Darkness at dawn : early suspense classics

by Woolrich, Cornell

  Weeks ran his hand across his forehead. “Coming in, no,” he said. “The street was dead, they were all down at the beach or on the boardwalk. The depot I’m not sure about, some of the redcaps might know me by sight-“

  “But they only see you one day every week. They might get mixed up after a day or two in remembering just the exact day. We gotta take a chance. And make sure they see you tomorrow when you do come down, that’ll cover today. Talk to one of them, lose something, stumble and get helped up, anything at all. Now about the train. The conductor must know you by sight—”

  Weeks’ face brightened all of a sudden, as the idea began to catch on, take hold of him. The self-preservation instinct isn’t easily suppressed. He grasped his son by the lapel of his coat. “Larry,” he said eagerly, “I just remembered—my commutation ticket—”

  Larry’s face paled again. “And I,” he groaned, “forgot all about that. The date’ll be punched—^we can’t get around that—”

  The Corpse and the Kid I 193

  “No, wait a minute. Just today—something that never happened before all summer—my mind was haj^re I guess on account of what I’d found out—but when I got to Penn Station I found I didn’t have it with me, I’d left it at the office. I had to buy an ordinary ticket to get down here—”

  “Then it’s a push-over!” exclaimed Larry. “It’s a Godsend. It’d be a crime not to take advantage of a break like that. Doesn’t it convince you what the best thing to do is? If I were superstitious I’d call it—” He stopped short. “Wait a minute, round-trip I hope? Or will you have to step up and buy a return ticket at this end?”

  “It’s here,” panted Weeks, fumbling in his coat. “I was burning so, I didn’t even notice—” He dragged it out and they both gave a simultaneous sigh of relief. “Swell,” said Larry. “That unpunched commutation ticket is going to be an A-one alibi in itself. Hang onto it whatever you do. But we’ll fix it all up brown. Can you get hold of someone in the city to pass the evening with you—or better still two or three friends?”

  “I can get in touch with Fred German. He always rolls up a gang of stay-outs as he goes along.”

  “Go to a show with ‘em, bend the elbow, get a little lit, stay with them as late as you possibly can manage it. And before you leave them—not after but before, so they all can see and hear you—call me long-distance down here. That means your name’ll go down on the company’s records from that end. I’ll have your cue ready for you by that time. If she’s not dead yet, then the rotgut made you sentimental and you wanted to talk to your family, that’s all. But if I have everything under control by that time, then I’ll have bad news for you then and there. You can stage a cloudburst in front of them and continue under your own speed from that point on. But until that happens, watch your step. Keep the soft pedal on. Don’t be jerky and nervous and punchy. Don’t give ‘em an idea you’ve got anything on your mind. The better you know people, the better they can tell when something’s wrong with you. Now all that is your job. Mine”—he drew in his breath—“is upstairs. Got your hat?” He took out his watch. “Get back to the station, the six o’clock pulls out in ten minutes. They’re starting to drift back from the beach, so go to Charlton Street, one over, and keep your head down. Don’t look at anyone. Thank God she wasn’t much on getting acquainted with her neighbors—” He was leading him toward the door as he spoke.

  “What’re you going to do?” asked Weeks with bated voice.

  “I don’t know,” said Larry, “but I don’t want an audience for it, whatever it is. All I need is darkness, and thinking how swell you’ve been to me all my life—and I can do the rest, I’ll pull through. Stand behind the door a minute till I take a squint.” He opened the door, sauntered out on the bungalow doorstep, and looked casually up in one direction, then down in the other, as though seeking a breath of air. Then suddenly he was back in again, pushing his father irresistibly before him. “Hurry up, not a living soul in sight. It may not be this way again for the rest of the evening. They all sit on their porches after dark—”

  Weeks’ body suddenly stiffened, held back. “No, I can’t do it, can’t let you! What am I thinking of anyway, letting my own son hold the bag for me? If they nab you doing this they’ll hang it on you—”

  “Do you want to die at Trenton?” Larry asked him fiercely. The answer was on Weeks’ face, would have been on anyone’s face. “Then lemme do it my way!” They gripped hands for a second. Something like a sob sounded in Weeks’ throat. Then he was over the threshold and Larry was pushing the door silently after him.

