Death Has a Small Voice

by Frances Lockridge

  He looked away from Mullins. He looked at the opposite wall.

  Megalomania was, of course, inherent in the mind of the murderer. It was less obvious in some murderers than in others; now and then a murderer might, quite rationally, believe that murder was not only necessary but altruistic. But in the end, one came to an exaltation of self which was not quite sane. This was true, probably, even in murder committed suddenly, without prior thought, in rage. You took a throat in your hands, perhaps; your hands hated. But, unless at some time you became You, you stopped.

  I’m half asleep now, Bill Weigand thought. I’m getting nowhere. Who killed Hilda Godwin? Who snatched Pamela North? And—where is Pam now? He did not like the next question. Is Pam alive?

  It was still only guesswork that it was some man who had been pilloried in Hilda Godwin’s first, and last, novel. There might be other reasons for the disappearance of the manuscript, and the copies of it. Bill tried to think of several, or even of one. His success was not conspicuous. Very well, then, book and murder were connected.

  Then—Hilda had been killed by someone who had read the book. That far, he could get. Hilda was killed by someone who had known her well, probably had been in love with her. Also, by someone who thought well of himself.

  Tomorrow, when they could really get to work, they might well find some one as yet unsuspected, even unencountered, who satisfied the requirements. In investigations, the villain did, quite often, make his appearance on, as it were, the last page. Until then, however, he would have to go with those he had.

  Item, Bernard Wilson, who had admittedly read the book. He found it “innocuous.” (Which might depend on whose ox was gored, of course. Or, he might have lied.) Had he been in love with Hilda? He might have been; it was not in evidence. Did he exalt himself? Bill pondered that. He came up with “maybe.”

  Item, Gilbert Rogers, who did not admit reading the book. But—would the murderer admit he had? Not, obviously, unless he needed to. Had he been in love with Hilda? Yes, admittedly. Megalomaniac? Hm-m. At any rate, by Garrett Shaw’s account (unverified), Rogers was violent. Admittedly, if he thought Shaw responsible for what had been in the trunk, he had grounds for violence. But had he?

  Item, Garrett Shaw, who had “asked the lady” and accepted her declination. (Not according to Rogers, however.) Had he read the book? There was nothing to indicate he had; nothing to indicate he had not. Hilda might well have given him a copy to read. Megalomania? It hadn’t showed, particularly. It might be there.

  Item, Alec Lyster. He had, if their information was more than talk at a bar, been much with Hilda a short time before—before Madeleine Barclay. He might have read the book. Self-exaltation? Again, hm-m. The point was, quite simply, that one could not tell—not at once, anyway. In time, perhaps, he—

  The telephone rang, harsh, insistent. Mullins said, “Hey? What? I’m—” and stopped, coming awake. Bill answered the telephone. He listened. He said, “Right.”

  “Come on,” he told Mullins. “The station wagon’s parked outside Jerry’s office building.”

  “Huh?” Mullins said.

  The Godwin car,” Bill said. “Wake up, for God’s sake!”

  “O.K., Loot,” Mullins said.

  They started for the door. With his hand on the knob, Bill Weigand stopped. His movement was quick as he turned back to his desk, picked up the telephone. He asked for a familiar number.

  Bill listened to the signal which meant that a bell was ringing, rhythmically, in the Norths’ apartment. He waited until there was no longer any use in waiting; he waited longer than that.

  “Could be he’s asleep,” Mullins said, from the doorway. But he did not speak with conviction. Bill Weigand took the trouble to shake his head. He stood for a moment irresolute, his right hand on the telephone in its cradle.

  “We’ll stop by there,” he said, then. “Come on.”

  But the telephone bell stopped them again. Bill swore; he returned; he said, “Weigand speaking,” and listened. He swore again. He said, “All right, wait there.”

  “Shaw hasn’t showed up again,” he told Mullins. “That was Snyder, waiting at the apartment house.”

  “He hasn’t had much time to get there,” Mullins pointed out and Bill, after a moment, nodded. The telephone rang again; again Weigand listened.

