Burroughs was opening it now and bringing out a cashbox. He set it down on the table and opened it. Paine’s eyes hardened and his mouth twisted sullenly. Look at all that money! The old fossil’s gnarled hand dipped into it, brought out a sheaf of bills, counted them. He put back a few, counted the remainder a second time and set them on the tabletop while he returned the cashbox, closed the safe, straightened out the tapestry.
A blurred figure moved partly into the way at this point, too close to the shade gap to come clearly into focus; but without obliterating the little stack of bills on the table. Burroughs’ claw-like hand picked them up, held them out. A second hand, smoother, reached for them. The two hands shook.
Paine prudently retreated to his former lookout point. He knew where the safe was now, that was all that mattered. He wasn’t a moment too soon. The shade shot up an instant later, this time with Burroughs’ hand guiding its cord. The other person had withdrawn offside again. Burroughs moved after him out of range, and the room abruptly darkened. A moment later a light flickered on in the porch ceiling.
Paine quickly shifted to the side of the house, in the moment’s grace given him, in order to make sure his presence wasn’t detected.
The door opened. Burroughs’ voice croaked a curt “Night,” to which the departing visitor made no answer. The interview had evidently not been an altogether cordial one. The door closed again, with quite a little force. A quick step crossed the porch, went along the cement walk to the street, away from where Paine stood pressed flat against the side of the house. He didn’t bother trying to see who it was. It was too dark for that, and his primary purpose was to keep his own presence concealed.
When the anonymous tread had safely died away in the distance, Paine moved to where he could command the front of the house. Burroughs was alone in it now, he knew; he was too niggardly even to employ a full-time servant. A dim light showed for a moment or two through the fanlight over the door, coming from the back of the hall. Now was the time to ring the doorbell, if he expected to make his plea to the old duffer before he retired.
He knew that, and yet something seemed to be keeping him from stepping up onto the porch and ringing the doorbell. He knew what it was, too, but he wouldn’t admit it to himself.
“He’ll only say no point-blank and slam the door in my face” was the excuse he gave himself as he crouched back in the shrubbery, waiting. “And then once he’s seen me out here, I’ll be the first one he’ll suspect afterwards when—”
The fanlight had gone dark now and Burroughs was on his way upstairs. A bedroom window on the floor above lighted up. There was still time; if he rang even now, Burroughs would come downstairs again and answer the door. But Paine didn’t make the move, stayed there patiently waiting.
The bedroom window blacked out at last, and the house was now dark and lifeless. Paine stayed there, still fighting with himself. Not a battle, really, because that had been lost long ago; but still giving himself excuses for what he knew he was about to do. Excuses for not going off about his business and remaining what he had been until now—an honest man.
How could he face his wife, if he came back empty-handed tonight? Tomorrow their furniture would be piled on the sidewalk. Night after night he had promised to tackle Burroughs, and each time he’d put it off, walked past the house without summoning up nerve enough to go through with it. Why? For one thing, he didn’t have the courage to stomach the sharp-tongued, sneering refusal that he was sure he’d get. But the more important thing had been the realization that once he made his plea, he automatically canceled this other, unlawful way of getting the money. Burroughs had probably forgotten his existence after all these years, but if he reminded him of it by interviewing him ahead of time—
He tightened his belt decisively. Well, he wasn’t coming home to her empty-handed tonight, but he still wasn’t going to tackle Burroughs for it either. She’d never need to find out just how he’d got it.
He straightened and looked all around him. No one in sight. The house was isolated. Most of the streets around it were only laid out and paved by courtesy; they bordered vacant lots. He moved in cautiously but determinedly toward the window of that room where he had seen the safe.
Cowardice can result in the taking of more risks than the most reckless courage. He was afraid of little things—afraid of going home and facing his wife empty-handed, afraid of asking an ill-tempered old reprobate for money because he knew he would be reviled and driven away—and so he was about to break into a house, become a burglar for the first time in his life.
