Darkness at dawn : early suspense classics

by Woolrich, Cornell

  “Well, you’ve danced her into her grave,” said Smitty bitterly. “If I was you I’d go out and stick both my feet under the first trolley-car that came along and hold them there until it went by. It might make a man of you!”

  He went out and found the ambulance doctor in the act of leaving. “What was it, her heart?”

  The A.D. favored him with a peculiar look, starting at the floor and ending at the top of his head. “Why wouldn’t it be? Nobody’s heart keeps going with a seven- or eight-inch metal pencil jammed into it.”

  He unfolded a handkerchief to reveal a slim coppery cylinder, tapering to needle-like sharpness at the writing end, where the case was pointed over the lead to protect it. It was aluminimi—encrusted blood was what gave it its copper sheen. Smitty nearly dropped it in consternation—not because of what it had done but because he had missed seeing it.

  “And another thing,” went on the A.D. “You’re new to this sort of thing, aren’t you? Well, just a friendly tip. No offense, but you don’t call an ambulance that long afl^er they’ve gone, our time is too val—”

  “I don’t getcha,” said Smitty impatiently. “She needed help; who am I supposed to ring in, potter’s field, and have her buried before she’s quit breathing?”

  This time the look he got was withering. “She was past help hours ago.” The doctor scanned his wrist. “It’s five now. She’s been dead since three, easily. I can’t tell you when exactly, but your friend the medical examiner’ll tell you whether I’m right or not. I’ve seen too many of ‘em in my time. She’s been gone two hours anyhow.”

  Smitty had taken a step back, as though he were afraid of the guy. “I came in here at four thirty,” he stammered excitedly, “and she was dancing on that floor there—I saw her with my own eyes—fifteen, twenty minutes ago!” His face was slightly sallow.

  “I don’t care whether you saw her dancin’ or saw her doin’ double-hand-springs on her left ear, she was dead!” roared the ambulance man testily. “She was celebrating her own wake then, if you insist!” He took a look at Smitty’s horrified face, quieted down, spit emphatically out of one comer of his mouth, and remarked: “Somebody was dancing with her dead body, that’s all. Pleasant dreams, kid!”

  Smitty started to bum slowly. “Somebody was,” he agreed, gritting his teeth. “I know who Somebody is, too. His number was Fourteen until a little while ago; well, it’s Thirteen from now on!”

  He went in to look at her again, the doctor whose time was so valuable trailing along. “From the back, eh? That’s how I missed it. She was lying on it the first time I came in and looked.”

  “I nearly missed it myself,” the intern told him. “I thought it was a boil at first. See this little pad of gauze? It had been soaked in alcohol and laid over it. There was absolutely no external flow of blood, and the pencil didn’t protrude, it was in up to the hilt. In fact I had to use forceps to get it out. You can see for yourself, the clip that fastens to the wearer’s pocket, which would have stopped it halfway, is missing. Probably broken off long before.”

  “I can’t figure it,” said Smitty. “If it went in up to the hilt, what room was there left for the grip that sent it home?”

  “Must have just gone in an inch or two at first and stayed there,” suggested the intern. “She probably killed herself on it by keeling over backwards and hittin the floor or the wall, driving it the rest of the way in.” He got to his feet. “Well, the pleasure’s all yours.” He flipped a careless salute and left.

  “Send the old crow in that had charge in here,” Smitty told the cop.

  The old woman came in fumbling with her hands, as though she had the seven-day itch.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Josephine Falvey—Mrs. Josephine Falvey.” She couldn’t keep her eyes off what lay on the floor.

  “It don’t matter after you’re forty,” Smitty assured her drily. “What’d you bandage that wound up for? D’you know that makes you an accessory to a crime?”

  “I didn’t do no such a—” she started to deny whitely.

  He suddenly thrust the postage-stamp of folded gauze, rusty on one side, under her nose. She cawed and jumped back. He followed her retreat. “You didn’t stick this on? C’mon, answer me!”

