Janet hovered over him.
Look at Murgy!
For Pete’s sake, one second there, when you walked in, it was naked in Murgy’s eyes!
Intent on his job, the policeman walked to the stilled form at the foot of the stairway. He looked at the left shoe, then up the stairs.
After a moment, he walked up the stairs, examined the carpet, the railing. He measured the length of the stairs with his eyes.
Then he came slowly down the stairs.
He paused and looked at the beautiful girlish body.
His compassion came flooding out into the room. Janet felt as if she could ride the edges of it like a buoy.
It was a quiet; unguarded moment for him. Janet threw her will into the effort.
It was Murgy. Look at Murgy, the murderer!
He glanced at Murgy. But then, he glanced at the others too.
He began talking with Doctor Roberts.
Janet stayed close to the policeman.
If she could have met him in life, she knew they would have enjoyed a silent understanding.
I met a lot of people like that. Everybody meets people whom they like or distrust just by a meeting of the eyes.
You re feeling them out forming opinions right now, by looking into their eyes, talking with them, letting the edges of your senses reach out and explore the edges of theirs.
I feel your respect for the doctor.
I feel you recoil now as you talk with Murgy. The dark, slimy thing is deep down, well hidden, but somehow you sense it.
But for Pete’s sake, feeling it isn’t enough. You must pass beyond feeling to realization.
Murgy killed me.
The balance simply has to be restored.
The policeman broke off his talk with Murgy. More official people had arrived. They took photographs. Two of them in white finally carried the body away on a stretcher.
Except for the policeman, the official people went away.
Blake went out. The doctor departed. Murgy was standing with tears in his eyes. The policeman touched Murgy’s shoulder, spoke.
Janet was in the doorway, barring it. But Murgy didn’t know she was there. He went across the lawn, to his apartment over the garage.
Only the policeman was left. He stood with his hat in his hands looking at the spot at the base of the stairs with eyes heavy with sadness.
He was really younger than the rough face and broken nose made him appear.
Young and sad because he had seen beauty dead. Young and sad, and sensitive.
Janet pressed close to him. It’s all right, for me. You understand? There’s no pain. It’s beautiful here—except for the imbalance of Murgy’s act.
It wasn’t an accident. You mustn’t believe that. Murgy did it. You didn’t like him. You sensed something about him.
Think of him! Think only of Murgy!
Don’t leave yet. Ask yourself, are you giving up too easily. Shouldn’t you look further?
He passed his hand through his hair. He seemed to be asking himself a question. He measured the stairway with his eyes.
She could sense the quiet, firm discipline that was in him, the result of training, of years of experience. The result of never ceasing to question, never stopping the mental probe for the unlikely, the one detail out of place.
Yes, yes! You feel something isn’t quite right.
The shoe—if a girl came home to change it, would she go all the way upstairs and then start down again without changing it?
Oh, the question is clear and nettlesome in your mind.
It’s a fine question.
Don’t let it go. Follow it. Think about it.
He stood scratching his jaw. He walked all the way upstairs. Down the hallway. He looked in a couple of rooms, found hers.
In her room, he opened the closet. He looked at the shoes.
He stood troubled. Then he went back to the head of the stairs. Again he measured them with his eyes.
But finally, he shook his head and walked out of the house.
Come back! You must come back!
She couldn’t reach him. She knew he wasn’t coming back. So she perched on the roof of his speeding car as it turned a corner a block away.
He went downtown. He stopped the car in the parking lot at headquarters. He went into the building and entered his office.
Another man was there, an older man. The two talked together for a moment. The older man went out.
The policeman sat down at his desk. He picked up a pen and drew a printed form toward him.
Janet hovered over the desk.
You mustn’t make out the form. You must not write it off as an accident.
Murgy did it.
He started writing.
It was murder.
He wrote a few lines and stopped.
Go get Murgy. He was the only one on the estate when it happened. Can’t you see it had to be Murgy?
He nibbled at the end of the pen.
Think of the shoe. I went up, but I didn’t change shoes.
He ran his finger down his crooked nose. He started writing again.
Okay, bub, if that’s the way you want it, go ahead and finish the report. Call it an accident. But I’m not giving up. I’m sticking with you. I’ll throw Murgy’s name at you so many times you’ll think you’re suffering combat fatigue from being a cop too long.
Ready? Here we go, endlessly, my friend, endlessly. Murgy, Murgy; Murgy Murgymurgymurgy…
He drove home. He showered. He got in bed. He turned the light off.
After a time, he rolled over and punched the pillow. After another interval, he threw back the covers with an angry gesture, turned on the light, sat on the edge of the bed, and smoked a cigarette.
There was a telephone beside the bed and on the phone stand a pad of paper.
While he smoked, he doodled. He drew a spiked heel. He drew the outlines of a house. He wasn’t a very good artist. He looked at the drawing of the house and under it he wrote: “No sign of forced entry. Only that servant around…”
He drew a pair of owlish eyes, and ringed them in black. He added some sharp lines for a face.
