Darkness at dawn : early suspense classics

by Woolrich, Cornell

  All I needed was just about an hour—hour and a half—until I could get that New York train. Kelly’s friends might still be covering the station, police or no police, but how were they going to pick me out in broad daylight? I certainly wasn’t wearing Kelly’s face, even if I was wearing his clothes. But the station waiting-room was too conspicuous a spot. The way to do it was hop on at the last minute when the train was already under way.

  I saw a light through plate glass, and went into another of those all-night beaneries; sitting mum in there was a shade less risky than roaming the streets until I was picked up. I went as far to the back as I could, got behind a bend in the wall, and ordered everything in sight to give myself an excuse for staying awhile. It was all I could do to swallow the stuff, but just as I had about cleaned it up and had no more alibi left, a kid came in selling the early morning editions. I grabbed one and buried my nose in it.

  It was a good thing I’d bought it. What I read once more changed the crazy pattern of my plans that I was trying to follow through like a man caught in a maze.

  I was on the last page, just two or three lines buried in the middle of a column of assorted mishaps that had taken place during the previous twenty-four hours. I’d been found dead on the tracks. I was thirty-three, unemployed, and lived at 35 Meadowbrook. And that was that.

  But the murder at the Columbia Hotel was splashed across page one. And Mr. George Kelly was very badly wanted by the police for questioning, not only about who his callers had been so they could be nailed for killing the clerk, but also about brand new twenty-dollar bills that had been popping up all over town for the past week or more. There might be some connection, the police seemed to feel, with a certain bank robbery in Omaha. Kelly might be someone named Hogan, and Hogan had been very badly wanted for a long time. Then again Kelly might not be. The descriptions of the twenty dollar bill spendthrift that were coming in didn’t always tally, but the serial numbers on his money all checked with the list that had been sent out by the bank.

  The picture of Kelly given by a haberdashery clerk who had sold him shirts and by the station-agent who had sold him a ticket to New York didn’t quite line up with that given by the elevator boy at the hotel nor a coffee pot counterman who’d sold him Java he hadn’t drunk—except that they all agreed he was wearing a light-gray suit.

  The colored man’s description, being the most recent and detailed, was given more credence than the others; he had rubbed elbows with Kelly night and day for a week. It was, naturally, my own and not the other Kelly’s. He was just senile enough and frightened enough not to remember that I had looked different the first six days of the week from what I had the seventh, nutty as it seems.

  And then at the tag end, this: all the trains were being watched and all the cars leaving town were being stopped on the highway and searched.

  So I was staying in town and liking it; or to be more exact, staying, like it or not. A stationery store across from the lunchroom opened up at eight, and I ducked in there and bought a light tan briefcase. The storekeeper wasn’t very well up on his newspaper reading, there wasn’t any fuss raised about the twenty I paid for it with, any more than there had been in the eating plate I’d just left. But the net was tightening around me all the time. I knew it yet I couldn’t do anything about it. I’d just presented them with two more witnesses to help identify me. I sent him into the back room looking for something I didn’t want, and got the money into the briefcase; it didn’t take more than a minute. The gun I had to leave where it was. I patted myself flat and walked out.

  There was a respectable-looking family hotel on the next block. I had to get off the streets in a hurry, so I went in there, and they sold a room to James Harper, My baggage was coming later, I explained. Yes, I was new in town. Just as I was stepping into the elevator ahead of the bellhop, someone in horn-rimmed glasses brushed by me getting off. I could feel him turning around to look after me, but he wasn’t anyone that I knew, so I figured I must have jostled him going by.

  I locked my new door, shoved the briefcase under the mattress, and lay down on top of it. I hadn’t had any sleep since two nights before. Just as I was fading out there was a slight tap at the door. I jacked myself upright and reached for the gun. The tap came again, very genteel, very apologetic. “Who is it?” I grated.

  “Mr. Harper?” said an unctuous voice.

  That was my name, or supposed to be. I went up close to the door and said, “Well?”