  “Yeah, I did!” she cackled, almost jumping up and down. “I did, I did—but I didn’t mean no harm. Honest, mister, I—”

  “When’d you do it?”

  “The last time, when you made me and the girl bring her in here. Up to then I kept rubbing her face with alcohol each time he brought her back to the door, but it didn’t seem to help her any. I knew I should of gone out and reported it to Pastemack, but he—that feller you know—begged me not to. He begged me to give them a break and not get them ruled out. He said it didn’t matter if she acted all limp that way, that she was just dazed. And an5rway, there wasn’t so much difference between her and the rest any more, they were all acting dopy like that. Then after you told me to bring her in the last time, I stuck my hand down the back of her dress and I felt something hard and round, like a carbuncle or berl, so I put a little gauze application over it. And then me and her decided, as long as the contest was over an5rway, we better go out and tell you—”

  “Yeah,” he scoffed, “and I s’pose if I hadn’t shown up she’d still be dancing around out there, until the place needed disinfecting! When was the first time you noticed anything the matter with her?”

  She babbled: “About two thirty, three o’clock. They were all in here—the place was still crowded—and someone knocked on the door. He was standing out there with her in his arms and he passed her to me and whispered, ‘Look after her, will you?’ That’s when he begged me not to tell anyone. He said he’d—” She stopped.

  “Go on!” snapped Smitty.

  “He said he’d cut me in on the thousand if they won it. Then when the whistle blew and they all went out again, he was standing there waiting to take her back in his arms—and off he goes with her. They all had to be helped out by that time, anyway, so nobody noticed anything wrong. After that, the same thing happened each time— until you came. But I didn’t dream she was dead.” She crossed herself. “If I’da thought that, you couldn’t have got me to touch her for love nor money—”

  “I’ve got my doubts,” Smitty told her, “about the money part of that, anyway. Outside—and consider yourself a material witness.”

  If the old crone was to be believed, it had happened outside on the dance floor under the bright arc lights, and not in here. He was pretty sure it had, at that. Monahan wouldn’t have dared try to force his way in here. The screaming of the other occupants would have blown the roof off. Secondly, the very fact that the floor had been more crowded at that time than later had helped cover it up. They’d probably quarreled when she tried to quit. He’d whipped out the pencil and struck her while she clung to him. She’d either fallen and killed herself on it, and he’d picked her up again immediately before anyone noticed, or else the Falvey woman had handled her carelessly in the washroom and the impaled pencil had reached her heart.

  Smitty decided he wanted to know if any of the feminine entries had been seen to fall to the floor at any time during the evening. Pasternack had been in his office from ten on, first giving out publicity items and then taking a nap, so Smitty put him back on the shelf. Moe, however, came across beautifully.

  “Did I see anyone fall?” he echoed shrilly. “Who didn’t? Such a commotion you never saw in your life. About half-past two. Right when we were on the air, too.”

  “Gro on, this is getting good. What’d he do, pick her right up again?”

  “Pick her up! She wouldn’t get up. You couldn’t go near her! She just sat there swearing and screaming and throwing things. I thought we’d have to send for the police. Finally they sneaked up behind her and hauled her off on her fanny to the bleachers and disqualified her—”

  “Wa-a-ait a minute,” gasped Smitty. “Who you talking about?”

 
Moe looked surprised. “That Standish dame, who else? You saw her, the one with the bum pin. That was when she sprained it and couldn’t dance any more. She wouldn’t go home. She hung around saying she was framed and gypped and we couldn’t get rid of her—”

  “Wrong number,” said Smitty disgustedly. “Back where you came from.” And to the cop: “Now we’ll get down to brass tacks. Let’s have a crack at Monahan—”

  He was thumbing his notebook with studied absorption when the fellow was shoved in the door. “Be right with you,” he said offhandedly, tapping his pockets, “soon as I jot down—Lend me your pencil a minute, will you?”

  “I—I had one, but I lost it,” said Monahan dully.

