by Dana Sherman
This is a Remember WENN fan fiction by Dana Sherman. I did not create, nor do I own these characters. This particular story is entirely my own.
"Buy barley futures"
Victor didn’t have the slightest idea who the dark haired man who came into the room saying those three words with such derision could possibly be. It didn’t matter. He immediately swung toward him and leveled his gun straight between his eyes. His hand was shaking. He gripped the handle tightly. He cocked the gun. He only had to pull the trigger. He could fight it for a while, but not for long. The pain was building already. He would fall into agony within seconds if he did not kill this man.
"Victor Comstock, you’re alive." The stranger spoke with genuine astonishment. Even in his state Victor could tell that he had no connection to either the Nazis or the Allies. He was an innocent bystander, and he was about to get a bullet straight through his brain. Victor knew he could do nothing to stop himself. He would pull the trigger soon. Then he would turn the gun on himself. That was not part of his conditioning, but he knew he would do it anyway. It would solve everyone’s problems, most especially his own.
"Scott," Betty whispered. That answered that question, anyway. So, this was Scott Sherwood. The stranger whom Betty had said was the man whom Victor had sent to replace him. Did that really happen, or was he imagining it. Had he ever been in London? Had he ever even been a Pittsburgh radio station manager, or had his whole life just been a dream? Had he been a Nazi functionary for years? For centuries maybe? The pain was getting worse. Victor’s hand started to shake again. He could give this Scott Sherwood perhaps ten more seconds of life before he had to succumb to his pain caused by his disobedience. He didn’t even know why he was bothering to fight. It was a hopeless concession to the morality he barely remembered he used to have.
"Hey Betty, I love you." Scott’s words registered as Victor’s mind became clouded with pain. He hadn’t moved. The gun was still aimed at Scott. Victor only hoped that this stranger would know, as he died, that it hadn’t been Victor’s choice. Scott loved Betty, Victor was going to have to kill a man who loved Betty. He didn’t know how he could do it. A wave of agonizing pain hit him. He didn’t know how he could not do it either.
"Buy barley futures." A soft voice, a pretty girl’s voice. Betty had said that. Victor turned his gun instinctively toward Betty. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Pruitt lower his gun. He was grinning with absolute glee. Of course he is, Victor thought. He knows that I will kill Betty, which is what he wanted in the first place. Pruitt had said it too though. Everyone else in the room had said that dreaded phrase at least once. It didn’t matter which one he killed. He tried to fight harder, but it was no use. The pain was unbearable. He swung his gun toward Pruitt and pulled the trigger.
Time seemed to stop moving, then it faded out altogether. Pruitt crumpled to the floor. Victor stood and stared at the tall rotund body as it lay there unmoving. The pain was already subsiding. He had done what he had to do. He would be rewarded for this. Perhaps the Nazis would allow him a few days without torture if they were especially pleased with him. He must go back to them. They would take care of him. He would never again have another thought of rebellion. Total obedience was the only way. He saw that now.
No, he had to kill himself for this. He had committed murder. He had killed a man in cold blood. This was a violation of every bit of his moral fiber. He turned the gun around toward himself. He heard Betty’s gasp of pain, of mental anguish. "No, please, Victor..." she cried in agony.
Scott broke out of the trance that seemed to hold all of them first. As Victor turned toward Betty, Scott swung his fist around, knocking the gun straight out of Victor’s hand. It skittered across the floor and came to a stop next to Pruitt’s still unmoving body.
Scott ran to the body, picked up both guns and threw them up to top of the shelves. They were beyond reach now. He looked at Pruitt, took his pulse and looked up at Betty and Victor. There was no need for words. His eyes told them what they already knew. There was no pulse. Rollie Pruitt was dead.
