The Golden Apples of the Sun by Ray Bradbury Read Free Book Online Page A

to speak, hanging out, ran on to new ones. He felt naked, unable to do anything until he found gloves. He might scour the entire house with the handkerchief, buffing every possible surface where fingerprints might lie, then accidentally bump a wall here or there, thus sealing his own fate with one microscopic, whorling symbol! It would be putting his stamp of approval on the murder, that's what it would be! Like those waxen seals in the old days when they rattled papyrus, flourished ink, dusted all with sand to dry the ink, and pressed their signet rings in hot crimson tallow at the bottom. So it would be if he left one, mind you, one fingerprint upon the scene! His approval of the murder did not extend as far as affixing said seal.
    More drawers! Be quiet, be curious, be careful, he told himself.
    At the bottom of the eighty-fifth drawer he found gloves.
    "Oh, my Lord, my Lord!" He slumped against the bureau, sighing. He tried the gloves on, held them up, proudly flexed them, buttoned them. They were soft, gray, thick, impregnable. He could do all sorts of tricks with hands now and leave no trace. He thumbed his nose in the bedroom mirror, sucking his teeth.

    "NO!" cried Huxley.
    What a wicked plan it had been.
    Huxley had fallen to the floor, purposely ! Oh, what a wickedly clever man! Down onto the hardwood floor had dropped Huxley, with Acton after him. They had rolled and tussled and clawed at the floor, printing and printing it with their frantic fingertips! Huxley had slipped away a few feet, Acton crawling after to lay hands on his neck and squeeze until the life came out like paste from a tube!
    Gloved, William Acton returned to the room and knelt down upon the floor and laboriously began the task of swabbing every wildly infested inch of it. Inch by inch, inch by inch, he polished and polished until he could almost see his intent, sweating face in it. Then he came to a table and polished the leg of it, on up its solid body and along the knobs and over the top. He came to a bowl of wax fruit, burnished the filigree silver, plucked out the wax fruit and wiped them clean, leaving the fruit at the bottom unpolished.
    "I'm sure I didn't touch them ," he said.
    After rubbing the table he came to a picture frame hung over it.
    "I'm certain I didn't touch that ," he said.
    He stood looking at it.
    He glanced at all the doors in the room. Which doors had he used tonight? He couldn't remember. Polish all of them, then. He started on the doorknobs, shined them all up, and then he curried the doors from head to foot, taking no chances. Then he went to all the furniture in the room and wiped the chair arms.
    "That chair you're sitting in, Acton, is an old Louis XIV piece. Feel that material," said Huxley.
    "I didn't come to talk furniture, Huxley! I came about Lily."
    "Oh, come off it, you're not that serious about her. She doesn't love you, you know. She's told me she'll go with me to Mexico City tomorrow."
    "You and your money and your damned furniture!"
    "It's nice furniture. Acton; be a good guest and feel of it."
    Fingerprints can be found on fabric.
    "Huxley!" William Acton stared at the body. "Did you guess I was going to kill you? Did your subconscious suspect, just as my subconscious suspected? And did your subconscious tell you to make me run about the house handling, touching, fondling books, dishes, doors, chairs? Were you that clever and that mean?"
    He washed the chairs dryly with the clenched handkerchief. Then he remembered the body—he hadn't dry-washed it. He went to it and turned it now this way, now that, and burnished every surface of it. He even shined the shoes, charging nothing.
    While shining the shoes his face took on a little tremor of worry, and after a moment he got up and walked over to that table.
    He took out and polished the wax fruit at the bottom of the bowl.
    "Better," he whispered, and went back to the body.
    But as he crouched over the body his eyelids twitched and his jaw moved from side