The Tents of Wickedness by Peter de Vries

Author:Peter de Vries [Vries, Peter de]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
Tags: Humour
ISBN: 9781497669666
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 1959-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

10

HERE occurred an unexpected merger of my two problems. It was lucky or unlucky depending on how you looked at it.

I had one of my charges on her feet. I was to see the other at our usual haunt after a call on Sweetie, who, alone now in the cottage on Beacon Street, was if anything more urgent in her desire for a child, a venture on which, under the sobering elms of home, I was by contrast the firmer in my resolve not to collaborate.

“I’m going to sell this place and move to New Mexico. I can write there. You’ll never see me again,” she argued.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I admire your spunk, but that’s as far as it goes. Good-by, Sweetie, and good luck. I’ll be watching for those poems. Good-by, good-by.”

At the Greek’s there was the preliminary chat with Nickie before the stern periodic inventory. A book of prints he had with him prompted me to remark that a good artist can get more out of a minor subject than a poor one can get out of a major.

“You’re absolutely right,” Nickie said. “Sargent gives us still lifes of people. Cézanne gives us portraits of apples.”

“Cowplop. When are you going to nail the Smoothie? Or Johnny Velours, as he now calls himself? Three more jobs since the Flickendens’ and you’re still no closer to a solution. You realize you’re on a kind of probation. Your dream was validated in the sense that there is an adversary, but he’s making more of a fool of you than we did! Lila’s cooling off too. I don’t know how much longer I can keep her from Reno. You can, by getting a job. I’ve been thinking.” I began my walk on eggs again. “Why don’t you work for a teaching certificate and then get a post at some first-rate university?”

He was lost in that dense thought into which it was so hard to pursue him.

“I’ve been thinking. It may not be Pete Cheshire at all. This looks like the work of a far more brilliant criminal.”

“Two crooks in a town this size? Oh, come now, isn’t that asking too much of Providence? Pete’s using the Johnny Velours name to throw suspicion off himself, but leaving it on a calling card with each job is clue enough. It’s Pete’s trade mark. Let’s not change the subject. Now I’ve taken the liberty of getting some catalogues of normal colleges … Please take them. I insist!”

Nickie stirred, another hue coming to the surface like that of a turning fish. “A college professor. Why not?” he said with that ominous compliance I had learned to watch out for. He had readily agreed to “look into” real estate brokering by accompanying an agent named Mrs. Apthorpe on her tours with clients. He was supposed to be exploring the possibilities of part-time employment but all it came to was some pleasant countryside rambles with a woman he found amusing, and a chance to see some local houses about which he had always been curious.

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