The Night People

by Edward D. Hoch

  They heard cars pulling up outside, and doors slamming. “That will be the sheriff,” Father Payne said, “with some of the townspeople. I must warn Jugo.”

  There were voices outside the mission doors now, and a hard knocking. Tokay left the old priest and went out to meet the crowd. The sheriff was in the lead, and old Hakor was by his side.

  “We’ve come for the Mexican,” Hakor said. “The sheriff has a warrant for his arrest.”

  Tokay stood in the doorway, blocking it. He spotted Liz Golden and called to her. “It was your brother who died, Liz. Do you want an innocent man to suffer for the crime?”

  “Only the guilty one,” she replied.

  Then, near the edge of the crowd, Tokay recognized Nat Quarn, the prospector. “What about you, Quarn?” he said. “You were sneaking around here last night. You could have found Jugo’s knife.”

  Quarn stepped forward, his beard spotted with tobacco juice. “If you’re accusing me you’d better be able to prove it! I never even seen that limping boy till after he was dead!”

  “Do you deny you’re treasure-hunting here?”

  Quarn started to answer but Hakor interrupted. “There’s the guilty one now!” he shouted, pointing beyond Tokay to where Jugo had appeared with Father Payne. Suddenly the crowd surged forward and Tokay feared they might break past him.

  But Father Payne spoke to them. “You all know me. Go back to your homes. I give you my word this man is innocent!”

  “Let’s have the Mexican!” someone else shouted, and Tokay saw that it was Sammy, the bartender.

  But as the shouting increased and the mood of the crowd grew more ugly, Liz Golden ran forward to join Tokay on the steps. “Listen—listen, all of you! He was my brother and I have a right to be heard! Don’t do anything you’ll be sorry for later!”

  “We won’t be sorry getting rid of that Mexican!” Hakor cried.

  “You have the knife that killed my brother. Let the Mexican touch it—here, inside the church—and swear to God he is innocent of the murder. If he does that, it will convince me.”

  Tokay had stepped aside and the crowd gradually spilled into the back of the church. The sheriff produced the knife and handed it to her. “Don’t worry about fingerprints,” he said. “A dozen folks handled it before I ever got a look at it.”

  Liz Golden took the knife and looked around for someplace to put it. She decided on a deep wooden box with a hinged and slotted top through which donations for the poor could be dropped. Father Payne emptied it of its few coins and Liz dropped the knife inside. “Now then, Jugo,” she said to the Mexican, “reach inside, grasp the knife and swear by the Lord that you did not kill my brother.”

  Jugo looked at her uncertainly, then shifted his gaze to Tokay and Father Payne. Perhaps it was the grumbling of the crowd that finally decided him. He thrust his hand into the poor box and said, “By the Lord I am innocent of this crime!”

  “What does that prove?” Hakor asked with a snort.

  Liz Golden merely smiled. “Would you like to try it, Mr. Hakor?”

  “Of course not! It’s superstitious nonsense!”

  “I don’t think so. I think it’ll tell us who really killed my brother.”

  Sammy the bartender spoke up. “I’ll take the oath. I don’t want people thinking I killed him because I found the body.”

  He plunged his hand into the box, grasped the knife and said the words. One or two others stepped forward then, and even the sheriff joined in. Finally Hakor was forced to follow them.

  “Satisfied now?” he asked Liz.

  She reached in with a cloth to wipe off the knife. “Who’s next? How about you, Mr. Quarn?”

  The prospector glanced about uncertainly, then stepped forward and thrust his hand into the box. Almost at once he let out a shriek and fell to the floor grasping his hand. “My God! My God—yes, I killed him! I stabbed him! Oh, God!”

  Liz Golden slammed down the lid on the poor box. “There’s your confession. Sheriff—and the real killer of my brother.”

  The sheriff merely gaped. “Why would he kill your brother?”

