by Don Elliott
That was the thing to say. But Mr. Crispian didn't say it. He stayed away from the telephone. Instead of calling the police, Mr. Crispian remained by the window, fascinated and chilled, frozen in his seat. He wanted to see what would happen next. His desire to save the blonde girl warred with his fear of getting involved in anything, and lost.
A moment more ticked by.
Then the face of the black-haired man appeared unexpectedly in the window, peering out.
Mr. Crispian, jolted with panic, tried to pull back out of sight, but he was too late. He had been seen! There could be no doubt of it! The black-haired man's gaze seemed to travel across the courtyard on a beeline to Mr. Crispian's window. He stared directly at Mr. Crispian for a long moment, and then, with a strange smile on his face, the black-haired man reached for the cord that controlled the blind. He pulled down the blind with a slow, deliberate motion, ending the show.
Mr. Crispian gasped in shock and instantly yanked down his own window blind. Then he collapsed into his chair and sat quivering with terror, not knowing what he should do now.
This was bad. For the second night in a row, he had been seen by one of the people across the court yard. But this was much worse than last night. It wasn't any naked wanton teen-ager that he had spied on. It was a murderer.
He saw me, Mr. Crispian thought in panic. He knows I witnessed the murder!
What can I do?
Suppose he comes to kill me too?
The telephone beckoned. The police would protect him. But Mr. Crispian could not bring himself to make the call. He had always feared the police. He was certain, in a fatalistic way, that the police knew all about his activities as a Peeping Tom, and that they were simply biding their time, collecting evidence, waiting for the proper moment to arrest him. He could not bring himself to ask for their help now, even in this moment of danger.
But what else was there to do? Where to turn for safety and security?
Mr. Crispian paced his two-room apartment, walking in short, bird-like steps. He looked about for some weapon that he could use to defend himself with in case the black-haired man decided to come looking for him.
Mr. Crispian did not doubt that he had been seen. After last night's episode with Kathryn, Mr. Crispian was abnormally sensitive to the possibility that some of the people on the far side of the courtyard might be able to see him as easily as he saw them. This time there could be no question about it. In that frozen fraction of a second before he had been able to duck down out of sight, Mr. Crispian had been clearly in the path of the black-haired man's gaze. Their glances had locked on each other for an instant. The man obviously knew that Mr. Crispian had witnessed the strangling, and it was folly to pretend otherwise. And certainly the murderer would want to get rid of any witnesses, if possible.
How long would it take' for him to get here?
Mr. Crispian's apartment was midway along his arm of the U. It would not be very difficult for the black-haired man to figure out what apartment belonged to which window. Kathryn had done it easily enough last night. And then, Mr. Crispian thought, the murderer would certainly come around to pay a call on the window peeper.
The doorbell rang.
Mr. Crispian froze. His teeth were chattering with terror. What to do now? How had he gotten here so soon? For the second night in a row, his sanctuary was under attack. Last night he had been foolish enough to let Kathryn in, because she had threatened to scream if he didn't. What now? Sit still and not answer? The door was locked.
Suppose he breaks in?
No. That was absolutely impossible. The door was thick, made of metal. You would need special tools to break it down, a blowtorch, a crowbar, things like that. It couldn't be knocked off its hinges by a simple shove of the shoulder, the way they were always doing in the movies.
The doorbell rang a second time, loudly, much more insistently.
Cold shivers of panic ran through Mr. Crispian's slender body. His eyes nervously darted around the apartment, still hunting for some weapon that he could use to defend himself. He saw a kitchen knife lying on the dinette table. It was long and sharp, deadly. But Mr. Crispian knew that he would never be able to use the knife on anyone, and see all that horrible blood come pouring out.
Something else, he thought. Something that I could use as a club, something heavy.
He ran to his kitchen closet and flung open the doors. A heavy skillet lay on the shelf. Yes. Yes, that would be good enough. Mr. Crispian thought. Fine. He could open the door, allow the strangler to rush into the apartment, hit him over the head with the skillet and knock him out, and then call the police.
Mr. Crispian trembled. Did he dare open the door at all? What if something misfired? Perhaps the murderer would grab the skillet away from him and club him down with it. He was such a big man, so strong looking.
The doorbell rang a third time. Fists pounded urgently against the door.
A high-pitched voice said, "Won't you please open up? I know you're there and I need help!
Mr. Crispian blinked in surprise. It had been a woman's voice. The woman? The blonde? But that was impossible. She was dead. He had seen the big man strangle her.
It had to be some kind of trick, Mr. Crispian thought, a trick designed to make him open the door to the black-haired man, the murderer.
"Please don't turn me away!" she pleaded, with a sob in her voice.
Mr. Crispian hung indecisively. The voice sounded female, all right. He didn't see how anybody could be imitating a woman's voice so expertly. Maybe it was the blonde girl, after all. Maybe by some miracle she had escaped, and she was being pursued hv the strangler.
