“Divide what?” Stubb snorted. “We don’t even know if anything’s really there. If it is, ten percent could be a fortune.”
Candy yawned. “Jim, if it was just you, I’d be in. You know that. The way it is …”
Barnes said, “And I’d be delighted to assist Madame Serpentina; but that would be—uh—a matter of gallantry. This is business, and not very good business, not very profitable business.”
“Candy said she thought Free was crazy. Do you think so too, Ozzie?”
Slowly, Barnes shook his head.
“What do you think?”
“I’m going to reserve that,” Barnes said. “I’ll tell you in the morning. Maybe.”
“In the morning?”
Barnes shrugged. “You’re going to have to let Candy and me stay here. As Madame Serpentina said a few minutes ago, it’s already so late that if it were summer it would be getting light out.”
Candy said, “That’s right. Dibs on the bathroom.”
“If you two stay here, you’re going to be sleeping on the floor,” Stubb told them. “I should have said we will— all three of us. Let’s get that straight right now.”
“What the hell!” The fat girl stared at him openmouthed. “There’s two double beds.”
“Right. And if more than one person uses them, the maid will report it, and the hotel will know there’s been more than one person staying in the room. We can’t afford that. It’s Madame S.’s room, so she gets a bed. The rest of us bunk on the floor or in chairs—or not at all.”
Ego Vendo
Candy was in the bathroom, in the tub. As Barnes lay on his back, almost precisely where the table from which they had eaten had stood, he could hear her singing, and occasionally splashing.
He would get up, Barnes thought, and have a shower when she was finished. He wished he had clean underwear. Perhaps Madame Serpentina would not object if he washed what he had, and left them—undershirt. Jockey shorts—to dry on a towel bar. On the shower curtain rod. He would sleep in his pants and shirt. Would Stubb object if he pressed his pants under the mattress of the spare bed? No, he couldn’t do that. Tomorrow—today—he would have to get his bag, his sample cases, from the lockers in the bus station. They were good for only twenty- four hours. They had taken almost the last of his money. Would Madame Serpentina allow him to store them here? Surely she would, even if he couldn’t sleep here again. In the lobby, perhaps, for a time. If only she had gone naked to bed. He would have seen her, no matter how dark the room. He had seen more, much more, through the hole. It didn’t matter now—the house was gone anyway—the black ball swinging. He would have to sell something to get more coins for the lockers. His watch, perhaps. No, that was gone, already gone. The ticket was in his wallet. Free’s ticket? Could that have been what old Free meant? Was it in pawn, whatever he had possessed, the thing he had so obliquely spoken off? Or was it oblique, the knight hooking left, hooking right, the bishop sliding off to one side? Perhaps it only seemed so now, Free’s treasure. Money or bonds, Stubb thought. Madame Serpentina thought it was a crown, though she hadn’t said so. A treasure in a wall; a wall with a sign, Free had said. An unmistakable sign. The picture was in one sample case now, but the hole was no longer behind it. Would never, never be again. He slid aside the picture and reached through, drew forth a treasure … a what? A chest filled with gold and emeralds. Slithering from some childhood memory, an old cobra, white and blind, twined about them. Surely not that. That was not like Free at all, Free who had owned no turban, whose complexion had been, if anything, lighter than his own. And anyway such treasures are found under floors. This was in a wall. Did the others know? Candy, Madame Serpentina? Free had breakfasted with Candy, she said. Or Stubb, Stubb was much too clever to be safe, but he couldn’t sell. He hadn’t sold them on it, and he had wanted to so much. Perhaps because he was too clever, too clearly dangerous even for Candy who loved him.
No one, Barnes thought, has ever loved me. Possibly Little Ozzie would have if things had been different. I can sell, he thought, but in the end they find they’ve been sold a bill of goods, of bads. I’m never as good as they’ve been led to believe, never earned as much as they thought I would. Still I’ll have it on my stone, he thought, if I can. “He Could Sell.” If I were rich I’d have a gate so I could have a stone shield over it:
There was a grunt and a heaving splash—presumably Candy was rising from the tub.
I wonder if she’s left me any hot water, Barnes thought, then remembered that he was in a hotel, with hot water enough for a thousand bathers. He wondered if she had left any dry towels.