It opened so easily. It was almost an invitation to unlawful entry. He stood up on the sill, and the cover of a paper book of matches, thrust into the intersection between the two window halves, pushed the tongue of the latch out of the way.
He dropped down to the ground, applied the little instrument he had brought to the lower frame, and it slid effortlessly up. A minute later he was in the room, had closed the window so it wouldn’t look suspicious from the outside. He wondered why he’d always thought until now it took skill and patience to break into a house. There was nothing to it.
He took out the folded handkerchief and tied it around the lower part of his face. For a minute he wasn’t going to bother with it, and later he was sorry he had, in one way. And then again, it probably would have happened anyway, even without it. It wouldn’t keep him from being seen, only from being identified.
He knew enough not to light the room lights, but he had nothing so scientific as a pocket torch with him to take their place. He had to rely on ordinary matches, which meant he could only use one hand for the safe dial, after he had cleared the tapestry out of the way.
It was a toy thing, a gimcrack. He hadn’t even the exact combination, just the approximate position—8-3-10. It wouldn’t work the first time, so he varied it slightly, and then it clicked free.
He opened it, brought out the cashbox, set it on the table. It was as though the act of setting it down threw a master electric switch. The room was suddenly drenched with light and Burroughs stood in the open doorway, bathrobe around his weazened frame, left hand out to the wall switch, right hand holding a gun trained on Paine.
Paine’s knees knocked together, his windpipe constricted, and he died a little—the way only an amateur caught red-handed at his first attempt can, a professional never. His thumb stung unexpectedly, and he mechanically whipped out the live match he was holding.
“Just got down in time, didn’t I?” the old man said with spiteful satisfaction. “It mayn’t be much of a safe, but it sets off a buzzer up by my bed every time it swings open—see?”
He should have moved straight across to the phone, right there in the room with Paine, and called for help, but he had a vindictive streak in him; he couldn’t resist standing and rubbing it in.
“Ye know what ye’re going to get for this, don’t ye?” he went on, licking his indrawn lips. “And I’ll see that ye get it too, every last month of it that’s coming to ye.” He took a step forward. “Now get away from that. Get all the way back over there and don’t ye make a move until I—”
A sudden dawning suspicion entered his glittering little eyes. “Wait a minute. Haven’t I seen you somewhere before? There’s something familiar about you.” He moved closer. “Take off that mask,” he ordered. “Let me see who the devil you are!”
Paine became panic-stricken at the thought of revealing his face. He didn’t stop to think that as long as Burroughs had him at gunpoint anyway, and he couldn’t get away, the old man was bound to find out who he was sooner or later.
He shook his head in unreasoning terror.
“No!” he panted hoarsely, billowing out the handkerchief over his mouth. He even tried to back away, but there was a chair or something in the way, and he couldn’t.
That brought the old man in closer. “Then by golly I’ll take it off for ye!” he snapped. He reached out for the lower triangular point of it. His right hand slanted out of line w
ith Paine’s body as he did so, was no longer exactly covering it with the gun. But the variation was nothing to take a chance on.
Cowardice. Cowardice that spurs you to a rashness the stoutest courage would quail from. Paine didn’t stop to think of the gun. He suddenly hooked onto both the old man’s arms, spread-eagled them. It was such a harebrained chance to take that Burroughs wasn’t expecting it, and accordingly it worked. The gun clicked futilely, pointed up toward the ceiling; it must have jammed, or else the first chamber was empty and Burroughs hadn’t known it.
Paine kept warding that arm off at a wide angle. But his chief concern was the empty hand clawing toward the handkerchief. That he swiveled far downward the other way, out of reach. He twisted the scrawny skin around the old man’s skinny right wrist until pain made the hand flop over open and drop the gun. It fell between them to the floor, and Paine scuffed it a foot or two out of reach with the side of his foot.