Scott got up and locked the Green Room door. Victor stood leaning against the wall, his eyes blank with hysteria, and Betty stood next to him passing a handkerchief she had dampened in the sink over his face. She whispered soothingly to him, only stopping to turn to Scott when Victor seemed to become relatively calm. It reminded Scott of what Hilary had done when Jeff had his nightmares. Jeff had awakened screaming and she had run to his side, whispering and calming him. Women are amazing, Scott thought. Victor Comstock pulls a gun on Betty, then kills a man in cold blood right before her eyes and she treats him like some kind of helpless frightened child. Scott knew he was in for at least a couple of nightmares from this, but there would be no sweet, soft voiced brunette to come into his room to soothe him when he woke screaming.
"Scott!" Mackie’s voice rang through the hall. "I couldn’t find Betty. Is it all right if I go back to the Buttery now? I don’t trust this oderless gas. I think we both ought to go downstairs."
"Sure, Mackie. I couldn’t find Betty, either," Scott yelled back through the locked door. "She's probably already downstairs. Go back to the Buttery. Don’t bother to wait for me. I don’t have any more shows today, so I’ll just let Betty know I’ll be leaving. There is something very important I have to do for Betty, anyway."
The three people in the green room who were in any condition to hear anything heard Mackie’s grateful footsteps in the hall, the door open and close again, and then the footsteps disappear down the corridor toward the stairs.
Scott, Betty, and Victor stood in the Green Room with a dead body lying on the floor. It was not one of the situations that any of them enjoyed.
"Victor, come here and help me get Pruitt down the back stairs," Scott ordered. Victor had clearly grown used to taking orders and did nothing to protest, merely nodding and taking Pruitt’s feet while Scott lifted his head. The two men slowly took the body down the back stairs. The ones that were used only for emergencies and fires.
Betty stared at Scott blankly. "What are you doing with him?" she asked him without expression. Scott knew the shock and horror that registered in her eyes was only the start of many months of pain and grief for her.
"We are going to put him in the back seat of his own car", Scott told her quietly. "Then we are going to drive the car off the pier into the Monangahela and deny any knowledge whatsoever of the whereabouts or fate of Rollie Pruitt."
"Have you gone mad, Scott?" she whispered.
"No," Scott replied. "I'm in love with you. Victor has gone mad."
"What should I do, Scott?"
"Go to the Buttery, tell the others that the gas leak was a false alarm. Then tell them Pruitt told you he was taking the rest of the afternoon off and left. Then tell them to finish up the rest of the day at the station. Thank God we only have three more shows before sign-off and I’m not in any of them. I don’t think anyone will miss me. After we shut down, don’t go home. Go straight to my apartment. I’ll let you know what else to do there. I have some ideas of where we can hide Victor but I’ll have to make a few phone calls. Whatever else you do, don’t let anyone even suspect anything is wrong. Just go through the rest of the day like it was any other Saturday. Can you do that?"
Betty stared at him blankly. So did Victor. "Betty!" he said sharply, "can you do that?"
"Yes, Scott. I’ll be all right." She spoke by rote. Victor stared at Pruitt’s face and looked like he was about to pass out. Scott knew that anything they did, they would only do if he could keep them both from falling apart.
The two men continued taking Pruitt’s body down the stairs. Betty followed them to the bottom of the staircase. It was dark outside and the emergency stairs led directly into the back parking lot. If they were careful no one would see them.
"Betty," Victor turned toward her before he pushed open the backdoor. "If I don’t see you again, I want you to know that in all these months I never stopped loving you. I loved you through everything. That was the only thing the Nazis couldn’t figure out how to take away from me. Please forgive me, and try not to be bitter. I know it will be hard, but please try. Betty, please..." His voice drifted off and his eyes went blank again. He stared at her for a moment in silence, as if trying to remember what he was going to say.
"I love you too, Victor," was all Betty had time to say before she ran back upstairs, trying to ward off her shock and horror before she gave way to hysterical tears.
*******************
"Did you mean it, Scott?" Victor sat on Scott’s couch sipping a scotch and soda. "Do you love Betty?" Victor stopped suddenly. He killed Pruitt and nearly did a lot worse. He threatened Betty with a gun and nearly killed her. How could he ask Scott anything? If Scott simply killed him on the spot, it would only be the most appropriate reaction.
