Death Locked In

by Douglas G. Greene (ed)

  “It’s a suicide, see?” continued the police dick pugnaciously, as though by raising his voice he was deciding the argument. “I’ve cased the room, and I don’t care if he stood on his head or did somersaults before he rode up.” He waved a little black pocket-notebook under Striker’s nose. “Here’s my report, and if it don’t suit you, why don’t you take it up with the Mayor?”

  Striker said in a humble, placating voice: “Mind if I ask you something personal?”

  “What?” said the precinct man sourly.

  “Are you a married man?”

  “Sure I’m married. What’s that to—?”

  “Think hard. The night you became engaged, the night you first proposed to your wife, did you feel like taking your own life afterwards?”

  The police dick went “Arrrr!” disgustedly, flung around on his heel, and stalked out, giving the revolving door an exasperated twirl that kept it going long after he was gone.

  “They get sore, when you’ve got ‘em pinned down, “ Striker remarked wryly.

  Perry remonstrated impatiently, “Why are you always trying to make it out worse than it is? Isn’t it bad enough without looking for trouble?”

  “If there’s something phony about his death, isn’t it worse if it goes undetected than if it’s brought to light?”

  Perry said, pointedly thumbing the still-turning door, “That was the police we just had with us.”

  “We were practically alone,” muttered his disgruntled operative.

  And so they couldn’t blame it on the Depression this time. That was starting to clear up now. And besides, Allan Hastings had come from well-to-do people. They couldn’t blame it on love either. Perry half-heartedly tried to suggest he hadn’t loved the girl he was engaged to, had had somebody else under his skin maybe, so he’d taken this way to get out of it.

  “That’s a woman’s reason, not a man’s,” Striker said disgustedly. “Men don’t kill themselves for love; they go out and get tanked, and hop a train for someplace else, instead!” The others both nodded, probing deep within their personal memories. So that wouldn’t wash either.

  In the end there wasn’t anything they could blame it on but the room itself. “That room’s jinxed,” Maxon drawled slurringly. “That’s two in a row we’ve had in there. I think it’s the thirteen on it. You oughta change the number to nine-twelve and a half or nine-fourteen and a half or something, boss.”

  That was how the legend first got started.

  Perry immediately jumped on him full-weight. “Now listen, I won’t have any of that nonsense! There’s nothing wrong with that room! First thing you know the whole hotel’ll have a bad name, and then where are we? It’s just a coincidence, I tell you, just a coincidence!”

  Dennison sold the room the very second day after to a middle-aged couple on a visit to the city to see the sights. Striker and Maxon sort of held their breaths, without admitting it to each other. Striker even got up out of bed once or twice that first night and took a prowl past the door of nine-thirteen, stopping to listen carefully. All he could hear was a sonorous baritone snore and a silvery soprano one, in peaceful counterpoint.

  The hayseed couple left three days later, perfectly unharmed and vowing they’d never enjoyed themselves as much in their lives.

  “Looks like the spirits are lying low,” commented the deskman, shoving the red vacancy-tag back into the pigeonhole.

  “No,” said Striker, “looks like it only happens to singles. When there’s two in the room nothing ever happens.”

  “You never heard of anyone committing suicide in the presence of a second party, did you?” the clerk pointed out not unreasonably. “That’s one thing they gotta have privacy for.”

  Maybe it had been, as Perry insisted, just a gruesome coincidence. “But if it happens a third time,” Striker vowed to himself, “I’m going to get to the bottom of it if I gotta pull the whole place down brick by brick!”

  The Legend, meanwhile, had blazed up, high and furious, with the employees; even the slowest-moving among them had a way of hurrying past Room 913 with sidelong glances and fetish mutterings when any duty called them to that particular hallway after dark. Perry raised hell about it, but he was up against the supernatural now; he and his threats of discharge didn’t stack up at all against that. The penalty for repeating the rumor to a guest was instant dismissal if detected by the management. If.

