Woolrich was born in New York on December 4, 1903, his mother the daughter of a Russian Jewish émigré and his father a Latino of Canadian and English descent. His parents split when he was three and he stayed in Mexico with his father, but he returned to New York to live with his mother when he reached high-school age. In 1921 he enrolled in Columbia University but quit in his junior year after his first novel sold to a major publisher. That novel, Cover Charge (1926), was a Jazz Age chronicle in the vein of his literary idol, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and in the late ‘20s, Woolrich moved to Hollywood to work as a staff writer for First National Pictures. But the Depression put an end to Jazz Age stories, and Woolrich was forced to reinvent himself, which he did with a vengeance. He returned to New York, lived in an apartment in a hotel with his mother, and between 1934 and 1948 wrote eleven novels and well over a hundred short stories and novelettes. The trademarks of his new style are present from his first crime story, “Death Sits in the Dentist Chair” (Detective Fiction Weekly, August 4, 1934): a bizarre murder, a race against time, the invasion of nightmare into the characters’ everyday experience, casual police brutality, intuition that passes as reasoning, and headlong suspense. He will always be identified with tales of suspense and terror set in nightmarish cities; his most powerful fiction presents a despairing view of the human condition.
“Afternoon of a Phony,” first published in Detective Fiction Weekly (November 14, 1936) and never reprinted till now, is something of a departure for Woolrich: a charming, clever, and bizarre whodunit with a Jersey Shore setting. A con man arrives at a seaside resort only to be mistaken by the local cops for the great sleuth from Trenton they've sent for, and Clip Rogers steps smoothly into the role of investigating a woman's death in one of the town's vacation hotels. The story becomes unmistakably the work of Woolrich when the culprit, motivated by lost love, takes center stage and for a page or two becomes a deeply sympathetic character; ironically, he remarks that the impostor Rogers has more humanity than any other cop he has ever encountered.
Woolrich was the Hitchcock of the written word, but until now not a word he wrote has ever appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. After 1948, his torrent of words slowed to a trickle, and by 1956, when AHMM first hit the stands, the master of suspense fiction was in the sad last period of his life, which ended with his death of a stroke on September 25, 1968. During those final two decades he wrote very little and almost every story he managed to finish was published by Fred Dannay, a longtime supporter, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Now in 2012 a Woolrich tale appears here. About time, yes?
* * * *
Afternoon of a Phony
Cornell Woolrich
Clip Rogers, also known as Real Estate Rodge, also known as High-Pressure Harry, also known as—but look it up yourself in the records—stopped his hired car (his for the next sixty minutes) in front of an imposing construction job which was clamorous with riveting. It was imposing not so much because of its height or breadth, but because of the quality of the materials being used. Its two-story skeleton was fashioned of steel beams, painted scarlet, of the kind that are usually used only for the tallest skyscrapers. The trim around its base was polished basalt. The mound of bricks that lay in the street waiting to go into the upper facade were bisque, with a high glaze, the best grade obtainable.
Clip swept his arm at it with an air of proprietorship, turned half around in his seat to face the two parties in the back of the car. “Nifty, eh?” he remarked, addressing the more conspicuous of the two. “Nothing like seeing it for yourself, is there? Well, how about it, Mr. Hemingway, think you'd care to come in on it with me? Tell you what I'll do. I'm very hard-pressed for ready cash right now, I've been financing the thing single-handed so far, and as you can see I've spared no expense. It'd be a crime to have to stop now, when it's within an acre of completion. Rather than approach the banks for a loan and pay the exorbitant rates of interest they'll soak me, I'd be willing to cut somebody in on it outright, and keep it in private ownership. Five thousand dollars—and a half-interest in it is yours.”
Mr. Hemingway, better known as Philadelphia Slim (because he was very fat and badly wanted in Philadelphia), looked judicious, one might even say cagey. “I don't know,” he hesitated, “it's a little bit out of my line. Now, my friend Mr. Jeffreys here, goes in for that sort of thing more than I do. He's cleaned up quite a bit in his home town buying property at foreclosure. What's your opinion, Mr. Jeffreys?” he asked deferentially.
