Alfred Hitchcock Presents : 12 Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV

by Alfred Hitchcock

  The cable ran: Hospitalized bad kickup malaria Flying back immediately released maybe two weeks Hang on Charles.

  And that was bad news. Bad from two angles-that he would have to wait before Charles could get to him, that poor Charles was sick.

  But whereas, before the first meeting with Julius Magnussen, Cyprian would have been crushed almost to extinction by these twin misfortunes, now they seemed merely to serve as a spur to his fortitude and his hope and his labor. So that he clenched his teeth and redoubled his efforts to produce appropriate "memories"-until he reached the point of being sure that at least Friar and Magnussen believed him, that he almost believed himself.

  ***

  But it was as well for him that he wasn't present at any of the several meetings between Julius Magnussen and John Friar alone, or he would have heard talk which would have turned his hope-lightened purgatory into hopeless hell.

  -A bad case, John. Don't hide it from yourself. We'll need a miracle.

  -Good God, Julius, d'you mean you yourself don't believe-

  -Stop. That's not a question I want to be asked. Or answer. Leave it at what I said. A bad case. No case at all.

  -But the evidence against him's all circumstantial!

  -And therefore the best, in spite of what they say in novels.

  -But surely it's all open to two interpretations! Like-like his fingerprints on that poker.

  -And the splashes of blood on him and his clothing? Have you thought of that, John? Splashes. Not smears, which are what should be there from raising her, examining her, trying to help her…

  -But the boy's gentle, Julius! There's no violence in him. He couldn't even kill a fly that was pestering him.

  -Maybe not. And don't think that's not going to be used. For more than all it's worth. For God's sake, it's practically all we have! You know the young man, John: tell me, how would he react to the suggestion of an alternative plea?

  -You mean "not guilty, or guilty by reason of insanity"!-that gag! Good God, Julius-he wouldn't go for that if you tortured him.

  -H'mm. I was afraid that would be the answer.

  -Look now, what is all this? What are you trying to do-tell me you won't take the case after all? Is that it?

  -Cool off, John. I'm trying to save your prodigy's life, that's all.

  -I don't get this! Julius Magnussen, of all people, scared of a setup like this!… Remember that police photograph you showed me? Well, think of it. Not the head wounds, the others. Think of 'em! Cyprian could not have been responsible for that frightful sort of brutality. Think of what was done to that girl, man!… Can't you see- can't you?

  -Oh, yes, John, I can see. A great many things…

  ***

  But Cyprian knew nothing of such conversations, and it seemed to him, every time he saw his counsel, that more and more confidence radiated from that towering, loose-limbed figure; that the penetrating dark eyes looked always more cheerful.

  So he rode out the rest of the dragging days and nights and came in good enough order to the morning when the trial was to open. It was a Thursday, and he liked that because he had had a fancy, since an episode in his boyhood, that Thor's was his lucky day. Further, a bright autumnal sun was glittering over New York and even-a rare occurrence in the weeks he had been there-pushing rays through the bars of the small window high up in the wall of the cell.

  He dressed with great, almost finicking care. He drank a whole pot of coffee and then sent for more. He even ate a little of his breakfast.

  He was ready and waiting a full half-hour before they came for him. He spent it pacing the cell, smoking too much and too fast, glancing occasionally toward the pile of letters which he hadn't read and had no more intention of ever reading than he had of looking in court at any of the reporters' faces. He didn't think of what was before him today. He daren't think of that, in the same way-only infinitely multiplied-that he never thought about what was coming on a first night.

  So he considered, with furious intensity, anything and everything except what was coming. The sure hope at the back of his mind must be kept inviolate.

  He came naturally to thoughts of Charles. Every day he had been sure this must be the day when he would hear again-and every day he had been disappointed. He had wired again, and he had written-just a note which John Friar had air-mailed for him. But still no answer. Charles must be very ill indeed. Or-a wonderful idea which he dare not dwell upon for more than one delicious instant- Charles was well again and had arrived in New York, and was on his way here.