  Then just when the legend was languishing from lack of any further substantiation to feed upon, and was about to die down altogether, the room came through a third time!

  The calendar read Friday, July 12th, 1935, and the thermometers all read 90-plus. He came in mopping his face like everyone else, but with a sort of professional good humor about him that no one else could muster just then. That was one thing that tipped Striker off he was a salesman. Another was the two bulky sample cases he was hauling with him until the bellboy took them over. A third was his ability to crack a joke when most people felt like eggs in a frying pan waiting to be turned over.

  “Just rent me a bath without a room,” he told Dennison. I’ll sleep in the tub all night with the cold water running over me.”

  “I can give you a nice inside room on the fourth.” There were enough vacancies at the moment to offer a choice, these being the dog days.

  The newcomer held up his hand, palm outward. “No thanks, not this kind of weather. I’m willing to pay the difference.”

  “Well, I’ve got an outside on the sixth, and a couple on the ninth.”

  “The higher the better. More chance to get a little circulation into the air.”

  There were two on the ninth, 13 and 19. Dennison’s hand paused before 13, strayed on past it to 19, hesitated, came back again. After all, the room had to be sold. This was business, not a kid’s goblin story. Even Striker could see that. And it was nine months now since—There’d been singles in the room since then, too. And they’d lived to check out again.

  He gave him 913. But after the man had gone up, he couldn’t refrain from remarking to Striker: “Keep your fingers crossed. That’s the one with the jinx on it.” As though Striker didn’t know that! “I’m going to do a little more than that,” he promised himself privately.

  He swung the register around toward him so he could read it. Amos J. Dillberry, City, was inscribed on it. Meaning this was the salesman’s headquarters when he was not on the road, probably. Striker shifted it back again.

  He saw the salesman in the hotel dining room at mealtime that evening. He came in freshly showered and laundered, and had a wisecrack for his waiter. That was the salesman in him. The heat certainly hadn’t affected his appetite any. The way he stoked.

  “If anything happens,” thought Striker with gloomy foreboding, “that dick Courlander should show up later and try to tell me this guy was depressed or affected by the heat! He should just try!”

  In the early part of the evening the salesman hung around the lobby a while, trying to drum up conversation with this and that sweltering fellow-guest. Striker was in there too, watching him covertly. For once he was not a hotel dick sizing somebody up hostilely; he was a hotel dick sizing somebody up protectively. Not finding anyone particularly receptive, Dillberry went out into the street about ten, in quest of a soul mate.

  Striker stood up as soon as he’d gone, and took the opportunity of going up to 913 and inspecting it thoroughly. He went over every square inch of it: got down on his hands and knees and explored all along the baseboards of the walls; examined the electric outlets; held matches to such slight fissures as there were between the tiles in the bathroom; rolled back one half of the carpet at a time and inspected the floorboards thoroughly; even got up a chair and fiddled with the ceiling light fixture, to see if there was anything tricky about it. He couldn’t find a thing wrong. He tested the windows exhaustively, working them back and forth until the hinges threatened to come off. There wasn’t anything defective or balky about them, and on a scorching night like this the inmate
was bound to leave them wide open and let it go at that, not fiddle around with them in any way during the middle of the night. There wasn’t enough breeze, even this high up, to swing a cobweb.

  He locked the room behind him, went downstairs again with a helpless dissatisfied feeling of having done everything that was humanly possible—and yet not having done anything at all, really. What was there he could do?

  Dillberry reappeared a few minutes before twelve, with a package cradled in his arm that was unmistakably for refreshment purposes up in his room, and a conspiratorial expression on his face that told Striker’s experienced eyes what was coming next. The salesman obviously wasn’t the solitary drinker type.

  Striker saw her drift in about ten minutes later, with the air of a lady on her way to do a little constructive drinking. He couldn’t place her on the guest list, and she skipped the desk entirely—so he bracketed her with Dillberry. He did exactly nothing about it—turned his head away as though he hadn’t noticed her.

