Already at ten o’clock in the morning the ice cubes in the glass, the flushed cheek, the slightly glazed eye, the silly smile, the loud laughter about nothing at all.
He pulled the plug loose and the purring of the razor stopped. As he ran his fingertips along the angle of his jaw his eyes met the eyes in the mirror with a somber stare. “Washed up,” he said between his teeth. “At fifty-two you’re senile. I’m surprised you’re there at all. I’m surprised I can see you.”
He blew the fluff out of the shaving head of the razor, put the protective cap back on it, wound the cord around it carefully and put it away in the drawer. He got out the after-shaving lotion, rubbed it into his face, dusted it with powder and carefully wiped the powder off with a hand towel.
He scowled at the rather gaunt face in the glass and turned and looked out of the bathroom window. Not much smog this morning. Quite sunny and clear. You could see the city hall. Who the hell wants to see the city hall? The heck with the city hall. He went out of the bathroom, putting his coat on as he started down the stairs. Boom, boom. Boom, boom, boom. Like back in a cheap dive where you could smell smoke and sweat, and perfume of a sort. The living-room door was half open. He moved in through it and stood looking at the two of them, cheek-to-cheek, drifting slowly around the room. They danced close together, dreamy-eyed, in a world of their own. Not drunk. Just lit enough to like the music loud. He stood there and watched them. As they turned and saw him they hardly looked at him. Gladys’ lips curled a little in a faint sneer, very faint. Porter Green had a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and his eyes half closed against the smoke. A tall, dark fellow, with a sprinkling of gray in his hair. Well dressed. A bit shifty-eyed. Might be a used car salesman. Might be anything that didn’t take too much work or too much honesty. The music stopped and somebody started to spiel a commercial. The dancing couple broke apart. Porter Green stepped over and turned the volume control down. Gladys stood in the middle of the floor looking at Joe Pettigrew.
“Any little thing we can do for you, sweetheart?” she asked him in a clear contemptuous voice.
He shook his head without answering.
“Then you can do something for me. Drop dead.” She opened her mouth wide and went off into a peal of laughter.
“Cut it,” Porter Green said. “Stop picking on him, Glad. So he doesn’t like dance music. So what? There are things you don’t like, aren’t there?”
“Sure there are,” Gladys said. “Him.”
Porter Green moved over and picked up a whiskey bottle, began to load the two highball glasses on the coffee table.
“How about a drink, Joe?” he asked, without looking up.
Joe Pettigrew again shook his head slightly and said nothing. “He can do tricks,” Gladys said. “He’s almost human. But he can’t talk.”
“Aw, shut up,” Porter Green said, wearily. He stood up with the two full glasses in his hand. “Listen, Joe, I’m buying the liquor. You’re not worrying about that, are you? No? Well, that’s fine.” He handed a glass to Gladys. They both drank, looking across the glasses at Joe Pettigrew standing silent in the doorway.
“You know I married that,” Gladys said thoughtfully. “I really did. I wonder what kind of sleep medicine I’d been taking.”
Joe Pettigrew stepped back into the hallway and half closed the door. Gladys stared at it. In a changed tone, she said, “Just the same, he scares me. He just stands there and don’t say anything. Never complains. Never gets mad. What do you suppose goes on inside his head?”
The commercial spieler ended his stint and put on a new record. Porter Green stepped across and turned the volume up again, then turned it down. “I think I could guess,” he said. “After all, it’s a pretty old story.” He turned the volume up again and held his arms out.
Joe Pettigrew stepped out on the front porch, put the heavy old-fashioned front door on the latch, and closed it behind him to muffle the boom of the radio. Looking along the front of the house he saw that the front windows were closed. It wasn’t so loud out here. These old frame houses were pretty solidly built. He was just starting to think whether the grass needed cutting when a funny-looking man turned up the concrete walk toward him. Once in a while you see a man in an opera cloak. But not on Lexington Avenue in that block. Not in the middle of the morning. And not wearing a top hat. Joe Pettigrew stared at the top hat. It was definitely not new, definitely on the rusty side. A bit rough in the nap like a cat’s fur when the cat isn’t feeling too well. And the opera cloak wasn’t anything Adrian would have wanted to autograph. The man had a sharp nose and deep-set black eyes. He was pale but he didn’t look sick. He stopped at the foot of the steps and looked up at Joe Pettigrew.
