Stranger in the Dark

by Nielsen, Helen

  “Thanks,” Larry said. “I didn’t even know that I’d dropped it—” But by this time he was talking to himself. The running man was running again, already lost to sight in the semidarkness of the street Larry had just taken from his hotel, and the small black sedan was just turning the corner fast on his heels … the very small black sedan with its headlights burning dimly in the European manner, and its driver, an incredibly ugly man wearing a soft black hat, crouched over the steering wheel like a malevolent giant.

  Of course it hadn’t really happened. That’s what Larry tried to tell himself when it was all over and his blood had started flowing again. To be more accurate, it had happened but not at all the way it seemed. A man could run without being in fear of his life. He could be late for an appointment. He could be trying to catch a streetcar.

  One of the narrow streetcars rattled across the intersection at the far side of the square, and Larry told himself another story. What was so remarkable about a case of mistaken identity? It happened to somebody every day. And what was so terrible about a black sedan turning that particular corner at that particular moment? The streets were for public use, weren’t they? As for the evil-visaged driver, he’d been fooled once before tonight by a sinister face that broke into a broad smile when it was spoken to.

  Larry Willis, you’re an idiot. A fat man stares at you in a hotel dining room, an ugly man in a black sedan chases a frightened sailor through the streets, and a girl you’ve all but forgotten follows you about like a migratory ghost. And why? Because you’re exhausted. Because you’ve bounced around in the sky for thousands of miles, too excited to sleep, and now you’re out on the town trying to cure an ailment that needs nothing more than a long session in that cozy feather bed back at the hotel.

  It was easy to make a sale to a customer who wanted to be sold. Logically and persuasively, Larry explained away everything he’d just witnessed and then shoved the map into his coat pocket and turned back toward the hotel. He had four whole days to play tourist. The bright lights could wait…. One block … two blocks. This time no dawdling before the shop windows and no staring at the front page of a newspaper he couldn’t read. This time just a fast return trip to a little hotel that must be along here somewhere. He vaguely remembered the small canopy over the entrance and the bright red mailbox that was fastened to the wall next to the door. But he didn’t remember all that excitement in the middle of the street….

  Afterward it was easy to know what he should have done. He should have quit while he was ahead. He should have kept right on in pursuit of that feather bed and paid no attention to the excited people who were spilling out of a dozen doorways to gather around a terrible something in the street. Above all, he should have avoided Viggo, the little bellhop with the large vocabulary, who was suddenly running toward him with his tongue racing on ahead.

  “Did you see it, Herre Willis?” the boy shouted. “A man is crossing the street. An auto comes speeding. Wham! The man is dead! Hit and run, just like in America!”

  It was too late for all of the things Larry should have done. All he could do now was stand at the curbing like a tailor’s dummy and stare at an object in the gutter not three feet away. Stare and listen while Viggo babbled on.

  “I saw everything, Herre Willis. I saw the man start across the street. I saw the black sedan swing around the corner—”

  “The black sedan,” Larry echoed.

  Of course it was a black sedan. Larry knew that without asking, but he had to say something to keep from shouting the rest of what he knew.

  “The black sedan,” Viggo insisted. “I saw the whole thing because I’d just stepped outside to post this letter…. Oh, you’ve dropped yours, Herre Willis.”

  The boy wasn’t making any sense. All Larry was trying to do was rake up his room key out of his coat pocket and get upstairs before the newly arrived policeman at this street scene got a look at his face and started asking questions. What did he know anyway? What did he really know? And what business of his was this grief in the street even if he did? H.J. wasn’t footing the bills to this convention so his special representative could get involved in somebody else’s funeral!

  But now it seemed that something had dropped to the sidewalk, and Viggo was picking it up.

  “Your letter, Herre Willis. It just now fell out of your pocket with the map. Do you want it posted? … Oh, it hasn’t been addressed.”