  Maxon, who had just come on in time to get a load of this, looked at Striker in surprise. “Aren’t you going to do anything about that?” he murmured. “She’s not one of our regulars.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Striker assured him softly. “She don’t know it, but she’s subbing for night watchman up there. As long as he’s not alone, nothing can happen to him.”

  “Oh, is that the angle? Using her for a chest protector, eh? But that just postpones the showdown—don’t solve it. If you keep using a spare to ward it off, how you gonna know what it is?”

  “That,” Striker had to admit, “is just the rub. But I hate like the devil to find out at the expense of still another life.”

  But the precaution was frustrated before he had time to see whether it would work or not. The car came down almost immediately afterwards, and the blonde was still on it, looking extremely annoyed and quenching her unsatisfied thirst by chewing gum with a sound like castanets. Beside her stood Manager Perry, pious determination transforming his face.

  “Good night,” he said, politely ushering her off the car.

  “Y’couldda at least let me have one quick one, neat, you big overstuffed blimp!” quoth the departing lady indignantly. “After I helped him pick out the brand!”

  Perry came over to the desk and rebuked his houseman: “Where are your eyes, Striker? How did you let that come about? I happened to spot her out in the hall waiting to be let in. You want to be on your toes, man.”

  “So it looks like he takes his own chances,” murmured Maxon, when the manager had gone up again.

  “Then I’m elected, personally,” sighed Striker. “Maybe it’s just as well. Even if something had happened with her up there, she didn’t look like she had brains enough to be able to tell what it was afterwards.”

  In the car, on the way to his room, he said, “Stop at nine a minute—and wait for me.” This was about a quarter to one.

  He listened outside 13. He heard a page rustle, knew the salesman wasn’t asleep, so he knocked softly. Dillberry opened the door.

  “Excuse me for disturbing you. I’m the hotel detective.”

  “I’ve been quarantined once tonight already,” said the salesman, but his characteristic good humor got the better of him even now. “You can come in and look if you want to, but I know when I’m licked.”

  “No, it isn’t about that.” Striker wondered how to put it. In loyalty to his employer he couldn’t very well frighten the man out of the place. “I just wanted to warn you to please be careful of those windows. The guard-rail outside them’s pretty low, and—’’

  “No danger,” the salesman chuckled. “I’m not subject to dizzy spells and I don’t walk in my sleep.”

  Striker didn’t smile back. “Just bear in mind what I said, though, will you?”

  Dillberry was still chortling goodnaturedly. “If he did lose his balance during the night and go out,” thought Striker impatiently, “it would be like him still to keep on sniggering all the way down.”

  “What are you worried they’ll do—creep up on me and bite me?” kidded the salesman.

  “Maybe that’s a little closer to the truth than you realize,” Striker said to himself mordantly. Looking at the black, night-filled aperture across the lighted room from them, he visualized it for the first time as a hungry, predatory maw, with an evil active intelligence of its own, swallowing the living beings that lingered too long within its reach, sucking them through to destruction, like a diabolic vacuum cleaner. It looked like an upright, open black coffin there, against the cream-painted walls; all it needed was a silver handle at each end. Or like a symbolic Egyptian doorway to the land of the dead, with its severe proportions and pitch-black core and the hot, lazy air coming through it from the nether world.

  He was beginning to hate it with a personal hate, because it baffled him, it had him licked, had him helpless, and it struck without warning—an unfair adversary.

  Dillberry giggled, “You got a look on your face like you tasted poison! I got a bottle here hasn’t been opened yet. How about rinsing it out?”

  “No, thanks,” said Striker, turning away. “And it’s none of my business, I know, but just look out for those windows if you’ve got a little something under your belt later.”

  “No fear,” the salesman called after him. “It’s no fun drinking alone. Too hot for that, anyway.”

