The Best Crime Stories Ever Told

by Dorothy L. Sayers

  “Well, we sat there and talked a bit, and if I hadn’t been a Bond of Joy, I don’t know that I mightn’t have exceeded, gentlemen—yes, positively exceeded; for the more I thought about it the less I liked the thought of Number Seventeen. I hadn’t noticed the room particularly, except to see that the furniture had been changed since poor Fred’s time. So I just slipped out, by and by, and I went out to the little glass case under the arch where the booking-clerk sits—just like here, that hotel was—and I said:—

  “‘Look here, miss; haven’t you another room empty except seventeen?’

  “‘No,’ she said; ‘I don’t think so.’

  “‘Then what’s that?’ I said, and pointed to a key hanging on the board, the only one left.

  “‘Oh,’ she said, ‘that’s sixteen.’

  “‘Anyone in sixteen?’ I said. ‘Is it a comfortable room?’

  “‘No,’ said she. ‘Yes; quite comfortable. It’s next door to yours—much the same class of room.’

  “‘Then I’ll have sixteen, if you’ve no objection,’ I said, and went back to the others, feeling very clever.

  “When I went up to bed I locked my door, and, though I didn’t believe in ghosts, I wished seventeen wasn’t next door to me, and I wished there wasn’t a door between the two rooms, though the door was locked right enough and the key on my side. I’d only got the one candle besides the two on the dressing table, which I hadn’t lighted; and I got my collar and tie off before I noticed that the furniture in my new room was the furniture out of Number Seventeen; French bed with red curtains, mahogany wardrobe as big as a hearse, and the carved mirror over the dressing-table between the two windows, and ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’ over the mantelpiece. So that, though I’d not got the room where the commercial gentlemen had cut their throats, I’d got the furniture out of it. And for a moment I thought that was worse than the other. When I thought of what that furniture could tell, if it could speak—

  “It was a silly thing to do—but we’re all friends here and I don’t mind owning up—I looked under the bed and I looked inside the hearse-wardrobe and I looked in a sort of narrow cupboard there was, where a body could have stood upright—”

  “A body?” I repeated.

  “A man, I mean. You see, it seemed to me that either these poor chaps had been murdered by someone who hid himself in Number Seventeen to do it, or else there was something there that frightened them into cutting their throats; and upon my soul, I can’t tell you which idea I liked least!”

  He paused, and filled his pipe very deliberately. “Go on,” someone said. And he went on.

  “Now, you’ll observe,” he said, “that all I’ve told you up to the time of my going to bed that night’s just hearsay. So I don’t ask you to believe it—though the three coroners’ inquests would be enough to stagger most chaps, I should say. Still, what I’m going to tell you now’s my part of the story—what happened to me myself in that room.”

  He paused again, holding the pipe in his hand, unlighted.

  There was a silence, which I broke.

  “Well, what did happen?” I asked.

  “I had a bit of a struggle with myself,” he said. “I reminded myself it was not that room, but the next one that it had happened in. I smoked a pipe or two and read the morning paper, advertisements and all. And at last I went to bed. I left the candle burning, though, I own that.”

  “Did you sleep?” I asked.

  “Yes. I slept. Sound as a top. I was awakened by a soft tapping on my door. I sat up. I don’t think I’ve ever been so frightened in my life. But I made myself say, ‘Who’s there?’ in a whisper. Heaven knows I never expected anyone to answer. The candle had gone out and it was pitch-dark. There was a quiet murmur and a shuffling sound outside. And no one answered. I tell you I hadn’t expected anyone to. But I cleared my throat and cried out, ‘Who’s there?’ in a real out-loud voice. And ‘Me, sir,’ said a voice. ‘Shaving-water, sir; six o’clock, sir.’

  “It was the chambermaid.”

  A movement of relief ran round our circle.

  “I don’t think much of your story,” said the large commercial.

  “You haven’t heard it yet,” said the story-teller, dryly. “It was six o’clock on a winter’s morning, and pitch-dark. My train went at seven. I got up and began to dress. My one candle wasn’t much use. I lighted the two on the dressing table to see to shave by. There wasn’t any shaving-water outside my door, after all. And the passage was as black as a coal-hole. So I started to shave with cold water; one has to sometimes, you know. I’d gone over my face and I was just going lightly round under my chin, when I saw something move in the looking-glass. I mean something that moved was reflected in the looking-glass. The big door of the wardrobe had swung open, and by a sort of double reflection I could see the French bed with the red curtains. On the edge of it sat a man in his shirt and trousers—a man with black hair and whiskers, with the most awful look of despair and fear on his face that I’ve ever seen or dreamt of. I stood paralysed, watching him in the mirror. I could not have turned round to save my life. Suddenly he laughed. It was a horrid, silent laugh, and showed all his teeth. They were very white and even. And the next moment he had cut his throat from ear to ear, there before my eyes. Did you ever see a man cut his throat? The bed was all white before.”

  The story-teller had laid down his pipe, and he passed his hand over his face before he went on.

