The Big Book of Reel Murders

by Stories That Inspired Great Crime Films (epub)

  Pat walked onto the landing and took one step down.

  “You’ll ask me first, won’t you?”

  At the sound of her voice they looked up.

  “Don’t move or I’ll shoot. Untie Mr. Dunn.”

  The quick-witted Joyce came sidling towards her.

  “You wouldn’t shoot a woman, would you, Miss Hannay?” she whined.

  “If I had to shoot any woman I should shoot you,” said Pat, and she so obviously meant it that the girl stepped back in a fright. “Untie Mr. Dunn.”

  She waited till Peter was on his feet, and her attention was so concentrated upon him that she did not see Herzoff’s hand moving up the wall. If she had, she might not have realized that it was going towards the electric switch.

  “Let’s talk this over, Miss Hannay.” The mysterious professor drawled his words. “Give us half an hour to get away, and nobody will be hurt. This stuff”—he pointed to an open door which evidently led to an inner cellar—“is ours. We’ve done twelve years for it, and we’re entitled to have it.”

  And then the light went out. She heard a shot, and another, and the sound of a woman’s shriek.

  She flew up the stairs into the dark kitchen, and stumbled through into the open air. Somebody was at her heels. It was the butler. He grabbed at her and caught her by the sleeve. She tore her way out of his grasp and ran.

  Somewhere near at hand police whistles were blowing. She had a dim consciousness of seeing men running across the lawn towards her.

  “Where’s Inspector Dunn?”

  There was no mistaking the authoritative tone. She gasped her news.

  Her pursuer had disappeared. They found him, when the lights came on, in the kitchen, a philosophical criminal awaiting the inevitable arrest.

  As she came into the kitchen Peter staggered out of the cellar entrance.

  “Have they got Smitt?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “I haven’t seen him. You mean Professor Herzoff?”

  Peter turned to an officer who had come in.

  “Call an ambulance. He shot his daughter. If he didn’t come up here he’s down there still.”

  He looked at the butler.

  “Is there another way out of here?”

  “I’d say there is—through the tunnel, I guess,” said Higgins sulkily.

  “The tunnel?”

  Peter remembered the man’s boast.

  “Yes, but it’s pretty dangerous to use. The ground was too soft; it kept running down on us.”

  Peter turned quickly back to the cellar, reached the bottom of the stone steps, and passed through the door which separated the inner cellar. Then he saw for the first time the low entrance of the tunnel. Somebody was there.

  “Come out, Smitt.”

  The answer was a shot that sent the earth scattering. It had another effect. Great lumps of soft earth began to pour through. Peter had just time to scramble back to the cellar when there was a rumble and a roar, and great clouds of dust shot out of the narrow entrance. He threw in the rays of his lamp, but could see nothing.

  “That’s the weakest part of the tunnel.” It was Higgins’s quavering voice. “I told Lee we mustn’t use it….”

  Suddenly he stopped, and a look of terror came to his face.

  “Listen!” he whispered, and, listening, they heard the click-click-click of the death watch. “That’s for Lee.”

  * * *

  —

  “There’s nothing much more to explain,” said Peter Dunn that night when he had told his story ostensibly to Mr. Hannay, actually to Mr. Hannay’s daughter. “The first thing they did was to frighten away all the servants and substitute their own crowd. That was at the back of all the ghost business.

  “They thought it would be easy. They had already made an abortive attempt to reach the cellar through a tunnel which they drove under the earth. It must have taken two months of hard work, and they used the time while you were in the South of France. They got into the house, but they didn’t relish taking on the caretaker you left there, a policeman from the neighbourhood, if I remember rightly.

  “Once they’d staffed the house with their own people, their job was to get rid of you and Pat. They did the honourable thing—they offered to rent your house.”

  Mr. Hannay snorted.

  “When that failed,” Peter went on, “they used the method by which they had terrorized the servants to get you to give up your occupation. If you’d done that it would have been a simple matter: they could have opened up their treasure house at leisure. As it was, they could only work for a few hours a night, and they had to cart the earth away in sacks. You’ll find two or three full sacks near your gardener’s shed.

