Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (254 page)

“Basil the Boozle! Hello, Basil the Boozle!” The cry circled the garden. Reproachfully he distinguished Riply’s voice among the others.

“Hube the Boob!” Basil countered quickly; but his ill humor detracted from the effect, though several boys repeated it appreciatively.

Gloom settled upon Basil, and through the heavy dusk the figure of Imogene began to take on a new, unattainable charm. He was a romantic boy and already he had endowed her heavily from his fancy. Now he hated her for her indifference, but he must perversely linger near in the vain hope of recovering the penny of ecstasy so wantonly expended this afternoon.

He tried to talk to Margaret with decoy animation, but Margaret was not responsive. Already a voice had gone up in the darkness calling in a child. Panic seized upon him; the blessed hour of summer evening was almost over. At a spreading of the group to let pedestrians through, he maneuvered Imogene unwillingly aside.

“I’ve got it,” he whispered. “Here it is. Can I take you home?”

She looked at him distractedly. Her hand closed automatically on the ring.

“What? Oh, I promised Hubert he could take me home.” At the sight of his face she pulled herself from her trance and forced a note of indignation. “I saw you going off with Margaret Torrence just as soon as I came into the yard.”

“I didn’t. I just went to get the ring.”

“Yes, you did! I saw you!”

Her eyes moved back to Hubert Blair. He had replaced his roller skates and was making little rhythmic jumps and twirls on his toes, like a witch doctor throwing a slow hypnosis over an African tribe. Basil’s voice, explaining and arguing, went on, but Imogene moved away. Helplessly he followed. There were other voices calling in the darkness now and unwilling responses on all sides.

“All right, mother!”

“I’ll be there in a second, mother.”

“Mother, can’t I please stay out five minutes more?”

“I’ve got to go,” Imogene cried. “It’s almost nine.”

Waving her hand and smiling absently at Basil, she started off down the street. Hubert pranced and stunted at her side, circled around her and made entrancing little figures ahead.

Only after a minute did Basil realize that another young lady was addressing him.

“What?” he demanded absently.

“Hubert Blair is the nicest boy in town and you’re the most conceited,” repeated Margaret Torrence with deep conviction.

He stared at her in pained surprise. Margaret wrinkled her nose at him and yielded up her person to the now-insistent demands coming from across the street. As Basil gazed stupidly after her and then watched the forms of Imogene and Hubert disappear around the corner, there was a low mutter of thunder along the sultry sky and a moment later a solitary drop plunged through the lamplit leaves overhead and splattered on the sidewalk at his feet. The day was to close in rain.

III

It came quickly and he was drenched and running before he reached his house eight blocks away. But the change of weather had swept over his heart and he leaped up every few steps, swallowing the rain and crying “Yo-o-o!” aloud, as if he himself were a part of the fresh, violent disturbance of the night. Imogene was gone, washed out like the day’s dust on the sidewalk. Her beauty would come back into his mind in brighter weather, but here in the storm he was alone with himself. A sense of extraordinary power welled up in him, until to leave the ground permanently with one of his wild leaps would not have surprised him. He was a lone wolf, secret and untamed; a night prowler, demoniac and free. Only when he reached his own house did his emotion begin to turn, speculatively and almost without passion, against Hubert Blair.

He changed his clothes, and putting on pajamas and dressing-gown descended to the kitchen, where he happened upon a new chocolate cake. He ate a fourth of it and most of a bottle of milk. His elation somewhat diminished, he called up Riply Buckner on the phone.

“I’ve got a scheme,” he said.

‘What about?”

“How to do something to H. B. with the S. D.”

Riply understood immediately what he meant. Hubert had been so indiscreet as to fascinate other girls besides Miss Bissel that evening.

“We’ll have to take in Bill Kampf,” Basil said.

“All right.”

“See you at recess tomorrow. . . . Good night!”

IV

Four days later, when Mr. and Mrs. George P. Blair were finishing dinner, Hubert was called to the telephone. Mrs. Blair took advantage of his absence to speak to her husband of what had been on her mind all day.

“George, those boys, or whatever they are, came again last night.”

He frowned.

“Did you see them?”