  Tokay stepped forward, looking down at the man on the floor. “I think I can answer that. We found him prowling around the old church last night, looking for Spanish gold. That’s when he must have stolen the knife from Jugo’s belt. He had nothing against young Randy, but he wanted Jugo arrested for a killing—any killing. You see, Father Payne never leaves the mission, but he did get Jugo off a couple of times when you arrested him. Surely he’d hurry into town if Jugo was charged with murder, and Quarn could search the mission for the Spanish treasure.”

  “Is this true, Quarn?” Hakor asked the man on the floor.

  “Yes, yes! God, do something about my hand!”

  Liz bent over him with a needle. “This antivenin will help.”

  “Help with what?” Hakor asked.

  Liz looked up. “It was the only way I could get a confession out of him. When I wiped off the knife, I left my scorpion in there.”

  Later Tokay asked Father Payne, “What happened to the treasure under the old church?”

  “Stolen long ago. My only treasure is Coronado’s scrolls.”

  “Then I’ll leave them with you. They’ll be safe here.”

  Tokay went outside to find Liz Golden. “Which way are you headed?”

  “Back home to Tucson, after tomorrow morning. Father Payne is having a service for Randy and he’ll be buried here.”

  “Your car’s rented. Turn it in and I’ll drive you back.”

  “All right.”

  “But tell me one thing,” Tokay said. “How did you know Quarn was guilty when you set him up for the scorpion?”

  “He said he’d never seen my brother but he described him as a limping boy. How did he know about the limp if he’d never seen him?”

  “Someone else might have seen Randy and mentioned the limp to Quarn. He might have been completely innocent.”

  “But he wasn’t, was he?”

  The next afternoon, with the scorpion in the cigar box, they left for Tucson together.

  The Price of Wisdom

  THE NIGHTMARE BEGAN ON a Monday in May, when I stepped off the afternoon shuttle flight from Boston and caught a taxi for Martha’s third-floor apartment overlooking Gramercy Park. It was a sunny day in Manhattan and my spirits were high. I’d have two nights with Martha before returning home. With luck I might even take care of the business which was this month’s excuse for the trip.

  Martha Gaddis was my mistress. It’s a word that’s rarely used in these liberated times, but that’s what she was, nevertheless. I didn’t actually support her to the extent of paying the rent on her five-room apartment, but when I made my monthly trips to New York—to check on the diamond merchants along 47th Street or the antique jewelry at the little shops on upper Madison Avenue—she was always there waiting for me.

  Of course my wife Joan didn’t know about Martha Gaddis. She thought I stayed at the apartment of an old army buddy when I was in New York. Maybe she had her suspicions, but if so she never voiced them. It was probably better that way. Having Martha, after all, didn’t mean that I loved Joan any less. Joan was my wife and the mother of our two children. That was one life.

  Martha, and the apartment on Gramercy Park, was another life.

  This day she greeted me at the door, as she always did when I phoned from the airport. I could describe Martha by calling her a chic blonde, but that was only the surface woman. Actually she was an artist and a poet, merging two ill-paying professions into a sort of livelihood. She never asked me for money, though I insisted on leaving her some each month, if only to pay for the groceries I consumed. I didn’t think about what she did in her spare time the rest of the month. If there were other shuttle flights, from Washington or Chicago or Detroit, I didn’t want to know about them.

  “Jeff, darling,” she said in that familiar soft voice, running a hand along my cheek. “It’s been so long!”
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br />   “Only four weeks.”

  “It seems a lifetime.”

  I hung my suitcoat in the front closet and dropped my attaché case on a convenient chair. Then I gave her a long kiss. “It seems a lifetime for me too,” I agreed. “How’ve you been?”

  “Fine. Lonesome.”

  “I wrote you.”

  “One letter in four weeks! I get that much from Con Edison!”

  Traditionally, the first night’s dinner was eaten at her apartment. Martha was a good cook, and this night, as we dined by the window overlooking the park, she was filling me in on the history of the area.