  “Right,” he said. “Keep them at it.”

  Lyster had not appeared at his apartment. Gilbert Rogers had not been found. Neither had Professor Bernard Wilson. Bill stood for a moment; then dialed the switchboard and asked for a Westchester number. He talked, briefly, to a man he called “Captain.” He said, “Thanks, Merton,” at the end, and then held the receiver a little way from his ear, and half smiled. He put it back. He said, “Sorry, Captain.”

  The State Police, in the person of Captain Heimrich—who hated his first name; who was now in charge—reported that Lyster had not returned to his cabin; that Wilson still was missing from his house near the rambling dwelling which had been Hilda Godwin’s.

  “Let’s go,” Bill Weigand said. This time they went.

  Jerry North turned from Madison into the numbered street, walking east. The street was deserted, the buildings on either side blank faced. He came to the door of the building he sought and pressed the night bell. There was no response. He tried the door, and it opened. Jerry looked at the turning knob in his hand at first in dull surprise, then in growing excitement. The building was locked until eight; it was in charge of Sven Helder until eight, and admittance was under his supervision. Looking through the glass of the door, Jerry saw Helder’s table empty, a light burning over it.

  He spoke as he went in, and was unanswered. His voice, not raised, was amplified by the marble walls of the small lobby; it seemed to him as if he had shouted Helder’s name. He walked across the lobby to the elevators and rang and waited.

  He was about to turn away toward the stairs when he noticed that the door of one of the elevators was not quite closed. There was room to get his fingers between door edge and frame. He pulled and the door slid open.

  The elevator was level with the sill. On the floor of the elevator, in the darkness, someone lay, doubled up, motionless. Jerry was suddenly cold, but he moved quickly. His fingers found a switch and light poured from the elevator’s dome light.

  It wasn’t Pam. Sven Helder lay on the floor of the car. There was blood on the side of his head and he was breathing harshly; the little room the elevator made was filled with the sound of his breathing.

  Jerry crouched beside him, felt for the pulse. It took him time to find the pulse, because he found his hand was shaking. When he did find it, the pulse seemed strong enough.

  Touched by Jerry’s fingers, Sven Helder opened his eyes. He turned to lie on his back, his knees still drawn up. Then he straightened his legs and lay flat. He looked up at Jerry blankly, and began to speak, not in English. He looked much older than Jerry had ever seen him; the eyes, with the glasses missing, seemed smaller. They were deep sunken.

  “Helder!” Jerry said. “Helder! What happened?”

  “Don’t hit,” Helder said. “What do you want? Don’t hit.”

  Jerry got water from a drinking fountain in the lobby. He bathed Helder’s face, gently, using a handkerchief. He told Helder to take it easy; he told Helder, not knowing whether it was true, that he’d be all right.

  “Who are you?” Helder asked him. “What do you want?”

  “You know me,” Jerry said. “North. North Books. Who hit you? When?”

  Helder closed his eyes. In spite of his fear for the old man, his sympathy, Jerry wanted to shake words out of him. Instead, he moistened the handkerchief again, bathed the battered head again, spoke gently.

  “You’ll be all right,” Jerry said. “What happened? I’ll get you a doctor. Tell me what happened.”

  There wasn’t time for this; there wasn’t time for anything.

  Sven Helder opened his eyes.

  “You’re Mr. North,” he s
aid. “That’s who you are. Why did you hit me?”

  “No,” Jerry said. “I didn’t hit you, Mr. Helder.”

  “At the door,” Helder said. “He wanted to come in. He said—it wasn’t you.”

  “No,” Jerry said.

  “A tall man,” Helder said. “Said he worked for Hendriks. Hendriks, you know.”

  It was another tenant of the building. “Yes,” Jerry said.

  “Opened the door,” Helder said. “Hit me with something.”

  “He was coming in?” Jerry said. “You let him in?”

  “A big man,” Helder said. “He wanted to come in. He works for Hendriks. Keys.”

  “Keys?” Jerry repeated.