“Hilda did. She almost caught one of them. You see, I told her about the note they left last Tuesday, the one that said, ‘First warning, S. D.,’ so she was ready for them. They rang the back-door bell this time and she answered it straight from the dishes. If her hands hadn’t been soapy she could have caught one, because she grabbed him when he handed her a note, but her hands were soapy so he slipped away.”

“What did he look like?”

“She said he might have been a very little man, but she thought he was a boy in a false face. He dodged like a boy, she said, and she thought he had short pants on. The note was like the other. It said ‘Second warning, S. D.’“

“If you’ve got it, I’d like to see it after dinner.”

Hubert came back from the phone. “It was Imogene Bissel,” he said. “She wants me to come over to her house. A bunch are going over there tonight.”

“Hubert,” asked his father, “do you know any boy with the initials S. D.?”

“No, sir.”

“Have you thought?”

“Yeah, I thought. I knew a boy named Sam Davis, but I haven’t seen him for a year.”

“Who was he?”

“Oh, a sort of tough. He was at Number 44 School when I went there.”

“Did he have it in for you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Who do you think could be doing this? Has anybody got it in for you that you know about?”

“I don’t know, papa; I don’t think so.”

“I don’t like the looks of this thing,” said Mr. Blair thoughtfully. “Of course it may be only some boys, but it may be--”

He was silent. Later, he studied the note. It was in red ink and there was a skull and crossbones in the corner, but being printed, it told him nothing at all.

Meanwhile Hubert kissed his mother, set his cap jauntily on the side of his head, and passing through the kitchen stepped out on the back stoop, intending to take the usual short cut along the alley. It was a bright moonlit night and he paused for a moment on the stoop to tie his shoe. If he had but known that the telephone call just received had been a decoy, that it had not come from Imogene Bissel’s house, had not indeed been a girl’s voice at all, and that shadowy and grotesque forms were skulking in the alley just outside the gate, he would not have sprung so gracefully and lithely down the steps with his hands in his pockets or whistled the first bar of the Grizzly Bear into the apparently friendly night.

His whistle aroused varying emotions in the alley. Basil had given his daring and successful falsetto imitation over the telephone a little too soon, and though the Scandal Detectives had hurried, their preparations were not quite in order. They had become separated. Basil, got up like a Southern planter of the old persuasion, was just outside the Blairs’ gate; Bill Kampf, with a long Balkan mustache attached by a wire to the lower cartilage of his nose, was approaching in the shadow of the fence; but Riply Buckner, in a full rabbinical beard, was impeded by a length of rope he was trying to coil and was still a hundred feet away. The rope was an essential part of their plan; for, after much cogitation, they had decided what they were going to do to Hubert Blair. They were going to tie him up, gag him and put him in his own garbage can.

The idea at first horrified them--it would ruin his suit, it was awfully dirty and he might smother. In fact the garbage can, symbol of all that was repulsive, won the day only because it made every other idea seem tame. They disposed of the objections--his suit could be cleaned, it was where he ought to be anyhow, and if they left the lid off he couldn’t smother. To be sure of this they had paid a visit of inspection to the Buckners’ garbage can and stared into it, fascinated, envisaging Hubert among the rinds and eggshells. Then two of them, at last, resolutely put that part out of their minds and concentrated upon the luring of him into the alley and the overwhelming of him there.

Hubert’s cheerful whistle caught them off guard and each of the three stood stock-still, unable to communicate with the others. It flashed through Basil’s mind that if he grabbed Hubert without Riply at hand to apply the gag as had been arranged, Hubert’s cries might alarm the gigantic cook in the kitchen who had almost taken him the night before. The thought threw him into a state of indecision. At that precise moment Hubert opened the gate and came out into the alley.

The two stood five feet apart, staring at each other, and all at once Basil made a startling discovery. He discovered he liked Hubert Blair--liked him well as any boy he knew. He had absolutely no wish to lay hands on Hubert Blair and stuff him into a garbage can, jaunty cap and all. He would have fought to prevent that contingency. As his mind, unstrung by his situation, gave pasture to this inconvenient thought, he turned and dashed out of the alley and up the street.

For a moment the apparition had startled Hubert, but when it turned and made off he was heartened and gave chase. Out-distanced, he decided after fifty yards to let well enough alone; and returning to the alley, started rather precipitously down toward the other end--and came face to face with another small and hairy stranger.

