by Jerry eBooks
“Chris,” she said distantly, “my father willed his entire fortune to me. Mr. Willoughby says it will be over two million dollars. I think, Chris,” she said, “that I should tell you. I made my will this morning before the funeral. I left everything to you. I believe in having those things settled.”
She watched him across the haze of his cigarette while he frowned and finally nodded. “Perhaps you are right, my darling.”
“My darling.”she whispered without a sound. Suddenly, so very swiftly, she drank her martini and held out her glass. “Please, once more, Chris. I need something badly.”
It was almost eleven when the tall man with the wind-burned face knocked at the door. His hair was dusty red and his eyes were always moving. His smile was pleasant—when he smiled at all. And he said his name was Red Macon. He had worked for her father, he said to Carol. He’d tried to get down for the funeral, but his car had thrown a piston.
The clock struck eleven. Red Macon smiled crookedly. Married, huh? And his smile faded slightly. He looked at Chris; then his brown eyes came back to Carol. Yes, he would have to tell her about the first time he met her dad. He’d tell her some time. Not much of a story, really. He’d just walked in and asked tor a sports-writing job. He’d been fourteen. The old man had given him a job filling ink-wells. Yes, he had known the old man very well.
Carol scarcely knew why. Chris was frowning, but she smiled. “The clock just struck eleven,” she said. “The wind is rising. Perhaps you will spend the night.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.” He came in gracefully, like a lean strong cat walking on velvet claws. Chris mixed more martinis.
Carol knew how to drink. When she had been sixteen, her father had put out the bourbon and Scotch and said, “It isn’t how much, Carol, but what it does to you. The sooner you learn, the easier.”
When the glasses were two-thirds empty, Chris filled them again. Carol had never seen him drink before—not this way. Sometimes he stood at the window looking down toward the ocean, and a nerve twitched in his jaw. Red Macon leaned back in his chair and lit his pipe.
“A lot of people hated the old man, Carol. Do you mind if I call you that? They hated him, and a lot of them had good reasons. But nobody knew the goodythings he did. If he kept his cancelled checks, you’ll find out. He was trying to cancel a debt. Something in his soul. You’ll learn all that some day.”
Carol looked at her glass, then tilted it and drained the last drop. “The checks,” she said idly, “are probably upstairs in his wall safe with his ready cash. He usually kept quite a bit of money around.” Once, Carol had gone with her father to a gambling casino in Miami. She had made five passes with dice, letting the chips ride. The last, and losing bet, had been for sixty-four hundred dollars. She could remember the dryness in her throat. The hot pounding of her pulse. She felt that same way now. But the dryness was hard and thick. The pounding of her pulse was slow and deep, like the drumming of a funeral drum. This was not sixty-four hundred. This was all or nothing. . . .
“Another martini, darling?” Chris asked. His cheeks were flushed. His dark eyes shone through the mist of cigarette smoke. And the word kept echoing in her ears: darling . . . darling . . . darling. . . .
“Yes. Another one, please, darling,” she said. She walked over to the window. She knew Red and Chris were watching her. She was beautiful, she knew, and men watched beautiful women with golden hair and curves full of promise.
She said, as if she were musing aloud, “I used to dream that things were going to happen to me. Terrible things. That I would die. I used to dream that a,.shadow was crawling behind me, long and gray. I ran and it followed. I turned and fought; it fought back like a mist, and I couldn’t grasp it. And then one day I realized that the shadow was death.” She turned and smiled, first at Red and then at Chris. “Strange. I feel as if the shadow is somewhere in this room.”
“Carol—” Chris started and stopped. He stared at the martini.
THE CLOCK began to strike midnight.
Everyone in the room seemed to listen with some added tension. “Midnight,” Carol said. She looked at Chris. “Did you ever gamble for immense stakes?” And when he shook his head, she held out her hand to him. “It’s time to go to bed.” She turned to Red. “I’ll show you to the guest room.”