  “How come?” asked Smitty quietly.

  “Fell out of my pocket, I guess. The clip was broken.”

  “This it?”

  The fellow’s eyes grew big, while it almost touched their lashes, twirling from left to right and right to left. “Yeah, but what’s the matter with it, what’s it got on it?”

  “You asking me that?” leered Smitty. “Come on, show me how you did it!”

  Monahan cowered back against the wall, looked from the body on the floor to the pencil, and back again. “Oh no,” he moaned, “no. Is that what happened to her? I didn’t even know—”

  “Guys as innocent as you rub me the wrong way,” said Smitty. He reached for him, hauled him out into the center of the room, and then sent him flying back again. His head bonged the door and the cop looked in inquiringly. “No, I didn’t knock,” said Smitty, “that was just his dome.” He sprayed a little of the alcohol into Monahan’s stunned face and hauled him forward again. “The first peep out of you was, ‘I killed her.’ Then you keeled over. Later on you kept saying, ‘I’m to blame, I’m to blame.’ Why try to back out now?”

  “But I didn’t mean I did anything to her,” wailed Monahan. “I thought I killed her by dancing too much. She was all right when I helped her in here about two. Then when I came back for her, the old dame whispered she couldn’t wake her up. She said maybe the motion of dancing would bring her to. She said, ‘You want that thousand dollars, don’t you? Here, hold her up, no one’ll be any the wiser.’ And I listened to her like a fool and faked it from then on.”

  Smitty sent him hurling again, “Oh, so now it’s supposed to have happened in here—with your pencil, no less! Quit trying to pass the buck!”

  The cop, who didn’t seem to be very bright, again opened the door, and Monahan came sprawling out at his feet. “Greez, what a hard head he must have,” he remarked.

  “Go over and start up that phonograph over there,” ordered Smitty. “We’re going to have a little demonstration—of how he did it. If banging his conk against the door won’t bring back his memory, maybe dancing with her will do it.” He hoisted Monahan upright by the scruff of the neck. “Which pocket was the pencil in?”

  The man motioned toward his breast. Smitty dropped it in point first. The cop fitted the needle into the groove and threw the switch. A blare came from the amplifier. “Pick her up and hold her,” grated Smitty.

  An animal-like moan was the only answer he got. The man tried to back away. The cop threw him forward again. “So you won’t dance, eh?”

  “I won’t dance,” gasped Monahan.

  When they helped him up from the floor, he would dance.

  “You held her like that dead, for two solid hours,” Smitty reminded him. “Why mind an extra five minutes or so?”

  The moving scarecrow crouched down beside the other inert scarecrow on the floor. Slowly his arms went around her. The two scarecrows rose to their feet, tottered drunkenly together, then moved out of the doorway into the open in time to the music. The cop began to perspire.

  Smitty said: “Any time you’re willing to admit you done it, you can quit.”

  “God forgive you for this!” said a tomb-like voice.

  “Take out the pencil,” said Smitty, “without letting go of her—like you did the first time.”

  “This is the first time,” said that hollow voice. “The time before—it dropped out.” His right hand slipped slowly away from the corpse’s back, dipped into his pocket.

  The others had come out of Pastemack’s office, drawn by the sound of the macabre music, and stood huddled together, horror and unbehef written all over their weary faces. A comer of the bleachers hid both Smitty and the cop from them; all they could see was that grisly couple moving slowly out into the center of the big floor, alone under the funeral heliotrope arc light. Monahan’s hand suddenly went up, with something gleaming in it; stabbed down again and was hidden against his partner’s back. There was an unearthly howl and the girl with the turned ankle fell flat on her face amidst the onlookers.

  Smitty signaled the cop; the music suddenly broke off. Monahan and his partner had come to a halt again and stood there like they had when the contest first ended, upright, tent-shaped, feet far apart, heads locked together. One pair of eyes was as glazed as the other now.

  “All right, break, break!” said Smitty.

