Doorway to Death

by Dan J. Marlowe

  She stumbled at her first step and then recovered herself. She turned at the threshold to look at Johnny, the wine glass in her hand; her voice was unsteady but clear. “Goodbye, my friend. I have a certain familiarity with losing causes.”

  The door closed behind her, and Ronald Frederick removed the pass key from the pocket of his jacket and locked the door. The little man breathed as though he had just run a race, and his collar clung damply to his neck. His glasses had fogged, and he removed them and thrust them in his breast pocket. With his toe he edged a wing chair into position a little off center in the room and to the right of the body on the floor. “Sit there, Johnny.” He set up a straight-legged bedroom chair confronting the wing chair, but eight feet away and with its back to the room's entrance. He sat down and visibly tried to relax while still keeping a careful eye on Johnny as he sat down on the chair opposite.

  Johnny tried not to sink too far into the wing chair's depths while at the same time endeavoring not to give the impression of maintaining his position on the front edge. A dozen times he measured with his eyes the distance between the two chairs before he spoke. “What was all that jazz, Freddie? You didn't poison that wine.”

  “Of course I didn't. It's enough that she thinks that I did.” The voice was weary, the face drawn. “I couldn't use force on her, as you very well know. Time and noise alone would prevent. This way is easier. Before she spoke to you just now there were two possibilities, the reverse of what I outlined for her out here. If she doesn't know, the wine will remain untouched. The final thing to die in the human spirit is hope, and if she doesn't know she would endure anything I could do to her, hoping with her last breath to convince me. But if she does know, she knows also that she can't hold out indefinitely against the violence I promised her.” He smiled at Johnny. “If she tells me, she dies easily, something for which all of us might wish. If she doesn't tell me, she dies unpleasantly. With the wine in her hand, she will feel that she has only to drink it to escape the torture and have the last laugh on me.”

  Ronald Frederick ran a hand tiredly over his features, groped for the glasses in his pocket, flipped them open, and slipped them on his nose. “As I said, those were the original possibilities before she spoke to you just now. By her farewell she has indicated her choice. She knows where the capsule is, and she will drink the wine to cheat me from finding it. It will take a tremendous effort of will for her to do this; she will postpone it until she hears my key in the lock again. And then when she discovers that it has all been for nothing, that she has escaped nothing, she will be like wet cardboard. There will be no strength, no will, no resistance. No violence will be needed; the truth will pour out of her.”

  Johnny spoke after a thoughtful moment. “Freddie, you're really a first class bastard. You make it a pleasure for me to figure what I'll do to you when I take you.”

  The no longer dapper little man smiled, and looked musingly at the other chair. “As a matter of fact, Johnny—”

  “As a matter of fact, Freddie, you figure I've just about served my time on this trip?”

  “Exactly. When I open that door you will be a dangerous unnecessary hazard to the expedition. I think that now is the time.”

  The revolver in his lap began a slow, steady ascent, and Johnny tensed in his chair. “You forgot this thing over here, Freddie—” He gestured widely with his left arm, and in the same instant launched himself forward with every ounce of spring in his body in a long, rolling block. The revolver, which had veered fractionally along with the little man's glance at the outflung left arm, snapped back and popped viciously, and Johnny felt a tearing hot wind in his left shoulder as the weight of his hips and shoulders caught the legs of Ronald Frederick's chair and flung it back against the door. Wood splintered noisily, and Johnny heard the manager's choked scream as he went flying. “Damn you—!”

  Johnny was still scrambling to get his knees under him on the floor when he saw the little man roll over and come up with the gun still miraculously in his hand, two buttons gone and a shoulder torn out of the immaculate jacket, a bruise or smudge of carpet dust high on one temple, and a muscle twitching uncontrollably in a cheek.

  “Now—!” The voice was a triumphant croak, and the eyes were wild as the gun swung over to again pick up the target, and Johnny wrenched a chair leg loose from the debris with which he had become entangled and drew back his arm to throw it.

  A knock at the door paralyzed all movement in the room. Johnny stared at the insane face opposite, eighteen inches from the floor as the knock came again, louder. “Open up in there.”

  “Who is it?” Ronald Frederick called.

