Madball (26 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY

SAMMY PUT DOWN the suitcases. Behind him he heard Miss Trixie slide home the bolt of the door. He turned. She looked eager, excited. Her eyes were shining
.
He felt eager and excited himself now. He'd heard people talk about being in love and had never known what it meant until just now. The way he felt now, that was being in love. He loved Trixie.

He took a step toward her, but she smiled and put up a hand to hold him off. "Honey, don't rush me. I want to get my breath. And we got all night, honey."

"Sure, Miss Trixie."

She walked around him and opened one of the suitcases. It was the one that had been empty; they'd put the shoe box in it and a bottle Miss Trixie had had and then she'd tossed enough clothes in to fill it.

Sammy thought maybe she was going to reach for the box of money and that was his so he moved over to stop her if she did, but she reached only for the bottle.

"Sammy, I'll make us each a drink." She looked at him thoughtfully for a second. "Here's what let's do. I think you ought to take a bath before we go to bed. Will you do that, honey?"

"Sure, Miss Trixie."

"And while you're doing that, I'll make us each a nice drink and I'll get undressed and be in bed waiting for you and the drinks will be ready too."

"Sure, Miss Trixie."

"And close the bathroom door, will you, honey? The sound of water running always gives me the jim-jams."

"All right, Miss Trixie."

Sammy started for the bathroom and then turned back. "Now, Miss Trixie, you wouldn't run off with that money, would you? That's my money, and I don't want you to run off with it."

She laughed heartily. "Word of honor as a girl scout. When you come out all nice and clean I'll be here and the money will be here and I'll be waiting for you."

Sammy went into the bathroom and shut the door. He put the plug in the bathtub and started the water running. But he was still a little worried about the money. He loved Miss Trixie and he believed her, but what if he was wrong in believing her? That must be an awful lot of money in the box; he remembered the look on Miss Trixie's face when she'd looked into the box.

He happened to look up and saw that there was a transom above the bathroom door. The glass in the transom was the wavy kind that you can't see through, but it was open a little; he'd be able to see through the crack at the bottom if he got up there.

But he wasn't tall enough to see through that crack, and there wasn't any way of climbing up there. He looked down to see if the bathroom door had a keyhole he could look through, but it didn't have. There was a knob that probably locked it but there wasn't any keyhole.

He turned back to see if the water was running warm enough and that was when he saw the stool. It was a stool to sit on, but it suddenly came to Sammy that he could stand on it too, and that if he moved it over by the door and stood on it there, he could see through the bottom of the transom. And then he could see what Miss Trixie was doing out there and she wouldn't know that he was seeing. He moved the stool over in front of the door and stepped up onto it.

If Miss Trixie started to undress and get into bed, then he'd know for sure that she wasn't going to run away with the money while he was taking a bath. And anyway it would be nice to watch her undress and get naked.

But Miss Trixie wasn't running off with the money nor was she getting undressed yet; she was making the drinks. She'd already poured whisky, about three fingers of it, into each of the two tumblers on the bureau. Now she had a little box and she took some little white things, about six or seven of them, out of the box and put them into one of the glasses and started to stir it with a fingernail file she took out of the purse that was still hanging from her arm. She must be making something fancy for them to drink, not just plain whisky. Sammy knew that people mixed things to make fancy drinks.

He was getting hot from the steam that was coming up from the water running in the tub. There'd been two faucets and he'd known one of them must be hot and the other cold but he hadn't known which and had turned one at random. It had been the hot water, he knew now. So he got down from the stool and turned it off and turned the other one on. Then he got on the stool.

Miss Trixie still hadn't started to undress. But she'd finished mixing the drinks and she was kneeling in front of the suitcase, the one that was open and had the shoe box in it, and she moved the clothes until the shoe box showed. She picked up the shoe box and took the lid off, standing up now and looking in and reaching in, moving some of the bills around.

She shouldn't do that. It was his money and not hers, and if she looked at it and touched it like that she might change her m
ind about running away with it.

Maybe it would be a good idea to scare her so she wouldn't do that. He remembered the gun in his pocket. Maybe he should scare her with it and let her know he had a gun so she'd be afraid to try to run away with his money.

He took the gun out of his pocket as he stepped down off the stool. He pulled back the hammer with his thumb
-
because the click it made wouldn't be heard over the roar of the running water now anyway
-
like the man at the shooting gallery had showed him how to do.

He opened the door and stepped out.

Miss Trixie jumped up, and from the look on her face he knew that he was scaring her all right. She backed away from him. She dropped the box of money and the money came out of the box and made a pile of money on the floor, a pile of green and white paper money.

And she took another step back and he decided he didn't want to scare her too much. He loved her and he didn't want her to look at him like that.

He said, "I ain't going to hurt you, Miss Trixie. I just want to show you that I-"

The gun went off in his hand.

Why, his finger had just been resting on the trigger; it hadn't been pulling hard like he'd had to pull on the trigger of the revolver at the shooting gallery!

The noise it made was awful in that little room.

But the look on Miss Trixie's face was even more awful. And suddenly her head and shoulders bent forward and she fell down on the floor. She jerked and rolled over, her head toward him.

Sammy let go of the gun and it fell on the floor too. He said, "I'm sorry, Miss Trixie, I didn't mean-"

She didn't move or answer. But maybe he hadn't really shot her. Maybe the noise had just scared her and she'd fainted.

Sammy got down on the floor by her and put her head in his lap. He saw now that there was a spreading red spot on her pretty green dress right between her breasts. And suddenly blood, a lot of blood, came out of her mouth; Sammy whimpered.

Her face wasn't pretty any more and Sammy looked away from it. He saw Miss Trixie's purse where it had fallen and spilled its contents. The handful of bills he had given her had come out of it and they were lying right next to the bills that had come out of the shoe box. And a book of matches had come out of her purse and was lying there too.

There was hammering on the door of the room and yelling outside in the corridor and somebody trying the knob and somebody yelling to somebody else to call the police, and Sammy was staring at the pile of money and the book of matches and thinking that now Mr. Evans would get the money back, and Sammy reaching for the matches and striking one and touching it to the money, and flames going up as the money started to bu
rn
, and Sammy moving more and more of the five and ten and twenty and fifty and hundred dollar bills onto the fire and Miss Trixie's eyes glazing over and more hammering on the door and yelling and the roar of water still running in the bathroom and the flames getting higher and higher and prettier and prettier and hotter and hotter and brighter and brighter.