  “When I could look round I did. There was no one in the room. The bed was as white as ever. Well, that’s all,” he said, abruptly, “except that now, of course, I understood how these poor chaps had come by their deaths. They’d all seen this horror—the ghost of the first poor chap, I suppose—Bert Hatteras, you know; and with the shock their hands must have slipped and their throats got cut before they could stop themselves. Oh! by the way, when I looked at my watch it was two o’clock; there hadn’t been any chambermaid at all. I must have dreamed that. But I didn’t dream the other. Oh! and one thing more. It was the same room. They hadn’t changed the room, they’d only changed the number. It was the same room!”

  “Look here,” said the heavy man; “the room you’ve been talking about. My room’s sixteen. And it’s got that same furniture in it as what you describe, and the same picture and all.”

  “Oh, has it?” said the story-teller, a little uncomfortable, it seemed. “I’m sorry. But the cat’s out of the bag now, and it can’t be helped. Yes, it was this house I was speaking of. I suppose they’ve opened the room again. But you don’t believe in ghosts; you’ll be all right.”

  “Yes,” said the heavy man, and presently got up and left the room.

  “He’s gone to see if he can get his room changed. You see if he hasn’t,” said the rabbit-faced man; “and I don’t wonder.”

  The heavy man came back and settled into his chair.

  “I could do with a drink,” he said, reaching to the bell.

  “I’ll stand some punch, gentlemen, if you’ll allow me,” said our dapper story-teller. “I rather pride myself on my punch. I’ll step out to the bar and get what I need for it.”

  “I thought he said he was a teetotaller,” said the heavy traveler when he had gone. And then our voices buzzed like a hive of bees. When our story-teller came in again we turned on him—half-adozen of us at once—and spoke.

  “One at a time,” he said, gently. “I didn’t quite catch what you said.”

  “We want to know,” I said, “how it was—if seeing that ghost made all those chaps cut their throats by startling them when they were shaving—how was it you didn’t cut your throat when you saw it?”

  “I should have,” he answered, gravely, “without the slightest doubt—I should have cut my throat, only,” he glanced at our heavy friend, “I always shave with a safety razor. I travel in them,” he added, slowly, and bisected a lemon.

  “But—but,” said the large man, when he could speak through our uproar, “I’ve gone and given up my room.”<
br />
  “Yes,” said the dapper man, squeezing the lemon; “I’ve just had my things moved into it. It’s the best room in the house. I always think it worth while to take a little pains to secure it.”

  THE OPEN BOAT

  STEPHEN CRANE

  I

  N one of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks. Many a man ought to have a bath-tub larger than the boat which here rode upon the sea. These waves were most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall, and each froth-top was a problem in small-boat navigation.

  The cook squatted in the bottom and looked with both eyes at the six inches of gunwale which separated him from the ocean. His sleeves were rolled over his fat forearms, and the two flaps of his unbuttoned vest dangled as he bent to bail out the boat. Often he said: “Gawd! That was a narrow clip.” As he remarked it he invariably gazed eastward over the broken sea.

  The oiler, steering with one of the two oars in the boat, sometimes raised himself suddenly to keep clear of water that swirled in over the stern. It was a thin little oar and it seemed often ready to snap.

  The correspondent, pulling at the other oar, watched the waves and wondered why he was there.

  The injured captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in that profound dejection and indifference which comes, temporarily at least, to even the bravest and most enduring when, willy nilly, the firm fails, the army loses, the ship goes down. The mind of the master of a vessel is rooted deep in the timbers of her, though he commanded for a day or a decade, and this captain had on him the stern impression of a scene in the greys of dawn of seven turned faces, and later a stump of a top-mast with a white ball on it that slashed to and fro at the waves, went low and lower, and down. Thereafter there was something strange in his voice. Although steady, it was, deep with mourning, and of a quality beyond oration or tears.

  “Keep ‘er a little more south, Billie,” said he.

  “‘A little more south,’ sir,” said the oiler in the stern.

  A seat in this boat was not unlike a seat upon a bucking bronco, and by the same token, a bronco is not much smaller. The craft pranced and reared, and plunged like an animal. As each wave came, and she rose for it, she seemed like a horse making at a fence outrageously high. The manner of her scramble over these walls of water is a mystic thing, and, moreover, at the top of them were ordinarily these problems in white water, the foam racing down from the summit of each wave, requiring a new leap, and a leap from the air. Then, after scornfully bumping a crest, she would slide, and race, and splash down a long incline, and arrive bobbing and nodding in front of the next menace.

  A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats. In a ten-foot dingey one can get an idea of the resources of the sea in the line of waves that is not probable to the average experience which is never at sea in a dingey. As each slatey wall of water approached, it shut all else from the view of the men in the boat, and it was not difficult to imagine that this particular wave was the final outburst of the ocean, the last effort of the grim water. There was a terrible grace in the move of the waves, and they came in silence, save for the snarling of the crests.

  In the wan light, the faces of the men must have been grey. Their eyes must have glinted in strange ways as they gazed steadily astern. Viewed from a balcony, the whole thing would doubtless have been weirdly picturesque. But the men in the boat had no time to see it, and if they had had leisure there were other things to occupy their minds. The sun swung steadily up the sky, and they knew it was broad day because the color of the sea changed from slate to emerald-green, streaked with amber lights, and the foam was like tumbling snow. The process of the breaking day was unknown to them. They were aware only of this effect upon the color of the waves that rolled toward them.

