All The Bells on Earth (29 page)

“Look at that,” Mahoney said, pointing his umbrella at the shadows alongside a front porch. A big plastic snowman, meant to be illuminated, lay on the grass, its face smashed in as if someone had yanked it off the porch and jumped up and down on it. Its electrical cord was wrapped around its neck in a sort of noose.

“Another one,” Mahoney said. “Do you think it’s him again?”

“Either it’s him or …”

And just then, a car rolled slowly past the end of the block, heading east on Palm Street. It was the third time that evening that they’d seen it. The driver was a shadow, but it seemed to Bentley that the shadow was observing the two of them, and the preacher raised his umbrella as a greeting. The car sped up and was gone. Bentley didn’t recognize the car, but he was almost certain it wasn’t Argyle. The driver appeared to be a short man, maybe heavyset. Probably it was George Nelson, halfway to Hell in a hand-basket.

Bentley wondered again if he should have cashed the check that Argyle had given Obermeyer. Making the deal final—actually taking the money—might have stopped whatever it was that was coming to pass….

But that was nuts. Whatever was going on with Argyle had nothing to do with money, and it never had. A man could as easily sell his soul for a nickel as for five billion dollars, and you couldn’t put a price on salvation—or on damnation, either, he reminded himself.

“What makes you think this thing in a jar is a demon?” Father Mahoney asked.

“What else would it be?”

“Do you mean a demon out of Hell? Beelzebub or Belial or one of them? Something with a name?”

“Well, there’s no point in getting too specific about it. We don’t care about the thing’s credentials.”

“Why not something else?”

“What, exactly?”

“A bottle imp. A monkey’s paw. A genie.”

“I don’t believe in imps and genies. A demon’s a demon the world around, as far as I’m concerned. What I know is that something has come into the country from the China coast, something Argyle has been waiting for. It was part of a shipment that included the golem, which I saw with my own eyes through the window. My sources believe this thing to be a demon, and
I
believe it to be a demon, and I believe that Argyle intends for this demon to ride his golem into Hell in order to give the Devil his due, which is to say, a soul. In a nutshell that’s what I think.”

“And it’s packaged as a toy?”

“Insidious, isn’t it? Looks fairly innocent, apparently—some kind of good-luck item. You make a wish on it like you’d wish on a rabbit’s foot or a star. Then it’s got you. Pulls you in by appealing to your desires. What it means is damnation, which is nothing to Argyle—he thinks he’s already damned.”

They turned the corner and headed up toward Cambridge. “It’s Stebbins that I’m worried about. I’m certain he’s got it, and that he’s lying when he says he doesn’t. Looting his garage won’t do us any good any more. He’ll have the thing hidden by now. There’s nothing left to do but confront him about it. We’ve got to appeal to his decency, and we’ve got to appeal to his fear.”

“Do you think he’ll listen?”

“No,” Bentley said. “I don’t suppose he will.”

T
HE MOTOR HOME WAS
dark, thank goodness, and it wasn’t raining, although it smelled like rain, and the sky was heavy with clouds. Walt walked out to the curb and looked out into the street, where, on any other night of the year, there would have been a dozen roaches going about their senseless business. Tonight there was nothing; the streets were empty except for a few earthworms in the gutter. Somewhere in the distance there was the ringing of bells, small bells.

The wind billowed out the hem of his nightshirt, and he clapped his hands down against it, looking around him for the first time and thankful that he was wearing his shorts under the nightshirt. If a police cruiser were to appear …

Hurrying now, he tucked his finger into the hole in the concrete lid of the water meter box and pulled it off, laying it on the grass. The streetlamp barely illuminated the inside of the box, which was about a foot deep, the meter itself casting a shadow across the bottom of it. He knelt against the curb, wishing he had brought the flashlight. There was movement down there, all right, small dark things creeping through the tangled roots of the Bermuda grass that had grown up through the bottom of the box. Of course there could as easily be black widows down there as roaches.