  The old man made vague gestures, as if he was trying to reach into a pocket.

  “Your keys,” Jerry said. “Here.” He felt Helder’s trouser pockets; the single pocket of the sagging sweater. The pockets were empty.

  “He got the keys,” Helder said. “Hit me on the head.”

  The sunken eyes closed again.

  It was taking time; there wasn’t any time. But the old man’s face was gray in the harsh light from above; his breathing remained stertorous. Jerry couldn’t leave him there, unaided.

  He crossed the lobby with long strides. In a telephone booth, he searched his pockets for a coin. Finally he found a quarter. Every movement took uncountable time, irretrievable time. Finally the operator answered.

  An ambulance was needed. Jerry told here where. It would bring the police, too. Sometime—sometime. There wasn’t that much time, Jerry’s nerves told him. He made himself speak slowly, distinctly; explain that it was an emergency. He gave his name. Finally, he could hang up.

  Helder was breathing as before. His eyes were open again. He was looking up at the light.

  Pam—Pam!—had taken a first aid course once; he had helped her. Amateurs shouldn’t move the injured; amateurs, meaning well, might kill.

  Jerry left Helder on the floor of the elevator, staring up at the light. Jerry North went up stairs.

  As she pulled the door toward her, Jerry’s name was on Pam’s lips. It would have been spoken in eagerness, in unmeasurable relief. But it was not spoken.

  The voice continued, only for seconds, but for long enough. “Page 97,” the voice said, “try to get him to clean up long passage beginning—” The voice ended. But before it ended, Pam had known; had had time to check the word she was about to speak so gladly; to have exhilaration snuff out in her mind as the voice snuffed out. It had been the Voice-Scriber, of course. It had always been there—a thin, distant voice; a thin wire of voice. Jerry himself was—Jerry was three thousand miles away.

  The room had been dim, except for the surface of the desk. An adjustable fluorescent light made the desk top bright. But now—and this happened not in sequence to the stopping of the voice, but simultaneously with it—the light rose to glare into her face, leaving everything behind it dark. For an instant, Pam saw the hand which turned the light up toward her. It was a man’s hand.

  The whisper came from behind the light. It was harsher than before, as if the speaker now found a whisper difficult to sustain. It seemed to Pam that there was a new violence in the sound, although the words were not violent.

  “Well, here we are again,” the man said. “Back where we started.”

  “Again” to rhyme with “rain.” To rhyme with “pain.” But what Pam felt was too dull for pain, too hopeless. She said nothing; she raised her hands to shield her eyes from the light.

  “You got out,” the man said. “How did you manage that?”

  She did not answer; she shook her head hopelessly.

  “Don’t be stubborn,” the man said. “I don’t like stubborn women. How did you get out?”

  “There was a trap door to the attic,” Pam said. Her voice was as dull as her mind, as without inflection. “There was a window. The roof.”

  “Enterprising,” the man said. “Stubborn and enterprising. A waste of time, wasn’t it? All you went through.” He paused; she could feel him looking at her. “A good bit apparently,” he said. “You look it. And ran in a circle.”

  He laughed, then. Even the harsh whisper was more gentle than the brief laughter.

  “To tell me where you hid it,” he said. “You ran back in a circle to tell me. Through thorns, apparently.”

  Dully, she thought, he’s enjoying this. Behind the light, faceless—in power. Like an evil god, enjoying what he does.

  “Where is it?” he said. “What did you do with it?”

  Why was he doing this? He had the record; obviously he had it. He had taken the stacks of records from the shelf behind Miss Corning’s desk. He was playing them one by one, seeking the record he wanted. It was only a matter of time. He must—

  But perhaps he did not know! Of course—he could not really know. He was right, or would be right. But he could not be sure of that. A matter of time—and no murderer has enough time.

  “I asked you a question,” he said, and now, oddly, there was a querulous note in his voice. “I expect an answer,” he said. He was, Pam thought, almost aggrieved.

  She shook her head.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “This time, you’ll tell me. See?”