  In disjointed sentences the cook and the correspondent argued as to the difference between a life-saving station and a house of refuge. The cook had said: “There’s a house of refuge just north of the Mosquito Inlet Light, and as soon as they see us, they’ll come off in their boat and pick us up.”

  “As soon as who see us?” said the correspondent.

  “The crew,” said the cook.

  “Houses of refuge don’t have crews,” said the correspondent. “As I understand them, they are only places where clothes and grub are stored for the benefit of shipwrecked people. They don’t carry crews.”

  “Oh, yes, they do,” said the cook.

  “No, they don’t,” said the correspondent.

  “Well, we’re not there yet, anyhow,” said the oiler, in the stern.

  “Well,” said the cook, “perhaps it’s not a house of refuge that I’m thinking of as being near Mosquito Inlet Light. Perhaps it’s a life-saving station.”

  “We’re not there yet,” said the oiler, in the stern.

  II

  As the boat bounced from the top of each wave, the wind tore through the hair of the hatless men, and as the craft plopped her stern down again the spray splashed past them. The crest of each of these waves was a hill, from the top of which the men surveyed, for a moment, a broad tumultuous expanse, shining and wind-riven. It was probably splendid. It was probably glorious, this play of the free sea, wild with lights of emerald and white and amber.

  “Bully good thing it’s an on-shore wind,” said the cook; “If not, where would we be? Wouldn’t have a show.”

  “That’s right,” said the correspondent.

  The busy oiler nodded his assent.

  Then the captain, in the bow, chuckled in a way that expressed humor, contempt, tragedy, all in one. “Do you think we’ve got much of a show now, boys?” said he.

  Whereupon the three were silent, save for a trifle of hemming and hawing. To express any particular optimism at this time they felt to be childish and stupid, but they all doubtless possessed this sense of the situation in their mind. A young man thinks doggedly at such times. On the other hand, the ethics of their condition was decidedly against any open suggestion of hopelessness. So they were silent.

  “Oh, well,” said the captain, soothing his children, “We’ll get ashore all right.”

  But there was that in his tone which made them think, so the oiler quoth: “Yes! If this wind holds!”

  The cook was bailing: “Yes! If we don’t catch hell in the surf.”

  Canton flannel gulls flew near and far. Sometimes they sat down on the sea, near patches of brown seaweed that rolled on the waves with a movement like carpets on a line in a gale. The birds sat comfortably in groups, and they were envied by some in the dingey, for the wrath of the sea was no more to them than it was to a covey of prairie chickens a thousand miles inland. Often they came very close and stared at the men with black bead-like eyes. At these times they were uncanny and sinister in their unblinking scrutiny, and the men hooted angrily at them, telling them to be gone. One came, and evidently decided to alight on the top of the captain’s head. The bird flew parallel to the boat and did not circle, but made short sidelong jumps in the air in chicken-fashion. His black eyes were wistfully fixed upon the captain’s head. “Ugly brute,” said the oiler to the bird. “You look as if you were made with a jack-knife.” The cook and the correspondent swore darkly at the creature. The captain naturally wished to knock it away with the end of the heavy painter; but he did not dare do it, because anything resembling an emphatic gesture would have capsized this freighted boat, and so with his open hand, the captain gently and carefully waved the gull away. After it had been discouraged from the pursuit the captain breathed e
asier on account of his hair, and others breathed easier because the bird struck their minds at this time as being somehow grewsome and ominous.

  In the meantime the oiler and the correspondent rowed. And also they rowed.

  They sat together in the same seat, and each rowed an oar. Then the oiler took both oars; then the correspondent took both oars; then the oiler; then the correspondent. They rowed and they rowed. The very ticklish part of the business was when the time came for the reclining one in the stern to take his turn at the oars. By the very last star of truth, it is easier to steal eggs from under a hen than it was to change seats in the dingey. First the man in the stern slid his hand along the thwart and moved with care, as if he were of Sèvres. Then the man in the rowing seat slid his hand along the other thwart. It was all done with most extraordinary care. As the two sidled past each other, the whole party kept watchful eyes on the coming wave, and the captain cried: “Look out now! Steady there!”

  The brown mats of seaweed that appeared from time to time were like islands, bits of earth. They were traveling, apparently, neither one way nor the other. They were, to all intents, stationary. They informed the men in the boat that it was making progress slowly toward the land.

  The captain, rearing cautiously in the bow, after the dingey soared on a great swell, said that he had seen the light-house at Mosquito Inlet. Presently the cook remarked that he had seen it. The correspondent was at the oars then, and for some reason he too wished to look at the lighthouse, but his back was toward the far shore and the waves were important, and for some time he could not seize an opportunity to turn his head. But at last there came a wave more gentle than the others, and when at the crest of it he swiftly scoured the western horizon.

  “See it?” said the captain.

  “No,” said the correspondent slowly, “I didn’t see anything.”