The Cheaters

  BY ROBERT BLOCH

  l. Joe Henshaw

  THE way I got those spectacles, I bought a blind lot off the City for twenty bucks.

  Maggie hollered fit to raise the dead when I told her.

  "What you wanna load up on some more junk for? The store’s full of it now. Get yourself a lot of raggedy old clothes and some busted furniture, that’s what you’ll get. Why, that dump’s over two hunnert years old! Ain’t nobody been inside it since Prohibition, it’s padlocked tight shut. And you have to throw away twenty bucks for whatever you find for salvage.”

  And on and on, about what a bum I was, and why had she ever married me, and who wanted to be stuck away for life in the junk and second-hand business. Same old phonograph record she’s played for years. Maggie always had a temper.

  Spectacles, you know! Makes you see things better!

  Well, I just walked out on her and let her keep right on jawing to Jake. Jake, he’s willing to listen to her. He’ll sit back of the shop for hours, drinking coffee in the kitchen when he should be working, and let her rave about me.

  But I knew what I was doing. Delehanty at the City Hall gave me the tipoff about this old house and told me to get in my bid, he’d take care of it.

  They were pulling down this here old dump near the wharf. Must have been a classy dive once, even though they made a speak out of it back in Prohibition days and then slapped a padlock on it since. Delehanty told me that upstairs, where nobody ever went while it was a rummy hangout, there was all kinds of old furniture—a dozen bedrooms full of clothes, everything from way back.

  Maybe Maggie was right about it being junk, and then maybe she was wrong. You never can tell. Way I figured, there might be some real antique pieces up there. One good haul and I stood to make two-three hundred iron men selling to a downtown auction house. That’s the way to get ahead in this racket. You got to take a chance once in a while.

  So anyhow, I slapped my bid in, and nobody bid against me, so I got the lot. City gave me three days to move the stuff out before they started razing. Delehanty slipped me a key.

  I walked out on Maggie, climbed in the truck, and went down there. Usual thing, I have Jake drive and help me load, but this time I wanted to case the joint myself. If there really was something valuable in there—well, Jake’s my junior partner, sort of—and he’d want a cut. If he saw the stuff. If I saw it first and moved it out, he’d never know. So let him stay back there and listen to Maggie. Maybe I am a dried-up old jerk like she tells it. And maybe I’m a pretty smart guy. Just because Jake likes to dress up Saturdays and go down to the Bright Spot—

  Anyway,— I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about these spectacles, these here cheaters I found.

  Like I say, I drove down to the wharf on Edison and found the dump. It sure was a crummy-looking pile. Easy two hundred years old. Fancy gables, all rotted; no wrecker would get much out of that heap.

  THE lousy padlock was so rusty I almost had to jimmy the door, but the key finally worked and I went inside. Dust fit to choke a pig, all over everything. Downstairs was just rubbish and slats. They must have ripped the bar and fixings out when the Feds raided it. I kind of counted on finding bar stools and maybe some metal laying around, but no soap.

  So I tried the stairs. Tried is right. They almost rotted right under my feet, going up. Fancy banister, some kind of mahogany— that was in good shape, but no use to me. Even under all the dirt, I could see that this dump had class, once. About the time George Washington slept there, maybe.

  Upstairs was even worse. Eight big rooms, all dust, and broken sticks of furniture. Busted beds. Canopy beds, mostly. Springs all broken. Bedding, just rags. I poked around but didn’t find anything unless you count the crockery under the beds.

  There were some chairs with nice wood to them, the frame parts, but springs and stuffing were absolutely out. Couple tables around, too, but strictly from lumber.

  I WAS beginning to burn up. I’d figured the least there would be was maybe some pictures on the walls; you know, some classy old masters kind of paintings like Rembrandt and so on. But I got rooked, and now I knew it for a fact.

  Closets were full of clothes, though. Lucky I hadn’t brought Jake because he’d blab to Maggie and then she’d know for sure she’d been right. The clothes were all rotted and raggedy like she said they would be. And stink!

