Fancies and Goodnights

«By God!» said Trimble. «Do you know who that is? Do you know who you've got there?»
«No,» said we. «Who?»
«Jason C. Reid.»
«Jason C.?» I said. «No, it's J. Chapman. Oh, yes, I see. So what?»
«Why, for God's sake, don't you read the news? Don't you remember the Pittsburgh cleaver murder?»
«No,» said I.
«Wait a minute,» said Logan. «About a year or so ago, was it? I read something.»
«Damn it!» said Trimble. «It was a front-page sensation. This guy was tried for it. They said he hacked a pal of his pretty nearly to pieces. I saw the body. Never seen such a mess in my life. Fantastic! Horrible!»
«However,» said I, «it would appear this fellow didn't do it. Presumably he wasn't convicted.»
«They tried to pin it on him,» said Trimble, «but they couldn't. It looked hellish bad, I must say. Alone together. No trace of any outsider. But no motive. I don't know. I just don't know. I covered the trial. I was in court every day, but I couldn't make up my mind about the guy. Don't leave any meat cleavers round this library, that's all.»
With that, he bade us goodbye. I looked at Logan. Logan looked at me. «I don't believe it,» said Logan. «I don't believe he did it.»
«I don't wonder his nerves are eating him,» said I.
«No,» said Logan. «It must be damnable. And now it's followed him here, and he knows it.»
«We'll let him know, somehow,» said I, «that we're not even interested enough to look up the newspaper files.»
«Good idea,» said Logan.
A little later Reid came in again, his movements showing signs of intense control. He came over to where we were sitting. «Would you prefer to cancel our arrangement for tonight?» said he. «I think it would be better if we cancelled it. I shall ask my firm to transfer me again. I —»
«Hold on,» said Logan. «Who said so? Not us.»
«Didn't he tell you?» said Reid. «Of course he did.»
«He said you were tried,» said I. «And he said you were acquitted. That's good enough for us.»
«You're still acquitted,» said Logan. «And the date's on, and we won't talk.»
«Oh!» said Reid. «Oh!»
«Forget it,» said Logan, returning to his papers.
I took Reid by the shoulder and gave him a friendly shove in the direction of his table. We avoided looking at him for the rest of the afternoon.
That night, when we met for dinner, we were naturally a little self-conscious. Reid probably felt it. «Look here,» he said when we had finished eating, «would either of you mind if we skipped the movie tonight?»
«It's O.K. by me,» said Logan. «Shall we go to Chancey's?»
«No,» said Reid, «I want you to come somewhere where we can talk. Come up to my place.»
«Just as you like,» said I. «It's not necessary.»
«Yes it is,» said Reid. «We may as well get it over.»
He was in a painfully nervous state, so we consented and went up to his apartment, where we had never been before. It was a single room with a pull-down bed and a bathroom and kitchenette opening off it. Though Reid had now been in town over two months, there was absolutely no sign that he was living there at all. It might have been a room hired for the uncomfortable conversation of this one night.
We sat down, but Reid immediately got up again and stood between us, in front of the imitation fireplace.
«I should like to say nothing about what happened today,» he began. «I should like to ignore it and let it be forgotten. But it can't be forgotten.»
«It's no use telling me you won't think about it,» said he. "Of course you'll think about it. Everyone did back there. The firm sent me to Cleveland. It became known there, too. Everyone was thinking about it, whispering about it, wondering.
«You see, it would be rather more exciting if the fellow was guilty after all, wouldn't it?»
«In a way, I'm glad this has come out. With you two, I mean. Most people — I don't want them to know anything. You two — you've been decent to me — I want you to know all about it. All.»
«I came up from Georgia to Pittsburgh, was there for ten years with the Walls Tyman people. While there I met — I met Earle Wilson. He came from Georgia, too, and we became very great friends. I've never been one to go about much. Earle was not only my best friend: he was almost my only friend.»
«Very well. Earle's job with our company was a better paid one than mine. He was able to afford a small house just beyond the fringe of the town. I used to drive out there two or three evenings a week. We spent the evenings very quietly. I want you to understand that I was quite at home in the house. There was no host-and-guest atmosphere about it. If I felt sleepy, I'd make no bones about going upstairs and stretching out on a bed and taking a nap for half an hour. There's nothing so extraordinary about that, is there?»
«No, nothing extraordinary about that,» said Logan.
«Some people seemed to think there was,» said Reid. «Well, one night I went out there after work. We ate, we sat about a bit, we played a game of checkers. He mixed a couple of drinks, then I mixed a couple. Normal enough, isn't it?»
«It certainly is,» said Logan.
«I was tired,» said Reid. «I felt heavy. I said I'd go upstairs and stretch out for half an hour. That always puts me right. So I went up.»
«I sleep heavily, very heavily, for half an hour, then I'm all right. This time I seemed to be dreaming, a sort of nightmare. I thought I was in an air raid somewhere, and heard Earle's voice calling me, but I didn't wake, not until the usual half-hour was up anyway.»
«I went downstairs. The room below was dark. I called out to Earle and started across from the stairs toward the light switch. Halfway across, I tripped over something — it turned out to be the floor lamp, which had fallen over. And I went down, and I fell flat on him.»
«I knew he was dead. I got up and found the light. He was lying there. He looked as if he had been attacked by a madman. He was cut to pieces, almost. God!»
«I got hold of the phone at once and called the police. Naturally, while they were coming, I looked round. But first of all I just walked about, dazed. It seems I must have gone up into the bedroom again. I've got no recollection of that, but they found a smear of blood on the pillow. Of course, I was covered with it. Absolutely covered; I'd fallen on him. You can understand a man being dazed, can't you? You can understand him going upstairs, even, and not remembering it? Can't you?»
«I certainly can,» said Logan.
«It seems very natural,» said I.
«They thought they had trapped me over that,» said Reid. "They said so to my face. The idiots! Well, I remember looking around, and I saw what it had been done with. Earle had a great equipment of cutlery in his kitchen. One of our firm's subsidiaries was in that line. One of the things was a meat cleaver, the sort of thing you see usually in a butcher's shop. It was there on the carpet.
«Well, the police came. I told them all I could. Earle was a quiet fellow. He had no enemies. Does anyone have that sort of enemy? I thought it must be some maniac. Nothing was missing. It wasn't robbery, unless some half-crazy tramp had got in and been too scared in the end to take anything.»
«Whoever it was had made a very clean getaway. Too clean for the police. And too clean for me. They looked for fingerprints, and they couldn't find any.
«They have an endless routine in this sort of thing. I won't bore you with every single detail. It seemed their routine wasn't good enough — the fellow was too clever for them. But of course they wanted an arrest. So they indicted me.»
«Their case was nothing but a negative one. God knows how they thought it could succeed. Perhaps they didn't think so. But, you see, if they could build up a strong presumptive case, and I only got off because of a hung jury — well, that's different from having to admit they couldn't find hair or hide of the real murderer».