The 9 Dark Hours

by Lenore Glen Offord

  “Where were you?”

  “On the roof of the building across the alley in back. I had a view of several familiar shadows on the blinds of that apartment next door. Our friends, Barney, are not quite confident.”

  “You’re telling me. And you smoothed them down by coming up their fire escape?”

  “There was no risk in that,” said O’Shea blandly. “They have gone.”

  “Gone! What the—”

  “About twenty minutes ago,” the suave voice continued (and was interrupted by Barney, saying bitterly, “While I was downstairs!”) “—about that time the lights in 4-C went out, and someone raised the shade and looked out. Then a dim light shone, probably from the hall, and they went out—all three of them. They did not come back. They carried one or two small suitcases.”

  “The hell they did. Nothing else?”

  “Nothing.”

  Barney waited for a moment before replying. His voice when it came was entirely without inflection.

  “If this is a double-cross—” he said, and left the sentence hanging in mid-air. The very flatness of his tone made it sound incredibly threatening.

  “Oh, not by me, Barney,” said the other man. “Not by me. I do not settle my scores by helping an enemy to escape.”

  There was another brief silence. “Okay, Colly,” Barney said at last, “I’m inclined to believe you. But—where did they go?”

  “Across the hall, perhaps?”

  “That wouldn’t do them much good. Out of the building, maybe, while I was in Bassett’s apartment; but they can’t have taken it along, or they’d have been spotted.”

  “You are sure?” O’Shea inquired.

  “Sure. Both ends of the alley and the front door are covered. —Good God, did they get it to another hideout, earlier?—but I know it was there Friday morning—and I’ll swear they haven’t moved it since I’ve been here.”

  Mr. O’Shea disposed of the theory of another hideout. “The boys would have known,” he said confidently. All at once his back appeared in my line of vision, the head turned a trifle toward one side of the living room. He seemed to bend an interested gaze on the wall, but nothing was there except a pair of tinted photographs depicting Cupid Asleep and Cupid Awake.

  The only impression I could gather from this rear view was that of an extraordinary supple leanness darkly and cheaply clothed, of a height something above average, and a cap dragged down over close-cut sandy hair. He had moved with a fluid swiftness.

  For about half a minute Barney had been giving out with as novel and pungent a bit of swearing as I’d ever heard. Now he let it trail off, and sighed. “I can’t go out hunting,” he said bitterly, “without removing the last doubt from their minds. They weren’t sure I was lying, but if they caught me snooping now, they would be. And a while ago they were right under my nose.”

  The darkly clothed shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Perhaps they still are,” said Colly O’Shea. “We can find out soon enough.” He turned and moved silently into the hall, but so close was he to the dressing-room door that I knew when he stopped short. The suave voice was more subdued than ever.

  “Since when, Barney, did you take to wearing white rubber overshoes?” he asked gently.

  O Lord, I thought, they say criminals always overlook something. In about one minute this O’Shea will begin looking around; I’m trapped here, I’ll be caught trying to disguise myself as a bedspring—

  “Those are mine,” I said, opening the door and stepping out.

  One of the men, I think, was angry and the other startled; but they looked at me without the slightest change of expression, and in silence. This sudden front view of Mr. O’Shea was, to say the least, astonishing. He seemed to have no color anywhere in his face, since the sandy eyebrows and lashes were all but invisible, and the impassive eyes of so light a gray as to be almost white. Speechless, we stood face to face.

  Well, Cameron, I thought—you were the girl who complained that she never met any unusual men.

  “Your mouse?” O’Shea inquired at last. He spoke to Barney, but continued to gaze at me.

  With haste Barney forestalled my indignant denial. “No,” he said, “she’s the real tenant of this apartment. She dropped in a bit earlier than we expected. Miss Ferris, Mr. O’Shea,” he added punctiliously.

  O’Shea’s capped head ducked toward me. “It is a pleasure,” he said in a tone that canceled his words. “And you had not meant to tell me she was here?”

  “Not if I could help it,” said Barney shamelessly. “I hadn’t forgotten my promise, Colly, but this couldn’t be avoided. By the way, it was Miss Ferris who proved to me that we were on the right track. She saw and heard the child.”

  O’Shea looked at him quickly. Their gazes locked and held.

  “I may add,” I said, “that I have no idea of what this is all about.”

  “May I ask, Miss Ferris,” said O’Shea with deadly politeness, “under what circumstances you saw—”

  “She said a woman was carrying it upstairs on Tuesday afternoon,” Barney put in.

  “What did the woman look like?”