Then he locked that same foot behind one of Burroughs’ and pushed him over it. The old man went sprawling backwards on the floor, and the short, unequal struggle was over. Yet even as he went, he was victorious. His down-flung left arm, as Paine released it to send him over, swept up in an arc, clawed, and took the handkerchief with it.
He sprawled there now, cradled on the point of one elbow, breathing malign recognition that was like a knife through Paine’s heart. “You’re Dick Paine, you dirty crook! I know ye now! You’re Dick Paine, my old employee! You’re going to pay for this—”
That was all he had time to say. That was his own death warrant. Paine was acting under such neuromuscular compulsion, brought on by the instinct of self-preservation, that he wasn’t even conscious of stooping to retrieve the fallen gun. The next thing he knew it was in his hand, pointed toward the accusing mouth, which was all he was afraid of.
He jerked the trigger. For the second time it clicked—either jammed or unloaded at that chamber. He was to have that on his conscience afterwards, that click—like a last chance given him to keep from doing what he was about to do. That made it something different, that took away the shadowy little excuse he would have had until now; that changed it from an impulsive act committed in the heat of combat to a deed of cold-blooded, deliberate murder, with plenty of time to think twice before it was committed. And conscience makes cowards of us all. And he was a coward to begin with.
Burroughs even had time to sputter the opening syllables of a desperate plea for mercy, a promise of immunity. True, he probably wouldn’t have kept it.
“Don’t! Paine—Dick, don’t! I won’t say anything. I won’t tell ’em you were here—”
But Burroughs knew who he was. Paine tugged at the trigger, and the third chamber held death in it. This time the gun crashed, and Burroughs’ whole face was veiled in a huff of smoke. By the time it had thinned he was already dead, head on the floor, a tenuous thread of red streaking from the corner of his mouth, as though he had no more than split his lip.
Paine was the amateur even to the bitter end. In the death hush that followed, his first half-audible remark was: “Mr. Burroughs, I didn’t mean to—”
Then he just stared in white-faced consternation. “Now I’ve done it! I’ve killed a man—and they kill you for that! Now I’m in for it!”
He looked at the gun, appalled, as though it alone, and not he, was to blame for what had happened. He picked up the handkerchief, dazedly rubbed at the weapon, then desisted again. It seemed to him safer to take it with him, even though it was Burroughs’ own. He had an amateur’s mystic dread of fingerprints. He was sure he wouldn’t be able to clean it thoroughly enough to remove all traces of his own handling; even in the very act of trying to clean it, he might leave others. He sheathed it in the inner pocket of his coat.
He looked this way and that. He’d better get out of here; he’d better get out of here. Already the drums of flight were beginning to beat in him, and he knew they’d never be silent again.
The cashbox was still standing there on the table where he’d left it, and he went to it, flung the lid up. He didn’t want this money any more; it had curdled for him; it had become bloody money. But he had to have some, at least, to make it easier to keep from getting caught. He didn’t stop to count how much there was in it; there must have been at least a thousand, by the looks of it. Maybe even fifteen or eighteen hundred.
He wouldn’t take a cent more than was coming to him.
He’d only take the two hundred and fifty he’d come here to get. To his frightened mind that seemed to make his crime less heinous, if he contented himself with taking just what was rightfully his. That seemed to keep it from being outright murder and robbery, enabled him to maintain the fiction that it had been just a collection of a debt accompanied by a frightful and unforeseen accident. And one’s conscience, after all, is the most dreaded policeman of the lot.
And furthermore, he realized as he hastily counted it out, thrust the sum into his back trouser pocket, buttoned the pocket down, he couldn’t tell his wife that he’d been here—or she’d know what he’d done. He’d have to make her think that he’d got the money somewhere else. That shouldn’t be hard. He’d put off coming here to see Burroughs night after night; he’d shown her plainly that he hadn’t relished the idea of approaching his former boss. She’d been the one who had kept egging him on.
Only tonight she’d said, “I don’t think you’ll ever carry it out. I’ve about given up hope.”