  Just before it met the frame Weeks pivoted abruptly, jumped back, and rammed his foot into the opening. There was a new urgency in his voice. “Helen. I see her coming! She just turned the comer!”

  “Get back in!” snapped Larry. “Can’t make it now. Her eyes are too good, she’ll spot you even from a distance.” He closed the door on the two of them. “He with her?”

  “No.”

  “Then they missed connections. I’ll send her right out again after him.” He swore viciously. “If you’re not out of here in five minutes, you don’t make that train—and the later you get back the riskier it gets. As it is, you have three hours you can’t account for. Here—the clothes closet—be ready to light out the first chance you get. It’s just a step to the door.”

  Weeks, pulling the door of the hall closet after him, murmured: “Don’t you think the kid would—”

  The Corpse and the Kid I 195

  All Larry said was: “She was pretty chummy with Doris.”

  Her key was already jiggling in the front door. Larry seemed to be coming toward it as she got it open and they met face to face. She was in her bathing suit. He’d overlooked that when he’d spoken to her boy friend. He swore again, silently this time.

  “Who was that came to the door just now, before I got here?” she asked.

  “Me,” he said curtly. “Who’d you think?”

  “I know, I saw you, but I thought I saw someone else too, a minute later. It looked like two people from where I was.”

  “Well, it wasn’t,” he snapped. “Whatta ya been drinking?”

  “Oh, grouchy again.” She started for the stairs. “Doris back yet?”

  “No,” he said firmly.

  “Grood, then I can swipe some of her face powder while she’s out.” She ran lightly up the stairs. He went cold for a minute, then he passed her like a bullet passing an arrow. He was standing in front of the door with his back to it when she turned down the upstairs corridor. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked dryly. “Feel playful?” She tried to elbow him aside.

  “Lay off,” he said huskily. “She raised Cain just before she went out about your helping yourself to her things, said she wants it stopped.” He got the key out of the door behind his back and dropped it into his back pocket.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said. “That isn’t like her at all. I’m going to ask her to her face when she comes ba—” She rattled the doorknob unsuccessfully, gave him a surprised look.

  “See, what’d I tell you?” he murmured. “She must have locked it and taken the key with her.” He moved down the hall again, as if going to his own room.

  “If it was already locked,” she called after him, “why did you jump up here in such a hurry to keep me out?”

  He had an answer for that one though, too. “I didn’t want you to find out. It’s hell when trouble starts between the women of a family.”

  “Maybe I’m crazy,” she said, “but I have the funniest feeling that there’s something going on around here today—everything’s suddenly different from what it is other days. What was the idea freezing Gordon out when he tried to call for me?”

  She had stopped before her own door, which was next to their stepmother’s. He was nearer the stair-well than she was, almost directly over it. From below came the faint double click of a door as it opened then shut again. Even he could hardly hear it, she certainly couldn�
��t. The front door—he’d made it. Larry straight-armed himself against the stair railing and let a lot of air out of his lungs. He was trembling in strange places, at the wrists and in back of his knees. It was his job now. He was scared sick of it, but he was going to do it.

  Without turning his head he knew she was standing there up the hall, watching him, waiting. What the hell was she waiting for? Oh yes, she’d asked him a question, she was waiting for the answer. That was it. Absently he gave it to her. “You weren’t here, I only told him where to find you.” She went into her room and banged the door shut.