  No sense at all. Just a babbling boy who’d seen a man killed and lost his wits. But he did thrust something into Larry’s hands before racing back to that crowd in the street, and the something was a folded map with an envelope protruding from the folds. A long, unsealed envelope that Larry had never seen before.

  Turn it over and over. Lift up the flap and look inside. Try to make sense of it, just any kind of sense at all…. One … two … three. Three crisp one-hundred-dollar bills in United States currency, and in the gutter, not three feet away, a dead man’s cap. Navy blue with a little gold anchor in braid just above the leather visor.

  2.

  HIT AND RUN, VIGGO SAID. HIT AND RUN, JUST LIKE IN AMERICA. But suppose you know better, what do you do? Do you rush up to that policeman in the street with a story that wouldn’t make sense even if he did understand English? Do you wave three hundred dollars in his face and probably spend your first night abroad locked up in the local equivalent of a drunk tank? Or do you run for that automatic elevator in the lobby and tell yourself all the way up to that cozy feather bed that this is all a mistake with some perfectly simple explanation that will be clear to you in the morning?

  It didn’t take long for Larry to reach a decision, but in the morning nothing was any clearer.

  Three hundred dollars … Larry awakened slowly, trying to remember what all the happy noise was about. The chimes in the tower were sounding off like the fade-out theme of an epic movie, and the unfamiliar ceiling swimming into focus overhead must have a location…. Chicago? … Detroit? … Minneapolis? Then, like a knock on the head, Larry remembered. Maybe it was just a bad dream. Maybe, if he closed his eyes and burrowed down in the feathers again, it would go away, but that long envelope was still propped up against the lamp on the night stand just where he’d left it, and the contents were as bewildering as they had been last night. Three one-hundred-dollar bills. So far as he could tell they were perfectly good bills with nothing wrong about them except the uncomfortable fact that they shouldn’t be in his hands. And why were they in his hands? Try as he would to find an alternative explanation, the answer always came out the same. It always came back to a street-corner collision with a man in a seaman’s cap who was no longer alive to claim his property.

  But was it his property? Larry sat up in bed and pondered the problem over a prebreakfast cigarette. The envelope was gray, he could see by daylight. It was made of an expensive paper but bore no monogram or return address. A man’s envelope he guessed, although some women liked the longer size too, but was it a stationery the running man would have used? He conjured up an image from an all too vivid memory: the sun-browned face, the muscular build, the rough sweater and faded denims. No, this was no man to squander his money on fancy stationery. Larry sniffed at the envelope. No scent, not even the smell of fish, and yet the fish inside were very rare—particularly in foreign waters.

  And yet it had to come back to the running man. There was no way for the envelope to have gotten inside the map unless it was dropped by the man who folded the map. Dropped or deliberately planted. It did seem strange, now that he had reason to think of it, that a man in such a hurry would go to so much trouble just to be polite. It seemed as strange as the rest of it—the running, the calling of that name “McDonald,” and the sudden death….

  Larry knew what he was doing. He was thinking himself into trouble. he was sitting there in his new Nylon pajamas and working up a nice case of curiosity that wouldn’t be satisfied by anything so sane as chucking that envelope at the nearest lost and found. Sooner or later he’d ha
ve to dig up a biography on a corpse, and there was only one place to start.

  When George Washington warned against foreign entanglements, he didn’t have in mind anything like Larry Willis and a dead man’s bank roll, but the admonition seemed apropos after the first half hour at police headquarters. Getting there was easy. Larry simply consulted the pocket dictionary H.J. had contributed as a going-away present, and said, “Politigaarden,” to the first cabdriver he encountered. By that time he had dreamed up an approach calculated to cause a minimum of involvement for Larry Willis, but he hadn’t anticipated an unscheduled tour of the police yard. Language dictionary in hand, he finally stated his case to a bewildered man in shirt sleeves who seemed to have something better to do with his morning.

  “You wish to report an accident?” he asked.

  Larry shook his head and tried another page of the book. This time it must have turned out worse. The man looked startled.