“Good morning,” he said, touching the edge of the topper.
“Morning,” Joe Pettigrew said. “What are you selling today?”
“I’m not selling magazines,” the man in the opera cloak said.
“Not at this address, friend.”
“Nor am I about to enquire if you have a photograph of yourself that would tint up in beautiful watercolors as transparent as moonlight on the Matterhorn.” The man put a hand under his opera cloak.
“Don’t tell me you’ve got a vacuum cleaner under that cloak,” Joe Pettigrew said.
“Nor,” went on the man in the opera cloak, “do I have an all-stainless-steel kitchen in my hip pocket. Not that I couldn’t have, if I chose.”
“But you are selling something,” Joe Pettigrew said dryly.
“I am bestowing something,” the man in the opera cloak said. “On the right persons. A carefully selected…”
“A suit club,” Joe Pettigrew said disgustedly. “I didn’t know they had them any more.”
The tall skinny man brought his hand out from under the cloak with a card in it.
“A carefully selected few,” he repeated. “I don’t know. I’m lazy this morning. Perhaps I shall only select one.”
“The jackpot,” Joe Pettigrew said. “Me.”
The man held the card out. Joe Pettigrew took it and read “Professor Augustus Bingo.” Then in smaller letters in the corner “White Eagle Depilatory Powder.” There was a telephone number and an address on North Wilcox. Joe Pettigrew flicked the card with a fingernail and shook his head. “Never use it, friend.”
Professor Augustus Bingo smiled very faintly. Or rather his lips pulled back a fraction of an inch and his eyes crinkled at the corners. Call it a smile. It wasn’t big enough to argue about. He put his hand under his cloak again, came out with a small round box about the size of a typewriter ribbon box. He held it up and sure enough it said on it “White Eagle Depilatory Powder.”
“I presume you know what depilatory powder is, Mister…”
“Pettigrew,” Joe Pettigrew said amiably. “Joe Pettigrew.”
“Ah, my instinct was right,” Professor Bingo remarked. “You are in trouble.” He tapped on the round box with his long pointed finger. “This, Mr. Pettigrew, is not depilatory powder.”
“Wait a minute,” Joe Pettigrew said. “First it’s depilatory powder, then it isn’t. And I’m in trouble. Why? Because my name is Pettigrew?”
“All in good time, Mr. Pettigrew. Let me establish the background. This is a run-down neighborhood. No longer desirable. But your house is not run-down. It is old but well . kept. Therefore, you own it.”
“Say I own a piece of it,” Joe Pettigrew said.
The Professor held up his left hand, palm outwards. “Quiet, please. I continue with my analysis. The taxes are high and you own the house. If you were able, you would have moved away. Why have you not? Because you can’t sell this property. But it is a large house. Therefore you have roomers.”
“One roomer,” Joe Pettigrew said. “Just one.” He sighed.
“You are about forty-eight years of age,” the Professor suggested.
“Give or take four years,” Joe Pettigrew said.
“You are shaved and neatly dressed. Yet you have an unhappy exp
ression. Therefore I postulate a young wife. Spoiled, exacting. I also postulate…” He broke off abruptly and began to pull the lid off the box of something that was no depilatory powder. “I have ceased to postulate,” he said calmly. “This,” he held out the uncovered box, and Joe Pettigrew could see that it was half full of a white powder, “is not Copenhagen snuff”
“I’m a patient man,” Joe Pettigrew said. “But just lay off telling me what it isn’t and tell me what it is.”
“It is snuff,” the Professor said coldly. “Professor Bingo’s snuff. My snuff.”
