Innocent Bystander

by Craig Rice

  Up above, Smith was listening. All his frantic haste was gone. He signaled to call in the cops who were searching the Pier. He was going to need them here.

  “Tony, the fifty thousand—I meant to split it with you—I wasgoing to tell you—” Her voice caught in her throat. “You couldn’t prove it—”

  “Nobody needs to prove you killed O’Mara,” he said. “Because you know it and I know it and, somewhere in hell, O’Mara knows it. He had too much on you, and you had to kill him.” He laughed bitterly. “I thought you threw those knives too badly, that—wonderful—day on the Pier. You saw me grab a knife, and you grabbed one yourself. Only, your knife was found in his body, and I can still produce the one I grabbed.”

  Again he laughed. “The funny thing is, I might have split with you, too. It was my fifty thousand, but I’d have split anything in the world with you, honey.”

  “Tony, let’s get out of here. I’ll do anything. We’ll get away together.”

  “Don’t forget little Amby. He liked being alive. He had fun. But tonight, when you thought you’d lure little Amby into saying he’d seen me on the Ferris wheel, he looked at you and he really remembered you. Poor little Amby. He remembered what had happened when he was doing your picture—and where he had seen you before. On the wheel. That’s what he wanted to tell me before O’Mara butted in. That he had seen you on the wheel with McGurn, before I got in that car with him. That’s what he wanted to tell me. And you had to kill him.”

  His fingers clasped on her shoulders brutally. “When Amby was dying, I was outside the door.”

  The catch in his throat was almost like a sob. “Only tell me this one thing, sweetheart. Any time, you could have told the cops you’d seen me on the wheel. That’s how you planned it. Why didn’t you turn me in?”

  “Because—” She seemed to melt in his grasp. “Because I—wanted you—I didn’t want to lose you—”

  Up above Smith listened. He heard Ellen’s voice.

  “I wanted you,” Smith heard her say. “Not the way I wanted—the chumps, the suckers. Like McGurn. Like that guy Smith. I can tell you all of it now, darling. McGurn threw me over. He’s the first guy who did, and he’ll be the last. I wanted that fifty thousand. Tony, I’ve never seen five hundred dollars all at one time, not ever in my life.”

  “I have,” Tony said, “but it was to look at, not to touch.”

  The long sigh in her breath came over the loudspeaker. “I killed McGurn because he was a sucker. I killed him to get that safety-deposit key he wore hung around his neck. I used a knife. The one I won from the concession.”

  Tony’s voice said, “That’s when I really pegged you, kid. You like to win prizes. And that’s where the knives came from.”

  Her voice went on: “You know all of it now, don’t you, darling? McGurn met me on the wheel because he thought it was a gag and went along with it. McGurn was always a great one for a gag.”

  “Yeah,” Tony said. “He always was a great one for a gag.”

  She went on: “Tony, believe me, I didn’t know you. I’d heard of you, sure. You looked like the perfect fall guy.”

  Tony’s laugh was bitter. “How right you were!” He paused. “But why did you stick around? What was the idea of sitting there and having Amby draw your picture while I did what you knew I was going to do?”

  Her voice was thin and breathless. “I had to watch. I had to know for sure whether you would be there or not. It was a good place to watch from, Tony.”

  “You never should have torn up the picture, baby. That gave you away. That, and the powder on McGurn’s lapel, and the perfume you use, and little Pat Murphy’s voice on the phone. It all adds up, baby.”

  “I guess I’m pretty dumb, Tony.”

  “I guess you were.” He paused again. “But why didn’t you beat it out of town? You had McGurn out of the way, and you had the key to his safety-deposit vault. You could have come back to open it any time.”

  Her voice was very soft. “I was going to. That’s how I planned it. But when I saw you—when I met you—”

  “Yes?”

  “Tony. Something happened—to me. It was—oh, darling, hold me tight—”

  Smith listened, his face like stone. His eyes were fixed at some far point where the sky and ocean kissed each other. The corners of his mouth drooped in tired despair.

