by Jerry eBooks
I put it back in the tank. My business was with the other two. I like goldfish as well as the next man, but business is business and crime is crime. I took my coat off and rolled my sleeves up and picked the razor blade backed with adhesive tape off the table.
It was a very messy job. It took about five minutes. Then they lay in the palm of my hand, three-quarters of an inch in diameter, heavy, perfectly round, milky white and shimmering with that inner light no other jewel has. The Leander pearls.
I washed them off, wrapped them in my handkerchief, rolled down my sleeves and put my coat back on. I looked at Madder, at his little pain and fear-tortured eyes, the sweat on his face. I didn’t care anything about Madder. He was a killer, a torturer.
I went out of the fish room. The bedroom door was still shut. I went down below and cranked the wall telephone.
“This is the Wallace place at Westport,” I said. “There’s been an accident. We need a doctor and we’ll have to have the police. What can you do?”
The girl said: “I’ll try and get you a doctor, Mr. Wallace. It may take a little time though. There’s a town marshal at Westport. Will he do?”
“I suppose so,” I said and thanked her and hung up. There were points about a country telephone after all.
I lit another cigarette and sat down in one of the rustic rockers on the porch. In a little while there were steps and Mrs. Sype came out of the house. She stood a moment looking off down the hills, then she sat down in the other rocker beside me. Her dry eyes looked at me steadily.
“You’re a detective, I suppose,” she said slowly, diffidently.
“Yes, I represent the company that insured the Leander pearls.”
She looked off into the distance. “I thought he would have peace here,” she said. “That nobody would bother him any more. That this place would be a sort of sanctuary.”
“He ought not to have tried to keep the pearls.”
She turned her head, quickly this time. She looked blank now, then she looked scared.
I reached down in my pocket and got out the wadded handkerchief, opened it up on the palm of my hand. They lay there together on the white linen, two hundred grand worth of murder.
“He could have had his sanctuary,” I said. “Nobody wanted to take it away from him. But he wasn’t satisfied with that.”
She looked slowly, lingeringly at the pearls. Then her lips twitched. Her voice got hoarse.
“Poor Wally,” she said. “So you did find them. You’re pretty clever, you know. He killed dozens of fish before he learned how to do that trick.” She looked up into my face. A little wonder showed at the back of her eyes.
She said: “I always hated the idea. Do you remember the old Bible theory of the scapegoat?”
I shook my head, no.
“The animal on which the sins of a man were laid and then it was driven off into the wilderness. The fish were his scapegoat.”
She smiled at me. I didn’t smile back.
She said, still smiling faintly: “You see, he once had the pearls, the real ones, and suffering seemed to him to make them his. But he couldn’t have had any profit from them, even if he had found them again. It seems some landmark changed, while he was in prison, and he never could find the spot in Idaho where they were buried.”
An icy finger was moving slowly up and down my spine. I opened my mouth and something I supposed might be my voice said: “Huh?”
She reached a finger out and touched one of the pearls. I was still holding them out, as if my hand was a shelf nailed to the wall.
“So he got these,” she said. “In Seattle. They’re hollow, filled with white wax. I forget what they call the process. They look very fine. Of course I never saw any really valuable pearls.”
“What did he get them for?” I croaked.
“Don’t you see? They were his sin. He had to hide them in the wilderness, this wilderness. He hid them in the fish. And do you know—” she leaned towards me again and her eyes shone. She said very slowly, very earnestly: “Sometimes I think that in the very end, just the last year or so, he actually believed they were the real pearls he was hiding. Does all this mean anything to you?”
I looked down at my pearls. My hand and the handkerchief closed over them slowly.
I said: “I’m a plain man, Mrs. Sype. I guess the scapegoat idea is a bit over my head. I’d say he was just trying to kid himself a bit—like any healthy loser.”
She smiled again. She was handsome when she smiled. Then she shrugged quite lightly.