“Never use snuff either,” Joe Pettigrew said. “But I’ll tell you. Down the end of the street there’s a Tudor court called the Lexington Towers. Full of bit players and extras and so on. When they’re not working, which is most of the time, and when they’re not hitting the sixty-five-percent neutral spirits, which is hardly any of the time, a sniff of what you have there might be right down the middle for them. If you can collect for it, that is. And that’s a point you want to watch.”
“Professor Bingo’s snuff,” the Professor said with icy dignity, “is not cocaine.” He folded his cloak around him with a gesture and touched the brim of his hat. He was still holding the small box in his left hand as he turned away.
“Cocaine, my friend?” he said. “Bah! Compared with Bingo’s snuff cocaine is baby powder.”
Joe Pettigrew watched him move down the concrete walk and turn along the pavement. Old streets have old trees along them. Lexington Avenue was lined with camphor trees. They had their new coats of leaves and the leaves were still tinged with pink here and there. The Professor moved off under the trees. From the house the boom boom sounded still. They would be on their third or fourth drink by now. They would be humming the music, cheek-to-cheek. After awhile they would start flopping around on the furniture. Mauling each other. Well, what difference did it make? He wondered what Gladys would be like when she was fifty-two years old. The way she was going now she wouldn’t look like she sang in the choir.
He stopped thinking about this and watched Professor Bingo, who had now stopped under one of the camphor trees and turned to look back. He put his hand up to the brim of his rusty topper and lifted the hat clear off his head and bowed. Joe Pettigrew waved at him politely. The Professor put the hat back on and very slowly, so that Joe Pettigrew could see exactly what he was doing, he took a pinch of powder from the still open small round box and pushed it against his nostrils. Joe Pettigrew could almost hear him sniff it up with that long indrawn breath snuff takers use in order to get the stuff high up on the membranes.
He didn’t actually hear this, of course, he just imagined it. But he saw it clearly enough. The hat, the opera cloak, the long thin legs, the white indoor face, the deep dark eyes, the arm raised, the round box in the left hand. He couldn’t have been more than fifty feet away at most. Right in front of the fourth camphor tree from the foot of the walk.
But that couldn’t have been right because if he had been standing in front of the tree Joe Pettigrew wouldn’t have been able to see the entire trunk of the tree, the grass, the edge of the curbing, the street. Some of this would have been hidden behind the lean, fantastic body of Professor Bingo. Only it wasn’t. Because Professor Augustus Bingo wasn’t there any more. Nobody was there. Nobody at all.
Joe Pettigrew put his head on one side, staring down the street. He stood very still. He hardly heard the radio inside the house. A car turned the corner and went by along the block. Dust rose behind it. The leaves of the trees didn’t quite rustle but they made a faint, barely audible sound. Then something else rustled.
Slow steps were coming towards Joe Pettigrew. No sound of heels. Just shoe leather slithering along the concrete of the walk. The muscles in the back of his neck began to ache. He could feel his teeth biting hard together. The steps came on slowly. They came very close. Then there was a moment of complete silence. Then the rustling steps moved away from Joe Pettigrew again. And then the voice of Professor Bingo said out of nowhere:
“A free sample with my compliments, Mr. Pettigrew. But, of course, I shall be available for further supplies on a more professional basis.”
The steps rustled again going away. In a little while Joe Pettigrew didn’t hear them at all. Exactly why he looked down at the top of the steps he was not quite clear; but he did. And there, where no hand had put it, beside the toe of his right shoe, was a small round box like a typewriter ribbon box. On the cover of it was written in ink, in a clear Spencerian hand, “Professor Bingo’s Snuff.”
Very slowly, like a man very old or in a dream, Joe Pettigrew leaned down and picked up the box, covered it with his hand and put it in his pocket.
Boom, boom. Boom, boom, boom, went the radio. Gladys and Porter Green were not paying any attention to it. They were locked in each other’s arms in a corner of the davenport, lips on lips. With a long sigh, Gladys opened her eyes and looked across the room. Then she stiffened and jerked away. Very slowly the door of the room was opening.
“What’s the matter, baby?”
“The door. What’s he up to now?”