  Suddenly he said, “There must be some way of getting this damned thing up. Some sort of emergency switch—”

  “You got the owner of this thing stuck in his office,” the attendant said. “In the Administration Building. He may know something about it.”

  Smith sent a cop running for the Administration Building. Then he turned away from the crowd and listened to Ellen’s voice, still coming from the loudspeaker.

  “I still want you,” Ellen said. “I was afraid you’d kill me, because I’d framed you. I could have run away, but—I wanted you—”

  “I could have run away, too,” Tony said. “But I didn’t want to run away all my life. I wanted it proved that I didn’t kill McGurn.”

  Slowly, softly, warmly, her arms stole around his neck. “Tony. I’ve still got the key. I’ll give it to you.”

  “We won’t need it now, baby. Not either of us.”

  The touch of her was still like magic.

  “Tony—darling—”

  He ran his hands up her arms. The skin was cool and yet somehow vibrant. He bent his head to kiss her. His left hand grasped her right wrist, bent it slowly forward.

  “Sorry, baby. I’m superstitious about knives.”

  He dug in his fingers; the knife clattered from her hand to the floor.

  “But not about making love.”

  There was nothing between them and that other world, now, except thirty feet of pale green water.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  EMPTY RESCUE

  Smith turned almost savagely to the fat, breathless little man who came puffing up. “You own this rig?”

  The fat man nodded.

  “Get it up. Fast.”

  “Lemme take a look at what’s wrong,” the owner said. He waddled to the control board and examined it carefully.

  “Make it quick,” Smith said. After those last words, no sound had come from the loudspeaker.

  “The air pressure’s way down,” the owner said. “Look at that gauge. They won’t last long.”

  “Get them up!”

  The owner suddenly said, “Hey, wait! The Bell stuck last year, and my electrician put in an extra switch in case it happened again. It comes off another line.”

  “Where?” Smith snapped. “Do something. Anything.”

  “Here it is,” the little fat man announced.

  He squatted under the wooden platform and reached for an electric switch. “This’ll do it, I think.”

  He pushed the switch. A faint motor hum issued from the depths of the water.

  “That’s it,” the little man said, grinning.

  Smith turned and ran around the bottom of the platform to the stairs. He vaulted them, rushed down the wooden walk that ran over the surface of the water tank to the center of the tank, and looked down into the gray-green depths of the water.

  At first he could only see a vague, indistinct, silvery blob. The grinding of the motors grew louder. The blob began to take on form and shape. Up and up it came, slowly.

  Then suddenly the top of the Bell broke the surface of the water with a sucking splash.

  Smith turned to the owner, who had come up behind him. “You can open that steel door from the outside, can’t you?”

  The fat man wagged a big, steel, key-like object. “With this,” he said.

  The Bell bobbed up and down for a moment, then settled by the platform with one last, heavy bump.

  The owner inserted the key into the lock. He grunted as he took hold of the door handle and tugged. It wouldn’t budge. Smith grabbed hold of the handle and tugged with him.

  The door opened suddenly, with a jerk.


  A vast rush of water gushed out from the Bell and almost swept both men into the tank.

  Smith regained his balance first. He looked in through the open door of the Bell, from which the water was still draining. He saw nothing. Then he stepped into the Bell itself and looked around.

  He still saw nothing.

  The Bell was empty.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  NIGHTMARE IN THE FUN HOUSE

  Tony was bushed. He had used up almost all his reserve strength to pull himself up out of the emergency tunnel exit. Now he lay beside the hole through which he’d just climbed, trying to catch his breath.

  The air in the Diving-Bell had been sapped pretty low by the time he’d clawed open the trap door to the escape tunnel and eased himself into it, dragging Ellen with him. He’d crawled through the tunnel, always holding on to her. He’d only been able to think of one thing. He had to turn her in to the cops alive.

  Opening that last door had been the hardest part of it all. He’d had to shove at it savagely, using both his hands.

  And in that moment when he’d finally gotten it open, she’d slipped past him and disappeared into the darkness.

