VII. ALEXANDER ROTH

THERE is nothing so much like one road as another road, and any road but U.S. 70 and one going either to Los Angeles or New York was right for me. I had to get going—where, it didn't matter—and keep going. I was in Bakersfield before I read that Charles J. Haskell, Sr., was dead; and in Frisco before Vera's body was discovered; and in Seattle before the fifteen bucks I borrowed on Haskell's ring gave out. I felt somewhat easier in Seattle, hard up or not; because it was in Seattle that I read the following article:

HUSBAND SOUGHT BY POLICE OF THREE STATES

Charles Haskell, Wanted By Investigators for Questioning in Regard To The Afton Place Murder Still Missing.

August 22nd. (UP) Charles Haskell, New York bookmaker and husband of the murdered woman, Vera Haskell, is still at large. For the past week police have been checking into the clues found in the apartment of the strangled woman and in the automobile parked in the apartment house garage.

Is that one for the book or is that one for the book? Haskell gets me into a spot and Haskell gets me out of it. They even went so far as to print his picture, wired from New York! It is easy to figure out how it happened, but if you can explain why it did, you're a better man than I am, Gunga-Din.

Vera was murdered by a dead man. Laugh that off. Nevertheless, when you come right down to it, my problems weren't solved. I had to stay away from Los Angeles for fear someone might recognize me—and I couldn't go back to New York because Alexander Roth was dead. That meant Detroit, Peoria, New Orleans and Butte no more. And that meant the end of my career before it was begun. Now I'd never stand under the lights and roll them in the aisles with Wagner, Schubert and Bach.

Not so bad, considering what I was escaping? I don't know about that. For me to throw away my ambitions to be a great musician is not the same as you putting out the cat or throwing away the Christmas tree. It was killing my soul, if that's what you call it; to keep my body alive.

And another thing. I was giving up Sue, which hurt me still more. I could never come near her with a thing like this hanging over my head. It hurt, as I said; yet there was a certain satisfaction in what I was doing. I was aware that giving up the only girl I ever loved, and the only one who'd ever loved me, was maybe the first decent thing I'd ever done. If I sent word to her, and she came running to me to be my wife, it would be hell on her the rest of her days. Thank God I loved her enough to make this sacrifice.

So here I am—one day in Buffalo and the next in Columbus, earning a couple of dollars now and then by rubbing out the hot stuff in cheesy bands. I keep trying to forget what happened—and I have, almost—except that once in a while I wonder what might have taken place and what my life might have been if that damned grey roadster hadn't stopped. And when I start wondering—well, sometimes I want to curse and sometimes I want to cry.

Dramatics, buddy? No, sir. No dramatics. God or Fate or some mysterious force can put the finger on you or on me for no good reason at all.

THE END