Free Tales for a Stormy Night by Dorothy Salisbury Davis Page A

say he promised to stand up in the Crown Theatre and proclaim you a wanton woman if you didn’t cough up?”
    “Yes, but…”
    “And didn’t you say he was mad to match a twenty he’d lost on a horse?”
    “That was his cousin Richard said that,” Peg cried.
    Denny grinned, having the gist of it. Sweet William had run and lost early, but whoever was collecting from Richard was late on his rounds.
    The detective smashed his fist down on the desk. “But this is the one I caught placing the bet! Right out there.” He waved his hand toward the lobby. ‘Sweet William,’ he says, holding out the twenty and I nabbed him.”
    “Hold on a minute,” Denny shouted. “Sweet William ran in the second race. What would I be doing betting on a horse already in the pasture?”
    “There! That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” the detective triumphantly cried. “They were in it together!”
    “Oh,” Peg said, after a second, a look of great understanding lighting her face. “They were in it together, were they? What mischief, the two of them.”
    What mischief indeed, Denny thought. “I was not placing a bet,” he said with great deliberateness. “I wouldn’t know a bookmaker from a cobbler in this country. I was getting change of the twenty.”
    “And where, love, did you get the twenty?” said Peg.
    As though she could be persuaded now. “I shook it out of Richard.”
    “After he shook down your wife for it,” the detective put in harshly.
    “She was a hell of a lot more shakeable for him than ever she was for me then,” Denny shouted. He turned on the big man and faced up to him. “Since you’re so set on patching us up, let me ask you a question: who carries the purse in your house?”
    The detective’s mouth fell open. “My wife Norah does,” he said in no more than a whisper.
    “And I suppose your pockets are bulging?”
    The detective smiled wanly. “The sad truth is, she’s so tight she could squeeze a ha’penny out of a mouse.”
    Peg reached for the money, but Denny clamped his hand over it first. “I’ve earned this twice,” he said. “I want to spend it before I’ve got to go out and earn it over again.”
    Peg threw her head back. “I suppose we’re treating Richard on it, too, since he was such a help to you getting it out of me?”
    “No,” Denny said, “but you might say we’re treating each other.”
    “That was a mean prank,” Peg said. “I’d never’ve suspected you of conspiring like that, Denny.”
    “Nor did I think you’d tell me the story you did, love, of paying the rent with it.”
    “’Twas just for today, dear, to save the money. Tomorrow I’d have told you the truth.”
    “Then tomorrow I’ll tell it to you,” said Denny. “Tonight we’ll celebrate the conspiracy.”
1953

Backward, Turn Backward
    S HERIFF ANDREW WILLETS STOOD at the living-room window and watched his deputies herd back from the lawn another surge of the curious, restive people of Pottersville. Some had started out from their houses, shops, or gardens at the first sound of his siren, and throughout the long morning the crowd had swelled, winnowed out, and then swelled again.
    Behind him in the kitchen, from which the body of Matt Thompson had been recently removed, the technical crew of the state police were at work with microscope and camera, ultraviolet lamp and vacuum cleaner. He had full confidence in them but grave doubts that their findings would add much weight to, or counterbalance by much, the spoken testimony against Phil Canby. They had not waited, some of those outside, to give it to police or state’s attorney; they passed it to one another, neighbor to stranger, stranger sometimes back again to neighbor.
    It was possible to disperse them, the sheriff thought, just as a swarm of flies might be waved from carrion; but they would as quickly collect again, unless it were possible to undo murder—unless it were possible to go out and say to them: “It’s all a mistake.