  “Until 1830 it was a farm belonging to a man named Samuel Ruggles,” she said over coffee and dessert. “Then he divided it to form the present park. Most of these houses date from about 1840, and one of them—Number Four—was the home of New York’s mayor, James Harper, in 1844. A few decades later Samuel Tilden, the almost-president of 1876, lived at Number Fifteen. And Edwin Booth the actor was at Number Sixteen.”

  “You should write a book about it,” I told her half in jest. She had a way of going off on subjects like that, pouring out more knowledge than I really cared to hear.

  She started to reply but was interrupted by the buzzer. “Who could that be?”

  “One of your other lovers,” I ventured.

  “Some joke!” She spoke through the intercom, asking who was there, but nobody answered. The buzzing kept on. Finally, in exasperation, she unbolted the door. “They probably want one of the other tenants.”

  Then I heard her scream, not loud, and she tumbled backward through the doorway, landing on the rug. I was out of my chair, crossing the room to her side, when I saw the man in the doorway.

  He wore a stocking mask over his head and carried a small revolver. Behind him was a second man, also masked, who held what looked like a sawed-off shotgun.

  “What in hell is this? Who are you?” I bent over to help Martha.

  “Stay away from her!” the man with the revolver ordered. His voice was brisk and authoritative. “You’re Jeff Michaels, right?”

  The sound of my name on that man’s lips sent a chill through me. This was no random holdup. They were after me and they’d found me. In that wild instant a dozen thoughts crowded my brain. Had Joan learned about Martha and me and sent these people to kill me? No, that was fantastic!

  “I’m Michaels,” I managed to get out. “What do you want?”

  “We’re taking you along. Tell the lady not to call the police if she ever wants to see you alive again.”

  Martha was still on the floor, sheer terror on her face. “Jeff, what do they want?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  The man with the revolver gestured. “You’re being kidnapped, mister. Don’t struggle, do as you’re told, and you won’t be harmed. Otherwise, you’re dead.”

  “Kidnapped! I don’t have any—”

  “Shut up!” While the second man covered me with the shotgun, the first one took out a hypodermic needle. “This won’t hurt you and it won’t knock you out. It’ll just make you a little fuzzy headed and willing to come with us. It’s this or a rap on the head. Take your choice.”

  “What sort of choice is that?” I mumbled. But I didn’t resist when he plunged the needle through my shirt and into my arm.

  “Now tell the lady not to call the police. You don’t want it all over the papers that you were kidnapped from your girlfriend’s apartment, do you?”

  “I—no.” The injection was already beginning to take effect. I turned to Martha. “I’ll be all right. Don’t call the police.”

  “Jeff!”

  “We won’t hurt him, lady, as long as you both behave.”

  Then they slipped on my jacket and hustled me out the door to the elevator. A part of me was past all caring, but another part still hoped someone would see us and raise an alarm.

  They kept me to one side till they saw the elevator was empty, then prodded me in with their guns. We rode down to the basement and they took me out the back door to a waiting car. In the back seat the one with the revolver said, “Now you’ll be blindfolded from here on. If you remove the blindfold and see our faces, or see the place where we take you, we’ll have to kill you. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good!”

  He fitted some sort of goggles over my face that effectively blocked all vision. Then he ordered me onto the floor of the back seat and covered me with a blanket. We drove for about a half hour, as near as I could tell, but in my drugged state it might have been longer. It was impossible to concentrate on direction, or even to determine whether or not we passed over a bridge going out of Manhattan.

  Presently the car stopped and the revolver prodded me once more. “We’re here. No tricks now.”

  They led me inside a building and up several flights of stairs. I tried to listen for sounds but I heard nothing. It was an apartment somewhere in the city, but I could tell no more. The floor was bare, without even a rug, and in the room where I was to be kept there seemed to be no bed. “You’ll use that sleeping bag,” the man’s voice told me. “If your wife pays off, it won’t be for long.”