  “You wish to report a murder?”

  “No!” Larry said emphatically. “I didn’t say anything about Murder! I said that a man was killed in an accident last night just outside my hotel, and I want to know if he’s been identified.”

  In English it must have sounded better. The man in shirt sleeves, although he still regarded Larry with apprehension, nodded his head and then darted through the nearby doorway of an adjoining office. In a moment he was back with another man, middle-aged and a bit snug in his gray worsted suit, who regarded Larry with an expression of tolerant amusement in his blue eyes. In one hand he carried the business card with which Larry had opened this one-sided interview, and referred to it briefly as the other hand extended in greeting.

  “Herre Willis?” he inquired. “My name is Sorensen. Martinus Sorensen. May I be of service?”

  Aside from a little trouble with the W, Martinus Sorensen sounded a lot more promising than his predecessor. He seemed to have more rank, too. A nod of his head and the man in shirt sleeves returned to the other office, leaving Larry with a clear field. The last speech had gone over pretty well, so he repeated it for the benefit of a man who was now occupied with a fat cigar case he’d removed from his vest pocket. He offered it to larry.

  “No, thanks,” Larry said.

  Sorensen smiled. “Of course, American. A cigarette, perhaps.”

  “Nothing, thanks,” Larry insisted. “I just want a little information.”

  “You witnessed this accident?”

  Match in hand, Sorensen’s eyes were a little too bright. Larry had a bad moment. “No, I didn’t,” he said quickly, “but I came along a few minutes later and saw the crowd gathering in the street. The bellboy at my hotel told me that a man had been killed by a hit-and-run driver.”

  Sorensen nodded, puffing furiously on the cigar to get it burning.

  “I didn’t think much about it at the time,” larry added, “But later I began to worry. A friend of mine was supposed to meet me at my hotel last night, but he never showed up. This morning I remembered the accident and began to wonder if he could have been that man.”

  It was a perfectly good approach Larry had dreamed up. Learn the identity of the dead man, then drop that troublesome envelope in the nearest postbox. It seemed much less risky than trying to explain to the police where and how he got possession of such an intriguing property. But Martinus Sorensen seemed more interested in getting information than in giving it out.

  “Then you didn’t see the victim?” he queried.

  “It was dark,” Larry said.

  “Of course.” The cigar was doing nicely now. Sorensen took larry’s Card again and studied it thoughtfully. For a moment only the smoke made comment. “And your friend’s name, Herre Willis?”

  Sorensen had it all wrong; he wasn’t supposed to ask for a name; he was supposed to reveal a name. Larry wasn’t prepared for the question, and so he blurted out the first thing at the edge of his mind. “McDonald,” he said, and then watched a frown dig a gorge across Sorensen’s forehead.

  “An American?” he asked.

  “Yes, an old buddy,” Larry said quickly. “In the same line, farm equipment. We’re here for a convention.”

  The farm-equipment bit was good; Sorensen could verify it on the card. “I see,” he said. “Well, in that case, Herre Willis, your friend probably forgot the appointment and is still at his hotel. The man who was killed last night was not an American, and his name was not McDonald.”

  Larry forgot to look relieved. Not an American. That bit of information didn’t surprise him. The running man hadn’t dressed like a tourist or a visiting diplomat. But if not American, why was he carrying dollars? Why not kroner?

  “Then he’s been identified?” he suggested hopefully.

  “Yes,” Sorensen said. “He was carrying his seaman’s papers. He owned a boat, you see. A small boat for fishing and renting to tourists…. Do you like to fish, Herre Willis?”

  One shaggy eyebrow was still frowning at Larry. It was beginning to worry him.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have time,” he said.

  Sorensen sighed. “No time. That’s the great trouble with the world these days. Nobody has time any more, not even me.”

