Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 (7 page)

 
          
 
Fingerprints can be found on fabric.

 
          
 
"Huxley!" William Acton stared at
the body. "Did you guess I was going to kill you? Did your subconscious
suspect, just as my subconscious suspected? And did your subconscious tell you
to make me run about the house handling, touching, fondling books, dishes,
doors, chairs? Were you that clever and that mean?"

 
          
 
He washed the chairs dryly with the clenched
handkerchief. Then he remembered the body—he hadn't dry-washed it. He went to
it and turned it now this way, now that, and burnished every surface of it. He
even shined the shoes, charging nothing.

 
          
 
While shining the shoes his face took on a
little tremor of worry, and after a moment he got up and walked over to that
table.

 
          
 
He took out and polished the wax fruit at the
bottom of the bowl.

 
          
 
"Better," he whispered, and went
back to the body.

 
          
 
But as he crouched over the body his eyelids
twitched and his jaw moved from side to side and he debated, then he got up and
walked once more to the table.

 
          
 
He polished the picture frame.

 
          
 
While polishing the picture frame he
discovered—

 
          
 
The wall.

 
          
 
"That," he said, "is
silly."

 
          
 
"Oh!" cried Huxley, fending him off.
He gave
Acton
a shove as they
struggled.
Acton
fell, got up,
touching the wall, and ran toward Huxley again. He strangled Huxley. Huxley
died.

 
          
 
Acton
turned steadfastly from the wall, with equilibrium and decision. The harsh
words and the action faded in his mind; he hid them away. He glanced at the
four walls.

 
          
 
"Ridiculous!" he said.

 
          
 
From the comers of his eyes he saw something
on one wall.

 
          
 
"I refuse to pay attention," he said
to distract himself. "The next room, now! I'll be methodical. Let's
see—altogether we were in the hall, the library, this room, and the dining room
and the kitchen."

 
          
 
There was a spot on the wall behind him.

 
          
 
Well, wasn't there?

 
          
 
He turned angrily. "All right, all right,
just to be sure," and he went over and couldn't find any spot. Oh, a
little one, yes, right —there. He dabbed it. It wasn't a fingerprint anyhow. He
finished with it, and his gloved hand leaned against the wall and he looked at
the wall and the way it went over to his right and over to his left and how it
went down to his feet and up over his head and he said softly, "No."
He looked up and down and over and across and he said quietly, "That would
be too much." How many square feet? "I don't give a good damn,"
he said. But unknown to his eyes, his gloved fingers moved in a little rubbing
rhythm on the wall.

 
          
 
He peered at his hand and the wallpaper. He
looked over his shoulder at the other room. "I must go in there and polish
the essentials," he told himself, but his hand remained, as if to hold the
wall, or himself, up. His face hardened.

 
          
 
Without a word he began to scrub the wall, up
and down, back and forth, up and down, as high as he could stretch and as low
as he could bend.

 
          
 
"Ridiculous, oh my Lord,
ridiculous!"

 
          
 
But you must be certain, his thought said to
him.

 
          
 
"Yes, one must be certain," he
replied.

 
          
 
He got one wall finished, and then . . .

 
          
 
He came to another wall.

 
          
 
"What time is it?"

 
          
 
He looked at the mantel clock. An hour gone.
It was five after one.

 
          
 
The doorbell rang.

 
          
 
Acton
froze, staring at the door, the clock, the door, the clock.

 
          
 
Someone rapped loudly.

 
          
 
A long moment passed.
Acton
did not breathe. Without new air in his body he began to fail away, to sway;
his head roared a silence of cold waves thundering onto heavy rocks.

 
          
 
"Hey, in there!" cried a drunken
voice. "I know you're in there, Huxley! Open up, dammit! This is
Billy-boy, drunk as an owl, Huxley, old pal, drunker than two owls."

 
          
 
"Go away," whispered
Acton
soundlessly, crushed against the wall.

 
          
 
"Huxley, you're in there, I hear you
breathing!" cried the drunken voice.

 
          
 
"Yes, I'm in here," whispered
Acton
,
feeling long and sprawled and clumsy on the floor, clumsy and cold and silent.
"Yes."

 
          
 
"Hell!" said the voice, fading away
into mist. The footsteps shuffled off. "Hell . . ."

 
          
 
Acton
stood a long time feeling the red heart beat inside his shut eyes, within his
head. When at last he opened his eyes he looked at the new fresh wall straight
ahead of him and finally got courage to speak. "Silly," he said.
"This wall's flawless. I won't touch it.
Got to hurry.
Got to hurry.
Time, time.
Only a few hours before those damn-fool friends blunder in!" He turned away.

