I Would Rather Stay Poor

He went to the garage, rolled up his sleeves and quickly removed the sparking plugs from the engine. As he worked, he hummed tunelessly under his breath, his fleshy face set. He scraped a little carbon from the plugs, then leaving them on the work bench, he silently returned to the house. He crept up the stairs and entered his room. The time was now close on half past ten. The gangster movie with all its noise and violence would run to eleven. Even if Kit had time to scream, the old couple wouldn’t hear her. Calvin sat down, holding the cosh in his hand and waited.

Minutes dragged by. At half past ten, he suddenly wondered if Kit were too drunk to take a bath. She might have fallen asleep. He got to his feet and moved to the communicating door. Putting his ear against the panel of the door, he listened. He heard nothing. He was tempted to see if the door was still locked, but he was afraid of alerting her.

He went back to his chair and sat down. There were other nights, he told himself, but as each day went by, the danger increased.

He lit a cigarette. Faintly, he could hear the television set downstairs. He looked at his watch. Then he heard a sound from the other room that brought him to his feet, tense and listening. A minute or so passed. He could now hear Kit moving around her room. Then he heard her door open and he heard her walk across the passage and into the bathroom. He heard the bathroom door close.

A vicious little grin lit up his face and he opened his door to peer into the passage. The thick fingers of his right hand gripped the cosh. Above the sound from the television, he could hear the bath water running. He stood waiting. After what seemed an eternity, the water ceased to run. He moved into the passage. With cat-like silence, he reached the bathroom door and paused to listen again. He heard the sound of water as if Kit had stepped into the bath. He was breathing lightly and rapidly and he was aware that his heart was beating unsteadily. His lips came off his teeth in a vicious grin as he turned the door handle. When it was as far back as it would go and as yet another burst of gunfire came from the television set, he gave the door a sudden shove forward. He heard the bolt drop onto the tiled floor as the door jerked open. He moved quickly into the bathroom.

He paused, his right hand, holding the cosh, half swinging up, his heart suddenly skipping a beat.

Kit stood with her back against the far wall, some twelve feet from Calvin. She held a loofa in her left hand which dripped water. Calvin guessed at once that she had been using the loofa to disturb the bath water, leading him to believe she was in the bath.

In her right hand, she held a .38 automatic, its blunt nose pointing directly at Calvin. She was still wearing her polka-dot nylon wrap and there was a fixed little smile on her white face that sent a sudden chill up Calvin’s spine. He had an instinctive feeling that she was about to shoot him.

‘Don’t be a fool!’ he rapped out. ‘You’ll never touch the money if you shoot!’

They were the right words. The awful little smile slipped from her mouth and her brown, glittering eyes suddenly lost their mad blank stare.

For a long tense moment, they stared at each other. The gun remained pointing at him, but he knew the danger for the moment was over.

Then she said, ‘Yes… I was forgetting. You clever devil! You just saved your beastly life by saying the right thing at absolutely the right moment. You follow a pattern, don’t you? You use women and then you get rid of them, but you’re not getting rid of me!’

Calvin was eyeing the gun in her hand. The sight of the gun shocked him. His great strength against her feeble strength was useless in the face of the gun. He measured the distance between them. He might just possibly reach her and smash the gun out of her hand, but he was sure he couldn’t prevent her firing the gun before he did reach her. Even above the racket the television was making, the old couple would hear the shot.

‘It was a mistake,’ he said, keeping the snarl out of his voice with an effort. ‘You scare me, Kit, with your drinking. I acted on impulse.’

‘Don’t act on another impulse,’ she said, staring fixedly at him. ‘I’ll kill you if I have to, so don’t do anything stupid.’

‘I’m not going to do anything. It’s all right.’