  The hand came momentarily into the light. The hand held a revolver. The hand and the weapon went back into the darkness behind the light.

  “Where is it?”

  Now, for the first time, he abandoned the whisper. He spoke in a low voice; a low, heavy voice.

  The voice of the record? It must be, of course. Pam’s mind turned on itself, sought back into itself. She tried, desperately, to remember. But her mind was too tired; too numb. The quality of that voice on the record—what was it? Was this it? It had to be. But—but this voice, even as she heard it, made no impression on the dulled surface of her mind. She could not hold anything in her mind.

  Anything but fear—the crude, unmodulated fear of the animal. The fear a bird feels, without thought, in the mouth of a cat—a fear so intense a bird may die of it, and of it only. She felt the body’s fear, which numbs the mind, her mind too tired to reject it.

  Because—he did not hide his voice in a whisper now!

  There could be only one reason. Whatever she did, whatever she said, she was going to die. He had decided that.

  “It isn’t here,” he said then, still in the low, heavy voice. “I thought it might be one of these.” He did not show her what he meant. “In the desk,” he said. “It would have been a good place. One record with half a dozen. Temporarily a good place. But it isn’t here. Where is it?”

  He gave her time. She had been numb with weariness; too numb to fight against fear. But he gave her time. Pam North’s mind with a resilience seemingly of its own, beyond her will, struggled through numbness.

  He hadn’t found it. He had been wrong. Then—she had a chance!

  “You can’t kill me until you know, can you?” she said. “You have to find it first. Why should I tell you?”

  “Oh,” he said, “to stay alive.”

  She shook her head.

  “You’ll have to,” she said. “Find the record first. Destroy it.” Her mind was quick, now; the numbness quite gone. “Because it identifies you.”

  “The voice,” the man said. “Only the voice. I’ve been going back over it. She didn’t—” He stopped suddenly. “This does no good,” he said. “Where is it?”

  “Whatever the record says,” Pam told him. “Maybe you don’t remember right. Maybe it isn’t only the voice. You have to know, don’t you?”

  “I’ll know,” he said. “You’ll tell me. To live.”

  “No,” Pam said. “I wouldn’t live, would I? Because I heard it. I remember.”

  “The record’s a fact,” he said. “What you remember—” She could feel a shrug. “One woman’s memory,” he said. “Against the word of—” He broke off. “Against my word,” he said. “I’ll chance that I’ll—”

  “Why should—” Pam
began.

  “Be quiet!” he said. Now he whispered again. “Somebody’s coming. Don’t move.”

  He moved himself. She could hear him. He turned the chair behind the desk, and the swivel squeaked faintly. (I’ll have to tell Jerry the chair squeaks, Pam North thought. Tell him—Oh, Jerry! Jerry!) There was the faint sound of movement beyond the desk.

  “Turn the other lights on when I say,” the whisper said. “Get rid of whoever it is. Tell whatever story you—think is safe. Only, get rid of whoever it is. Probably that janitor chap, come to.”

  “You—” Pam began.

  “Keep your voice down,” the man whispered. “In the washroom. With the door not closed. Not quite closed. So you’d—now!”

  Pam reached behind her and touched a light switch. An overhead light came on. The familiar office was now as it always was—almost as it always was. She straightened the desk lamp, so that light from it flowed to the desk top.

  The door of the washroom was partly open. For an instant, a hand showed in the opening. The hand held the revolver. The hand and the revolver disappeared; the door remained a little open.

  Pam North turned and faced the door leading to the outer office. As she turned, lights went on in the outer office. She heard someone walking there, coming nearer. Through the ground glass of the door she could not see who was approaching. The footsteps sounded heavy on the tile of the office floor.

  She recognized the steps, then. She wanted to scream a warning.

  “Don’t try it,” the whisper said. “Tell whoever it is that everything’s all right.”

  She could only wait—wait while the steps she knew came nearer the door, wait for the sound of the knob turning. She stood between the desk and the door, facing the door. She waited for the door to open. It seemed to take an infinite time in its slow opening.