  “What puzzled me was the maid, Joyce. I didn’t know until this afternoon that Lee Smitt had a daughter who had been an actress. When she pretended that she’d seen a man walk through her room she acted pretty well. Anyway, she deceived you, Mr. Hannay, and I should imagine that you would take a whole lot of deceiving.”

  Pat tried to catch his eye but did not succeed.

  “It is very remarkable how things come about,” said Mr. Hannay. “Something told me that in no circumstances ought I to give up possession of this house—which shows you, Mr. Dunn, how the path of duty can also be—um—the path of glory. If I had taken the easier path we should not have captured these criminals. We might have saved ourselves a little trouble, and perhaps a little danger—and I don’t think any of you realize how near I was to choking myself with that beastly gag the fellow put into my mouth—but we should not have had the satisfaction of having placed two miscreants in jail. By the way, I suppose my evidence will be necessary?”

  “Undoubtedly,” said Peter, with great gravity. “Your evidence will possibly be the most vital of all.”

  When her father had gone, Pat asked:

  “Am I to go into that awful court?”

  “You are not,” said Peter Dunn emphatically. “There are quite enough people taking credit for this little coup. I will give all the evidence required, and if I’m asked I shall mention the fact that my wife was present.”

  “But I’m not your wife,” said Pat.

  “You will be by then,” said Peter.

  Night Without Sleep

  ELICK MOLL

  THE STORY

  Original publication: Cosmopolitan, June 1949. Note: Moll later expanded the story into a full-length novel with the same title (Boston, Little, Brown, 1950)

  MAINLY KNOWN AS A SCREENWRITER for television and motion pictures, Elick Moll (1901–1988) also wrote short stories for such major publications as the Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Redbook, Story, and Cosmopolitan. When Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought one of his stories in 1942, he was hired by Samuel Goldwyn to write for the screen so he moved from New York to Hollywood and lived there until his death.

  The first full-length film on which he worked (though Moll did not receive screen credit) was the classic Passage to Marseille (1944), which starred Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains. Other films for which he wrote the screenplay were Wake Up and Dream (1946), You Were Meant for Me (1948), The House on Telegraph Hill (1951), Night Without Sleep (1952), Storm Center (1956), and Spring Reunion (1957).

  He also wrote teleplays for such prestigious and popular television series as Playhouse 90, Four Star Playhouse, I Spy, Hawaii Five-O, and The Bold Ones: The Lawyers.

  His successful Broadway comedy, Seidman and Son (1962), based on his 1958 novel of the same title, featured such familiar stage and screen stars as Sam Levene, Vincent Gardenia, Diana Muldaur, and Nancy Wickwire.

  Moll wrote the novella “Night without Sleep” for Cosmopolitan in 1949, apparently rewrote it as a novel that was published the following year, then cowrote the screenplay for t
he film released in 1952. Although, it is possible he wrote the screenplay after the novella, then novelized the screenplay to produce the manuscript for the book.

  It is the story of Richard Bowen, once a successful novelist, now living on his wife’s bounty. He wakes one night after a terrifying nightmare with a fierce hangover. Fearfully, he tries to recall the events of the preceding afternoon and evening, gradually reconstructing the scenes with his wife, with his mistress, and with Phillipa, who has revered him since his first novel. Somewhere in this vague tale is a blind spot—the moment of blackout—which he cannot avoid.

  THE FILM

  Title: Night Without Sleep, 1952

  Studio: Twentieth Century Fox

  Director: Roy Ward Baker

  Screenwriters: Elick Moll, Frank Partos

  Producer: Robert Bassler

  THE CAST

  • Gary Merrill (Richard Morton)

  • Linda Darnell (Julie Bannon)

  • Hildegarde Neff (Lisa Muller)

  • June Vincent (Emily Morton)

  • Hugh Beaumont (John Harkness)

  Elick Moll’s third version of Night Without Sleep, apart from being in a different medium, is extremely close to the works on which it was based. It is a noir film of psychological suspense in which a Broadway composer with a vicious temper wakes up from a particularly intense and troubling blackout in which tiny moments come to the front of his brain. He hears a woman’s screams but does not see her face. He remembers yelling in fury. He fears he may have killed someone.