Porter Green turned his head. The door was wide open now. But nobody stood in it. “Okay the door’s open,” he said a little thickly. “So what?”
“It’s Joe.”
“It’s Joe and still so what?” Porter Green said irritably.
“He’s hiding out there. He’s up to something.”
“Phooey,” Porter Green said. He stood up and walked across the room. He put his head out into the hall. “Nobody here,” he said over his shoulder. “Must have been the draft.”
“There isn’t any draft,” Gladys said. Porter Green shut the door, felt that it was firmly closed, shook it. It was closed all right. He started back across the room. When he was halfway to the davenport the door clicked behind him and slowly swung open again. Shrilly, against the heavy beat of the radio, Gladys yelled.
Porter Green lunged across and snapped off the radio, then turned angrily.
“Don’t go loopy on me,” he said between his teeth.” I don’t like loopy dames.”
Gladys just sat there with her mouth open staring at the open door. Porter Green went across to it and stepped out into the hall. There was nobody there. There was no sound. For a long moment the house was perfectly still.
Then, upstairs from the back of the house somebody began to whistle.
When Porter Green again shut the door he fixed it so that it was not on the latch. He would have been wiser to turn the knob of the bolt as well. He might just possibly have saved a lot of trouble. But he was not a very sensitive man and he had other things on his mind.
It might not have made any difference anyway.
There were things to think about carefully. The noise—but that could be blanketed by turning up the radio. Wouldn’t have to turn it up much either. Maybe not at all. Darn near shook the floor the way it was. Joe Pettigrew sneered at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.
“You and me spend such a lot of time together,” he said to his reflection. “We’re such little pals. From now on you ought to have a name. I’ll call you Joseph.”
“Don’t go whimsical on me,” Joseph said. “I don’t go for the light touch. I’m the moody type.”
“I need your advice,” Joe said. “Not that it ever was worth anything. I’m serious enough. Take the question of the snuff the Professor gave me. It works. Gladys and her boy friend didn’t see me. Twice I stood right in the open door and they looked straight at me. They didn’t see a thing. That’s why she yelled. Seeing me wouldn’t have scared her worth a nickel.”
“It would have made her laugh,” Joseph said.
“But I can see you, Joseph. And you can see me. So suppose the effect of the snuff wears off after awhile? It’s got to, because otherwise how would the Professor make any money? So I need to know how long.”
“You’ll know all right,” Joseph said, “if anyone is looking your way when it wears off.”
“That,” Joe Pettigrew said, “could be very inconvenient, if you know what I’m thinking.”
Joseph nodded. He knew that all right. “Maybe it doesn’t wear off,” he suggested. “Maybe the Professor has another powder that cancels this one out. Maybe that’s the hook. He gives you what takes you out but when you want back in again you have to see him with folding money.”
Joe Pettigrew thought about it, but he said no, he didn’t think that could be right, because the Professor’s card gave an address on Wilcox which would be in an office building. It would have elevators, and if the Professor was waiting around for customers that nobody could see, but that presumably they could feel if they touched them—well, having his place of business in an office building wouldn’t be practical unless the effect did wear off.
“All right,” Joseph said a little sourly.” I won’t be stubborn.”
“The next point,” Joe Pettigrew said, “is where this being invisible leaves off. What I mean is, Gladys and Porter Green can’t see me. Therefore they can’t see the clothes I’m wearing because an empty suit of clothes standing in the doorway would scare them a lot worse than nothing standing there. But there’s got to be some kind of system to it. Is it anything I touch?”
“That could be it,” Joseph said. “Why not? Anything you touch fades out just the same as you do.”
“But I touched the door,” Joe said. “And I don’t think that faded out. And I don’t touch—I mean actually touch—all of my clothes. My feet touch my socks and my socks touch my shoes. I touch my shirt and I don’t touch my jacket. And what about the things in pockets?”
“Maybe it’s your aura,” Joseph said. “Or your magnetic field or just your personality—what there is of it—anything that falls in that field goes with you. Cigarettes, money, anything that’s properly yours, but not things like doors and walls and floors.”