He could just sit there behind his locked door, of course. But he knew that he'd feel shame the rest of his life if he let her be killed when he had a chance to save her. He owed her so much, after all. She had given him so many nights of panting pleasure.
Impulsively, Mr. Crispian rushed to the door. He threw it open, keeping the skillet gripped tightly in his hand, ready for immediate use.
It was the blonde girl from across the courtyard.
The one that Mr. Crispian had spied on for so many nights. The one with the round, firm breasts, and the small pinkish-red nipples, the milky-white skin. The girl whom he had watched twisting and writhing in nightly calisthenics, her breasts leaping and hobbling, her flesh going taut.
He knew her nude body well.
And now here she was, standing at his door. She was wearing a housecoat that had been loosely thrown over her light negligee. She was breathing hard, the hillocks of her breasts heaving violently. She looked frightened and disturbed. There was, Mr. Crispian couldn't help but notice, a neat row of purpling finger-marks around her lovely throat.
He stammered incoherently, "I thought you were-I saw him-that is-he strangled von."
She shook her head. "No. It wasn't anything like that You've got to come quickly with me. My fiance-there was a terrible accident He's hurt very bad ly. I don't know what to do."
"But wasn't he strangling you?" Mr. Crispian asked inanely, staring at the finger-marks around her throat. He could not get that scene of violence out of his mind. "I saw it-across the courtyard-I happened to look out the window, you understand-"
She shrugged, almost casually. "We had a silly little quarrel, but it was over. Everything was all right. And then-the accident-" She reached for his arm, tugged at him, half dragged him toward the door. "Oh, please, you've got to come. Hurry!"
Mr. Crispian goggled at the creamy white flesh of her rising breasts, nearly spilling out of the front of her gown. He thought he could see her nipples. Except for last night, and the encounter with Kathryn, Mr. Crispian had not been this close to a woman this way for years.
Last night he had bungled it. He had had a chance to gratify his long-pent-up desires, and he had placed his hands on the hot-blooded young girl's bare, quivering breasts only to thrust her away from him in revulsion. Now, unbelievably, anoth
er woman had come to him. The blonde. The one whose body had made so many of his nights happy. She was all but naked under her wrap. He knew that he could see and touch her bare body if he wanted, that in her present state of near-hysteria he might do much more.
She had come to. him.
She wanted his help.
Maybe the time had arrived, Mr. Crispian thought, to stop peeping and start living. The fact that two women on two consecutive nights had come to him, nearly nude under their outer garments, might be a sign. His luck was running the right way. Why fight it?
The sight of her, her warmth next to him, her full, heaving breasts and sweet-smelling body, made him dizzy, made him grow reckless.
"Yes-yes." Mr. Crispian blurted. "I'll go with you-whatever you want."
She turned and led the way out of the apartment. Mr. Crispian started to put his heavy skillet down. Then he changed his mind and carried it along with him, for reasons that he did not fully comprehend. It just seemed safer to have the heavy pan with him when he ventured into a strange apartment.
The tall blonde girl strode rapidly along, and Mr. Crispian had to hustle to keep up with her, with his short legs and undynamic body. He could imagine the big globes of her breasts jiggling up and down with each stride that she took.
They circled through the hallway, around the bend in the U of the building, ran down the stairs, and headed for the blonde girl's apartment, directly across from the apartment where Mr. Crispian lived.
The girl produced a key from a pocket of her housecoat and opened the door. Mr. Crispian followed her in. When he stepped into the apartment that he had watched for so many months, Mr. Crispian involuntarily let out a little gasp of horror.
The man was lying sprawled on his face in the middle of the room.
A pair of scissors was sticking out of his back.
The scissors were embedded right up to the finger holes. The long blades, Mr. Crispian thought, probably penetrated five or six inches into his body. Cutting through lungs and heart, snuffing out life.
"Good Lord!" Mr. Crispian cried.
The blonde girl turned to him, her breasts heaving in agitation. "We were having this crazy argument," she said breathlessly. "And then suddenly we were fighting and he lost his balance; he fell over backward. The scissors were resting on that little ledge over there, and he fell right onto them. It was one of those freak things. One in a million. The scissors just went right into his body, all the way like that. I'm afraid he's dead!"
"What shall I do?" Mr. Crispian asked, half dazed by the excitement and by the nearness of the blonde's full-breasted body.
"Take the scissors out of him," she begged him. "Please. I'm afraid to touch them. You do it. Please take them out for me!"
Mr. Crispian looked nervously down at the man. He looked dead, though of course Mr. Crispian had no real way of being sure. He wasn't any expert on corpses. The big man didn't appear to be breathing. There was a little oozing blood around the place where the scissors had gone into his back.
"You think I ought to?" he asked uneasily. "I've heard it isn't a good idea to take sharp objects out of wounded people."