Mr. Jeffreys’ two main characteristics were an air of unmistakable prosperity and an air of even more unmistakable childlike innocence. Crash knickers, howling golf-stockings, and well-fed, he was the perfect prospect. His and Mr. Hemingway's acquaintanceship dated from the hotel lobby twenty-four hours before. He was down here for a well-earned rest. Mr. H. was down here to put over a big deal. It was quite a coincidence the way he and Clip Rogers had run into each other awhile ago, right while Mr. Jeffreys was with the former.
Mr. Jeffreys’ opinion seemed to be one of almost uncontrollable eagerness. He nudged Mr. Hemingway to go ahead, even tried to wink knowingly at him without Rogers seeing it. He was what both of them would have described as “hot.”
But Mr. Hemingway was careful to appear only tepid.
“I haven't got that much money in ready cash,” he drawled. “I could let you have a check—”
“I've got to have the money this afternoon, or the offer's withdrawn,” his partner said. “I've got an obligation coming due that has to be met—”
The lamb between the two wolves looked unsuspectingly from one to the other. “I have twenty-five hundred with me,” he burst out. “Would you consider letting me have a quarter-interest in the building for that, Mr. Rogers?”
Mr. Rogers’ eyes sparkled a little; outside of that, he appeared quite reluctant. “That's letting it go for nothing,” he said sadly. “You'll get your investment back out of the first month's rentals, alone. I suppose it's better than having it taken away from me, though.
“Of course, I've known Mr. Hemingway here for years, but you're practically a stranger to me—”
“I can vouch for Mr. Jeffreys,” spoke up Mr. H. quickly. “He's one of the leading citizens of Jonesville, Indiana.”
“Johnsville, Illinois,” corrected Mr. Jeffreys.
“Well, in that case—” condescended Mr. Rogers. “I have the deed all drawn up, in my pocket. It just needs to be signed.”
“If you'll come back to my room at the hotel,” said Jeffreys excitedly, “we can cinch the thing then and there. I'll have them turn the money over to me, they're keeping it in a the safe.”
Rogers and Slim exchanged the briefest of looks. The former cleared his throat. “I'd prefer to have this transaction kept strictly confidential for the present, Mr. Jeffreys. It would hurt my credit to have it known that I was in difficulties.”
“I won't say a word,” promised Jeffreys.
Rogers shoved his foot down, swung the car around slowly in a circle. Just as they were pulling away, the foreman of the construction gang went by. Rogers saluted him familiarly. “Everything coming along all right?” He let out the clutch without waiting for an answer.
The foreman stood staring after them, scratching his dome—a sight which Jeffreys missed seeing. “Who the hell was that?" he muttered to himself. “Blamed if I know him!”
Twenty minutes later by the clock, Rogers and Slim let themselves cordially out of Mr. Jeffreys’ hotel room with a great deal of handshaking.
“We'll wait for you downstairs in the lobby,” promised Slim. They waited side by side for the elevator to come up, in a sort of silent intensity. It showed up finally, and they descended without a word. They didn't linger in the lobby waiting for Mr. Jeffreys, as they had promised. They left the hotel quite briskly, as though they both had an important engagement somewhere else. They did have; it was Rogers who put it into words as they took leave of one another in an unlighted telephone booth several blocks
away. “All right, here's your split, twelve-fifty. Now lam—before he finds out we've sold him a United States Government branch-post office! I'll see you in New York later in the week, you know where.”
They parted, Rogers made his way to the station, bought a ticket, looked all around him, and boarded an express just as it was ready to pull out. The clack of the wheels as the cars got under way was sweet music to him—the lullaby of the lam. He snapped his hat-brim in farewell to the resort they were leaving behind and made his way forward to the smoking-car. He selected a nice comfortable leather-backed seat, sprawled himself out in it, loosened the knot of his necktie, lit up, and looked about him. Apprehensively? Not a bit of it.