“Of course, you would see it that way. But me—” she spread her hands. “Oh, well, it doesn’t matter much now. May I have them for a keepsake?”
“Have them?”
“The—the phony pearls. Surely you don’t—”
I stood up. An old Ford roadster without a top was chugging up the hill. A man in it had a big star on his vest. The chatter of the motor was like the chatter of some old angry bald-headed ape in the zoo.
Mrs. Sype was standing beside me, with her hand half out, a thin, beseeching look on her face.
I grinned at her with sudden ferocity.
“Yeah, you were pretty good in there for a while,” I said. “I damn near fell for it. And was I cold down the back, lady! But you helped. ‘Phony’ was a shade out of character for you. Your work with the Colt was fast and kind of ruthless. Most of all Sype’s last words queered it. ‘The Moors, Hattie—the Moors.’ He wouldn’t have bothered with that if the stones had been ringers. And he wasn’t sappy enough to kid himself all the way.”
For a moment her face didn’t change at all. Then it did. Something horrible showed in her eyes. She put her lips out and spit at me. Then she slammed into the house.
I tucked twenty-five thousand dollars into my vest pocket. Twelve thousand five hundred for me and twelve thousand five hundred for Kathy Horne. I could see her eyes when I brought her the check, and when she put it in the bank, to wait for Johnny to get paroled from Quentin.
The Ford had pulled up behind the other cars. The man driving spit over the side, yanked his emergency brake on, got out without using the door. He was a big fellow in shirt sleeves.
I went down the steps to meet him.
THE DILEMNA OF THE DEAD LADY
Cornell Woolrich
It was already getting light out, but the peculiar milky-white Paris street lights were still on outside Babe Sherman’s hotel window. He had the room light on, too, such as it was, and was busy packing at a mile-a-minute rate. The boat ticket was in the envelope on the bureau. All the bureau drawers were hanging out, and his big wardrobe trunk was yawning wide open in the middle of the room. He kept moving back and forth between it and the bureau with a sort of catlike tread, transferring things.
He was a good-looking devil, if you cared for his type of good looks—and women usually did. Then later on, they always found out how wrong they’d been. They were only a sideline with him, anyway; they were apt to get tangled around a guy’s feet, trip him up when he least expected it. Like this little—what was her name now? He actually couldn’t remember it for a minute, and didn’t try to; he wouldn’t be using it any more now, anyway. She’d come in handy, though—or rather her life’s savings had—right after he’d been cleaned at the Longchamps track. And then holding down a good job like she did with one of the biggest jewelry firms on the Rue de la Paix had been damned convenient for his purposes. He smiled when he thought of the long, slow build-up it had taken—calling for her there twice a day, taking her out to meals, playing Sir Galahad. Boy, he’d had to work hard for his loot this time, but it was worth it! He unwrapped the little tissue-paper package in his breastpocket, held the string of pearls up to the light, and looked at them. Matched, every one of them—and with a diamond clasp. They’d bring plenty in New York! He knew just the right fence, too.
The guff he’d had to hand her, though, when she first got around to pointing out new articles in the display cases, each time one was added to the stock! �
��I’d rather look at you, honey.” Not seeming to take any interest, not even glancing down. Until finally, when things were ripe enough to suit him: “Nice pearls, those. Hold ’em up to your neck a minute, let’s see how they look on you.”
“Oh, I’m not allow’ to take them out! I am only suppose’ to handle the briquets, gold cigarette cases—” But she would have done anything he asked her by that time. With a quick glance at the back of M’sieu Proprietor, who was right in the room with them, she was holding them at her throat for a stolen moment.
“I’ll fasten the catch for you—turn around, look at the glass.”
“No, no, please—” They fell to the floor, somehow. He picked them up and handed them back to her; they were standing at the end of the long case, he on his side, she on her side. And when they went back onto the velvet tray inside the case, the switch had already been made. As easy as that!