"Do it."
"Maybe we ought to call a doctor. Let him do it."
"No. I can't wait. I want those scissors out of him! Oh, Jim, Jim, my darling!"
"Have you called an ambulance yet?"
"I'll take care of everything. But first get the scissors out of him." She touched the front of her housecoat, and, as if by accident, the belt came loose. Mr. Crispian stared at her. He could see the negligee underneath, and he could see through the negligee as though it weren't there at all.
He saw breasts, round and red-nippled.
Thighs, twin firm columns.
The deep socket of the navel. The golden reflections.
He was hypnotized by the nearness of her body.
Maybe, he told himself, she would strip herself naked for him. In her gratitude for saving her fiance, she would reveal herself to him in all her glowing nudity. He would approach her, touch her breasts, feel the nipples hot and hard against his palm, and his lips would go to hers just as he had always dreamed; they would sink down onto the bed and her thighs would cradle him and he would glide to meet her passion.
"Take the scissors out of him," the blonde girl said insistently.
Mr. Crispian shrugged. Was it safe to do it? Maybe he was wrong-maybe if he didn't take the scissors out in a hurry, the man would die.
The blonde girl's body robbed him of all power to think rationally. She was commanding him, and he had to obey. His eyes rested for a moment on her thinly veiled body, drinking in the beauty of those breasts and thighs.
Then Mr. Crispian knelt. He put his hands OB the scissors. He gave an experimental tug.
The scissors did not want to come out. He tugged them back and forth and up and down, almost forgetting, in the intensity of his concentration, that they were embedded in the flesh of a human being, and suddenly they came away. A great rush of blood came with them, spouting wildly over Mr. Crispian's hands and over his trousers.
And just as the scissors came out of the fallen man's body the blonde girl hit Mr. Crispian across the back of the head with the skillet. His own skillet.
Mr. Crispian was stunned by the unexpected blow. He had been kneeling to work on the scissors, and he simply toppled forward in a heap.
His head felt foggy, and he saw bright spots dancing in front of his eyes. He was dimly conscious of the blonde girl standing over him, gripping the massive skillet, getting ready for another blow.
"You-hit me," Mr. Crispian mumbled thickly. "Why did you hit me? I was doing what you wanted. I was taking the scissors out."
She laughed shrilly at him. "You poor little creep! All these months, sitting there, watching me from the window! Well, I knew you'd be useful today. I knew you'd come in handy."
"I don't understand," Mr. Crispian muttered. Speaking was an effort. The pain in his head was tremendous. He could not get up. His legs felt numb. He wondered if she had fractured his skull. "Why did you hit me?" he asked. "I don't understand."
She smiled malevolently. "You don't think I want to fry for Jim's murder, do you?" she asked "Even if it was self-defense. And it was. You saw it. He was strangling me, he meant to kill me. But then I managed to grab the scissors when he went to pull the window blind. I stabbed him good and hard."
Mr. Crispian tried to rise. The skillet descended again, crashing against his skull with terrifying impact, and he slumped weakly back to the floor.
He lay there with his eyes shut, still grasping the bloody scissors in his hand, completely unable to move.
He heard the sound of a telephone being dialed. Then the blonde girl was speaking.
"Hello ... police headquarters? This is Ellen Dawson apartment 6-G, 1011 Rivington Drive. I want to report a murder. Yes ... that's right ... a murder. Of my fiance, Mr. James McHughes. McHughes. The artist.
"No, I didn't do it. You see, there's this old pervert living across the courtyard, who was always looking out his window at me, watching to see if I'd undress ... yes, that's right, a Peeping Tom.
"Well, this evening he rang my doorbell, and when I let him in he just went berserk. He started to attack me. No, not rape. He was strangling me, in fact. I've got the marks on my throat. And then my fiance came in--we had a date tonight-and tried to grab this little old guy, but the pervert picked up a big pair of scissors that I have and stabbed him with it. I was terrified, but I hit him over the head with a big metal skillet ... Yes, he's unconscous now. And T think Jim's dead. You'd better send someone over here right away ... please. I'm going to collapse any minute...." She hung up.
Mr. Crispian shook his head, trying desperately to clear the fog away from his brain. His eyes fluttered open. He said thickly, "It isn't so-I didn't try to strangle you, he did-and you killed him yourself, not me. I'll tell them that!"
"Who'll believe you?"
She giggled. "Of course they are. They're my own pair of scissors, aren't they? Why shouldn't my prints be on them? But the scissors also have your fingerprints on them. And that's what counts."
Mr. Crispian put one hand to his aching head. He knew he was being framed, that she was using him to save herself. That while the black-haired man had gone to pull down the window blinds, the woman had gathered her strength and had rammed the scissors into his back before he could finish the job. Then she had gone looking for a convenient patsy.