"Yeah, Victor, I meant it. I guess I’ve loved her for months. I just never mentioned it. Well, at least not in so many words."
"Take care of her, Scott. Please take care of her." Scott nodded silently. Victor closed his eyes for a moment in relief and smiled for the first time that day. Suddenly he got off the couch, set his drink down on the coffee table and headed for the door.
"Where do you think you’re going, Victor?" Scott asked sharply.
"I have to be at the Edelweiss restaurant in half an hour. I am meeting some people there. Thank you for the drink, Scott, but I really do have to go." He turned and started walking out the door.
Scott thought fast. "Victor, wait. You can’t just walk down the street dressed like a policeman. What if you got recognized and arrested. They wouldn’t like that, would they?" Panic came into Victor’s eyes at the very thought.
"Go into the bedroom and put on one of my jackets. Anything in the closet will do. I will get you across town to the Edelweiss safely." Victor nodded and walked across the living room and into the bedroom. As soon as he was in there, Scott shut the door and turned the key.
"Scott, I have to go now. You don’t understand. I have to meet them in twenty seven and a half minutes. Scott, please."
"You’re not going anywhere, Victor," Scott told him through the closed door. "You don’t know what you’re doing. Take a nap for awhile, I’ve got to make some phone calls." No sound came from the bedroom, but there was no way of escaping. There was a small bathroom leading off the bedroom and there was a window, but since they were on the 30th floor, there was little Victor could do beyond looking out of it.
***********
Betty rang Scott’s apartment bell at twelve-thirty in the morning. The door opened and Betty was pulled inside by the arm.
"Did it go okay with the others?" Scott asked her urgently. "No one suspected anything?"
"No, not a thing," Betty answered. "I just told them to go on with the rest of the day, and that I had work to do in the writer's room. I left after everyone else did so I wouldn’t have to go through any good-byes." She looked around the living room. "Where’s Victor?"
"He’s gone, Betty. I took him to a mental hospital in Ohio. He went willingly. But Betty, no one else knows that he is really the Victor Comstock who was believed killed in London. I just told the doctor that he is an amnesiac who has delusions of being kidnapped and brainwashed by Nazis in Berlin. The doctor interviewed him and agreed to take him. At least he’ll be safe there for the time being, and I’ll get over there to make sure he’s okay whenever I can. No one knows about Pruitt. He is resting comfortably in his car at the bottom of the Monangahela."
Betty didn’t think she could take one more second of this. She had never been a screamer or a crier, and had never had much respect for girls who were, but this was just to much. Pruitt was dead, Victor was a murderer, probably completely insane after what he had been through, and Scott...Scott loved her. Her mind couldn’t take it in at once. She broke down sobbing. Scott didn’t even try to stop her. He simply sat her down next to her on the couch. Crying was the best thing she could do now. Better than that look of blank horror in her eyes. As painful as it was to watch, at least if she was crying, she wasn’t in shock anymore.
"What did they do to him, Scott? I mean, I know Victor Comstock. He wouldn’t kill anyone. He wouldn’t harm anything or anyone. I’ve never met someone with such unshakable convictions. What could they have done to him?" She stopped talking and looked up at Scott as if begging him to make some sense of it all.
"Betty," he started, "Victor told me some of the things they did to him. You don’t want me to tell you. It’s amazing he is as rational as he is. I’m sorry."
Betty stared at him in horror. She was a writer. She could imagine what they had done. She started a fresh torrent of sobs. Scott just sat next to her on the couch. There was absolutely nothing he could do. He had disposed of the body, he had gotten the murderer into hiding. He had learned a lot from Sam Dane. But he still couldn’t get Betty to stop crying. Crying for Victor. It had always been Victor.
