The Murder
‘There are some people who would never commit a murder,’ said Mr Bentley.
‘Who, for instance?’ said Mr Hill.
‘Me, for instance, and lots more like me,’ said Mr Bentley.
‘Poppycock!’ said Mr Hill.
‘Poppycock?’
‘You heard what I said. Everybody’s capable of murder. Even you.’
‘I haven’t a motive in the world, I’m content with things, my wife is a good woman, I’ve got enough money, a good job, why should I commit murder?’ said Mr Bentley.
‘I could make you commit murder,’ said Mr Hill.
‘You could not.’
‘I could.’ Mr Hill looked out over the small green summer town, meditatively.
‘You can’t make a murderer out of a nonmurderer.’
‘Yes, I could.’
‘No, you couldn’t!’
‘How much would you like to bet?’
‘I’ve never bet in my life. Don’t believe in it.’
‘Oh, hell, a gentleman’s bet,’ said Mr Hill. ‘A dollar. A dollar to a dime. Come on, now, you’d bet a dime, wouldn’t you? You’d be three kinds of Scotchman not to, and showing little faith in your thesis, besides. Isn’t it worth a dime to prove you’re not a murderer?’
‘You’re joking.’
‘We’re both joking and we’re both not. All I’m interested in proving is that you’re no different than any other man. You’ve got a button to be pushed. If I could find it and push it, you’d commit murder.’
Mr Bentley laughed easily and cut the end from a cigar, twirled it between his comfortably fleshy lips, and leaned back in his rocker. Then he fumbled in his unbuttoned vest pocket, found a dime, and laid it on the porch newel in front of him. ‘All right,’ he said, and, thinking, drew forth another dime. ‘There’s twenty cents says I’m not a murderer. Now how are you going to prove that I am?’ He chuckled and squeezed his eyes deliciously shut. ‘I’m going to be sitting around here a good many years.’
‘There’ll be a time limit, of course.’
‘Oh, will there?’ Bentley laughed still louder.
‘Yes. One month from today, you’ll be a murderer.’
‘One month from today, eh? Ho!’ And he laughed, because the idea was so patently ridiculous. Recovering enough, he put his tongue in his cheek. ‘Today’s August first, right? So on September first, you owe me a dollar.’
‘No, you’ll owe me two dimes.’
‘You’re stubborn, aren’t you?’
‘You don’t know how stubborn.’
It was a fine late-summer evening, with just the right breeze, a lack of mosquitoes, two cigars burning the right way, and the sound of Mr Bentley’s wife clashing the dinner plates into soapsuds in the distant kitchen. Along the streets of the small town, people were coming out onto their porches, nodding at one another.
‘This is one of the most foolish conversations I’ve ever held in my life,’ said Mr Bentley, sniffing the air with glad appreciation, noting the smell of fresh-cut grass. ‘We talk about murder for ten minutes, we get off into whether all of us are capable of murder, and, next thing you know, we’ve made a bet.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Hill.
Mr Bentley looked over at his boarder. Mr Hill was about fifty-five, though he looked a bit older, with cold blue eyes, and a gray face, and lines that made it look like an apricot that has been allowed to shrivel in the sun. He was neatly bald, like a Caesar, and had an intense way of talking, gripping the chair, gripping your arm, gripping his own hands together as if in prayer, always convincing himself or convincing you of the truth of his exclamations. They had had many good talks in the past three months, since Mr Hill had moved into the back bedroom. They had talked of myriad things: locusts in spring, snow in April, seasonal tempests and coolings, trips to far places, the usual talk, scented with tobacco, comfortable as a full dinner, and there was a feeling in Mr Bentley that he had grown up with this stranger, known him from his days as a yelling child through bumpy adolescence to whitening senility. This, come to think of it, was the first time they had ever disagreed on anything. The wonderful thing about their friendship had been that it had so far excluded any quibblings or side issues, and had walked the straight way of Truth, or what the two men thought was truth, or perhaps, thought Mr Bentley now, with the cigar in his hand, what he had thought was the truth and what Mr Hill, out of politeness or plan, had pretended to take for the truth also.
‘Easiest money I ever made,’ said Mr Bentley.
‘Wait and see. Carry those dimes with you. You may need them soon.’
Mr Bentley put the coins into his vest pocket, half soberly. Perhaps a turn in the wind had, for a moment, changed the temperature of his thoughts. For a moment, his mind said, Well, could you murder? Eh?
‘Shake on it,’ said Mr Hill.
Mr Hill’s cold hand gripped tightly.
‘It’s a bet.’
‘All right, you fat slob, good night,’ said Mr Hill, and got up.
‘What?’ cried Mr Bentley, startled, not insulted yet, but because he couldn’t believe that terrible use of words.
‘Good night, slob,’ said Mr Hill, looking at him calmly. His hands were busy, moving aside the buttons on his summer shirt. The flesh of his lean stomach was revealed. There was an old scar there. It looked as if a bullet had gone cleanly through.
‘You see,’ said Mr Hill, seeing the wide popping eyes of the plump man in the rocking chair, ‘I’ve made this bet before.’
The front door shut softly. Mr Hill was gone.
The light was burning in Mr Hill’s room at ten minutes after one. Sitting there in the dark, Mr Bentley at last, unable to find sleep, got up and moved softly into the hall and looked at Mr Hill. For the door was open and there was Mr Hill standing before a mirror, touching, tapping, pinching himself, now here, now there.
And he seemed to be thinking to himself, Look at me! Look, here, Bentley, and here!
Bentley looked.
There were three round scars on Hill’s chest and stomach. There was a long slash scar over his heart, and a little one on his neck. And on his back, as if a dragon had pulled its talons across in a furious raveling, a series of terrible furrows.
Mr Bentley stood with his tongue between his lips, his hands open.
‘Come in,’ said Mr Hill.
Bentley