  And with that sound something suddenly exploded in his brain. The connecting bathroom, between her room and Doris’s! She could get in through there! Not only could but most certainly would, out of sheer stubbornness now, because she thought Doris was trying to keep her out. Women were that way. And when she did—there in full view upon the bed, what he had seen, what his own loyalty had been strong enough to condone, but what might prove too much for hers. He couldn’t take the chance. His father’s life was at stake, he couldn’t gamble with that. It had to be a sure thing—

  He dove back to that door again and whipped the key from his pocket. He got the door open as quietly as he could, but he was in too much of a hurry and it was too close to her own room to be an altogether soundless operation. Then when he was in, with the twisted body in full view, he saw what had covered him. She was in the bathroom already, but she had the water roaring into the washbasin and that kept her from hearing. But the door between was already open about a foot, must have been that way all afternoon. Just one look was all that was needed, just one look in without even opening it any more than it already was. She hadn’t given that look yet. He could be sure of that because her scream would have told him, but any minute now, any fraction of a second— He could see her in the mirror. She had the straps of her bathing suit down and was rinsing her face with cold water.

  There was no time to get the body out of the room altogether. He didn’t dare try. That much movement, the mere lifting and carrying of it, would surely attract her attention. And the long hall outside— where could he take it? The thought of trying deftly to compose and rearrange it where it lay, into the semblance of taking a nap, came to him for a moment and was rejected too. There wasn’t time enough for that, and anyway he’d already told her she was out. All this in the two or three stealthy cat-like steps that took him from the door to the side of the bed.

  As he reached it he already knew what the only possible thing to do was, for the time being. Even to get it into the clothes closet was out of the question. It meant crossing the room with it, and then clothes hangers have a way of rattling and clicking.

  He dropped to his knees, crouched below the level of the bed on the side away from the bathroom, pulled the corpse toward him by one wrist and one ankle, and as it dropped off the side, his own body broke its fall. It dropped heavily athwart his thighs. The way the arms and legs retained their posture betokened rigor already, but made it easier to handle if anything. From where it was, across his lap, two good shoves got it under the bed and he left it there. It was a big enough bed to conceal it completely, unless you got down on the floor where he was.

  Under and beyond the bed, on a level with his eyes, he could see the threshold of the bathroom. While he looked, and before there was any chance to scurry across the room to the hall door, Helen’s feet and ankles came into view. They paused there for a moment, toes pointed his way, and he quickly flattened himself out, chin on floor. She was looking in. But she couldn’t see under the bed, nor beyond it to the other side where he was, without bending over. And only old maids, he thought with a dismal chuckle, look under beds the first thing when they come into a room.

  He held his breath. Maybe she’d go away again, now that she’d glanced in. But she didn’t. The bare ankles in house-slippers crossed the threshold into the room. They came directly over toward him, growing bigger, like in a nightmare, as they drew nearer. They stopped on the other side of the bed from him, so close that her knees must be touching it. And one slipper was an inch away from Doris’s rigidly outstretched hand. Oh my God, he thought, if she looks down at the floor—or if she comes around to this side!

  What did she want there by the bed, what did she see, what was she looking at? Was there blood on it? No, there couldn’t be, no skin had been broken, only her neck. Had something belonging to the dead woman been left on the bed, something he’d overlooked, a ring maybe or a necklace?

  The bedclothes on his side brushed his face suddenly, moved upward a little. The danger signal went all over his body like an electric shock, until he understood. Oh, that was it! In dislodging the body he’d dragged them down a little. Woman-like she was smoothing the covers out again, tugging them back in place. Her feet shifted down toward the foot a little, then back toward the head again, as she completed her task. Momentarily he expected to see one of them go in too far and come down on the dead flesh of that upturned palm. Momentarily he expected her to come around to his side. Or even see him over the top of the bed, if she leaned too far across it. He lived hours in those few seconds. But she didn’t do any of those things.