  That night he had a date with his mistress, but he also had met an actress and cannot remember what happened during the course of his alcohol-fueled night. He calls each of them to see if they are okay, only to have a surprise thrust on him before the sun comes up.

  The working title during filming was Purple Like Grapes, which references describe as the title of the original appearance in Cosmopolitan, but that is bogus; it was titled “Night without Sleep” in Cosmopolitan.

  Tyrone Power had been announced as the star of the film; a few months later, Richard Basehart was reported to have the top role.

  NIGHT WITHOUT SLEEP

  Elick Moll

  ROGER WOKE FROM THE DREAM with his heart pounding thickly. His first thought was that he’d been running and had tripped and banged his head. It ached terribly. Then he realized that the running had been part of a nightmare. He could feel the horror of it still, all around him in the cloudy, monstrous dark.

  He blinked his eyes, unable for the moment to complete the bridge between dreaming and reality. Where was he? He listened for some sound or movement. There was none. The silence seemed absolute, like the dark. It was so complete that listening made his ears roar faintly. He comprehended, for a ghastly moment, the terrible aloneness of being adrift at sea, or buried alive in a small and airless tomb.

  He put a hand up beside him experimentally, and felt wood. It made no connection in his mind. He moved his hand, half fearfully, along the somehow menacing smoothness. Maybe he had died, was lying in a cask somewhere, like buried treasure. An antic thought. But it didn’t stop the sweat from coming out on his face. The dark moved in on him, thickening; it suddenly seemed difficult to breathe.

  Panic seized him. He sprang up convulsively, his hands clawing at the weight on his chest. Then horror exploded in all the pores of his body, rose screaming into his throat. There was a body lying across him—he’d felt it, an obscenely hairy body, still warm, sprawled across his chest, dead, murdered——

  He flung it off and stumbled to his feet, reaching out wildly for a window, a door. Things fell. His hand struck a wall and unwilled, following some familiar, neuron trail he himself bore no conscious knowledge of, moved up to a switch. The room swam suddenly before him, yellow as gold but more precious. He stared, dissolving inside, at the familiar pattern of his study, deranged only by the lamp and telephone he’d knocked down in his wild, hysterical scramble for light.

  He let out his cramped breath in what was almost a sob of relief. He’d been asleep on his own couch, in his own study, in his own house (I beg your pardon, he thought, Emily’s house) with Fred, his setter, across his chest.

  The dog stood now, observing him, his fringed tail moving in a slow inquiring arc, not yet sure of his state of grace with the god before him. “Come here, you old fool,” Roger said. The dog came to him slowly, head down, shambling in a little ballet of love and propitiation. “What are you so sheepish about? You think you’re so lucky because I let you come in here with me last night, climb into bed with me, and enjoy listening to my drunken snoring?”

  The dog jumped up, put his forelegs against Roger’s chest, his tail going like a metronome set to “Presto.” Roger tugged gently at the silky ears. “You’re no corpse, are you? You’re just a great, big, stupid valentine, with a tail.” Sudden weak tears stung Roger’s eyes. “Yes. You know what kind of a prize you’ve got yourself addressed to? You know what kind of man this is you’ve given your big foolish heart to?”

  I blacked out, he thought wonderingly. The thing I said could never happen to me. I said it just the other day to my analyst. “Don’t try to make a lost week-end character out of me,” I told him. And now I’ve done it. With my little hatchet.

  “Yes, Fred,” he said aloud. “Out like a light. I don’t know where I was last night, how I got home, or anything else. And how do you like that?”

  The dog lifted his muzzle, tried to lick his face. Roger turned his head aside from the rough, seeking tongue, and the slight, sharp movement set up a murderous throbbing in his head. He stood for a moment with his face screwed up and his shoulders hunched a little, waiting for it to subside. God, those Martinis. They always came to the ball with this anvil chorus in tow. When would he learn? Why didn’t some protective mechanism inside him sound a warning after the third? He must really have poured it on in quarts last night.