  The third alternative he shuddered away from. The thought of Charles dead was so black, so bleak, so dreadful, that it would have driven him back in escape to thoughts of the immediate future if he hadn't been saved by the arrival of his guard.

  For once he was glad to see the fellow. He said, "Do we start now?" and moved toward the door.

  But the man shook his head. "They ain't here yet," he said. "Take it easy." He drew a folded yellow envelope from a pocket and held it out to Cyprian. "Sent over from Friar's," he said. "He reckoned you might like to have it right away."

  Cyprian almost snatched it from the outstretched hand. His heart was pounding, and sudden color had tinged his pallid face. With fingers which he didn't know were shaking, he fumbled at the flimsy envelope, ripped it open at last, and unfolded the sheet it contained.

  And read: Better Out next Wednesday will fly arriving Thursday Charles.

  The new color deepened in Cyprian's face. He read the cable again-and again. Here was the best of all possible omens. Almost as good as his wild daydream of a few moments before-that perhaps Charles would arrive in person. On second thought, perhaps better. Because now he was supremely confident, and he would so far prefer to have all this ugliness behind him when Charles returned; out of sight and wrapped up and put away, to be disinterred and examined, if ever, at a safe distance in time and then only for personal historic interest.

  He moved his shoulders unconsciously, as if in reflex to the removal of a heavy weight. He folded the strip of paper carefully, and stowed it away in his breast pocket. And then looked at the guard and smiled, and said softly, "Thank you. Thank you very much…"

  There was a tramping of feet in the corridor-and two uniformed men he had never seen before. One of them pushed the cell door wide and looked at him with no expression and said, "All set?"

  Cyprian smiled at this man too, and walked out into the corridor quickly, lightly, almost jauntily…

  But there was no lightness in him when he came back eight hours later, and no square of sunshine from the barred window. There was only night outside and here the hard cold light of the single bulb overhead.

  His face was lined and wax-white. His shoulders sagged and his body seemed not to fill his clothes. He lurched on his feet while they opened the door of the cell, and one of the men gripped his arm and said, "Take it easy."

  They put him inside and he dropped on the edge of his cot and sat there limp and head-hanging, his eyes wide and staring at the floor and not seeing it.

  The escort went away and his own guard came, and sometime later the doctor. He couldn't get food down, and they put him to bed and gave him a sedative. He slept almost at once, and they left him.

  He lay like a log for three hours, until the deadly numbness of fatigue had gone and the drug had eased its grip. And then he began to murmur and thrash around on the cot-and in a moment gave a harsh choked cry and sat upright, awake.

  He remembered. He tried not to, he fought, but he couldn't stop memory from working. He remembered everything-at first in jumbled pictures, then in echoing phrases; at last, concentrated upon the gray-haired, gray-eyed figure of the District Attorney, he recalled the whole of the clear and ruthlessly dispassionate Opening for the Prosecution. The speech which, period by period, point by careful point, had not only stripped Cyprian Morse of all cover but had shattered all remnant of hope in him.

  What had happened after the speech didn't matter. The irrepara
ble damage to Cyprian Morse, the conviction of Cyprian Morse, had been brought about; those witnesses, the silly endless procession of them who answered silly endless questions, they were just so many more nails in his coffin. After the speech, which showed such complete, such eerie knowledge and understanding, as if the speaker had not only seen everything that had happened but had seen it with Cyprian's mind and Cyprian's eyes-after that, all else seemed time-prolonging and sadistic anticlimactic…

  He didn't move. He sat as he was, and stared into the abyss…

  Morning came, and daylight, and people he heard and saw as if from a long distance. He moved then but was almost unconscious of moving. It was as if his body were an automaton and his mind a separate entity outside it, which had no concern with the robot movements.

  The automaton clothed itself, and ate and drank, and went with his mind and the uniformed men and sat in the crowded courtroom in the same place as his undivided self had sat the day before.