  Monahan was clinging to her with a silent, terrible intensity as though he could no longer let go.

  The Standish girl had sat up, but promptly covered her eyes with both hands and was shaking all over as if she had a chill.

  “I want that girl in here,” said Smitty. “And you, Moe. And the old lady.”

  He closed the door on the three of them. “Let’s see that book of entries again.”

  Moe handed it over jumpily.

  “Sylvia Standish, eh?” The girl nodded, still sucking in her breath from the fright she’d had.

  “Toodles McGuire was Rose Lamont—now what’s your real name?” He thumbed at the old woman. “What are you two to each other?”

  The girl looked away. “She’s my mother, if you gotta know,” she said.

  “Might as well admit it, it’s easy enough to check up on,” he agreed. “I had a hunch there was a tie-up like that in it somewhere. You were too ready to help her carry the body in here the first time.” He turned to the cringing Moe. “I understood you to say she carried on like nobody’s never-mind when she was ruled out, had to be hauled off the floor by main force and wouldn’t go home. Was she just a bum loser, or what was her grievance?”

  “She claimed it was done purposely,” said Moe. “Me, I got my doubts. It was like this. That girl the feller killed, she had on a string of glass beads, see? So the string broke and they rolled all over the floor under everybody’s feet. So this one, she slipped on ‘em, fell and turned her ankle and couldn’t dance no more. Then she starts hollering blue murder.” He shrugged. “What should we do, call off the contest because she couldn’t dance no more?”

  “She did it purposely,” broke in the girl hotly, “so she could hook the award herself! She knew I had a better chance than anyone else—”

  “I suppose it was while you were sitting there on the floor you picked up the pencil Monahan had dropped,” Smitty said casually.

  “I did like hell! It fell out in the bleachers when he came over to apolo—” She stopped abruptly. “I don’t know what pencil you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t worry about a little slip-up like that,” Smitty told her. “You’re down for it an)^way—and have been ever since you folded up out there just now. You’re not telling me anything I don’t know already.”

  “Anyone woulda keeled over; I thought I was seeing her ghost—”

  “That ain’t what told me. It was seeing him pretend to do it that told me he never did it. It wasn’t done outside at all, in spite of what your old lady tried to hand me. Know why? The pencil didn’t go through her dress. There’s no hole in the back of her dress. Therefore she had her dress off and was cooling off when it happened. Therefore it was done here in the restroom. For Monahan to do it outside he would have had to hitch her whole dress up almost over her head in front of everybody—and maybe that wouldn’t have been noticed!

  “He never came in here af
ter her; your own mother would have been the first one to squawk for help. You did, though. She stayed a moment after the others. You came in the minute they cleared out and stuck her with it. She fell on it and killed herself. Then your old lady tried to cover you by putting a pad on the wound and giving Monahan the idea she was stupefied from fatigue. When he began to notice the coldness, if he did, he thought it was from the alcohol rubs she was getting every rest-period. I guess he isn’t very bright anyway—a guy like that, that dances for his coffee-and. He didn’t have any motive. He wouldn’t have done it even if she wanted to quit, he’d have let her. He was too penitent later on when he thought he’d tired her to death. But you had all the motive I need—those broken beads, (retting even for what you thought she did. Have I left anything out?” “Yeah,” she said curtly, “look up my sleeve and tell me if my hat’s on straight!”

  On the way out to the Black Maria that had backed up to the entrance, with the two Falvey women, Pastemack, Moe, and the other four dancers marching single file ahead of him, Smitty called to the cop: “Where’s Monahan? Bring him along!”

  The cop came up mopping his brow. “I finally pried him loose,” he said, “when they came to take her away, but I can’t get him to stop laughing. He’s been laughing ever since. I think he’s lost his mind. Makes your blood run cold. Look at that!”

  Monahan was standing there, propped against the wall, a lone figure under the arc light, his arms still extended in the half-embrace in which he had held his partner for nine days and nights, while peal after peal of macabre mirth came from him, shaking him from head to foot.