  Now he lay on the damp concrete and closed his eyes for a moment. He was tired, dog-tired. The injuries O’Mara had inflicted were really beginning to hurt now. His battered eye throbbed like a riveting-gun.

  Then he smelled something.

  Death.

  He opened his eyes again. By that time they were used to the darkness around him. He realized that he was in Amby’s hide-out shed behind the Diving-Bell. The escape tunnel had led from the tank to the shed.

  The smell of death was in that shed. Amby. Dead.

  Tony tried to get up. Pain shot through him like burning arrows. When he pulled himself to his feet, the sweat was pouring from his face.

  He staggered out of the shed and across the yard.

  Before rounding the corner of the aquarium walk, Ellen hid the knife she’d recovered from the floor of the Diving-Bell in her purse. It might come in handy. You never could tell.

  She was about to step out and reveal herself. She had nothing to conceal, now. No one would believe Tony’s story. Especially not Smith.

  Suddenly she heard approaching voices. She leaned back against the cement wall as far as she could, hugging the shadows.

  Two cops walked by.

  “Imagine that dame doing the killings,” one of them said. “A pretty babe like that.”

  The other cop laughed. A nasty laugh. “D’ja see Smith’s face when he listened to that loudspeaker on the Bell? She certainly made a sucker out of him.”

  The cops’ voices faded out.

  For a moment Ellen stood there, thinking. Then Smith knew. What a fool she’d been! Forgetting that there was a microphone in the Bell, connected outside. She should have killed Tony before he’d had a chance to talk.

  But now—what? She’d have to hide out somewhere on the Pier until the police had gone.

  She heard footsteps coming from behind her. Stumbling footsteps, echoing in the narrow cement walls of the aquarium walk.

  No, she couldn’t stay here or anywhere on the Pier. Only one thing to do. Get out. Under the iron fence ahead. There was a chance she could reach the main Pier, get to the entrance. Hide out somewhere else.

  She stepped out of the brooding shadows as the echoing footsteps approached closer and closer. Rushing across the intervening three feet between her and the iron fence, she bent over and crawled under it. She held her. breath. Her blood pounded in her temples. Her heart beat like a bellows.

  Then she slid onto the street.

  No sound of recognition.

  Ducking into the shadows of the booths lining the street, she hurried quickly along. If only no one came from the opposite direction. It looked hopeful. All the way down the Pier to the entrance, the street seemed deserted. If only—

  Tony staggered through the aquarium walk until he got to the ramp leading up to the street. The incline slowed him down. But he made it, puffing heavily. When he heard voices, he looked around the corner. Smith was there, talking with a little fat guy.

  He turned his head and looked down the street to the right. He saw nothing at first. But a moving something in the darkness caught his eye. Ellen’s white dress. Without hesitating he lunged to the fence, crawled under it, and stumbled on after Ellen’s retreating figure.

  Smith saw him. “Tony!” he called. “Wait!”

  He vaulted the stairs and followed after Tony, still calling out for him to stop. A few hundred feet ahead of Tony, he caught sight of something else. A woman. Ellen!

  When she heard Smith’s voice, Ellen stopped short and turned around. She saw both Tony and Smith coming after her. She started to run forward and stopped suddenly. Ahead of her, she saw two cops coming her way.

  She turned to the right. The Fun House. The mirror maze!

  Wheeling, she darted up the stairs of the Fun House. Tony was only a few feet behind her. Smith was a few feet behind Tony.

  The multi-mirrored entrance confused her momentarily. The first one she tried was a false one. She bumped into the glass. The next one, though, was the right one. It led to another opening. Slowly, she told herself, take it easy. Feel your way ahead first. Don’t bump. That’ll give you away. Take it easy.

  Seconds later Tony stumbled up the stairs and entered the mirror maze. Up ahead he could hear Ellen’s high-heeled foot-taps advancing slowly, falteringly, feeling their way through.

  Art Smith followed unhesitatingly after Tony. With his gun ready he stepped into the right entrance. So far so good, he thought. Ahead he heard Tony’s stumbling footsteps. And, fainter, the sound of Ellen’s measured walk.