He shuddered and straightened up, looking out at the street again.
Surely
there was a lonely roach out and about, happy to sacrifice itself for something like this. The ringing of bells grew louder suddenly, accompanied by a random jingling, as if a Christmas-decorated horse and carriage had just then rounded the corner. Two men, he saw now,
had
rounded the corner and were approaching from up the street, coming along hurriedly, jingling as they came. One of them strode along a little in front of the other, and passed just then beneath a streetlight. He was heavyset and balding and wore dark clothing and spectacles—the image of Mr. Pickwick. Walt realized with a shock of recognition that the man was a priest. The other man, for God’s sake, was the Reverend Bentley, the two of them out on some kind of joint mission, probably ferreting out sinners.

Walt was seized with the sudden desire to run. Here he was in the street, barefoot, wearing a nightshirt, hunting roaches with a tennis shoe. What would he tell them? That this had something to do with sex?

Bentley spotted him and waved, and just then, as they drew near to the driveway, the priest set into a sort of dance, a fantastic, one-legged caper, waving his umbrella in the air as if he were casting out demons and hopping toward Walt with a look of wild glee on his face, his spectacles leaping on the bridge of his nose. Walt stood dumbfounded. Of all the late-night lunacy, this took the cake.

Nora’s hopscotch! The old priest was simply hopscotching. Relieved, Walt shook Bentley’s hand. Bentley was as sober-looking as Mahoney was gleeful.

“This is Walt Stebbins,” Bentley said to the priest. “The man I’ve been telling you about. Stebbins, this is Father Mahoney, from the Holy Spirit.”

“My pleasure,” the priest said. He had a firm grip. Walt saw now that there were little clutches of bells clipped to both men’s belts.

“Mr. Stebbins once donated heavily to the lunch program,” Bentley said to Mahoney. “I think we can use him if we can get him off his high horse.”

Walt grinned at him.
Use
him? What the
hell
was the man talking about?

“I haven’t hopscotched in sixty years,” the priest said, breathing heavily. He took off his spectacles and wiped them on his shirt, then put them back on.

“We must look like a couple of crazy men to you.” Bentley squinted at Walt and jingled the bells.

“No,” Walt said, “not at all.” He held onto his nightshirt, fighting the wind. “I’m hardly in a position to …” He gestured with the shoe.

“We’re ringing bells,” Bentley said. “In the middle of the night. Do you know why?”

Walt shook his head. “I guess I don’t, really.”

“Because the bells at St. Anthony’s were sabotaged and Mr. Simms was murdered. That’s right, I said
murdered
. Does this come as any surprise to you?”

“Well, I had no idea….” Walt said. “I haven’t read anything …”

“Of course you haven’t read anything. And you won’t, either. Do you know why he was murdered?”

Walt shrugged.

“To silence the bells
.” Bentley nodded hard at him. “Church bells, Mr. Stebbins, are abhorrent to the ears of fiends and demons. Drives them mad. The streets of European cities used to be patrolled by bellmen throughout the night. Back me up here, Mahoney.”

“The Reverend Bentley is correct,” the priest said. “These bells we carry are Benedictus bells, and with them we mean to drive the demons out of Old Towne. It’s an old tradition, really, very old. ‘Mercy secure you all, and keep the goblin from you while you sleep.’ That was the chant of the bellman.”

Just then a cockroach came up out of the water meter hole and sprinted out onto the curb. Walt lunged at it, slamming it flat with the sole of the tennis shoe. He felt the cold wind on his rear end, and so he pinned down the hem of the nightshirt with his free hand again. “Got him,” Wait said weakly, noticing that Bentley was frowning at him.

A light came on in the motor home, and the curtains were pushed aside. Aunt Jinx looked out at them, and Walt waved the tennis shoe at her as naturally as he could, as if he were just going about the usual business. Father Mahoney nodded politely. She shut the curtain again and the light went off.

“I don’t suppose we’d better wake up Henry?” Bentley said to Walt.