  The automaton sat still and went through motions-of listening to friends and Counsel, of answering them when necessary, of looking attentive to the gabber-jab of the unending witnesses, of considering thoughtfully the closing speech for the Prosecution, of hearing the crabbed Judge rule that the Court, this being Friday, should recess until the morning of Monday…

  But his mind, his actual self, was in hell without a permit. For sixty-two hours the automaton made all the foolish gestures of living; for uncountable stages of distorted time his mind gazed into the pit.

  The Monday came, and the automaton moved accordingly. But the clean-cut edges of the schism between body and mind began to waver before the two parts of him left the cell, as if something had happened which demanded they should be joined again. Resisting the pull, his mind began to wonder what had caused it. His refusal to see John Friar or Magnussen during the recess? The odd, almost excited manner of his guard on bringing a newspaper to the cell and trying to insist on the automaton reading it? The looks which both his escorts cast at the automaton in the car on the way to court?

  He didn't want the union. He would break, he felt, if he couldn't keep up the separation. But the pull grew stronger with every foot of the way, and almost irresistible as he entered the courtroom itself, and his mind felt a difference-a strange, disturbing, agitated alteration-in the other minds behind the faces staring at him.

  And then, with a shivering, nauseating shock, his resistance went and he was swept back into his body once more, so that he was stripped and next to the world again with no transparent armor between.

  It was the face of Magnussen's wizened clerk which brought it about, a face which always before had been harassed and grave and filled with foreboding, but which now was gay and eager and irradiated by a tremendous gnome-like smile. As Cyprian was about to take his seat, this smile was turned full on him, and his hand was surreptitiously taken and earnestly squeezed, and through the smile a voice came whispering something which couldn't be distinguished but all the same was pregnant with the most extreme importance.

  Cyprian sat down, weakly. Once again, he had no strength. He looked up into the little clerk's face and muttered something-he wasn't sure of the words himself.

  An astonished change came over the puckered visage. "Mr. Morse!" The voice cracked in amazement. "Do you mean to say you haven't heard!"

  Dumbly Cyprian shook his head, the small movement leaving him exhausted.

  "Not about the-the other killings!… Mr. Morse! There have been two more murders of unfortunate girls! In every respect the same as Miss Halmar's-even the-the mutilations identical… On Saturday night the first victim was found; and another discovered in the early hours of this morning!"

  Cyprian went on staring up into the excited, agitated face. "D-don't you realize what this m-means!" The voice was stammering now. "All three deaths must be linked. You couldn't have caused the others! They're the work of a maniac-a Jack the Ripper 1" Fluttering hands produced a newspaper, unfolded it, waved it. "Look here, Mr. Morse!"

  There were black heavy headlines. They wavered in front of Cyprian's eyes, then focused sharply and made him catch at his breath.

  POLICE CLUELESS IN NEW FIEND SLAYINGS! MORSE RELEASE DEMANDED BY PUBLIC!

  "Oh," said Cyprian, his lips barely moving. "Oh, I see…" His whole body began to tingle, as if circulation had been withheld from it until now. He said, a little louder, "What-what will happen?"

  The clerk sat down beside him. His hoarse whispering was as clear now as a shout in Cyprian's ears. "What will happen? I'll tell you, Mr. Morse. I'll tell you exactly. The D.A. will withdraw-and not long after Mr. Magnussen's opened. He'll withdraw, Mr. Morse, you mark my words!"

  The words coincided with a stentorian bellow from the back of the courtroom, followed by a stamping rustle as everyone stood up- and Justice swept to its throne in a dusty black robe…

  And Cyprian, life welling up in him, found himself caught in a whirling timeless jumble of fact and feeling and emotion, a maelstrom which was in effect the precise opposite of the long nightmare succeeding his arrest-

  Julius Magnussen towering on his feet, speaking of Cyprian Morse's innocence with an almost contemptuous certainty. Julius Magnussen examining detectives on the witness stand, forcing them to prove all three killings had been identical. Julius Magnussen calling more witnesses, then looking around haughtily at the Prosecution when the Court was asked to hear a statement. The District Attorney himself, gray eyes not understanding now but puzzled and confused, muttering that the state withdrew its case against Cyprian Morse. The Judge speaking, bestowing commiseration on Cyprian Morse, laudation on Julius Magnussen, censure upon their opponents-