  The drug was beginning to wear off, and I tried to reason with him. “Look, this diamond ring I’m wearing is worth two thousand dollars. Take it, and my watch and wallet. Then let me go.”

  “We’re after far bigger stakes, Michaels. Pretty soon we’re going to phone your wife in Boston and you’ll tell her what we want.”

  “What’s that? I’m not a wealthy man.”

  “You’re wealthy enough for us. We know all about your jewelry business.”

  I realized it had all been carefully planned. “How much do you want?” I asked at last.

  “A quarter of a million dollars in uncut rubies.”

  “Rubies!”

  “We have a market for them overseas, and we know they’re available through your business. Your wife will phone the manager tomorrow and convey your instructions. If he won’t surrender the gems, you may have to phone him too. Your wife will package them as we instruct and fly to New York tomorrow afternoon. The package will be left in a ladies’ room at LaGuardia Airport. Your wife will board the next shuttle flight back to Boston. Once the rubies are safely in our hands, without police interference, you’ll be released.”

  A little later they made their call. The telephone was thrust into my hands and I heard Joan’s puzzled voice on the other end. “Jeff? What is it?”

  Trying to keep my voice calm, I answered, “Don’t get excited. I’ve been kidnapped.”

  “What!”

  “Calm yourself, Joan. I’m in no danger if you do exactly what they tell you. And don’t call the police.”

  “My God, Jeff! What do they want?”

  “A quarter million dollars in uncut rubies. You’ll have to get them from the company vault and fly to New York with them tomorrow. This man will tell you exactly what to do.”

  My captor took the phone and spoke distinctly. “We won’t contact you again, Mrs. Michaels, so listen carefully.” He outlined the procedure to be followed, including the plane she should take the next day and the place where the package should be left. “There’s a wastebasket for paper towels. Wrap the package in a couple of paper towels and drop it in. Then leave immediately and take the shuttle back to Boston.”

  “I—I don’t think I can get the rubies that soon,” Joan said. I could hear her voice coming from the receiver.

  “Your husband will call his manager and take care of that. You just pick them up.”

  “Can I talk to him again?”

  “Do as you’re told and he’ll be free by tomorrow night. Otherwise he’ll be dead.”

  He hung up but I could feel his presence near me still. “We’d better call your manager and arrange for the pickup of the rubies. We don’t want any slips.”

  I talked to George Franklin on the phone and told him what had happened, emphasizing he must not call the police. He was a frig
htened little man at the best of times, and the news of my kidnapping completely unnerved him.

  “A quarter million uncut!” he protested. “I don’t think we have that much in rubies.”

  “Then get them! Draw some money out of the special account and buy them from Craig or Morton. They’ll have enough to make up the difference.”

  “All right.” He sounded reluctant.

  “These men mean business, George.”

  “All right,” he repeated.

  After the phone calls they handcuffed me and gave me another injection, putting me into the sleeping bag for the night. I slept better than I’d expected, helped no doubt by the powerful tranquilizing drug. When I awakened in the morning they brought me a light breakfast—orange juice in a plain water glass and a piece of toast on a paper plate.

  I could tell nothing about my surroundings, though occasional street noises penetrated the room. Sitting on the floor with my meager breakfast, I might have been on another planet. I knew that one of the two men was in the room, watching me, and since he didn’t speak I suspected it was the silent one with the shotgun.

  I found myself feeling for the walls, trying to leave a mark that might be identified later. But they were smoothly painted and any smudges I might make could easily be wiped away. In my hands were a paper plate that would be disposed of and a water glass.

  The glass was my only chance to leave some sign, and it was a slim one. I waited till I heard my captor step out of the room momentarily and then I finished the juice and turned the glass upside down. Working quickly, I used my diamond ring to scratch a crude JM on the bottom of the glass. I couldn’t see how successful I was, of course. It might not show at all—or it might be so obvious they’d see it at once and throw away the glass. But it was my only chance.