He was all dressed, even had his hat on the back of his skull, but he’d left his shoes off, had been going around in his stocking feet, hence the catlike tread. Nor was this because he intended beating this cheesy side-street hotel out of his bill, although that wouldn’t have been anything new to his experience either. He could possibly have gotten away with it at that—there was only what they called a “concierge” on duty below until seven, and at that he was always asleep. But for once in his life he’d paid up. He wasn’t taking any chances of getting stopped at the station. He wanted to get clear of this damn burg and clear of this damn country without a hitch. He had a good reason, $75,000-worth of pearls. When they said it in francs it sounded like a telephone number. Besides, he didn’t like the looks of their jails here; you could smell them blocks away. One more thing: you didn’t just step on the boat like in New York. It took five hours on the boat train getting to it, and a wire to Cherbourg to hold you and send you back could make it in twenty minutes. So it was better to part friends with everyone. Not that the management of a third-class joint like this would send a wire to Cherbourg, but they would go to the police, and if the switch of the pearls happened to come to light at about the same time.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and picked up his right shoe. He put the pearls down for a minute, draped across his thigh, fumbled under the mattress and took out a tiny screwdriver. He went to work on the three little screws that fastened his heel. A minute later it was loose in his hand. It was hollow, had a steel rim on the end of it to keep it from wearing down. He coiled the pearls up, packed them in. There was no customs inspection at this end, and before he tackled the Feds at the other side, he’d think up something better. This would do for now.
It was just when he had the heel fitted in place again, but not screwed on, that the knock on the door came. He got white as a sheet for a minute, sat there without breathing. Then he remembered that he’d left word downstairs last night that he was making the boat train; it was probably the porter for his wardrobe trunk. He got his windpipe going again, called out in his half-baked French, “Too soon, gimme another ten minutes!”
The knocking hadn’t quit from the time it began, without getting louder it kept getting faster and faster all the time. The answer froze him when it came through the door: “Let me in, let me in, Bebe, it’s me!”
He knew who “me” was, all right! He began to swear viciously but soundlessly. He’d already answered like a fool, she knew he was there! If he’d only kept his trap shut, she might have gone away. But if he didn’t let her in now, she’d probably rouse the whole hotel! He didn’t want any publicity if he could help it. She could make it tough for him, even without knowing about the pearls. After all, she had turned over her savings to him. Her knocking was a frantic machine-gun tattoo by now, and getting louder all the time. Maybe he could stall her off for an hour or two, get rid of her long enough to make the station, feed her some taffy or other.
He hid the screwdriver again, stuck his feet into his shoes without lacing them, shuffled over to the door and unlocked it. Then he tried to stand in the opening so that she couldn’t see past him into the room.
She seemed half-hysterical, there were tears standing in her eyes. “Bebe, I waited for you there last night, what happen’ ? Why you do these to me, what I have done?”
“What d’ya mean by coming here at this hour?” he hissed viciously at her. “Didn’t I tell you never to come here!”
“Nobody see me, the concierge was asleep, I walk all the way up the stairs—” She broke off suddenly. “You are all dress’, at these hour? You, who never get up ontil late! The hat even—”
“I just got in,” he tried to bluff her, looking up and down the passageway. The motion was his undoing; in that instant she had peered inside, across his shoulder, possibly on the lookout for some other girl. She saw the trunk standing there open in the middle of the room.
He clapped his hand to her mouth in the nick of time, stifling her scream. Then pulled her roughly in after him and locked the door.
He let go of her then. “Now, there’s nothing to get excited about,” he said soothingly. “I’m just going on a little business trip to, er—” He snapped his fingers helplessly, couldn’t think of any French names. “I’ll be back day after tomorrow—”
But she wasn’t listening, was at the bureau before he could stop her, pawing the boat ticket. He snatched it from her, but the damage had already been done. “But you are going to New York! This ticket is for one! You said never a word—” Anyone but a heel like Babe Sherman would have been wrung by the misery in her voice. “I thought that you and I, we—”
He was getting sick of this. “What a crust!” he snarled. “Get hep to yourself! I should marry you! Why, we don’t even talk the same lingo!”