Then he ripped off the sheet of paper, wadded it and threw it toward the waste basket. He snubbed out his cigarette, turned off the light for a second time, punched his pillow with a gesture betokening finality, and threw his head against it.
He reached the curtain of sleep. He started through it. Cells relaxing, the barriers began to waver, weaken.
She pressed in close.
MurgymurgymurgyMURGY!
He tossed and pulled the covers snug about his shoulders. Then he threw them off, got out of bed, and snapped on the light.
He was still agitated as he dressed and went out.
* * * *
He sat in the dark car for many long minutes, before starting it. He drove aimlessly for a couple of blocks, his mind a pair of millstones grating against themselves. He stopped before a bar and went in.
He sat down at the end of the bar, alone. He had one, two, three drinks. His face was still troubled by nagging questions.
Two more drinks. They didn’t help. The creases deepened in his cheeks.
Janet balanced atop a cognac bottle. Better give Murgy a little more thought. Why not follow him, shadow him? He isn’t resting easy. He’ll want to get rid of those jewels in a shady deal now and be ready to run if the fakes are spotted.
The policeman raised his gaze and looked at the television set over the bar. He stopped thinking about the long stairway, the broken heel, Murgy, and various possibilities. His mind snapped to what he was seeing on the TV set.
A local newscaster with doleful face was talking about her, her death. He was only a two dimensional image and she could sense nothing about him
from this point. He was taking considerable time, and she could only guess that he was talking about her background, her family. There were some old newspaper pictures, one taken when she’d been helping raise money for the crippled children’s hospital. She hadn’t wanted any publicity for that, and she wished the newscast were less thorough.
There was a sudden disturbance down the bar. A fat man with a bald head and drink-flushed face was giving the TV set the Bronx cheer.
Janet felt quick displeasure. Really, I was never the rich, degenerated hussy you’re making me out, mister.
The force of the mental explosion back down the bar caused Janet to rise to the ceiling. She saw that the fat man’s exhibition had also disturbed her young policeman. He slammed out of the bar. And he was so mad he started across the street without looking.
Janet became a silent scream.
He looked up just in time to see the taxi hurtle around the corner. He tried to get out of the way. He’d had a drink too many.
Instantaneously, he became an empty shell of flesh and blood, shortly destined to become dust, lying broken in the middle of the street. A terrified but innocent cabbie was emerging from his taxi, and a small crowd was pouring out of the bar to join him.
This was defeat, Janet knew. Never had a defeat of the flesh been so agonizing. The stars could have been hers. Now the stars would have to wait, for a long, long time. For as long as Murgy lived. It wasn’t the waiting that would be so hard. It was this entrapment in incompleteness, this torture, this unspeakable pain of being inescapably enmeshed in cosmic injustice.
She took her misery to the darkest shadow she could find and lurked there awhile, until the scene in the street had run its course, from arrival to departure of the police.
A bitter thought wave her propulsion, she returned to the estate. She filtered through the roof and hovered in the foyer.
While there had been hope, the foyer’s full capacity for torture had not reached her. Now she felt it.
“Hello, Beautiful.”
Where had the thought come from? She swirled like a miniature nebula.
“Take it easy I’m right here.”
He swirled beside her. Her policeman.
“You!”
“Sure. I was so amazed at where I found myself I didn’t get to you while you were hiding near the accident. You know, you feel even more beautiful than you looked.”
“Why, thanks for the compliment. And your own homeliness, fellow, was all of the flesh. But don’t you concern yourself with me.”
“Why not?”
“I’m stuck here. You didn’t catch Murgy.”
“I had a hunch about that guy…”
“Hunch? Hah! It was me trying to get the guilt of the old boy across to you.”
“Really? Well, I was going to keep an eye on him.”
“I was after you to do that, too. See, I caught him stealing my jewels.”
“I had to go and ruin everything!”
“But you didn’t mean to barge in front of that cab.”
“Just the same, I’ll spend eternity being sorry. Sure you can’t come with me?”
“Nope. Just go quickly.”
He was gone. She felt his unwilling departure. It was the final straw of torture.
“Look, honey, my name’s Joe.”
He was back.
“I got this idea. It’s worth a try at least.”
It was so good having him back.
“My superior officer, Lieutenant Hal Dineen. He’s the sharpest, most tenacious cop ever to carry a badge. That report of mine, to start with, is going to raise a question in his mind. The same facts you were trying to get over to me are there for him to find. I just bounced over to headquarters and back. Just a look told me my fray with that taxi has knocked his mental guards to smithereens. He was at his desk, reading that last report of mine. If you alone could do what you did, consider what the two of us trying real hard can do if we hit Dineen, in his present state, with full thought force.”
Janet bounced to the rooftop. Joe was beside her.
“Janet, Dineen is razor sharp at playing hunches. He believes in them. All set to hit him with the grandfather of all hunches, the results of which he’ll talk about for a lifetime?”
“Let’s.” Let’s, darling.