  “Can I see you for a minute?”

  “What about?” I switched a chair over, pivoted up on it, and peered over the transom, which was open an inch or two. The man with glasses who’d been in the lobby a few minutes ago was standing there. I could see the whole hall. There wasn’t anyone else in it. I jumped down again, pushed the chair back, hesitated for a minute, then turned the key and faced him.

  “Harper’s the name, all right,” I said, “but I think you’ve got your wires crossed, haven’t you? I don’t know you.”

  “Mr. Harper, I represent the Gibraltar Life Insurance Company, here in town. Being a new arrival here, I don’t know whether you’ve heard of us or not—” I certainly had. Ethel had ten thousand coming to her from them. He was way past the door by now. I closed it after him, and quietly locked him in the room with me. He was gushing sales talk. My eyes never left his face.

  “No, no insurance,” I said. “I never have and never will. Don’t believe in it, and what’s more I can’t afford it—”

  “There’s where you’re wrong,” he said briskly. “Let me just give you an instance. There was a man in this town named Lynch—” I stiffened and hooked my thumb into the waistband of my trousers, that way it was near the opening of my shirt. He continued. “He was broke, without a job, down on his luck—but he did have insurance. He met with an accident.” He spread his hands triumphantly. “His wife gets ten thousand dollars.” Then very slowly, “As soon as we’re convinced, of course, that he’s dead.” Smack, between the eyes!

  “Did you sell him his policy?” I tried to remember what the salesman who’d sold me mine looked like. I was quivering inside like a vibrator.

  “No,” he said, “I’m just an investigator for the company, but I was present when he took his examination.”

  “Then, if you’re an investigator,” I said brittlely, “how can you sell me one?”

  “I’ll be frank with you,” he said with a cold smile. “I’m up here mainly to protect the company’s interests. There’s a remarkable resemblance between you and this Lynch, Mr. Harper. In fact, downstairs just now I thought I was seeing a ghost. Now don’t take offense, but we have to be careful what wr’re doing. I may be mistaken of course, but I have a very good memory for faces. You can establish your own identity, I suppose?”

  “Sure,” I said truculently, “but I’m not going to. What’s all this got to do with me anyway?”

  “Nothing,” he admitted glibly. “Of course this widow of his is in desperate need, and it will hold up the payment to her indefinitely, that’s all. In fact until I’m satisfied beyond the shadow of a doubt that there hasn’t been any—slipup.”

  “What’ll it take to do that?”

  “Simply your word for it, that you are not Walter Lynch. It’s just one of those coincidences, that’s all.”

  “If that’s all you want, you’ve got it. Take my word for it, I’m not.” I tried to laugh as if the whole thing were preposterous.

  “Would you put that in writing for me?” he said. “Just so my conscience will be clear, just so I can protect myself if the company says anything later. After all, it’s my bread and butter—”

  I pulled out a sheet of hotel stationery. “What’s the catch in this?” I asked.

  His eyes widened innocently. “Nothing. You don’t have to put your signature in full if that’s what’s worrying you. Just initial it. ‘I am not Walter Lynch, signed J. H.’ It will avoid the necessity for a more thorough investigation by the company—”

&
nbsp; I scrawled it out and gave it to him. He blotted it, folded it, and tore off a strip before he tucked it in his wallet.

  “Don’t need the second half of the sheet,” he murmured. He moved toward the door. “Well, I’ll trot down to the office,” he said. “Sorry I can’t interest you in a policy.” He turned the key without seeming to notice that the door had been locked, went out into the hall.

  I pounced on the strips of paper he’d let fall. There were two of them. “/ am not —” was on one and “J. H.” on the other. I’d fallen for him. He had my own original signature, standing by itself now, to compare with the one on file. He suspected who I was!

  I ran out after him. The elevator was just going down. I rang for it like blazes, but it wouldn’t come back. I chased back to the room, got the briefcase, and trooped down the stairs. When I came out into the lobby he’d disappeared. I darted out into the street and looked both ways. No sign of him. He must have gone back to his own room for a minute. Just as I was turning to go in again, out he came. He seemed surprised to see me, then covered it by saying, “If you ever change your mind, let me know.”