  I poked around and got to wondering. You don’t run into old clothes much in a deserted house. Or bedding, either. Why had they took a powder in such a hurry, the people? So long ago, too! Why, them clothes was way before the Civil War, the styles of them. Fancy pants for men. Couple rotted shoes with nothing left but buckles.

  I picked some up. That was a break. Silver. Silver buckles. I went around the bedroom closets and got maybe, a dozen. That was OK with me. I found a sword, too. Real fancy stuff, in one of those scabbards that was maybe silver, too. I’d find out about that—it sure was a genuine antique piece all right.

  Funny about those people having left all this junk. Delehanty tipped me off this was supposed to be a haunted house. Of course in my line that’s strictly a gag. I salvaged maybe two hundred haunted houses in my time—every old house is supposed to be haunted. But I never seen a ghost in thirty years, nothing ever alive in those places but maybe some cockroaches.

  Then I come to this end room with the big door. All the other bedrooms was open; fact, some of the doors was loose on their hinges. But this door wasn’t sprung. It was locked. Locked tight.

  I had to use a crowbar from the truck on it. Got kind of excited, because you never can tell what a locked door means. Worked and sweated, and finally got it open.

  Dust hit me in the face, and a stink. An awful stink. I was carrying a flashlight, of course; wasn't dark out, but the house was gloomy and there wasn’t any lights, it being so old and all.

  So I coughed and turned on the light and took a look. It was a big room with mounds of dust all over the floor and under that a big rag that was maybe a carpet once upon a time. There was some oak panels in this room too, and the wreckers could maybe get something for that because it was prime lumber still, even under the dust you can tell when a place is really built.

  But I wasn’t interested in dust and rags and panels. I wanted to know why the room was locked. And the flashlight told me. It showed me the walls.

  Bookshelves.

  From the floor to the ceiling, bookshelves, all around the whole lousy room.

  There must of been a thousand books in that room, no kidding, a regular library some guy had up there,

  I waded through the dirt and pulled out a couple of the nearest books. The bindings were some kind of leather—that is, they was leather once. Now the things just sort of crumpled in my hands and so did the pages. All yellow and musty, which is why the stink was so bad in here.

  I began to swear. I’m no schmoe, I know there’s dough in old books. But not unless they’re in good condition. And this stuff was rotten.

  Then I spotted some stuff in iron bindings. That’s right, so help me, iron bindings! Big clasps you had to unbuckle before you opened them. I took one down and got it open. It was some kind of foreign stuff, Greek maybe, I don’t know. But I recollect the name on the front page— De Vermis Mysteriis. Screwy.

  Still you never know, and I decided I would haul all the good ones down to the truck and see what Segall would give me for the lot. Maybe there was something valuable here after all.

  Then I took another look around the room. No furniture. No tables or chairs in here at all, like in the bedrooms. Except over in the corner—

  OVER in the corner was this here table.

  A sort of a desk-table, for writing, I guess. And right on top of the table, smack in the center, was a skull.

  So help me, it was a human skull, all yellow and grinning up at me under the flashlight beam, and for a minute I almost went for that haunted house stuff.

  Then I notice how the top is bored out for one of them old-fashioned' goose-quill pens. The guy who collected all these foreigner-type books used the skull for an inkwell. That’s a screwball for you, hey?

  But the table is what interested me, really interested me, that is. Because it was antique all right. Solid mahogany, and a job of carving—all kinds of fancy scrollwork and little goofy faces carved in the wood.

  There was a drawer, too, and it wasn’t locked. I got excited, figuring you never can tell what you find in such places— maybe a lot of valuable documents, who knows. So I didn’t waste much time pulling the drawer open.

  Only it was empty. Nothing in it whatsoever.

  I was so mad I let out a couple words and kicked the side of the table.

  That’s how I found them. The cheaters, that is.