And then she was alone in the blue-and-gray bedroom with Chris. “The wind is blowing hard,” she said. He was taking off his tie. She watched him in the mirror. As he put his big suitcase on the bed and opened it, her eye caught the gleam of something shiny. Something?
“Do you love me, Chris?” she wondered softly.
“Terribly, darling.”
It was somewhat like throwing the dice that time, she thought. She wandered through the bathroom and into her father’s bedroom. She removed the old portrait and worked the combination of the wall safe. She took out the metal box and carried it back into her bedroom.
Chris whistled softly. Carol lifted her brows. “I had no idea he kept so much cash in here. There must be—”
“At least a hundred thousand,” Chris whispered, “At least.” His fingers trembled as he reached down and touched it. “A fortune. If a man had that, he would never again need—”
“Need to what, Chris?” she asked, looking up slowly. He swallowed. The flush of martinis burned in his cheeks and his lips were damp. “A man would never need to work, would he?” she asked softly. “Or lie. Or murder.” Abruptly their eyes locked.
Suddenly she felt ill, hopelessly ill. Yet she could not abandon the fantastic role she had begun. There was something inevitable, hypnotic, in this thing she was doing. Something like a siren wail, leading her across the blackness toward the pit into which she would perish.
“Do you know, Chris,” she said, “the person who killed father must have been in this house. Stayed in this house. There were absolutely no footprints to show where he might have leaped from the balcony.”
Without knowing it, she had retreated three steps. She stopped, and across the silent space they stared at each other. His chest rose and fell. “What kind—of a man do you think the killer was?” he asked.
“I think he was rather intelligent. He planned carefully. As you or any good lawyer would plan a big case that could make a fortune. I think,” she continued slowly, “that the killer is a coward, however. In fact, I am betting on that. You see, he did not kill with his hands. He did not slug or beat. He did not go near the blood of death. Instead he shot from the darkness. Only once. That was dangerous. One shot might not have killed father; but the killer’s nerve broke. He could not fire again. I wonder,” she mused, “if he will ever be able to fire again. Oh, he might fire, but could he hit? I wonder about that, Chris.”
Carol saw the clock. It was ten minutes to one. A tree-limb raked the cornice outside the window. She swallowed. Chris opened and closed his fingers. For a moment he stared at the money.
“Why—Why do you think this man killed your father?” he stammered.
“The simplest motive of all. Money.”
“But I don’t see how—” Then Chris stopped, his jaw sagging, his lips damp, his eyes burning.
“Yes, Chris. You do see. And I see,” Carol whispered. “Because I have a great deal of money, now.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Chris cried. “You don’t have any proof or—You don’t know!”
“I know more certainly than anything. You have told me. Your eyes. Everything about you, Chris. I know exactly what—” she stopped. Something was happening—something like the gradual change when stage lights blend into different colors, and suddenly everything shines hard and bright. She stared at Chris and he became a man she had never seen, never laughed with or loved or kissed before. His lean face seemed to sink around his bones. His eyes grew deep, and his lips crawled hack from his teeth. For just one moment she thought he was going to smile. Instead, he moved like a cat, so gracefully, so much like melted syrup that she could only stare,
hypnotized. Then the gun was in his hand, glisteuing like the jeweled eye of a snake and he whispered the words, “It was lovely, but farewell, my darling. We are going—”
“Chris! Don’t look at me that—” she breathed.
HE LAUGHED and swept the money into his pocket. “It could have been so much more, but—
“Don’t touch that door, Carol! You were wrong about me losing my nerve. You are wrong about many things. I used only one shot because one is always enough. I am no lawyer. I wasn’t in the Army. I was in prison in California for manslaughter. My first wife died. Odd, wasn’t it? But she had lied about her fortune, less than thirty thousand. As it was—” He stopped. For one instant he listened, then he glided across the room. Before Carol could move, he seized her arm and twisted it up between her shoulder blades. The gun dug into her spine. He shoved her toward the door and opened it.
Red Macon stumbled back across the hall and his fists came up.
“Don’t,” Chris said. “It will only get her killed. Walk ahead of us. Walk slowly down those stairs.”