  “I have,” I said abruptly. “I think I will take out a policy after all. That your car?”

  His eyes lighted up. “Good!” he said. “Step in. I’ll ride you down to the office myself, turn you over to our ace salesman.” I knew what he was thinking, that the salesman could back him up in his identification of me.

  I got in next to him. When the first light stopped him I had the gun out against his ribs, under my left arm.

  “You don’t need to wait for that,” I said. “Turn up the other way, we’re lighting out. Argue about it and I’ll give it to you right here in the car.”

  He shuddered a little and then gave the wheel a turn. He didn’t say anything.

  “Don’t look so hard at the next traffic cop you pass,” I warned him once. When we got out of the business district, I said: “Take one hand off the wheel and haul that signature out of your wallet.” I rolled it up with one hand, chewed it to a pulp, and spit it out in little soggy pieces. He was sweating a little. I was too, but not as much.

  “What’s it going to be?” he quavered. “I’ve got a wife and kids—”

  “You’ll get back to ‘em,” I reassured him, “but you’ll be a little late, that’s all. You’re going to clear me out of town. I’ll turn you back alone.”

  He gave a sigh of relief. “All right,” he said. “I’ll do whatever you say.”

  “Can you drive without your glasses?” He took them off and handed them to me and I put them on. I could hardly see anything at first. I took off the light-gray coat and changed that with him too. The briefcase on my lap covered my trousers from above and the car door from the side.

  “If we’re stopped and asked any questions,” I said, “one wrong word out of you and I’ll give it to you right under their noses, state police or no state police.”

  He just nodded, completely buffaloed.

  The suburbs petered out and we hit open country. We weren’t, newspapers to the contrary, stopped. A motorcycle cop passed us coming into town; he just glanced in as he went by, didn’t look back. I watched him in the mirror until he was gone. Twenty miles out we left the main highway and took a side road, with fewer cars on it. About ten minutes later his machine started to buck.

  “I’m running out of gas,” he said.

  “See if you can make that clump of trees over there,” I barked. “Gret off the road and into it. Then you can start back for gas on foot and I’ll light out.”

  He swerved off the road, bumped across grassy ground and came to a stop on the other side of the trees. He cut the engine and we both got out.

  “All right,” I said, “now remember what I told you, keep your mouth shut. Gro ahead, never mind watching me.”

  I stood with one elbow on the car door and one leg on the running-board. He turned and started shuffling off through the knee-deep grass. I let him get about five yards away and then I shot him three times in the head. He fell and you couldn’t see him in the grass, just a sort of hole there where it was pressed down. I looked around and there wasn’t anyone in sight on the road, so I went up to him and gave him another one right up against his ear to make sure.

  I got back in the car and started it. He’d lied about the gas; I saw that by looking at his tank-meter. It was running low, but there was enough left to get back on the road again and make the next filling station.

  When I’d filled up, an attendant took the twenty inside with him and stayed in there longer than I liked. I sounded the horn and he came running out.

  “I can’t make change,” he said.

  “Well, keep it then!” I snapped and roared away.

  I met the cops that his phone call had tipped off about ten minutes later, coming toward me not after me. Five of them—too many to buck. I’d thrown the gun away after leaving the gas-station, and I was sitting on the briefcase. I braked and sat there looking innocently surprised.

  “Driver’s license?” they said. I had the insurance fellow’s in the coat I was wearing.

  “Left it home,” I said.

  They came over and frisked me, and then one of them took it out of my pocket. “No, you didn’t,” he said, “but it’s got the wrong guy’s description on it. Get out a minute.”

  I had to. Two of them had guns out.