  The feet turned, showed him their heels, and started back across the room growing smaller again. He was too prostrated even to sigh, he just lay there with his mouth open like a fish. She didn’t go out, though. The feet skipped the opening to the bathroom and stopped before Doris’s dresser over to one side. Helping herself to the face powder. But now she had a mirror in front of her, damn it! And he knew what mirrors were. If, for instance, it was tilted at a slight angle, it would show her the floor behind her—better than she could see it herself. Like a periscope in reverse, it might even reveal what lay under the bed, what her own unaided eyes would never have shown her.

  He heard the thud of Doris’s powder-box as she put it down again. He waited for the scream that would surely come as she raised her eyes to the quicksilver before her. He lay there tense, as rigid as that other form next to him even if a little warmer. He wondered why he didn’t get it over with by jumping up and showing himself, saying,

  Tfie Corpse and the Kid I 199

  “Yes, I’m here—and look what’s beside me!” But he didn’t. The time to do that had been when she first came in downstairs. That time was past now. There was no going back.

  And then just when he’d quit hoping, there was a little shuffling sound and her feet had carried her back over the threshold and out of the room, and he was alone with the dead.

  He couldn’t get up for a while—even though he knew that right now was the best time, while she was busy dressing in her own room, to get out of there. He felt weak all over. When he finally did totter upright it wasn’t to the outside door that he went but to the one to the bathroom.

  He carefully eased it shut and locked it on his side. Let her suspect what she wanted, she wasn’t going to get back in there again until the grisly evidence was out of the way! And that would have to wait until she was out of the house. He cursed her bitterly, and her pal Gordon even more so, for unknowingly adding to his troubles like this. He even cursed the dead woman for not dissolving into thin air once she was dead. He cursed everyone but the man who was by now speeding back to New York and safety; he was loyal to him to the last breath in his body. He went out into the hall and once more locked the dead woman’s door behind him, once more extracted the key.

  Just as he got in the clear once more, the phone started downstairs. It wasn’t New York yet, too early. The train hadn’t even gotten there yet. Helen stuck her head out of her room and called: “If it’s Grordon, tell him I’m ready to leave now, not to be so impatient!” But it wasn’t Gordon. It was an older voice, asking for Doris. The masculine “hello” Larry gave it seemed to leave it at a loss. Larry caught right on; he did some quick thinking. She’d been ready to leave an hour ago, she’d been going to this voice, and had never gotten there because death had stopped her in her own room. Still, an hou
r isn’t much to a pretty woman—or to the man who’s smitten with her.

  Larry thought savagely, “It was your party. You’re going to pay for it!” He tried to make his voice sound boyish, cordial. “She’s gone out,” he said with a cheerful ring, “but she left a message in case anyone called up for her. Only I don’t know if you’re the right party—”

  “Who is this speaking?” said the voice suspiciously.

  “I’m Helen’s boy friend.” That ought to be all right. He must know by now that Doris had been pretty thick with Helen, that therefore any friends of the latter would be neutral, not hostile like himself

  The voice was still cagey though. “How is it you’re there alone?”

  “I’m not. Helen’s here with me, but she’s upstairs dressing. Can’t come to the phone, so she asked me to give the message—”

  “What is it? This is the right party,” the voice bit in.

  “Well, Mrs. Weeks was called out this afternoon. Some people dropped in from the city and she couldn’t get away from them. She said if anyone called, to say she’d gone to the Pine Tree Inn for dinner. You know where that is?” Why wouldn’t he? Larry himself had seen the two of them dancing there more than once, and had promptly backed out again in a hurry each time.

  But the voice wasn’t committing itself. “I think so—it’s a little way out on the road to Lakewood, isn’t it?”

  “You can’t miss it,” said Larry pointedly. “It’s got a great big sign that lights up the road.”

  The voice caught on. “Oh, then she’s going to wai— Then she’ll be there?”

  “These people are only passing through, they’re not staying. She’ll be free at about nine thirty. You see they’re not bringing her back, so she thought if you wanted to pick her up with your car out there— Otherwise she’d have to phone for a taxi and wait until it got out there.”