  Striker went on up to his own room and turned in. The night air had a heavy, stagnant expectancy to it, as if it were just waiting for something to happen. Probably the heat, and yet he could hardly breathe, the air was so leaden with menace and sinister tension.

  He couldn’t put his mind to the “fantastic” magazine he’d taken to bed with him—he flung it across the room finally. “You’d think I knew, ahead of time!” he told himself scoffingly. And yet deny it as he might, he did have a feeling that tonight was going to be one of those times. Heat jangling his nerves, probably. He put out his light—even the weak bulb gave too much warmth for comfort—and lay there in the dark, chain-smoking cigarettes until his tongue prickled.

  An hour ticked off, like drops of molten lead. He heard the hour of three strike faintly somewhere in the distance, finally. He lay there, tossing and turning, his mind going around and around the problem. What could it have been but two suicides, by coincidence both from the one room? There had been no violence, no signs of anyone having got in from the outside.

  He couldn’t get the infernal room off his mind; it was driving him nutty. He sat up abruptly, decided to go down there and take soundings. Anything was better than lying there. He put on shirt and pants, groped his way to the door without bothering with the light—it was too hot for lights—opened the door and started down the hall. He left the door cracked open behind him, to save himself the trouble of having to work a key on it when he got back.

  He’d already rounded the turn of the hall and was at the fire door giving onto the emergency stairs, when he heard a faint trill somewhere behind him. The ding-a-ling of a telephone bell. Could that be his? If it was—He tensed at the implication. It kept on sounding: it must be his, or it would have been answered by now.

  He turned and ran back, shoved the door wide open. It was. It burst into full-bodied volume, almost seemed to explode in his face. He found the instrument in the dark, rasped, “Hello?”

  “Strike?” There was fear in Maxon’s voice now. “It’s—it’s happened again.”

  Striker drew in his breath, and that was cold too, in all the heat of the stuffy room. “Nine-thirteen?” he said hoarsely. “Nine-thirteen!”

  He hung up without another word. His feet beat a pulsing tattoo, racing down the hall. This time he went straight to the room, not down to the street. He’d seen too often what “they” looked like, down below, after they’d grounded. This time he wanted to see what that hell box, that four-walled coffin, that murder crate of a room looked like. Right after. Not five minutes or even two, but right after—as fast as it was humanly
possible to get there. But maybe five minutes had passed, already: must have, by the time it was discovered, and he was summoned, and he got back and answered his phone. Why hadn’t he stirred his stumps a few minutes sooner? He’d have been just in time, not only to prevent, but to see what it was—if there was anything to see.

  He got down to the ninth, heat or no heat, in thirty seconds flat, and over to the side of the building the room was on. The door was yawning wide open, and the room light was out. “Caught you, have I?” flashed grimly through his mind. He rounded the jamb like a shot, poked the light switch on, stood crouched, ready to fling himself—Nothing. No living thing, no disturbance.

  No note either, this time. He didn’t miss any bets. He looked into the closet, the bath, even got down and peered under the bed. He peered cautiously down from the lethal window embrasure, careful where he put his hands, careful where he put his weight.

  He couldn’t see the street, because the window was too high up, but he could hear voices down there.

  He went back to the hall and stood there listening. But it was too late to expect to hear anything, and he knew it. The way he’d come galloping down like a war horse would have drowned out any sounds of surreptitious departure there might have been. And somehow, he couldn’t help feeling there hadn’t been any, anyway. The evil was implicit in this room itself—didn’t come from outside, open door to the contrary.

  He left the room just the way he’d found it, went below finally. Maxon straightened up from concealing something under the desk, drew the back of his hand recklessly across his mouth. “Bring on your heebie-jeebies,” he said defiantly. “See if I care—now!”

  Striker didn’t blame him too much at that. He felt pretty shaken himself.

  Perry came down one car-trip behind him. “I never heard of anything like it!” he was seething. “What kind of a merry-go-round is this anyway?”