Well, it only made sense. Decent girls like Betty didn’t fall in love with guys like him and she was the only decent girl he’d ever spoken more than a few words to. Who would have believed the girl to make Scott Sherwood fall completely in love would be Betty Roberts from Elkhart, Indiana? Who would have believed it would be a brunette? Like most guys of his moral nature, he’d always liked blondes. They seemed easier somehow. His previous women had all looked like magazine advertisements for peroxide. But Betty; sweet, lovely Betty, who never opened a bottle of hair dye in her life, who was pure and noble and everything else he would never be, was the one to capture him completely. He would protect her from anything that came of this horrific night. He had hidden Victor from the police, from the government and from the Nazis. The hospital he’d found for him wasn’t the best in the world, but it was clean and decent. Victor would never be cured there, but at least he would be safe and cared for. That is all he could hope for right now.
Scott stroked Betty’s hair as her sobbing became softer and more subdued. He had made himself an accessory to murder. He didn’t know why he was willing to do this for any girl on earth, except that this wasn’t any girl. This was an angel. If she only found it in herself to return his love the smallest amount, it would be worth anything he had to endure.
Betty slept that night on Scott’s sofa. It was the first time she had ever been alone overnight with any man. Her room at the Barbicon Hotel was up for rent, she was sure of that. The housemother didn’t give girls who ignored the one AM curfew a second chance. Her lock would be changed by ten in the morning. Her clothes and possessions packed up and sitting in the lobby waiting for her to claim them. She lay on the sofa, a blanket thrown over her, and stared at the ceiling. Scott was fast asleep in the easy chair opposite her. The last thing she remembered he gave her a pill and a cup of water. She took it and was asleep in less than a minute. Now she felt hung over. What was in that stuff? With difficulty she turned to look at the clock. It was nine AM. She thanked God it was Sunday. WENN would be running the church broadcasts and Eugenia’s fairy tales until the afternoon. Scott wouldn’t be needed until the evening dramas.
A rush of pain swept over her as she lay on Scott’s couch. Victor...where was Victor? Scott had told her he was in an institution in Ohio. Her eyes filled with tears. She just couldn’t deal with it yet. She would just let Scott handle it for today. She would let Scott take care of her. It was all she could do. She could depend on Scott. True, he was totally irresponsible, late for work more often than not, and there was no way of telling what kind of trouble he would get the station into on any given day. He was the strangest human dichotomy she had ever met. He was a completely undependable person, but she knew she could depend on him.
"Hey Betty, I love you." Scott’s words still rang in her head. He had thought he was going to die. A person can say all kinds of things in what they think is the last five seconds of life. If Victor had never pulled that gun on him, would he have gone through his life loving her and never have said a word. Or had he said every day, with every word and action, that he loved her, and she had just been too absorbed in herself or in Victor to realize it? Were his flirting and schoolboy level passes the only way he had of expressing love unless he had a gun to his head?
Betty turned and watched him sleeping in the chair. He is as much a criminal now as Victor, she thought. He has assisted a murderer to escape. He had put himself in unbelievable danger because he knew how much she loved Victor. She wouldn’t have believed Scott was capable of such devotion, such selflessness, if she hadn’t seen it for herself. But he was still Scott Sherwood. This was the man who could charm the birds out of the trees and escape in an instant by looking at his watch. Even if he meant what he said, she didn’t know if she would ever be able to return his love.
Scott woke up then and caught Betty’s gaze staring at him. She didn’t need to speak to him. The questioning gaze in her eyes was enough.
"I meant it, Betty," was all he said. It was enough for now.
*****************
"Maybe we should go to the police, Scott," she said over breakfast. "If you explain to them why you did it, and I do a lot of crying maybe they will understand. Victor had been conditioned to do what he did. It wasn’t his fault. It was the Nazis. Surely they would understand. There is still a ring of Nazi sympathizers in Pittsburgh. The police really ought to know about that for the good of the country."