  “Your coat don’t match your trousers,” he said dryly. “And you ought to go back to the optician and see about those glasses. Both side-pieces stick out about three inches in back of your ears.” Then he picked up the briefcase and said, “Isn’t it uncomfortable sitting this way?” He opened it, looked in. “Yeah,” he said, “Hogan,” and we started back to town, one of them riding with me with my wrist linked to his. The filling-station fellow said, “Yep, that’s him,” and we kept going.

  “I’m Walter Lynch,” I said. “The real Hogan died down by the tracks. I took the money from his room, that’s all—changed places with him. Maybe I can go to jail for that, but you can’t pin a murder rap on me. My wife will identify me. Take me over to 35 Meadow-brook, she’ll tell you who I am!”

  “Better pick a live one,” he said. “She jumped out a window early this morning—went crazy with grief, I guess. Don’t you read the papers?”

  When we got to the clump of trees, they’d found the insurance guy already. I could see some of them standing around the body. A detective came over and said, “The great Hogan at last, eh?”

  “I’m Walter Lynch,” I said.

  The detective said, “That saves me a good deal of trouble. That insurance guy, lying out there now, put in a call to his office just before he left his hotel—something about a guy named Lynch trying to pull a fast one on the company. When he didn’t show up they notified us.” He got in. “I’ll ride back with you,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything any more after that. If I let them think I was Hogan, I went up for murder. If I succeeded in proving I was Lynch, I went up for murder anyway. As the detective put it on the way to town, “Make up your mind who you wanna be—either way y’gonna sit down on a couple thousand volts.”

  (1935)

  The Showboat Murders

  “Just one night,” Miss Dulcy Harris was saying dramatically. “Just one night is all I ask! One night without hearing all about who you arrested and what they were wanted for and what their past record was and what they said in the line-up! Just one night away from crime!”

  She put her foot down, both literally and metaphorically. A little puff of dust rose from the ground at the impact. “Is this your night off, or isn’t it? Well, you can take those tickets to ‘X-Men’ and just tear them up, because I’m not going to sit through any more crime pictures with you and then spend the rest of the night listening to why the detectives aren’t like detectives in real life. I’ve planned our evening for us, for once! You’re taking me out to that showboat in the river.”

  Inspector Whittaker (Whitey) Ames, her aff
ianced, unhappily swiveled his neck around inside his starched collar. “Aw, gee, honey,” he pleaded, “not a showboat. An)rthing but that.”

  “Just why so?” she queried suspiciously.

  “Because I’m a total loss on anjrthing floating. It upsets me—”

  She hooted incredulously. “You mean you get seasick? But it’s anchored, it isn’t even moving!”

  “But it probably jiggles a little with the current.”

  Dulcy narrowed her eyes determinedly. “Everyone but me has been there by now—” She had more to say, much more. Before she had half finished he took her heroically by the arm.

  “You win,” he said, “let’s get the tickets. But I shoulda skipped that cocoanut pie at dinner,”

  Dance music came blaring up, and the excursion tug that linked the showboat to the shore fitted its apron neatly into the pier. The crowd made a dive for the floating bar it boasted, and sounds of ice rattling against metal filled the night.

  “Let’s go round to the other side,” gulped Whitey, “away from the smell of that orange peel.”

  “It’s just your imagination,” Dulcy told him. “Don’t give in. Keep saying the multiplication table over to yourself. It works wonders.”

  The sail down-river lasted for about three-quarters of an hour, and Ames held out manfully. The last outlying lights of St. Louis on the right had petered out before a playful searchlight beam sent a shaft of pale blue up into the sky ahead of them. The excursion tug tracked it down, and presently a low-lying hulk showed up on the river bosom, garlanded with colored lights. The tug came alongside, nudged it, retreated, and finally stuck as closely as a stamp to a letter.

  A ribbed incline on castors was wheeled out, the showboat lying lower in the water, and down it poured the audience. Almost before the last stragglers had cleared it, it was hauled up again, the tug gave a toot, beat the water white, and headed back where it had come from. The crowd it had brought was left there in midstream, cut off from the shore until the end of the show on something that had been a freighter and was no longer fit to go to sea.