Bill Kampf, being more simply organized than Basil, had no scruples of any kind. It had been decided to put Hubert into a garbage can, and though he had nothing at all against Hubert, the idea had made a pattern on his brain which he intended to follow. He was a natural man--that is to say, a hunter--and once a creature took on the aspect of a quarry, he would pursue it without qualms until it stopped struggling.

But he had been witness to Basil’s inexplicable flight, and supposing that Hubert’s father had appeared and was now directly behind him, he, too, faced about and made off down the alley. Presently he met Riply Buckner, who, without waiting to inquire the cause of his flight, enthusiastically joined him. Again Hubert was surprised into pursuing a little way. Then, deciding once and for all to let well enough alone, he returned on a dead run to his house.

Meanwhile Basil had discovered that he was not pursued, and keeping in the shadows, made his way back to the alley. He was not frightened--he had simply been incapable of action. The alley was empty; neither Bill nor Riply was in sight. He saw Mr. Blair come to the back gate, open it, look up and down and go back into the house. He came closer. There was a great chatter in the kitchen--Hubert’s voice, loud and boastful, and Mrs. Blair’s, frightened, and the two Swedish domestics contributing bursts of hilarious laughter. Then through an open window he heard Mr. Blair’s voice at the telephone:

“I want to speak to the chief of police. . . . Chief, this is George P. Blair. . . . Chief, there’s a gang of toughs around here who--”

Basil was off like a flash, tearing at his Confederate whiskers as he ran.

V

Imogene Bissel, having just turned thirteen, was not accustomed to having callers at night. She was spending a bored and solitary evening inspecting the month’s bills which were scattered over her mother’s desk, when she heard Hubert Blair and his father admitted into the front hall.

“I just thought I’d bring him over myself,” Mr. Blair was saying to her mother. “There seems to be a gang of toughs hanging around our alley tonight.”

Mrs. Bissel had not called upon Mrs. Blair and she was considerably taken aback by this unexpected visit. She even entertained the uncharitable thought that this was a crude overture, undertaken by Mr. Blair on behalf of his wife.

“Really!” she exclaimed. “Imogene will be delighted to see Hubert, I’m sure. . . . Imogene!”

“These toughs were evidently lying in wait for Hubert,” continued Mr. Blair. “But he’s a pretty spunky boy and he managed to drive them away. However, I didn’t want him to come down here alone.”

“Of course not,” she agreed. But she was unable to imagine why Hubert should have come at all. He was a nice enough boy, but surely Imogene had seen enough of him the last three afternoons. In fact, Mrs. Bissel was annoyed, and there was a minimum of warmth in her voice when she asked Mr. Blair to come in.

They were still in the hall, and Mr. Blair was just beginning to perceive that all was not as it should be, when there was another ring at the bell. Upon the door being opened, Basil Lee, red-faced and breathless, stood on the threshold.

“How do you do, Mrs. Bissel? Hello, Imogene!” he cried in an unnecessarily hearty voice. “Where’s the party?”

The salutation might have sounded to a dispassionate observer somewhat harsh and unnatural, but it fell upon the ears of an already disconcerted group.

“There isn’t any party,” said Imogene wonderingly.

“What?” Basil’s mouth dropped open in exaggerated horror, his voice trembled slightly. “You mean to say you didn’t call me up and tell me to come over here to a party?”

“Why, of course not, Basil!”

Imogene was excited by Hubert’s unexpected arrival and it occurred to her that Basil had invented this excuse to spoil it. Alone of those present, she was close to the truth; but she underestimated the urgency of Basil’s motive, which was not jealousy but mortal fear.

“You called
me
up, didn’t you, Imogene?” demanded Hubert confidently.

“Why, no, Hubert! I didn’t call up anybody.”

Amid a chorus of bewildered protestations, there was another ring at the doorbell and the pregnant night yielded up Riply Buckner, Jr., and William S. Kampf. Like Basil, they were somewhat rumpled and breathless, and they no less rudely and peremptorily demanded the whereabouts of the party, insisting with curious vehemence that Imogene had just now invited them over the phone.