Scott just shook his head. "Betty," he began. "If we do that, we will be putting both our lives in danger, and not from the police. The Allied military sent Victor over to Berlin to be a double agent in the first place. As a result, he was kidnapped, brainwashed, and turned into a programmed Nazi. That could be rather an embarrassment to them if it got out. The American and British people wouldn’t like it if it were known that their governments allowed an innocent civilian to be captured and tortured by the Nazis. If it is known that we know, we could easily find ourselves at the wrong end of an assassination attempt."
"Scott!" Betty was shocked. "You’re talking about our government, not the Nazis. Surely they wouldn’t do something like that." Scott sighed. Betty was the sweetest, purest thing he had ever seen. He would rather face a dozen handguns than disillusion her for an instant.
"Their government is based on immoral principles. Ours is based on moral ones. But the techniques are not much different. We do the same thing to promote our policies that they do to promote theirs. Believe me on this one, please Betty. Don’t tell anyone about any of this."
"I won’t Scott. I don’t understand a lot of this. But I’ll take your word on it, at least for now."
"Taking my word on anything is not usually the best policy for anyone, but this time you can, about everything".
"Scott, there is one thing I don’t understand at all. If you loved me, why didn’t you ever say so? Why did you just come off like some masher in a Union Hall dance day after day? It doesn’t make sense. Why do you act so darn shallow and insincere"?
"For the exact same reason you don’t, Betty. It’s the way I was brought up. In the Sherwood family, sincerity is not one of the values taught from an early age. But I do occasionally say what I mean, especially when I have a loaded gun in my face. I do love you, Betty. I mean it. If you can’t return my love, it would only confirm your intelligence and discerning taste. But I really wish you could."
"I can’t answer you right now, Scott. I’m very grateful to you, I know that. I don’t know how I will ever begin to repay you for what you did for Victor. But I don’t want to confuse gratitude, or loneliness, or fear, with true love. This is a lot for one day, Scott."
"I know. That’s why, I’m not going to pressure you about this. I’m going to do something I don’t usually do. I’ve decided to play fair on this one. I’ll never mention it again unless you bring it up first."
Betty looked at him steadily. He was good looking, he was charming, She was glad he was around. She smiled when she saw him and her thoughts often drifted to him when he wasn’t there. He had helped her out in an unbelievable jam. If he hadn’t been there she didn’t know what she would have done. If what she felt for him was love, it wasn’t love by the standards of her fiction. It wasn’t the kind of love that Elizabeth Marlowe and Daphne Danvers felt. She didn’t sigh, or faint, or lose sleep over him. She neither refused food for three days, nor ate an entire chocolate cake by herself. She worked and ate and slept as she always did. But she had forgotten what her life had been like before she met Scott Sherwood. She had lost track of what happened between them. She had forgotten she was angry with him for his lies about the letter of recommendation he said came from Victor. It simply seemed inevitable now. If Scott hadn’t been a liar and a scoundrel he never would have forged that letter and without that letter, she never would have met him, and Victor would probably be dead. For all she knew, she would be dead now. Pruitt had been pointing that gun at her. Scott probably saved her life.
"Scott, I can only promise you one thing. If I don’t end up with you, I’ll end up alone. I believe people have to be completely honest with each other to make love work. I couldn’t keep a big secret from any man I claimed to love. You say I can’t tell the secret I have with you to anyone else or all our lives will be in danger. So, I can never have anyone else without having to keep a terrible secret from him. I couldn’t do that. I’ll need time, Scott, but I know I’ll be with you if I end up with anyone."
"Oh, God, Betty. I’m in love with a woman who believes in total honesty. There is a wonderful irony in that, isn’t there."
"Ironic is a good word for our entire relationship, Scott. But Scott, there is one thing I want to clear up. I...well, about Victor..."
