Lawrence Crockett and R.T. Straker

Lawrence Crockett and R.T. Straker are connected by a business deal that outwardly concerns property but functions as a mechanism of coercion. Straker obtains the Marsten House and the former Village Washtub for one dollar, threatens to ruin Crockett if he discloses the transaction, and compels him to arrange workers, transport, supplies, and locks without asking what the work serves. The exchange makes Crockett an ordinary intermediary in an extraordinary operation: his local knowledge and professional access are absorbed into Straker’s concealed partnership and preparations at the Marsten House.

The Broker and the Stranger

Crockett is the Lot’s second selectman and the proprietor of Crockett’s Southern Maine Insurance and Realty. His daily life is organized around predictable civic and commercial habits: when the town whistle announces noon, he closes his office, hangs a “Back at One O’clock” sign, walks to the Excellent Café for two cheeseburgers and coffee, and returns to business. That routine establishes him as a settled local figure, someone accustomed to reading property, people, and transactions through familiar rules.

Straker enters that world as its opposite. When he first visits Crockett’s office on a shimmering July afternoon, he wears a sober three-piece suit despite the heat, carries a slim black briefcase, and appears bald, sweatless, and unnervingly severe. He does not inspect the property photographs, offer a handshake, or exchange the ordinary courtesies of a prospective buyer. His long fingers, unreadable eyes, and flat, toneless manner make the meeting feel less like negotiation than an encounter with an official messenger whose decision has already been made.

Straker states that he has been sent to buy a residence and a business establishment in the town. He identifies the business as the former laundromat beyond the Town Office Building, fronting on the park, and then names the residence: the Marsten House. Crockett recognizes the request as abnormal because the house is notorious and the property is not being approached as an ordinary investment. Straker gives his full name, Richard Throckett Straker, and insists that all papers will be in his name, while the larger partnership behind the purchase remains concealed from Crockett at this stage.

The Terms of the Transaction

The proposed exchange overturns Crockett’s assumptions about value. When he protests that the land is worth one and a half million dollars, Straker answers that the property will be Crockett’s if three conditions are fulfilled. The first requires Crockett to sell both the Marsten House and the business establishment for one dollar. The house belongs to a land corporation in Bangor, while the business establishment belongs to a Portland bank, so Crockett must persuade both owners to accept the lowest prices and personally absorb the difference, apart from his commission. The offer is therefore not a normal sale but a demand that Crockett use his professional position to make an implausible transfer appear legally workable.

The second condition converts the deal from a dubious bargain into a threat. Crockett must say nothing about the transaction. If the matter ever arises, he is to claim only that he and Straker are partners beginning a business aimed at tourists and summer people. Straker emphasizes that disclosure will have consequences: he will find out and ruin Crockett. The threat is delivered without theatrical anger, in the same flat register as an ordinary greeting, and its calmness makes it more credible to Crockett than an outburst would have been. Although Crockett presents himself as unruffled, he feels fear beneath the surface, especially because Straker somehow knows the name of Crockett’s Boston lawyer, Francis Walsh, a fact even Crockett’s wife does not know.

The third condition gives Straker access to Crockett’s labor and local infrastructure. The Marsten House requires renovations, and Straker’s partner plans to carry out the work personally. Crockett is to act as the partner’s agent, respond to requests, and employ whatever laborers are needed to bring specified objects either to the house or to the shop. He must not discuss these services. Crockett tries to protect himself by distinguishing legitimate renovations from possible criminal projects such as moonshine, LSD, or explosives, but Straker accepts the qualification without revealing anything about the intended work. The agreement is thus built on deliberate ignorance: Crockett is permitted to ask whether the transaction is valid, but not what it means.

Crockett finally agrees, though reluctantly, observing that Straker has done all the dealing while Crockett has supplied the opportunity to make money. Straker immediately imposes the next appointment, proposing to return Thursday afternoon. The timing reinforces the unequal structure of the relation. Crockett’s consent is technically present, but the initiative, conditions, information, and consequences all belong to Straker.

From Sale to Service

After the property transaction, Straker’s demands make Crockett’s role increasingly operational. In a later telephone call, Straker requests a large rental truck and orders Crockett to have it at the Portland docks at seven that evening, specifically at Custom House Wharf. Two movers will be sufficient. Crockett immediately writes down the names H. Peters and R. Snow and arranges Henry’s U-Haul, following the order before pausing to consider how completely Straker’s urgency controls his actions.

The shipment consists of a dozen boxes. All but one are to be taken to the shop; the exception is an extremely valuable Hepplewhite sideboard, recognizable by its size, which must be delivered to the Marsten House. The antique furniture gives the operation a respectable commercial surface, consistent with the proposed tourist business, while the division of the shipment between shop and house suggests that the two locations serve different purposes. Crockett does not receive an explanation, only instructions precise enough to prevent improvisation.

Straker then requires five stout Yale padlocks. The movers must lock the shop’s back door when they leave. At the house, they must leave the keys to all five locks on the basement table and, upon departure, secure the bulkhead door, the front and back doors, and the shed-garage. These details transform Crockett’s professional assistance into participation in the physical sealing of the property. He is not merely selling a building or arranging a delivery; he is helping establish controlled access to the Marsten House and its surrounding spaces.

Power, Secrecy, and Narrative Function

The relation’s decisive feature is the mismatch between Crockett’s apparent authority and his actual power. As a selectman, realtor, and local businessman, Crockett possesses the social knowledge Straker lacks: he knows the property owners, the local labor pool, the available vehicles, and the practical routes by which goods can enter the town. Yet Straker’s superior information and menace reverse the usual broker-client hierarchy. Straker knows Crockett’s private legal connection, dictates the price, dictates the cover story, dictates the labor arrangements, and makes silence an enforceable condition.

The deal also links ordinary commerce to the Marsten House’s returning evil. Crockett first notices the house because a car is shining in its driveway, and the sight produces a thread of disquiet in his chest. He had sold the house and the long-defunct Village Washtub as a package more than a year earlier, in what he remembers as the strangest deal of his career. The transaction’s strangeness is therefore visible before its purpose becomes clear: the abandoned property is not simply reoccupied but acquired through an arrangement that bypasses normal valuation and conceals the buyer’s intentions.

Straker’s use of Crockett demonstrates how supernatural invasion can proceed through familiar civic and commercial channels. The truck, movers, antique sideboard, business frontage, deeds, banks, land corporations, and padlocks all belong to the material vocabulary of local enterprise. Their organization under threat gives that vocabulary a darker function. Crockett’s fear does not come from understanding the evil at the Marsten House; it comes from sensing that Straker’s ordinary instructions are backed by an abnormal certainty and that refusal is not a realistic option.

The relationship therefore marks the conversion of a respectable local intermediary into an unwilling instrument. Crockett survives the encounter by complying, maintaining the cover story, and suppressing questions, but each act of compliance helps Straker establish the shop and secure the house. The business deal is significant not because it creates a partnership of equals, but because it reveals the first practical structure through which Straker’s hidden project enters the town: money and property provide the entrance, secrecy provides protection, and Crockett’s compelled services supply the labor that makes the Marsten House ready for what is to come.