  “Dameron. You going to open the door, or do I have to blow the lock?” Lieutenant Dameron's bull voice resounded through the wooden panels, and Ronald Frederick rose slowly to his feet with Johnny matching every move and inched around to the side of the door that would afford him concealment when it opened inward. He gestured to Johnny with the revolver.

  “Open the door for the fool.”

  Chapter XII

  Johnny had to step over the body on the floor to reach the door, and the doorknob was still turning in his hand after he unlocked it, when Lieutenant Dameron's impatient rush knocked the door away from him and brushed Johnny off balance against the wall as the lieutenant charged into the room. Behind him the slender figure of Detective Rogers stood poised on the threshold, alert and watchful, and then his eyes dropped to the body of the blond man on the floor just inside the door, and he froze.

  Ronald Frederick caught the freeswinging door in his left hand before it hit the wall, and his revolver was dead center on the detective. “You. What's-you-name.” The voice was high and cracked. “Inside. Quick.”

  Lieutenant Dameron turned in surprise, the beet-red features tightening as Detective Rogers reluctantly complied, and the manager reversed the flight of the door, which banged shut.

  “Frederick?” Lieutenant Dameron asked doubtfully, and then stood very still as the revolver swung around and lined up on his belt buckle. “By God, I didn't recognize you. Put up that gun now—”

  “Shut up!” Shrill overtones crackled in the already high-pitched voice, and the lieutenant shrugged and glanced at Johnny.

  “I thought we'd find you here. What's the matter with your arm?”

  Johnny glanced down at the blood-soaked left sleeve of his uniform and the red tricklings that ran down his wrist into his palm. “Pigeon kicked it.”

  “I said shut up, all of you—!” The little man moved cautiously from the door and backed a little further away, the revolver nervously shifting from one to the other of the trio on the other side of the room. Johnny thought that the room suddenly seemed very full of silent, hard-breathing people. The revolver settled down on its aimless flight and leveled on the detective. “You. Got a gun?”

  Jimmy Rogers nodded, lips compressed.

  “Where?”

  “Shoulder holster.”

  “Don't reach for it. Get over to him, Johnny, but not in line with him.” Johnny pushed himself off the wall against which he had been leaning. “Get his gun. At arm's length, from the side. I want to see all of both of you every second. Get it in your fingertips. If I see it in your palm, I shoot. Prop it as soon as it clears the holster.”

  The maneuver was carried out as delicately as a well-rehearsed ballet under the menacing snout of Frederick's revolver, and Johnny could see a muscle jumping in Jimmy Rogers' taut jawline as the police special thudded to the floor.

  “Kick it over here.”

  The sandyhaired man kicked, and the .38 slid spinning to the feet of Ronald Frederick, who looked immediately at the lieutenant.

  “No gun, Frederick. Listen, don't be a—”

  “I told you once, Dameron. Shut up!” The manager debated with himself, obviously doubtful. “Face the wall. All of you.”

  Johnny stared at the wall after turning, and surreptitiously flexed the fingers of his left hand to test the reaction.
<
br />   “You. On the left.” Rogers was on the left. “Lie down.

  Full length.” From the corner of his eye Johnny could see the detective drop awkwardly to his knees and then sprawl out on his belly. “You, Johnny. On the floor. Move over a little first.” Johnny eased himself down, bracing himself on the good arm. “You, Lieutenant. To the right a little.” Johnny listened to the lieutenant's bulk thump to the floor. He turned his head fractionally and saw Ronald Frederick cautiously move in closer behind them. Johnny's knees tensed, but the little man knelt swiftly beside the police officer and expertly slapped and probed for the suspected weapon. Satisfied there was none, he stood upright again, a measure of self-control returning and lessening the jerk in his movements.

  Lieutenant Dameron spoke quickly. “Frederick, you'd better give up on this right—”

  “Didn't I tell you to keep quiet?” From his position on the floor Johnny could see the revolver slew around and jerk upward, and with the now familiar pop piaster flew from just above the baseboard midway between Johnny and the lieutenant. Johnny flinched involuntarily and glanced sideways just in time to see Lieutenant Dameron unhunching his neck. Behind them Ronald Frederick giggled, an eerie sound in the stillness of the room, and the lieutenant silently mouthed the word “Crazy!”

