The Nothing Man by Jim Thompson Page A

load. I don't know that I can pronounce all the words just right, but-"
    "Go ahead. I'll try to interpret."
    "Sure," he said, and he read:

    _Lady of the endless lust,
    Itching lips and heaving bust,
    Lady save it, lady scram, lady hang it on a nail
    Get thee hence nor leave behind you
    Any vestige of your tail_.

    He finished reading and looked at me sharply. I looked back at him indifferently. I'd written it, of course, it and some fifty or sixty similar bits of doggerel. But that had been long ago, and they'd been done on various odds and ends of paper and on a variety of typewriters. On the Red Cross machines in hospitals. In newspaper offices. In dollar-an-hour, type-your-own-letter places. They couldn't be traced to me. I'd written them out of bitterness and brooding-at a time when I was still bitter and brooding- out of hate and resentment and restlessness. And, finally, I had presented them to Ellen. I had dedicated them to her.
    I'd shown them to no one but her. No one but she knew that I had written them. I wondered what masochistic urge had led her to save this one after destroying the others.
    "Well, keed?" Stukey grinned at me. "What you say?"
    "I gather that that's a copy," I said. "Where's the original?"
    "The cops over on the island have it. They read it off to me over the telephone."
    "You haven't seen it yourself, then? You don't actually know that it's as they described it? Old and creased and-"
    "What the hell you gettin' at?"
    "I've already arrived. But you, my dear Stukey, are very far behind. You didn't see the poem. You didn't see her. You don't know-"
    "They're kidding me, huh?" He let out a snort. "They made it all up just to cause some excitement."
    "You're chief of detectives. You seem to regard this as a pretty important case. So important that you had to bother my publisher and editor about it. Yet you've got your evidence by telephone. Why? Why didn't you go over there?"
    "Well-uh-" He licked his lips. "You know, keed. The bay's been kinda choppy. Ain't no real reason why I couldn't have gone, if I'd figured it was necessary, but- uh-"
    "A little choppy, eh? The ferries and charter boats aren't running, and it's just a little choppy. Cut it out, Stuke. You didn't go because you couldn't. No one could have."
    "That's what you say! I-"
    "So did you, earlier this evening. Remember our conversation at your office? No one could have crossed that bay tonight. _No one_. Certainly he couldn't have crossed it twice. If you don't know that, you ought to be back walking a beat, which, now that I think of it, might be an excellent idea."
    His face reddened; his round, overbright little eyes shifted nervously. "Now, look, Brownie. It's just as plain as day-"
    "-or the nose on your face." I nodded. "But you can't see it. You were so red hot to get something on me that you overlooked the plain facts of the matter. You say that she got up and got that poem out of her purse. How do you know she did? How do you know it wasn't simply made to look that way by the person who killed her?"
    "Well-" His tongue moved over his lips again. "But why would-?"
    "The poem belonged to him, the murderer, not her. Obviously he was a man with a perverted sense of humor, a maniac in the broad sense of the term. He visited her, doubtless as a client. He murdered her. Then he arranged for her to be found in such a way as to throw you off his trail yet satisfy his ego. And, stupid man that you are, he was entirely successful."
    I smiled at him pleasantly and took another drink. I lighted a cigarette, coughing slightly on the smoke as I choked back a laugh. This was far better than I had thought it would be. There were truly wonderful possibilities in it.
    "That's what happened, Lem," I said. "It had to be a maniac. You can't make sense out of it in any other way."
    "You call that sense?" he growled.
    "For a maniac, a sadistic killer, yes. By the way, I assume the ferries have resumed service? Well, then, you've let him get completely