  Then bedlam breaking loose, himself the center. Friends. Strangers. Acquaintances. Reporters. All crowding, jabbering, laughing. Women weeping. Flashbulbs exploding. John Friar pumping both his hands. Magnussen clapping him on the shoulder. Himself the center of a wedge of policemen, struggling for the exit. An odd little instant of comparative quiet in the hallway, and hearing Magnussen say to John Friar behind him, "An apology, John, you were right."

  Then John's big car, and the soft cushioned seat supporting him. And quietness, with the tires singing on the road and time to draw breath-and taste freedom…

  All horror was behind him and it was Wednesday evening and Charles was coming home. From John Friar's house in Westchester, in John Friar's car, driven by John Friar's chauffeur.

  ***

  It was deepening dusk when they pulled into the parking lot behind the apartment house. Cyprian peered, and saw no sign of any human being and was pleased. He got out and smiled at the chauffeur and said warmly, "Thank you, Maurice. Thank you very much…" and thrust a lavish tip into the man's gloved hand and waved a cheerful salute and walked off toward the rear entrance of the building. His footsteps rang crisply on the concrete, and a faint, wreathlike mist from his breathing hung on the autumn air. He suppressed an impulse to stop and crane his neck to look up to the penthouse and see the warm lights glowing out from it. He knew they were there, because he had heard John Friar telephoning to his servant, telling him when Mr. Morse was to be expected.

  Good old John, he thought. Thoughtful John! And then forgot John completely as he entered the service door, and still met no one and found one of the service elevators empty and waiting.

  He forgot John. He forgot everyone and everything-except Charles.

  And Charles would be here tomorrow. That was why Cyprian had insisted upon coming home tonight-so that he could supervise preparation.

  He hurried the elevator with his mind, and when it reached the rear hallway of his penthouse, threw open the gate-and was faced, not by light and an open door and Walter's white-smiling black face, but by cold unwelcoming darkness.

  He stepped out of the elevator and groped for the light switch and pressed it and blinked at the sudden glare. Frowning, he tried the door to the kitchen. It wasn't locked, but when he opened it there was more darkness. And no sound. No sound at
all.

  A chill settled on his mind. The warm excited glow which had been growing inside him evaporated with unnerving suddenness. He switched on more lights and went quickly through the bright-tiled neatness and threw open an inner door and called, "Walter! Walter, where are you?" into more darkness still.

  Not such absolute darkness this time, but the more disturbing for that. The curtains across the big windows at the west side of the living room had not been drawn and there was still a sort of gray luminosity in the air.

  Cyprian took two or three paces into the room. He called, "Walter!" again, and heard his own voice go up too high at the end of the word.

  And another voice spoke from behind him-a cracked and casual voice.

  "I sent him out for an hour or two," it said. "Hope you don't mind."

  Cyprian started violently. He gasped, "Charlesl" and wheeled around and saw a tall figure looming in the grayness. His heart pounded in his ears and he felt a swaying in his head.

  There was no answering sound-and he said, "Charles!" again and moved toward a table near the figure and reached out for the lamp he knew was on it.

  But his shoulder was caught in a grip which checked him completely. Long fingers strong as steel bit into his flesh, and Charles's voice said, "Take it easy. We don't need light just yet."

  Cyprian felt cold. His head still whirled. He couldn't understand, and the grip on his shoulder seemed to be paralyzing him and he was afraid with that worst of all fears which hasn't any shape.

  He said wildly, "Charles, I don't understand-I-" and couldn't get out any more words. He contorted all the muscles in his face in a useless attempt to see Charles's face.

  "You will," said Charles's voice. "Do you remember once telling me you'd never lie to me again?"

  "Yes," Cyprian whispered-and then, his mouth drying with fear, "Let me go. You're hurting me…"