She reeled as though an invisible blow had struck her, pulled herself together again. She had changed now. Her eyes were blazing. “My money!” she cried hoarsely. “Every sou I had in the world I turned over to you! My dot, my marriage dowry, that was suppose’ to be! No, no, you are not going to do these to me! You do not leave here until you have give it back—” She darted at the locked door. “I tell my story to the gendarmes—”
He reared after her, stumbled over the rug but caught her in time, flung her backward away from the door. The key came out of the keyhole, dropped to the floor, he kicked it sideways out of her reach. “No, you don’t!” he panted.
Something was holding her rigid, though his hands were no longer on her. He followed the direction of her dilated eyes, down toward the floor. His loosened heel had come off just now. She was staring, not at that, but at the lustrous string of pearls that spilled out of it like a tiny snake, their diamond catch twinkling like an eye.
Again she pounced, and again he forestalled her, whipped them up out of her reach. But as he did so, they straightened out and she got a better look at them than she would have had they stayed coiled in a mass. “It is number twenty-nine, from the store!” she gasped. “The one I showed you! Oh, mon Dieu, when they find out, they will blame me! They will send me to St. Lazare—”
He had never yet killed anyone, didn’t intend to even now. But death was already in the room with the two of them. She could have still saved herself, probably, by using her head, subsiding, pretending to fall in with his plans for the time being. That way she might have gotten out of there alive. But it would have been superhuman; no one in her position would have had the self-control to do it. She was only a very frightened French girl after all. They were both at a white-heat of fear and self-preservation; she lost her head completely, did the one thing that was calculated to doom her. She flung herself for the last time at the door, panic-stricken, with a hoarse cry for help. And he, equally panic-stricken, and more concerned about silencing her before she roused the house than even about keeping her in the room with him, took the shortest way of muffling her voice. The inaccurate way, the deadly way. He flung the long loop of pearls over her head from behind like a lasso, foreshortened them into a choking noose, dragged her stumbling backward. They were strun
g on fine platinum wire, almost unbreakable. She turned and turned, three times over, like a dislodged tenpin, whipping the thing inextricably around her throat, came up against him, coughing, clawing at herself, eyes rolling. Too late he let go, there wasn’t any slack left, the pearls were like gleaming white nail heads driven into her flesh.
He clawed now, too, trying to free her as he saw her face begin to mottle. There wasn’t room for a finger hold; to pluck at one loop only tightened the other two under it. Suddenly she dropped vertically, like a plummet, between his fumbling hands, twitched spasmodically for an instant at his feet, then lay there still, face black now, eyes horrible protuberances. Dead. Strangled by a thing of beauty, a thing meant to give pleasure.
II
Babe Sherman was a realist, also known as a heel. He saw from where he was that she was gone, without even bending over her. No face could turn that color and ever be alive again. No eyes could swell in their sockets like that and ever see again. He didn’t even bend down over her, to feel for her heart; didn’t say a word, didn’t make a sound. The thought in his mind was: “Now I’ve done it. Added murder to all the rest. It was about the only thing missing!”
His first move was to the door. He stood there listening. Their scuffle hadn’t taken long; these old Paris dumps had thick stone walls. Her last cry at the door, before he’d corralled her, had been a hoarse, low-pitched one, not a shrill, woman’s scream. There wasn’t a sound outside. Then he went to the window, peered through the mangy curtains, first from one side, then the other. He was low enough—third story—and the light had been on, but the shutters were all tightly closed on the third floor of the building across the way, every last one of them. He carefully fitted his own together; in France they come inside the vertical windows.
He went back to her, and he walked all around her. This time the thought was, appropriately enough: “How is it I’ve never done it before now? Lucky, I guess.” He wasn’t as cool as he looked, by any means, but he wasn’t as frightened as a decent man would have been, either; there’d been too many things in his life before this, the edge had been taken off long ago. He had no conscience.