* * * *
Lieutenant Hal Dineen was talking to a fellow officer, “I dunno. Just one of those things. Comes from being a cop, I guess, from having the old subconscious recognize and classify information the eyes, ears, and hands miss. Just a hunch I had about this old family retainer. We all get em—these hunches. Me, especially, I’m a great one for em. And this one I couldn’t shake and so I figured…”
THE BURGLAR’S GHOST, by Anonymous
Originally published in Chamber’s Journal, July 4, 1891.
I am not an imaginative man, and no one who knows me can say that I have ever indulged in sentimental ideas upon any subject. I am rather predisposed, in fact, to look at everything from a purely practical standpoint, and this quality has been further developed in me by the fact that for twenty years I have been an active member of the detective police force at Westford, a large town in one of our most important manufacturing districts. A policeman, as most people will readily believe, has to deal with so much practical life that he has small opportunity for developing other than practical qualities, and he is more apt to believe in tangible things than in ideas of a somewhat superstitious nature. However, I was once under the firm conviction that I had been largely helped up the ladder of life by the ghost of a once well-known burglar. I have told the story to many, and have heard it commented upon in various fashions. Whether the comments were satirical or practical, it made no difference to me; I had a firm faith at that time in the truth of my tale.
Eighteen years ago I was a plain clothes officer at Westford. I was then twenty-three years of age, and very anxious about two matters. First and foremost I desired promotion; second, I wished to be married. Of course I was more eager about the second than the first, because my sweetheart, Alice Moore, was one of the prettiest and cleverest girls in the town; but I put promotion first for the simple reason that with me promotion must come before marriage. Knowing this, I was always on the lookout for a chance of distinguishing myself, and I paid such attention to my duties that my superiors began to notice me, and foretold a successful career for me in the future.
One evening in the last week of September, 1873, I was sitting in my lodgings wondering what I could do to earn the promotion which I so earnestly wished for. Things were quiet just then in Westford, and I am afraid I half wished that something dreadful might occur if I only could have a share in it. I was pursuing this train of thought when I suddenly heard a voice say, “Good evening, officer.”
I turned sharply around. It was almost dusk and my lamp was not lighted. For all that, I could see clearly enough a man who was sitting by a chest of drawers that stood between the door and the window. His chair stood between the drawers and the door, and I concluded that he had quietly entered my room and seated himself before addressing me.
“Good evening!” I replied. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
He laughed when I said that—a low, chuckling, rather sly laugh. “No,” he said, “I dessay not, officer. I’m a very quiet sort of person. You might say, in fact, noiseless. Just so.”
I looked at him narrowly, feeling considerably surprised and astonished at his presence. He was a thickly built man, with a square face and heavy chin. His nose was small, but aggressive; his eyes were little and overshadowed by heavy eyebrows; I could see them twinkle when he spoke. As for his dress, it was in keeping with his face.
He wore a rough suit of woolen or frieze; a thick, gayly colored Belcher neckerchief encircled his bull-like throat, and in his big hands he continually twirled and twisted a fur cap, made appar
ently out of the skin of some favorite dog. As he sat there smiling at me and saying nothing, it made me feel uncomfortable.
“What do you want with me?” I asked.
“Just a little matter o’ business,” he answered.
“You should have gone to the office,” I said. “We’re not supposed to do business at home.”
“Right you are, guv’nor,” he replied; “but I wanted to see you. It’s you that’s got to do my job. If I’d ha’ seen the superintendent he might ha’ put somebody else on to it. That wouldn’t ha’ suited me. You see, officer, you’re young, and nat’rally eager-like for promotion. Eh?”
“What is it you want?” I inquired again.
“Ain’t you eager to be promoted?” he reiterated. “Ain’t you now, officer?”
I saw no reason why I should conceal the fact, even from this strange visitor. I admitted that I was eager for promotion.
“Ah!” he said, with a satisfied smile; “I’m glad o’ that. It’ll make you all the keener. Now, officer, you listen to me. I’m a-goin’ to put you on to a nice little job. Ah! I dessay you’ll be a sergeant before long, you will. You’ll be complimented and praised for your clever conduck in this ’ere affair. Mark my words if you ain’t.”
“Out with it,” I said, fancying I saw through the man’s meaning. “You’re going to split on some of your pals, I suppose, and you’ll want a reward.”
He shook his head. “A reward,” he said, “wouldn’t be no use to me at all—no, not if it was a thousand pounds. No, it ain’t nothing to do with reward. But now, officer, did you ever hear of Light Toed Jim?”
Light Toed Jim! I should have been a poor detective if I had not. Why, the man known under that sobriquet was one of the cleverest burglars and thieves in England, and had enjoyed such a famous career that his name was a household word. At that moment there was an additional interest attached to him. He had been convicted of burglary at the Northminster assizes in 1871, and sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude. After serving nearly two years of his time he had escaped from Portland, getting away in such clever fashion that he had never been heard of since. Where he was no one could say; but lately there had been a strong suspicion among the police that Light Toed Jim was at his old tricks again.
The 7th Ghost Story Page 21