  It sounded like a very broad hint that Larry would have been happy to take if martinus sorensen hadn’t been so tight-lipped; but he hadn’t gone to all this trouble just to leave the office no wiser than when he’d come in. “There couldn’t be a mistake, I suppose,” he persisted. “I hate to bother you this way, but I’d like to be sure—”

  It was the old foot-in-the-door technique, and he expected opposition, but martinus sorensen was a good-natured man. A smile made crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes as he removed the cigar from his mouth again. “No mistake,” he said. “The dead man has been identified beyond all doubt. We have his papers—” He opened the top drawer of a desk that stood between them and took out a small packet of items. “Holger Hansen, age thirty-five, residence Copenhagen,” he read aloud. “We have his money, twenty kroner and a few öre in change, and, if you will excuse me now, Herre Willis, we have his widow waiting in the next office to claim these things. Are you satisfied, Herre Willis?”

  … His widow. Quite suddenly Larry was more than satisfied. In the adjoining office was a woman who could probably put three hundred dollars to very good use. Without realizing it, Sorensen had cleared up a vital point. A man who rented out his boat to tourists could easily come by United States currency. Many Americans preferred paying all expenses in dollars in order to avoid the inevitable loss that came from changing money from one currency to another. Come to think of it, he might easily come by that gray envelope, as well, since many tourists liked doing these things in the grand manner of one bestowing a gratuity. And a man who had only twenty kroner in his pocket when he died couldn’t afford to lose his pay.

  Larry felt good, like an unexpected Samaritan with a windfall for the widow. It was easy to forget the things he didn’t want to remember. Chalk up the dead man’s fear to his own nervous system. Write off the black sedan to a too vivid imagination. Martinus Sorensen was on his way to the adjoining office, but Larry intercepted him at the door.

  “There’s just one thing more—” he began.

  “Yes, Herre Willis?”

  Sorensen waited, but he didn’t get an answer. The door to the other office stood Open, and just beyond it Larry could see the man in shirt sleeves engaged in earnest conversation with two people. One was a woman, small, shapely, and dressed in black. A heavy veil obscured her face, although he did catch a glimpse of very blonde hair, but it wasn’t the sight of the woman that froze Larry in the doorway like a gaping fool. It was the man who stood beside her with a comforting hand on her arm.

  “Who,” Larry gasped, “is that?”

  Sorensen’s voice was soft at his shoulder. “The widow,” He said, “and another relative. A cousin, I believe, of the deceased.”

  A cousin! Either somebody was lying or Holger Hansen came from a peculiar family, because the man ha
nging on to the widow’s arm had a face Larry would never forget. It was the same evil face that had glared over the steering wheel of a small black sedan about five minutes before Hansen stopped breathing.

  3.

  “YOU WERE SAYING, HERRE WILLIS?”

  Martinus Sorensen’s question had to penetrate a solid wall of shock. The same man! Larry knew that he couldn’t be mistaken. The little black sedan had been but a few feet away as it made that turn, and the grim face peering out from behind the steering wheel wasn’t the kind that’s seen in every collar ad. The hand Larry had sent groping for the envelope came back empty. He was saying—what? He was saying, or was about to say, that he’d bumped into a sailor on a street corner last night and accidentally come into possession of something that must belong to the dead man. But now he couldn’t say anything because a man in the next room had just put a detour sign on his easy way out.

  “It wasn’t important,” he muttered, backing away from the doorway. “I don’t want to keep you from your work. Those people shouldn’t be kept waiting.”

  Martinus Sorensen could look as puzzled as he pleased, that’s all the explanation he would get.

  Outside in the courtyard, Larry dropped behind one of the Romanesque columns and tried to collect his wits. So this was what happened when a man tried to return lost property? A terrible thought had occurred to him at the sight of that peculiar cousin in the other office. Suppose the street-corner recognition was a two-way deal and the man in the black sedan had seen him with Hansen? At the moment he was too stunned to realize why that possibility seemed so frightening, aside from the fact that men who run down and kill pedestrians aren’t likely to approve of live witnesses, but it had seemed an awfully good idea to make tracks.