  “All right, now.” The voice behind them tingled with electricity, and Johnny tensed again. “Down flat, everyone, and hold it flat. Heads down. First head up gets it.”

  Johnny turned his left cheek to the floor and his eyes to the right. As he had expected Lieutenant Dameron had reversed the procedure, and they lay stiffly and looked at each other. Johnny strained to hear movement in the room behind them. For a moment he heard nothing, and then he recognized the scrape of metal on metal followed by a metallic click, and he realized with a surge of hope that Ronald Frederick was unlocking the bathroom door. The incredible little man still had not given up.

  Strain as he might, Johnny could make out nothing further. Had the door closed again? He could not be sure. He realized suddenly that the lieutenant was trying to attract his attention. The mouthed whisper was an infinitesimal sound. “—he up to now—”

  Johnny moistened his lips and replied in kind. “He's in the bathroom. I think.” He lay quietly a moment and suddenly made up his mind. “We got to move, Joe. Before he comes out.” He doubled his legs beneath him and pivoted on his stomach; the flesh around his ears prickled, but the bathroom door was closed and the room behind them was empty.

  Johnny scrambled half-erect and nearly pitched forward on his face when he incautiously put his weight on the damaged left arm. Desperately he struggled to maintain his balance and then lifted his head sharply as a guttural, animalistic exclamation emerged from behind the closed door. From the floor Lieutenant Dameron's voice was almost normal as he whirled. “What the hell—7”

  Johnny charged the door in a silent, murderous rush. As always in motion, he felt alive, exultant; everything was going to be all right. No time to check to see whether the door had been relocked from the other side; he hit it with his good shoulder with every ounce of steam he could generate, and metal shrieked and wood cracked. The door burst shiveringly inward as his own momentum carried him in behind it, and in the glaringly white brightness of the bathroom the scene was stamped out for him as on an etching.

  Unbelieving, Johnny stared down at the body on the floor, at the snout-nosed revolver neatly balanced on the edge of the tub, and at a dazed Ronald Frederick, standing, wine glass in hand, gaping down at the woman at his feet.

  “What is it?” Lieutenant Dameron demanded huskily behind Johnny, struggling to negotiate the splintered door now hanging crazily from a shattered hinge. He pushed in and fell silent.

  “Jesus!” Jimmy Rogers breathed throatily behind them as he shoved inside and looked down in turn at Erika Muller's violently contorted figure and the dark blue and gray patches on the bloated features. “Another dead one!”

  Wine glass still in hand, Ronald Frederick glared confusedly at them across the length of the bathroom. Whatever his previous frustrations and the final coruscating star-burst of events had done to him, this final crushing demolition of his last hope had shocked him back to sanity. His voice was almost normal when he spoke; he might have been delivering a lecture. “Saccharin. I put saccharin in her glass. The power of suggestion killed her. Or she had a bad heart. She was my last chance. My last chance—”

  He stared at his silent audience, and the E string of his nerves tightened up again. His voice rose. “Saccharin, I tell you! Nothing more nor less. It couldn't kill her! It couldn't—!” He glared at them, half lifted the glass to dash it into the sink, then lifted it to his lips in a swift gesture and swallowed twice. “There, you see? Saccharin,” he said and swallowed dryly. Slowly he put the glass down in an unbalanced position on the sink's edge, and it toppled sidewise and crashed with a tinkly burst of glass fragments. Ronald Frederick did not appear to hear it. A hand went to his throat tentatively, almost questioningly, and Johnny realized with a start that he had been holding his own breath without realizing it.

  Beside him Lieutenant Dameron stirred as though emerging from a trance. He strode to the sink, bent his head, and sniffed vigorously amidst the glass particles before straightening and turning to Johnny. “Can't smell a damn thing. What in hell did he put in there?”

  “You heard him. Saccharin.”

  “For God's sake, look at her—!”

  Johnny hardly recognized his own voice. “She had her own.”

  “She what?”

  “She had her own poison. Freddie'd told her he'd poisoned the wine, but she might have thought he'd used a slow one. She knew hers was quick, so she dumped that in, too.”