Carol felt a ragged claw close over her stomach and squeeze away the life. Oh, God, dear God, she kept thinking.
“Stand there,” Chris ordered as they reached the lower hall. Red stopped, his back toward them. Carol screamed. It was too late. The shadow of Chris’ arm flashed down the wall and the gun smashed thickly into Red Macon’s head. He dropped without a sound.
“Come on. You will drive, in case anyone sets up an alarm and tries to stop the car.” Carol was scarcely aware of obeying. She touched the familiar wheel of her own Packard. She heard the doors slam. “Now, darling, you’re driving me into New York. And remember where the gun is.”
It was against her ribs. The car was moving. The lights stretched out far ahead on the broad parkway. “Hurry,” Chris said.
“Yes.” The speedometer began to climb. Carol stared straight ahead. The life was gone from her stomach entirely. She could feel almost nothing except the oldest of nightmares: the image of the gray shadow that had followed her for years. The Fear Shadow, learned and inherited from her father. And then, so very suddenly, she knew what she was going to do, and what she had had to do, all this evening.
“Chris, I wonder if you understand why I did this the way I did. It seems insane, doesn’t it? It seems suicidal, doesn’t it?”
“Dumb. Dumb as two-bit slugs, darling,” he agreed gently.
“But it wasn’t. I’ll tell you. Father was sick and unhappy because he had always run away and built high walls and trained huge dogs. He had never faced his fears, and so they had grown and pursued him forever. And I have always been the same way. I have run or bought my way out, and I would some day have been as ill and frightened as he. It was almost an insanity. You understand? He had done so many evil things. And I was his blood; his money was mine. His sins, in some queer way in my mind, were also mine.”
“Sure. Any way you want it. You don’t need to go over seventy.”
“I knew I had to do this. I had to do something the hardest way of all. The way that meant terror. I had to break the fear-spell or life was not worth living and I—”
“Slow this damned thing down!” Chris snapped as the tires wailed on a long curve. “There are hills ahead and this—”
“Yes. Hills. Cliffs. We are going eighty-five, aren’t we. And you are afraid.” Suddenly she laughed. “But I’m not afraid any more! I’m going to be killed anyway, and you—”
“You damned—” he yelled as the fenders screamed against a retaining wall. He lunged for the wheel and twisted it. The Packard seemed to stagger and the tires howled. The wheels seemed to lose touch with the earth.
Carol felt the poison of death-fear surge through her. “You’ll kill us if you do that again, you know, Chris,” she said, her voice calm. He jerked forward, then stared back, then looked out the window at the darkness pouring by.
“I think this car will do one-ten,” she whispered between set teeth. “If you touch the wheel, I’ll throw us off the road. And do you know what I’m going to do, Chris? Remember that S-curve we passed coming out? I’m not going to make it. I’m going to kill us there.”
“Carol, listen to—” His voice broke. His words were just strangling noises, then. His fingernails clawed at the doorhandle.
Now. . . . Now. . . . Oh, God, he’s got to crack now, Carol whispered desperately. In a way she felt she had already died this death, but the moment was living forever. The terror was enduring.
“Here comes the curve! Here we go, together, Chris!” she screamed.
And he screamed. The gun hit the floor. The door opened with a burst of air. She saw him throw his arm across his face as he leaped and screamed again. The scream fell away behind and the curve smashed up before her like a flat snake curved in the headlamps. She stomped on the brakes. The heavy car shuddered and began to moan. It reeled like a drunken animal as the fenders crushed at the right, then the car plunged left and right again, battering itself into wreckage on the posts to the left, the wall to the right. The steering wheel spun out of Carol’s fingers. The tires kept screaming amid shattering glass. And in the next instant came the tearing crash, a pile-driving blow across her temples and then a long slow fall into sleep.
IT WAS like the searchlights fingering the sky at a Hollywood premier. Blackness and the incessant blaze of lights, and then voices everywhere about her. And after a while, over the meaningless sounds, one certain voice grew distinct.