  Because I hit one of the little goofy faces and a sort of panel in the side of the table at the left just swung open and there was this drawer.

  I reached in and pulled out the spectacles.

  Just a pair of glasses, is all, but real funny ones. Little lenses, square shaped, with big heavy ear-pieces—books, I guess is what you call them. And a thick bridge for over the nose; that was silver too.

  I didn’t get it. Sure, there was silver in the frames, but they couldn’t be worth more than a couple bucks. So why hide the cheaters away in a secret drawer?

  I held the glasses up and wiped some specks of dust off the lenses, which was yellow glass instead of the regular, clear kind, but not very thick. I noticed little designs in the silver frames, like engraved lines. An d right across the bridge for the nose was a word, carved into the silver. I remember that word because I never saw it before.

  "Veritas” was the word, in funny square letters. Some more Greek, I guess. Maybe the old guy was Greek. The guy who had the locked library and the skull for an inkpot and the glasses in the secret drawer, I mean.

  I had to squint some at the lettering in the gloom there because my eyes weren’t too good and—that gave me an idea.

  Get to be my age, you get kind of shortsighted, sometimes. I always figured I’d go down to the opt—to the eye doctor—but I never got around to it. But looking at the cheaters I said to miyself, why not?

  So I put them on.

  The bows, or stems, whatever you call them, were pretty short for me. And like I said, the lenses were small. But I didn’t feel uncomfortable wearing them. Only my eyes hurt.

  My eyes hurt. Not hurt, exactly, but something else like hurting inside of me. Like I was being all pulled and twisted.

  Sounds screwy? Well, it felt screwy, too. Because the whole room went far away for a minute and then it came up close, and I blinked fast

  After that it was all right, and I could see pretty good. Everything was sharp and clear.

  I left the cheaters on and went downstairs, because it was getting dark and I figured on coming back with Jake tomorrow and loading up the truck. No sense in me doing it all by myself, Jake being so much younger, he could lift the heavy stuff.

  So I went home.

  I come in the shop and everything was OK and, Jake and Maggie were sitting in the back having coffee.

  Maggie kind of grinned at me. Then she said:

  "How did you make out, Joe, you lousy, old baboon? I’m glad we’re going to kill you.”

  No, she didn’t say all that.

  She just said, “How did you make out, Joe?”

  But she was thinking the rest.

  I saw it.

  Don’t ask me to explain: I saw it. Not words, or anything. And I didn’t hear. I saw. I knew, by looking at her, what she was thinking, and planning. Like what was coming next, almost.

  "Find a lot of stuff?” Jake asked, and I saw, "I hope you did because it’s all mine as soon as we bump you and we’re gonna bump you for sure tonight."

  "What you look so funny for; Joe, you sick or'somethin ?” Maggie said, and she also said, to herself, "Who cares, he’s gonna be a lot sicker soon all right, all right, does he suspect anything, no, of course not, he couldn’t, the old goat never got wise to us for a whole year now, just wait until Jake and I own this place together and his insurance too, it’s all planned.”

  “Yeah,” I said. "I was lifting stuff over to the house, and I don’t feel so hot. Guess I better sit down.”

  "What you need, you need a little drink to warm you up,” Jake said to me, and to himself he was saying, “That’s the way, we’ll start it like we figured, get him drunk and then when he gets upstairs I'll push him down and if that don’t finish him Maggie will with the board, it leaves the same kind of bruise. Everybody knows he drinks, it’s just an accident like and I can swear to it.’’

  I made myself smile.

  "Where’d you get the cheaters?" Maggie asked, saying, “God, what a homely mug on him, I get sick just looking at that face but it won’t be long now,”

  "Picked them up over at the house,” I said.

  Jake got out a fifth. He opened it and got some water glasses. "Drink up,” he said.

  I sat there, trying to figure it out. Why could I read their minds? Why did I know what they were planning? I didn’t know. But I could see what they were up to. I could see it. Could it be—the cheaters?