“Better not to,” Walt said. “He turns in early.” He nudged the smashed roach with his foot in order to loosen it from the concrete. The light was still on upstairs, and he could see a shadow move in front of the window, so it was good odds that Ivy was still awake.

“We’ll tackle him tomorrow,” Bentley said.

“Good,” Walt said. “It’s getting pretty late.”

“What about you?” Bentley asked. “Are you willing to do your part?”

“Sure,” Walt told him. “I guess so. What part?”

“We’re going to run the Devil out of town. Can we count you in?”

“I could contribute something, I guess.”

“Oh, we’re not asking for money,” Mahoney said. “We’re looking for recruits.”

Walt blinked at them. He had gone through this once before with Bentley. “I don’t know …” he said.

“Of course you don’t know,” Bentley told him. “Why should you know? I’m going to tell you something now. Can you stand to hear it?”

Walt nodded, feeling a drop of rain hit the top of his head. He was damned if he’d drown to hear it.

“It was me that burglarized your garage.”

“You?” Walt asked. And of course it was true. Everything was clear to him. Obviously Bentley had gone over the fence, then circled back around the block to where Walt had run into him.

“That’s right. And by golly I’d burglarize it again if I had to. And I might, too, unless you make up your mind to come in on our side.”

“Why?” Walt asked. He knew the answer to his question even as he asked it. Of course Bentley wanted the jar. Everyone wanted the jar. Well, it belonged to Walt now, and everyone could go whistle for it.

And then he remembered—Uncle Henry had made him pitch it into the Dumpster.

“I was looking for something,” Bentley said. “I have certain … certain
sources
. There’s a thing that’s come into the country, into the neighborhood, encased in a jar, boxed up in painted tin. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“I don’t deal in jars very much,” Walt said evasively. “I got a case of snow globes—flamingo globes, actually, filled with water. You know the kind of thing—glitter, a palm tree.”

Bentley waved the idea away. “Don’t meddle with me, son. There’s no time for it now.”

“Why didn’t you just
ask
me about this jar?” Walt said. “Why break in?”

“Do you believe in the Devil?”

“I’m not sure what you …”

“Of course you’re not sure. That’s why I didn’t ask you about it.”

He was serious! Well, so was Walt. It was his garage, and by heaven it was his jar, too.
Like
to call it … “Who killed Mr. Simms?” Walt asked abruptly. “Do you know?”

Bentley looked at him for a moment, as if calculating, then said, “We think we do. We believe it to be Robert Argyle, the financeer.”

“Well, that’s hasty,” Mahoney said. “We don’t know any such thing.”

“He was an old friend of yours, wasn’t he?” Bentley asked.

“Years ago,” Walt said, turning this whole thing over in his mind.

“Well let me give you a tip, straight from the horse,” Bentley said. “
He’ll kill you too
. Don’t think he won’t.”

Walt realized that the shoulders of his nightshirt were wet. The rain was coming down in a mist, but harder by the moment.

“Keep a weather eye out,” Bentley said. “We’ve got work to do. We can’t stand here talking. If you find this jar, be
very
careful with it. Treat it like an unexploded bomb.”

“Take these,” the priest said, disconnecting the bells from his belt and handing them to Walt. “Hang them up on the porch, like wind chimes.”

Walt took them. What the hell—it couldn’t hurt.

A car turned the corner just then, from the Chapman Avenue end of the street, two hundred feet away. Its high beams were on, and Walt automatically turned his eyes away. The car accelerated suddenly, angling in toward the curb, straight at them, and Walt could see nothing but the blinding glow of its headlamps. He backpedaled, up onto the curb, felt a hand clutch the back of his nightshirt and yank him sideways. He sprawled onto his hands and knees, throwing the tennis shoe, and at the same time heard a heavy thud and squeal as the car sideswiped the curbside palm tree, then bounced down onto the road again and sped away.

Walt scrambled to his feet and helped Mahoney up. “Thanks,” he said breathlessly.

The priest nodded. “Which of them was it?” he asked Bentley.