  He went to his desk, feeling blindly for the bottle of Empirin he knew he had around. He found the bottle where he expected to, on the tray behind the silver water jug. Apparently some things were still in place in his memory. There were four tablets in the bottle. He put them in his mouth. The water jug was empty. He started for the lavatory adjoining his study, thinking suddenly, I’ll never make it. He didn’t turn on the light but reached for the faucet in the dark, then stood with one hand propping himself up from the wall, his head hanging like a tired horse, splashing wearily and ignominiously in the soothing dark.

  He drank water from the tap until his stomach hurt. Then he went back into his study and picked up the telephone, his hands still trembling. He’d made quite a racket. Emily must surely have heard him, she’d be down in a moment, patient, long-suffering, bringing him some warm milk, weaving her solicitude around him like a ritual dance—which always irritated him.

  Wait a minute. Something had jogged his memory. Emily wasn’t home. Emily had gone to Boston yesterday to visit her family and make a speech at the Annual Charity Ball at Brookline for the displaced children of Upper Moldavia. He sighed with relief. Thank God for small favors. Dear Lord, for Thy blessing bestowed this night—or morning—or afternoon—on me, a displaced child from Ridgefield, Connecticut, I humbly give thanks.

  He sat down in the beautiful battered French provincial chair before his beautiful battered French provincial desk and looked up at the homely battered face of a French peasant painted by van Gogh, a gift from Emily on his thirtieth birthday. “Work alone is noble.” Who said that? Emily? Or Carlyle? Or both. That was the maddening thing about Emily’s homilies, they always kept such impeccable company. She quoted only the very best authors—like his mother had done.

  But it was true, alas, alas for poor Roger. Work alone was noble, and Roger had lost his tools. Lost, strayed, or stolen. The poor demented man who’d painted that picture above his desk had thrashed about all ov
er the French landscape like a strangling carp—a poor, crazy, haunted wight who cut his ear off and sent it with Christmas wrappings to a girl who’d once said no; he was ridiculous and tortured all the days of his life but he was somehow noble in the mind because he’d suffered the slings and arrows and left these relics of his work, his sweat, his torment; these childlike wide-eyed blues and yellows, these fields of wheat that Adam might have sown and reaped in God’s morning of the world. Yes, the dealers traded in them now, like cheeses; the baccalaureate junk dealers—who’d got fat on two wars, collected them along with their stamps, and coins, and dividends. But there was a little brotherhood of the pure in heart who still gathered in the galleries and the museums on Fifty-Seventh Street, on Fifth Avenue on Michigan Boulevard, in Sans Souci, on the Champs Elysées, in Belgrade, in Gdynia. They still came through the bomb-shattered streets, less than ever now could they buy, more than likely they couldn’t even buy their breakfast—but they could look, they could go down on their knees, inside knowing suddenly that what they believed in, against all the odds, was true, true—life was important and sacred, in spite of all the blood, horror, and nothingness.

  Something far off stirred in Roger’s thoughts: sad rain outside a window, the desolate sound of a train whistle enclosed in the gray of afternoon…? He pressed his palms against his temples. The anodyne was taking effect and for a while before the pain eased there would be this concerto for the foot pedals in his head. After that it would be better. He would live. But there was a deeper sickness in him now, a kind of nausea of the spirit not to be relieved, he knew, by coal-tar derivatives or vomiting. This was one of those milestones again—like turning thirty and realizing you were a failure. Until now, whenever Emily or the doctor started harping about his drinking he’d always had an answer. He drank because he enjoyed it. When it got so he couldn’t handle it any more, he’d quit. But he’d never believed it would happen. Blacking out—that was something that happened to someone else, adolescents, personality cripples who ran to alcohol like sniveling brats to their mamas, because someone had called them a bad name. You spoke of them with contempt, or at best with a kind of humorous pity. And now, here it was, in his own lap, and it wasn’t funny. To have a darkness clamp down on a piece of your life, even a few hours of it—it was like being lost, a lost soul, no longer quite human, no longer a creature of dignity and reason….