other Side who claimed to be named Jimmy and to have been a friend of my youth. Meanwhile, the radiator against the wall at my back thumped and churned, and I inhaled the pitch darkness and sweated. Jimmy was saying that I was going to take a trip.
I leaned forward in the dark and said, “Ask for Mortimer. I want to ask Mortimer a question.”
One of the trumpets chinked softly again, and the Princess made a remark I didn’t catch.
“It’s Mortimer L. I want,” I said.
There was some huskiness in the trumpet, very indistinct.
“He is trying to come through,” Miss Littlepaugh’s voice said, “but the vibrations are bad.”
“I want to ask him a question,” I said. “Get Mortimer. You know, Mortimer L. The L. is for Lonzo.”
The vibrations were still bad.
“I want to ask him about the suicide.”
The vibrations must have been very bad, for there wasn’t a sound now.
“Get Mortimer,” I said. “I want to ask him about the insurance. I want to ask him about the last letter he wrote.”
The vibrations must have been terrific, for a trumpet banged on the table and bounced off to the floor, and there was a racket and rustling across the table, and when the electric light came suddenly on, there was Miss Littlepaugh standing by the door with her hand on the switch, staring at me out of the red eyes, while her breath hissed quite audible over old teeth.
“You lied,” she said, “you lied to me!”
“No, I didn’t lie to you,” I said. “My name is jack Burden, and Mrs. Dalzell sent me.”
“She’s a fool,” she hissed, “a fool to send you–you–”
“She thought I was all right. And she wasn’t a fool to want twenty-five dollars.”
I took out my wallet, removed some bills, and held them in my hand. “I may not be all right,” I said, “but this stuff always is.”
“What do you want?” she demanded, her eyes snatching from my face to the green sheaf and back to my face.
“What I said,” I said. “I want to talk to Mortimer Lonzo Littlepaugh. If you can get him on the wire.”
“What do you want from him?”
“What I said I wanted. I want to ask him about the suicide.”
“It was an accident,” she said dully.
I detached a bill and held it up. “See that,” I said. “That is one hundred bucks.” I laid it on the table, at the end toward her. “Look at it good,” I said. “It is yours. Pick it up.”
She looked fearfully at the bill.
I held up two more bills. “Two more,” I said, “just like it. Three hundred dollars. If you could put me in touch with Mortimer, the money would be yours.”
“The vibrations,” she murmured, “sometimes the vibrations–”
“Yeah,” I said, “the vibrations. But a hundred buck will do a lot for the vibrations. Pick up that bill. It is yours.”
“No,” she said quickly and huskily, “no.”
I took one of the two bills in my hand and laid it on top of the other one on the table.
“Pick it up,” I said, “and to hell with the vibrations. Don’t you like money? Don’t you need money? When did you get a square meal? Pick it up and start talking.