  To the three of them the mirror maze became a nightmare. Long, inviting, seemingly free alleys beckoned ahead, only to develop into an illusion accompanied by a bump against restraining glass. A turn into what seemed to give free egress suddenly became a terrifying cul-de-sac.

  They found themselves frustrated time and again, groping around what seemed to be an unending labyrinth. They twisted, they turned, they wound around tortuous, perplexing alleyways, mirroring hundreds of their reflections to what seemed to be infinity.

  When the police activity had become concentrated at the Diving-Bell at the far end of the pier, the crowds poured back in. The lights were on again and a new crowd was moving under them. Again the huge fantastic doll over the Fun House entrance was rocking back and forth, sending out her raucous laughter.

  And, as always, the crowd gathered outside the mirror maze laughed with her, at the three who were trapped inside, trying to find each other.

  One of the two men of the trio, the crowd noticed, the handsome young man, had been in a fight. Must have been a bad one from the way he looked.

  Little by little the crowd stopped laughing. That was when the girl lifted her hand with a deadly-looking knife in it and struck blindly at a pane of glass which shattered under the impact. But it was then that the man laughed, the one who had so obviously been in a fight; the one who was standing at the far side of the maze from the girl with the knife. His laugh couldn’t be heard by the crowd outside, but it didn’t look like a pleasant one.

  On and on the three went, bumping, groping, dizzied by their maddening search. Their heads spun. Their eyes played strange tricks on them. Ahead, a hundred replicas of themselves aped their bewildered dilemma. To the right, to the left, and even up above, more hundreds of reflections of themselves capered and stumbled perplexedly.

  Ellen was the first to reach a safe haven.

  Almost miraculously to her, as though she were stepping into a new world, the mirror maze ended, and she found herself at the entrance of a crazily disordered room. A sign hanging over the entrance called it Joe’s Crazy Room.

  It was that. The floor sloped at a thirty-degree angle. The pictures hung askew. The legs of the chairs and tables followed the angle of the floor slope, but their tops and seats twiste
d off on a bias. A whole wall contained a series of crazily curved, whole-length mirrors that warped onlookers into deformed and grotesque gargoyles.

  Ellen stepped into the room. She was breathing hard. Tearless sobs rose to her throat and died there. Her eyes were almost half-closed. Her hand was closed, tightly, on the knife.

  She heard Tony’s stumbling feet before she saw him in the mirror she was facing. He, too, had found the entrance to the room.

  She braced her legs against the slope of the Crazy Room floor. Her eyes widened in anticipation. Her lips parted in that curious, curving smile.

  There he was. She braced herself to whirl and throw the knife. She didn’t move. Not yet. It might be only his reflection. He had stopped to catch his breath and regain his sense of direction.

  Ellen waited.

  Tony moved.

  Then another Tony stepped out of another place.

  Now it was the real Tony. The first one had been his reflection. Those damned mirrors!

  She whirled suddenly, the knife poised in her hand.

  Smith cursed every time he bumped into a mirror. But he kept doggedly on. Bumping, groping, twisting, seemingly getting nowhere at all, occasionally hearing the sound of Tony’s stumbling feet, Ellen’s heavy breathing, and the tap-tap of her high-heeled shoes.

  Suddenly the tap-tap stopped.

  Had she given up and stopped? Or had she found the end of the maze? He plunged on.

  Then all at once he, too, found himself at the door to the crazy room.

  There she was, ahead of him, the knife ready to strike. He knew now what he had always known from his first sight of her. He’d seen killers before. Killer had always been written all over her.

  He saw Tony, her target. He saw her wrist tense.

  In a fleeting instant of time a disconnected series of memories flashed through his mind. The first kiss he’d taken from her, by force. The loose button dangling from his coat. The line Dickson had read aloud from his report. The sound of her voice through the loudspeaker, “A chump, like Smith—”

  Sucker!

  He pulled the trigger of his gun.