So what more natural than to let her think that in the end he hadn’t? He’d think up some other explanation to account for the presence of the money; he’d have to. If not right tonight, then tomorrow. It would come to him after the shock of this had worn off a little and he could think more calmly.
Had he left anything around that would betray him, that they could trace to him? He’d better put the cashbox back; there was just a chance that they wouldn’t know exactly how much the old skinflint had had on hand. They often didn’t, with his type. He wiped it off carefully with the handkerchief he’d had around his face, twisted the dial closed on it, dabbed at that. He didn’t go near the window again; he put out the light and made his way out by the front door of the house.
He opened it with the handkerchief and closed it after him again, and after an exhaustive survey of the desolate street, came down off the porch, moved quickly along the front walk, turned left along the gray tape of sidewalk that threaded the gloom, toward the distant trolley line that he wasn’t going to board at this particular stop, at this particular hour.
He looked up once or twice at the star-flecked sky as he trudged along. It was over. That was all there was to it. Just a jealously guarded secret now. A memory that he daren’t share with anyone else, not even Pauline. But deep within him he knew better. It wasn’t over, it was just beginning. That had been just the curtain raiser, back there. Murder, like a snowball rolling down a slope, gathers momentum as it goes.
He had to have a drink. He had to try to drown the damn thing out of him. He couldn’t go home dry with it on his mind. They stayed open until four, didn’t they, places like that? He wasn’t much of a drinker; he wasn’t familiar with details like that. Yes, there was one over there, on the other side of the street. And this was far enough away, more than two-thirds of the way from Burroughs’ to his own place.
It was empty. That might be better; then again it might not. He could be too easily remembered. Well, too late now, he was already at the bar. “A straight whiskey.” The barman didn’t even have time to turn away before he spoke again. “Another one.”
He shouldn’t have done that; that looked suspicious, to gulp it that quick.
“Turn that radio off,” he said hurriedly. He shouldn’t have said that; that sounded suspicious. The barman had looked at him when he did. And the silence was worse, if anything. Unbearable. Those throbbing drums of danger. “Never mind, turn it on again.”
“Make up your mind, mister,” the barman said in mild reproof.
He see
med to be doing all the wrong things. He shouldn’t have come in here at all, to begin with. Well, he’d get out, before he put his foot in it any worse. “How much?” He took out the half-dollar and the quarter that was all he had.
“Eighty cents.”
His stomach dropped an inch. Not that money! He didn’t want to have to bring that out, it would show too plainly on his face. “Most places, they charge thirty-five a drink.”
“Not this brand. You didn’t specify.” But the barman was on guard now, scenting a deadbeat. He was leaning over the counter, right square in front of him, in a position to take in every move he made with his hands.
He shouldn’t have ordered that second drink. Just for a nickel he was going to have to take that whole wad out right under this man’s eyes. And maybe he would remember that tomorrow, after the jumpy way Paine had acted in here!
“Where’s the washroom?”
“That door right back there behind the cigarette machine.” But the barman was now plainly suspicious; Paine could tell that by the way he kept looking at him.
Paine closed it after him, sealed it with his shoulder-blades, unbuttoned his back pocket, riffled through the money, looking for the smallest possible denomination. A ten was the smallest, and there was only one of them; that would have to do. He cursed himself for getting into such a spot.
The door suddenly gave a heave behind him. Not a violent one, but he wasn’t expecting it. It threw him forward off balance. The imperfectly grasped outspread fan of money in his hand went scattering all over the floor. The barman’s head showed through the aperture. He started to say: “I don’t like the way you’re acting. Come on now, get out of my pla—” Then he saw the money.
Burroughs’ gun had been an awkward bulk for his inside coat pocket all along. The grip was too big; it overspanned the lining. His abrupt lurch forward had shifted it. It felt as if it was about to fall out of its own weight. He clutched at it to keep it in.
FOUR NOVELLAS OF FEAR: Eyes That Watch You, The Night I Died, You'll Never See Me Again, Murder Always Gathers Momentum Page 17