  Yes, the cheaters. They were the cheaters. Carrying on behind my back. Getting ready to finish me off. Tumble down the stairs. Never mind how I knew. I knew, that was the main thing.

  I KNEW what they were thinking while they sat there drinking with me, laughing with me only really laughing at me and waiting until I got drunk enough so they could kill me. Pretending to drink a lot while they got me loaded, until I made them drink shot for shot with me.

  I couldn’t get drunk, not as long as I was seeing them. The thoughts going through their heads, your blood would run cold and no liquor could make you drunk if you knew such things.

  Everything turned to ice. It was all cold and I knew just what to do. I made them drink with me and they began to get loud, only the thoughts kept getting worse. I listened to them talk, but all the time I saw their thoughts.

  '"We’ll kill him, just a little while now, why doesn't he pass out, he’s drinking like a fish, mustn’t take too much, got to keep him from suspecting, God how I hate that ugly puss of his. I want to see it smashed open, wait until he's out of the way and I have Maggie all to myself whenever I want to, he’s going to die, I could sing it, he’s going to die, die, die—”

  Everything turned to ice.

  I knew just what to do.

  They were laughing and singing and it was way after dark when I went out to the truck to put it into the garage for the night. They stayed behind, thinking about how to do it now, how to keep people from suspecting them.

  Me, I didn’t worry about that. Suspecting, I mean. I was all set.

  I put the truck away and then I came back to the kitchen, carrying the crowbar from the truck that I’d used up at the house.

  I came into the kitchen and locked the door. They saw me with the crowbar, standing there.

  "Hey, Joe—” said Jake.

  "Joe, what’s wrong?” said Maggie.

  I DIDN’T say a word. There wasn’t any time to talk, because I was smashing Jake’s face in with the crowbar, smashing his nose and eyes and jaw, and then I was hammering Maggie over the head and it spurted out and up, and the thoughts came out and they weren’t words, just screams and then there weren’t even any screams left to see.

  So I sat down and took off the cheaters to polish them. I was still blowing on them when the squad car came and the cops took me.

  They wouldn’t let me keep the glasses and I never did see them again. It didn’t matter much, anyhow. I might have worn them at the trial, but who cares what they thought of me then? And at the end I would have had to take the cheaters off. I know they would have made me take them off.

  When they put the black hood over my head, just before they hung me.

  2. Miriam Spencer Olcott

  I DISTINCTLY remember it was on Thursday afternoon, because that’s when Olive has her bridge club over, and of course she simply must have Miss Tooker help with the serving.

  Olive is much too diplomatic to lock me in my room, and I always wondered why it was that I seemed to get so sleepy on Thursdays, just when I might have a chance to slip out without anyone noticing. Finally l realized that she was putting something into my luncheon—more of Dr. Cramer’s work, no doubt.

  Well, I’m not a complete fool by any means, and this Thursday I simply made up my mind. When the tray came up I just nibbled a bit at some toast— that seemed safe—and poured the rest down the you-know-what. So Olive was none the wiser, and when I lay down upon the bed and closed my eyes she felt satisfied.

  I must have rested about an hour until I heard the front door open and the voices drifted up the stairwell. Then I knew it was safe for me to get up.

  I put on my dress and powdered my nose, and then I took ten dollars out of the pincushion where I keep what’s left of the cash. After that there was nothing to do but tiptoe down the stairs very quietly and slip away.

  Olive and her friends were in the parlor with the door closed. I had to rest a moment at the foot of the stairs because of my heart, you know, and for an instant I had the most peculiar temptation to open the parlor door and stick my tongue out at her.

  But that wouldn’t have been very ladylike. After all, Olive and her husband Percy had come to live with me and take care of me when Herbert died, and they got Miss Tooker to help when I had my first heart attack. I mustn’t be rude.

  Besides, I knew Olive would never permit me to go out alone any more. So it would be wiser if I didn’t disturb her now.

 

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