"You will never stop loving him. I know. I wish I had known him before. I would have watched him and gotten some clue of what I should be and say to make you love me. He must have been a very unusual person. Any man who can capture the good opinion and the heart of Betty Roberts doesn’t come along every day. Don’t worry about him, Betty. Victor will be all right. He went through a horrible ordeal. He may never fully recover, but he will be safe where he is. We can’t visit him for awhile. As soon as Pruitt’s body is found, the police will be trying to establish where he was and what he did yesterday. They will swarming all over WENN, interviewing everyone. We are going to have to get our stories straight now or there may have been no point to this in the first place. We will probably be watched and followed for awhile. We can’t do anything that will give them reason to follow us to Victor, or that will make them think Victor is anything but dead last year in a London bombing and Pruitt is just a businessman who got shot by some personal enemies. He probably had enough personal enemies who wanted to kill him anyway. Victor just happened to be the one who did it."
"Thank you, Scott, for everything. I don’t know what else I can say. Thank you for giving me some time and some space on this. I really have to get going. I have to find a new place to live".
"What?"
"Oh, yes. The Barbicon Hotel for Single Women has a very strict curfew. Midnight on weeknights and one AM Friday and Saturday nights. Its like being in high school."
"When I was in high school, my mother not leaving the porch light on was my curfew"
"I’ll bet. Well, at this place I had to sign a paper before I moved in saying I would not violate curfew. I’ve been out all night. Right now, even as we speak, the possessions of Miss Betty Roberts are packed up in the lobby waiting for the shameless hussy to pick them up. The other girls are sitting in the lobby giggling and speculating. I’ve seen it before, Scott. I know its true."
"They would throw you out because you spent one night out? For heaven’s sake, Betty, get your things and come back here. You can stay in my apartment for the day, then I’ll help you find someplace else to live. You don’t have to live where you are treated like a twelve year old"
"Thanks, Scott, but I would rather look for myself right now. You have done too much for me. I’ll never be able to look at you objectively again as it is. If I get into a real jam, I’ll let you know."
"Sure, Betty, I understand".
Betty pounded the pavement the rest of the day. She knocked on doors, made a dozen phone calls from the pay phone at the candy store and faced at least twenty sour faced landladies and housemothers. She skipped lunch to continue looking. Her stomach was grumbling and her feet were aching. But she was glad she was doing it. Apartment hunting was concrete. It was finite. It gave her something to think about besides Scott and Victor. It gave her a reason not to brood. It had to get done and she was doing it.
It was dinnertime and the August sky was dimming before she finally found a place that suited both her needs and her purse, and that had an establishment who seemed to be able to live with her. A tiny apartment of her own with just a bedroom, a sitting room and a kitchen. The bathroom was down the hall but she was used to that. The landlady said she seemed like a sweet girl and she could take it immediately. No men in the rooms, of course, but no curfew.
"Do what you want, dearie," she had said, "just keep it out from under my roof." Betty grinned at her.
"Don’t worry, Ma’am. Not much ever happens to me under any roof." She went off to get herself a burger for dinner before she faced the ordeal of getting her belongings.
As she had predicted, the lobby of the Barbicon Hotel was filled with girls waiting to pounce, and a housemother clucking her tongue at them. Her belongings were in two suitcases and a dress bag in the middle of the room. Everything she had in Pittsburgh fit into two suitcases and a dress bag. It was embarrassing on the face of it. She squared her shoulders and walked in past the whispering, snickering girls. She felt like Joan Crawford.
The housemother looked up at her with a hostile expression. "You know the rules, Miss Roberts. All your things are right there. Now take them and go. I run a house for respectable girls." Betty nodded with all the dignity she could muster and went to pick up her things.
"Don’t suppose you are going to tell us where you were all night, Miss Purity from Indiana," called out one of the more particularly unpleasant girls Betty had known at the hotel.
Betty stopped dead in her tracks. She was fed up. She had been through enough in the last twenty four hours to last anyone a lifetime. She turned around slowly.
"I spent the night in a man’s apartment, Julie", she answered. "In fact, I spent the night in a very good looking, charming actor’s apartment." She stopped to enjoy Julie’s expression. "He’s an unbelievable person, Julie. He’s taught me a lot".
She looked at her watch. "Oh my", she said as she picked up her bags and turned to go, "would you look at the time."
THE END
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