“If she dies, I’ll never forgive myself. I knew something was wrong, but he was her husband, after all.” It was Red Macon’s voice. And then she saw his face, white and streaked with blood. She opened her eyes and saw him as they carried her from the wreck toward the ambulance. She tried to smile at him. She moved her lips. Yes, she could speak.
“I’m not—going to die,” she whispered. And she knew it was true. “I’m just beginning to live now. I won. I won, see?”
She knew that he didn’t really see. She would tell him some day.
HIGH VOLTAGE HOMICIDE
Henry Norton
Troubleshooting is a lineman’s job, but Lee Bassler figured murder was too much. Yet live wires and dead men sometimes go together. Take the night of the ice storm—and the incident of the baffling blonde of Barton Street.
LEE BASSLER brought his truck to a cautious, sliding stop by the A curb. He climbed out of the cab, and stood for a moment braced against the wind, head lowered toward the icy rain that was silver-plating trees and wires and buildings. He squinted an appraising glance at the swaying cables overhead, estimating how much more ice they could bear before they came down. His face was set; he was frowning as he ducked into the lunchroom.
Bert, the sallow-faced counterman, brought coffee in a heavy white mug and put it on the counter in front of Lee. “Nice weather, huh?” he said.
“Nice weather to be inside.”
The coffee stung his mouth pleasantly. It brought a small revival of feeling to his chilled body, so that after a moment he unzipped his heavy jacket and shoved the earmuffed cap back off his forehead. He was bone-tired, and the shift was only two hours old.
Bert leaned his elbows on the counter and watched the rain freeze on the window screen. He said idly: “We don’t hardly ever get through a winter without one of these danged ice storms. ’Member last year?”
“I’ll say I remember!”
One of the worst, last year. An east wind howling down the gorge, freezing onto everything it touched. Electric lines grew from thin strands to great ropes and cables of glittering crystal, pulled crashing down by their own weight. Bassler, and all the repair men of the Midstate Power Company, had worked thirty-six hours without relief. Live wires writhed and sputtered in the city streets—whole sections of town blacked out—transformers and booster stations failed under crushing overloads.
He finished his coffee slowly, refusing to think of the moment when the cup would be empty and he would go back to the truck and open the two-w
ay radio. He did not know what kind of trouble would be waiting for him, but he knew there would be trouble. Three hundred sixty days out of the year he ran into nothing tougher than a burned out stove or a melted fuse box. Then it came up ice, and things went to hell in a hand-basket.
THE dispatcher on the radio answered his call with the brisk unconcern of a man who has an indoor job on a bad night.
“Got a soft one for you,” he said.
“Juice off at 1010 Barton Street. Customer’s name is Phillips. I haven’t got any other complaints from the neighborhood, so it’s probably a one-house failure. Lead wire down, maybe, or fuse burned out.”
“Quit quarterbacking!” Lee said. “I’ll find out what it is when I get there.”
It was ten blocks to the trouble, and it took him almost ten minutes to make it. The streets were deepening sheets of ice now, and the chains on the emergency truck clattered and whirred on the frozen surface. He put the emergency light to flashing and inched past the two or three cars that appealed for help as he went by. Normally, he’d have time to stop, but tonight he had enough to do on his own job, without taking on more.
He found 1010 Barton, and it looked like more than a one-house job. All the adjoining houses were dark, and he could see no sign of trouble on the lead-in wire. Using a hand flash to pick his way up the icy steps, he punched the doorbell. The door opened at once. “Power company,” Lee said.
“It’s about time,” said Mr. Phillips. “You’ve been darn near—” He looked at his watch in the light of Lee’s flash. “Well, it seemed long enough!”
“What seems to be wrong?”
“Juice is off, that’s what’s wrong!” Mr. Phillips was a chubby little man, silhouetted in the feeble yellow light of an old-fashioned kerosene lamp. His tone was one of great indignation. “Lights, radio, stove—hey, how come the doorbell rang?”
“Dry cell batteries,” said Lee Bassler, and pushed inside. “Let’s have a look, mister. I’ve got a lot of calls waiting on this one.”