You didn't know Clip Rogers if you thought he ever took time off from making easy money the hard way. The busy little bees had nothing on him when it came to being industrious: He hated even to waste a train-trip from one point to another without at least trying to contact one sucker. This, of course, was a very short haul, not much more than a commutation-trip, and the prospects around him were a very crummy-looking lot.
He looked them over, took a stab at drumming up a conversation with the man across the aisle—just because he was the likeliest-looking—and got promptly and definitely squelched. He got up and went out to the washroom, just to give himself an excuse for changing seats and tackling someone else when he came back. While he was in there he took the opportunity of transferring his twelve-hundred from his inner pocket to a safer place, a little felt pouch stitched to his garter. Just in case.
His cuff had dropped over his shoe again, when somebody tried the door. Clip, of course, had it locked on the inside. The tryer didn't go away, kept trying as though he wanted in in the worst way. By the time he got in, Clip's coat was hanging up on a hook and he was very busy cooling off his hands and arms under the water-tap.
The interrupter was a very stocky man with a—just then, at any rate—light green face. He could hardly see straight. “I never could stand riding on a train, on top of ersters and beer!” he groaned blindly. He pitched his coat at the hook over Clip's, disappeared into the closet, and was too sick for a while to care whether school kept or not.
* * * *
Clip, to put on his own coat again, had to remove the other one and hold it up with one hand, while he got at his. This was putting him to a very strong temptation—and Clip tempted very easily. He spaded his hand deftly at it, then snapped it back again almost as though something had bitten him.
A detective-badge had come up in his palm.
He wouldn't have been found dead with the thing, but just then the trembling cabinet-door started opening once more. There was no time to do anything but fling the coat back over the hook. When he started shrugging back into his own, he still had that insignia of his hereditary enemies hidden in his palm, with no chance of getting rid it.
The late sufferer looked a whole lot better. “They always send me on these out o’ town assignments,” he complained weakly, replacing his coat. Clip just nodded sympathetically, and when he left there, put the whole length of the train between them. On the way he was going to drop the badge overboard between-cars, and then thought better of it.
Why throw it away? It had its uses. It could come in very handy for a little plain or fancy shake-down, for instance, to liven up slack periods. Might get him a little graft from some barkeeper, a free show at some club, a free room at some hotel. On the other hand, it was very doubtful that that dick back there would finish out the trip without discovering his loss—and he'd know Clip was the only guy who could have taken it.
Clip was in no position, with his twelve-hundred bucks, to be at the receiving-end of a frisk, just then. So it was a case of doing without the thing, or take a terrific chance. But now that he had it, he hated to give it up without trying it out a little—like a kid with a new toy.
The train started to slow just then for one of its two stops and a sign reading “Wildmere” gandered in through the window.
And all of a sudden, he found himself out on the platform, and the train was powdering again in back of him. Which is one of the beauties of traveling without baggage. He turned and looked after it just in time to see one of the smoking-car windows way up front thrown open, and the head, shoulders and arms of the real owner of the badge shoved way out, gesturing wildly.
He'd either been too busy looking for his badge, or too all-in after being ill, or maybe he'd dozed off—but he'd missed his station.
If he'd run straight to the back platform instead of wasting time, he could have still jumped off and made it. But the line was electrified, and the cars picked up speed much quicker than a coal-burner. By the time he did join the tail-lights, he was just a speck way down the track, whizzing along at such a speed it would have been suicide to jump.
* * * *
II
It wasn't just idle curiosity that made Clip Rogers saunter up to the station-agent's window, although it was a grave mistake on his part to do so. He wanted to know just how much time he had in Wildmere before that dick got back here again from the other direction. He really didn't want any time at all here in Wildmere, but there wasn't anything he could do about it.
He couldn't go back where he'd just come from, because Mr. Jeffreys who had bought one of Uncle Sam's post-offices was there—and there was no other place the trains went from here. And there was no other New York train until seven, he knew that already.
