Adam & Eve & Pinch Me

by A. E. Coppard

“Come to bed now,” commanded Pomona, and Mrs. Flynn thereupon, still giggling, followed her child. When he was alone trembling Johnny turned down the lamp flame which had filled the room with smoky fumes. His glance rested upon the table knife; the room was silent and oppressive now. He glared at the picture of Hamlet, at the clock with the oily face, at the notepaper lying white upon the table. They had all turned into quivering semblances of the things they were; he was crying.

II

A letter, indited in the way he desired, was posted by Johnny on his way to work next morning. He was clerk in the warehouse of a wholesale provision merchant and he kept tally, in some underground cellars carpeted with sawdust, of hundreds of sacks of sugar and cereals, tubs of butter, of lard, of treacle, chests of tea, a regular promontory of cheeses, cases of candles, jam, starch, and knife polish, many of them stamped with the mysterious words “Factory Bulked.” He did not like those words, they sounded ugly and their meaning was obscure. Sometimes he took the cheese-tasting implement from the foreman’s bench and, when no one was looking, pierced it into a fine Cheddar or Stilton, withdrawing it with a little cylinder of cheese lying like a small candle in the curved blade. Then he would bite off the piece of rind, restore it neatly to the body of the cheese, and drop the other candle-like piece into his pocket. Sometimes his pocket was so full of cheese that he was reluctant to approach the foreman fearing he would smell it. He was very fond of cheese. All of them liked cheese.

The Flynns waited several days for a reply to the letter, but none came. Stringer did not seem to think it called for any reply. At the end of a week Johnny wrote again to his sister’s seducer. Pomona had given up her situation at the restaurant; her brother was conspicuously and unfailingly tender to her. He saved what money he could, spent none upon himself, and brought home daily an orange or an egg for the girl. He wrote a third letter to the odious Stringer, not at all threateningly, but just invitingly, persuasively. And he waited, but waited in vain. Then in that underground cheese tunnel where he worked he began to plot an alternate course of action, and as time passed bringing no recognition from Stringer his plot began to crystallize and determine itself. It was nothing else than to murder the man; he would kill him, he had thought it out, it could be done. He would wait for him near Stringer’s lodgings one dark night and beat out his brains with a club. All that was necessary then would be to establish an alibi. For some days Johnny dwelt so gloatingly upon the details of this retribution that he forgot about the alibi. By this time he had accumulated from his mother—for he could never once bring himself to interrogate Pomona personally about her misfortune—sufficient description of Stringer to recognize him among a thousand, so he thought. It appeared that he was not a large man with a red beard, but a small man with glasses, spats, and a slight limp, who always attended a certain club of which he was the secretary at a certain hour on certain nights in each week. To Johnny’s mind, the alibi was not merely important in itself, it was a romantic necessity. And it was so easy; it would be quite sufficient for Johnny to present himself at the public library where he was fairly well known. The library was quite close to Stringer’s lodgings and they, fortunately, were in a dark quiet little street. He would borrow a book from the odd-eyed man in the reference department, retire to one of the inner study rooms, and at half past seven creep out unseen, creep out, creep out with his thick stick and wait by the house in that dark quiet little street; it was very quiet, and it would be very dark; wait there for him all in the dark, just creep quietly out—and wait. But in order to get that alibi quite perfect he would have to take a friend with him to the library room, so that the friend could swear that he had really been there all the time, because it was just possible the odd-eyed man wouldn’t be prepared to swear to it; he did not seem able to see very much, but it was hard to tell with people like that.

Johnny Flynn had not told any of his friends about his sister’s misfortune; in time, time enough, they were bound to hear of it. Of all his friends he rejected the close ones, those of whom he was very fond, and chose a stupid lump of a fellow, massive and nasal, named Donald. Though awkward and fat he had joined Johnny’s running club; Johnny had trained him for his first race. But he had subjected Donald to such exhausting exercise, what with skipping, gymnastics, and tiring jaunts, that though his bulk disappeared his strength went with it; to Johnny’s great chagrin he grew weak, and failed ignominiously in the race. Donald thereafter wisely rejected all offers of assistance and projected a training system of his own. For weeks he tramped miles into hilly country, in the heaviest of boots to the soles of which he had nailed some thick pads of lead. When he donned his light running shoes for his second race he displayed an agility and suppleness, a god-like ease, that won not only the race, but the admiration and envy of all the competitors. It was this dull lumpish Donald that Johnny fixed upon to assist him. He was a great tool and it would not matter if he did get himself into trouble. Even if he did Johnny could get him out again, by confessing to the police; so that was all right. He asked Donald to go to the library with him on a certain evening to read a book called “Rasselas”—it was a grand book, very exciting—and Donald said he would go. He did not propose to tell Donald of his homicidal intention; he would just sit him down in the library with “Rasselas” while he himself sat at another table behind Donald, yes, behind him; even if Donald noticed him creeping out he would say he was only going to the counter to get another book. It was all quite clear, and safe. He would be able to creep out, creep out, rush up to the dark little street—yes, he would ask Donald for a piece of that lead and wrap it round the head of the stick—he would creep out, and in ten minutes or twenty he would be back in the library again asking for another book or sitting down by Donald as if he had not been outside the place, as if nothing had happened as far as he was concerned, nothing at all!

The few intervening days passed with vexing deliberation. Each night seemed the best of all possible nights for the deed, each hour that Stringer survived seemed a bad hour for the world. They were bad slow hours for Johnny, but at last the day dawned, passed, darkness came, and the hour rushed upon him.

He took his stick and called for Donald.

“Can’t come,” said Donald, limping to the door in answer to Johnny’s knock. “I been and hurt my leg.”

For a moment Johnny was full of an inward silent blasphemy that flashed from a sudden tremendous hatred, but he said calmly:

“But still ... no, you haven’t ... what have you hurt it for?”