  “But then he just got the whole load—!”

  “Sure he did. Drank it like a little man, didn't he?”

  The lieutenant stared, then grimaced. “Jimmy—!”

  “Right, Lieutenant. I'll have an ambulance here in nothing flat.” The sandyhaired man almost ran out the door, and the lieutenant swept a handful of towels from the rack and knelt beside the body of Erika Muller. He began to unfold towels and spread them lightly over the twisted limbs.

  Johnny looked down at his own clenched hands; he walked back out into the bedroom and directly across to Jimmy Rogers at the telephone. He had to walk around him to get at him with his right hand.

  “Switchboard?” the detective demanded and looked up inquiringly at Johnny. “Get me—” He had a hundredth of a second's warning, but it was not nearly enough. All the sick, bitter frustration that had welled up within Johnny at the sight of Erika Muller's body exploded in the right hand smash he unloaded on the completely unsuspecting detective's jaw. The slender man arced over sideways from the force of the blow, and when he landed he slid.

  Johnny caught the falling phone in mid-air. “Sorry. Changed my mind.” He stepped over the unconscious man and returned to the bathroom. Lieutenant Dameron was just rising to his feet, brushing at his knees. Johnny pushed past him, pulled down the toilet seat cover, and sat down, almost face to face with Ronald Frederick, who sat balanced precariously on the edge of the tub.

  Johnny looked at him closely. The slender features were flushed, the fingers digging into the side of the tub contracted and relaxed spasmodically, and a knee jerked slightly. The little man swallowed hard, and spoke with an effort. “Saccharin—”

  “Sure, Freddie. Yours. Not hers. This the way you woulda picked to go?”

  “What... you mean—?”

  “Because this is the way you're going. And at that its too good for you.” He brushed past the watching lieutenant and leaned casually in the doorway before he spoke again. “Sweet dreams, Freddie.”

  Lieutenant Dameron looked at him sharply. “You have to needle a man in his condition?”

  “Who's needlin' him? I'm tellin' him. I want him to know.”

  “Know? Know what?”

  “Know that he's kickin' off with a gutful of poison, co
urtesy of Killain.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? We'll have him pumped—” the harsh voice died; Lieutenant Dameron strode up to Johnny in the doorway. “What are you up to now? Get out of that door. Jimmy—”

  “I took care of Jimmy. You're not gonna pump this guy out, Joe. This is my pigeon.”

  The big man's hands closed and opened. “Don't be a bigger fool than nature made you, Johnny. He'll burn, anyway.”

  “He might get life. I've seen it happen. This way we don't need to guess.”

  Lieutenant Dameron glanced behind him. Ronald Frederick's glazing eyes stared unseeingly at the far wall. The slender body did a slow forward bend, doubled convulsively and pitched forward onto the floor on its knees, then writhed over on its back. A grayish pallor invaded the pinched features, and the lieutenant jerked around to Johnny. “Get the hell out of that doorway—!”

  “Don't try it, Joe. I'm telling you.”

  The ruddyfaced man backed off two steps, came up on his toes, looked at Johnny beside the splintered door, and hesitated. “For the last time, Johnny—”

  “I knew you had more sense than to give me that free shot, Joe. You can have him in ten minutes.” Johnny's head came around sharply at a brisk series of knocks at the corridor door. He looked back at the lieutenant. “Did you have a rear guard?”

  “You know damn well they'd have been in here before this if I did have,” Lieutenant Dameron growled.

  The sudden knock on the door made them both jump. Somehow, Johnny knew who it was; he started for the door and then looked back. “Don't make the mistake of going for the phone.” He listened at the door. “'Who is it?”

  “Open up, Johnny. It's Willie.”

  “Yeah, Willie,” Johnny thought; he half-turned to look at the ruddyfaced man standing by the shattered door; after a long moment he reached out and took the knob gingerly and opened the door. Willie Martin strolled in, dapper in a dark brown lightweight gabardine complete with boutonniere in the lapel. He looked around critically as Johnny closed the door again, and his glance halted at the body of the blond man. “I just missed him in London,” he said conversationally.