He wasn't worried that the dick might telephone back long-distance and ask the local rubes to hold him. The dick couldn't be sure he'd actually taken his badge, and he certainly wouldn't crave publicity on the score of having had it lifted from him. Wouldn't that sound great: “A dip pinched my badge and jumped off the train with it, and I was carried past my station!” Not the best man among ‘em could have ever lived that down afterwards. The Associated Press would have spread it all over the country in one of those little space-fillers the newspapers pad out their back pages with.
The next question came from the agent before Clip could get out of reach, and it packed a wallop that lifted him out of his shoes. “You must expect to mop the blamed mess up in right smart order, inspector, seein’ as how you're already askin’ about the trains goin’ back?”
“Come again?” wheezed Clip Rogers.
He promptly did, which made it Clip's turn once more. “I don't know who you take me for,” he said frostily, “but your wires are crossed somewhere along the line.”
The agent flopped his hand at him reassuringly. “I won't say nothin’ to nobody, as long as you don't want it known who you are. But I know Sheriff Haskell was expectin’ you on that train, and I seed you was the only one got off—” His thumb hooked one of his braces. “I'd make a good detective myself, wouldn't I?”
“Just about,” was Clip's comment. He was dying to ask who he, Clip, was, but before he could, that took care of itself, too.
“Here's Haskell now, come down to meet you,” said the agent, and Clip turned to find himself the center of an admiring triple stare on the part of two constables and the sheriff.
The latter thrust out his hand at him. “Inspector Griswold, I'm Sheriff Haskell,” he beamed. “I'm certainly honored to meet you, sir!” (pump, pump, pump.) “When Capital City wired back they were sending the great Griswold to help us out on this, I couldn't believe my eyes!” (pump, pump, pump.)
Clip took his throbbing hand back again and said, eloquently, "Unh?"
One of the constables wet his thumb and extended it toward Clip's sleeve.
“Inspector Griswold,” he quavered, “no offense—but lemme touch you.” He drew his breath in reverently, “Think of it! The guy that put the great Gash-face Marrone behind the bars at State Prison—”
“That was the government,” said Clip truthfully, “not me.”
The second constable sighed like a sick calf. “I knew he'd be modest; all great guys always are. Is it true that Rat-eyes Houlihan committed suicide the minute he found out you'
d been assigned to go after him?”
Clip wasn't the slowest guy in the world on the pick-up. He was in it now, so he was going to stay in it—at least until seven. “Nawr, fifteen minutes after he found out,” he corrected without batting an eyelash.
“I've got my car back of the station, Inspector Griswold,” offered the sheriff.
“Just call me by my first name,” said Clip, by way of finding out.
He did. “Thanks, Clarence, I appreciate that!” said the sheriff effusively. And he looked over his shoulder at the two constables who were following them as much as to say, “Isn't he swell, though!”
“That,” amended Clip, now that he knew the worst, “don't go for you two men.” There was such a thing as going to far. “Clarence,” he shuddered inwardly.
“Nossir, inspector, of course not, inspector,” they chorused submissively.
* * * *
He got in front next to Haskell, the two constables in the rear.
“Of course, the case was outlined to you before you left Capital City, so we don't need to go over—” began the sheriff as he pressed the starter.
“No, it wasn't. They wanted to, but I wouldn't let them,” cut in Clip promptly. “I like to tackle an assignment with my mind a perfect blank, no preconceived ideas about it whatever. I work best when I start from scratch. Riding on trains always makes me go stale, anyway, so I wouldn't let ‘em tell me a thing before I started.”
He saw the two constables nod at each other gravely in the mirror. “A very good system.”
“Then I'll just take you up there and let you form your own conclusions,” suggested Haskell.
Wildmere was a good deal bigger than he had taken it to be, not in a built-up city way, but in a sprawling countryfied way. The trees out-numbered the houses, but the houses kept on showing up just the same. “There” turned out to be a large resort hotel on the top of a hill, a rambling wooden structure painted dazzling white, with a veranda all around it and a young army of rocking-chairs lined up in triple rows.
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