 
          
 
From the comers of his eyes he saw the little
webs. When his back was turned the little spiders came out of the woodwork and
delicately spun their fragile little half-invisible webs. Not upon the wall at
his left, which was already washed fresh, but upon the three walls as yet
untouched. Each time he stared directly at them the spiders dropped back into
the woodwork, only to spindle out as he retreated. "Those walls are all
right," he insisted with a half shout. "I won't touch them!"

 
          
 
He went to a writing desk at which Huxley had
been seated earlier. He opened a drawer and took out what he was looking for. A
little magnifying glass Huxley sometimes used for reading. He took the
magnifier and approached the wall uneasily.

 
          
 
Fingerprints.

 
          
 
"But those aren't miner He laughed
unsteadily. "I didn't put them there! I'm sure I didn't! A servant, a
butler, or a maid perhaps!"

 
          
 
The wall was full of them.

 
          
 
"Look at this one here," he said.
"Long and tapered, a woman's, I'd bet money on it."

 
          
 
"Would you?"

 
          
 
"I would!"

 
          
 
"Are you certain?"

 
          
 
"Yes!"

 
          
 
"Positive?"

 
          
 
"Well-yes."

 
          
 
"Absolutely?"

 
          
 
"Yes, damn it, yes!"

 
          
 
"Wipe it out, anyway, why don't
you?"

 
          
 
"There, by God!"

 
          
 
"Out damned spot, eh, Acton?"

 
          
 
"And this one, over here," scoffed Acton.
"That's the print of a fat man."

 
          
 
"Are you sure?"

 
          
 
"Don't start that again!" he
snapped, and rubbed it out. He pulled off a glove and held his hand up,
trembling, in the glary light.

 
          
 
"Look at it, you idiot! See how the
whorls go? See?"

 
          
 
"That proves nothing!"

 
          
 
"Oh, all right!" Raging, he swept
the wall up and down, back and forth, with gloved hands, sweating, grunting,
swearing, bending, rising, and getting redder of face.

 
          
 
He took off his coat, put it on a chair.

 
          
 
"Two o'clock," he said, finishing
the wall, glaring at the clock.

 
          
 
He walked over to the bowl and took out the
wax fruit and polished the ones at the bottom and put them back, and polished
the picture frame.

 
          
 
He gazed up at the chandelier.

 
          
 
His fingers twitched at his sides.

 
          
 
His mouth slipped open and the tongue moved
along his lips and he looked at the chandelier and looked away and looked back
at the chandelier and looked at Huxley's body and then at the crystal
chandelier with its long pearls of rainbow glass.

 
          
 
He got a chair and brought it over under the
chandelier and put one foot up on it and took it down and threw the chair,
violently, laughing, into a comer. Then he ran out of the room, leaving one
wall as yet unwashed.

 
          
 
In the dining room he came to a table.

 
          
 
"I want to show you my Gregorian cutlery,
Acton," Huxley had said. Oh, that casual, that hypnotic, voice!

 
          
 
"I haven't time," Acton said.
"I've got to see Lily—"

 
          
 
"Nonsense, look at this silver, this
exquisite craftsmanship."

 
          
 
Acton paused over the table where the boxes of
cutlery were laid out, hearing once more Huxley's voice, remembering all the
touchings and gesturings.

 
          
 
Now Acton wiped the forks and spoons and took
down all the plaques and special ceramic dishes from the wall shelf. . . .

 
          
 
"Here's a lovely bit of ceramics by
Gertrude and Otto Natzler, Acton. Are you familiar with their work?"

 
          
 
"It is lovely."

 
          
 
"Pick it up. Turn it over. See the fine
thinness of the bowl, hand-thrown on a turntable, thin as eggshell, incredible.
And the amazing volcanic glaze? Handle it, go ahead. I don't mind."

 
          
 
HANDLE IT. GO AHEAD. PICK IT UP!

           
 
Acton sobbed unevenly. He hurled the pottery
against the wall. It shattered and spread, flaking wildly, upon the floor.

 
          
 
An instant later he was on his knees. Every
piece, every shard of it, must be found. Fool, fool, fool! he cried to himself,
shaking his head and shutting and opening his eyes and bending under the table.
Find every piece, idiot, not one fragment of it must be left behind. Fool,
fool! He gathered them. Are they all here? He looked at them on the table
before him. He looked under the table again and under the chairs and the
service bureaus and found one more piece by match light and started to polish
each little fragment as if it were a precious stone. He laid them all out
neatly upon the shining polished table.