  “From one glimpse of her,” I said wearily, “I can’t give a complete description. I had no reason to stare. It seems to me she was medium height, dark, and rather full-faced. But—”

  “Gertie,” said O’Shea, and nodded slowly. The white eyes held a peculiar gleam. “That should please both you and me, Barney. This girl—” He paused for a moment, and looked full at me. “This is your affair. If they are in the front apartment,” he had dismissed me with a gesture and now made one of his fluid movements toward the door, “nothing has been lost.”

  I suppose I had been hypnotized by the definiteness of Barney’s commands, and the taut expectancy of both men as they spoke to each other and to me. Every nerve in my body was tingling, but I simply stood there and watched, pop-eyed, while Barney stepped quietly into the public corridor and laid his ear against the door—not of 4-B, but the one belonging to my bachelor neighbor, Mr. Spelvin.

  He shook his head as he returned to my hallway.

  “In a moment,” O’Shea said imperturbably, “I will have a look from the front fire escape.”

  Barney gazed at him with narrowed eyes. “They couldn’t possibly have left it next door?”

  “I doubt that, but we can see. The window catches are very simple.”

  “You’re a useful fellow, Colly,” Barney said with a grin. “Of course, there’s always the chance that we’re walking into a trap.”

  “There is, indeed. I should welcome that, but it might not improve your own chances.”

  “And you’d rather catch ’em in the act. About fifty-fifty, it seems to me. We’ll both go.” He caught up the leather jacket and threw it across his shoulders.

  With the utmost aplomb, the two gentlemen crossed the room, once more raised shade and window, stepped onto the fire escape and vanished. Since their arrangements had not included me, I was left standing in the hall struggling with a fine case of the screaming meemies.

  They moved so fast, and so quietly! They were so businesslike—

  And what on earth did it all mean? What was I doing here, a speechless witness to this meeting of crooks? The sight of Mr. O’Shea was not reassuring, and he and Barney were hand in glove on some project that took in my neighbors in a peaceful, respectable apartment house. This couldn’t be real.

  I shook my head violently, to clear it. Yes, it was real. There was the disguised living room, there were my overshoes on the floor, there was the sound of rain drumming on the fire escape. I had walked into the middle of a wild melodrama; but who were the villains?

  Whatever happened was to come off tonight. Barney had asked to borrow my room “for one night.”

  Mr. O’Shea was attempting to settle a score with an enemy.

  The baby that I had seen once, and heard once, was somehow important in the matter. I walked thoughtfully into the living room, several improbable ideas jockeyi
ng for place in my mind.

  When almost ten minutes had passed since the men had left, and not a sound had come from next door, I wondered suddenly why I was standing here waiting for their return, instead of grabbing my rubbers and getting the hell out the front door. Well, no; I needn’t wonder. I knew. I would be curious for the rest of my life if I didn’t find out what all this was about.

  So I put my head out the window and was rewarded by the sight of Mr. O’Shea, drifting like a shadow down the iron ladder which led from the roof. He peered through the window of 4-B, and murmured a few indistinguishable words. At once Barney emerged from the window, and O’Shea, with a side glance at me, remarked in his soft monotone, “Since they may return, I think I shall stay here.”

  Barney said, “It won’t be necessary, Colly.”

  “Oh, yes. This chance is too good to miss. I helped you on two conditions, and one was that when you had finished I should have my turn.”

  “You’ll get it, never fear, and I’ll enjoy watching.”

  “I shall stay,” said O’Shea’s colorless lips, “to make sure of that.” He bent double and slid through the open section of the bay window.

  In another moment the big man was beside me, and my window was again closed and shaded against the wet darkness. Deliberately he peeled off the damp leather coat and hung it in the closet; returning to the living room, he looked at me, and abruptly chuckled.

  “Any questions, Miss Ferris?” he offered politely.

  “If you think half an hour’s explanation will cover everything, you’ll have to begin pretty soon,” I said.

  “Oh, that,” he said slowly. “That bargain is off.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean that conditions have changed, and we have lots of time.”

  “No,” I said, “things aren’t quite the same. You didn’t want me to see your visitor, did you? But I did.”

  “I didn’t want him to see you.”

  Seemed to me it worked both ways, but I said, “Why not? Is he the source of that danger you’ve been trying to frighten me with?”

  “Not the same one; another. A potential one.”

  “And you and he are working together.”

  “For the present,” said the big man imperturbably, “we are.”

  I spread a hand, palm upward. “And after admitting that, you think I can stay here quietly and listen to you telling lies as fast as you can think them up?”

  “I think you’ll stay here, yes. But you’ll be hearing the truth.”

  “That’s open to doubt, Mr. Barney,” I said. “Before that creature turned up at the window, you’d started some kind of an explanation. May I ask if it was planned to include him?”

  Once more he gave me that faint, rueful smile. “This is a game of Truth? Very well; no, it wasn’t. And, by the way—no Mister. Just Barney.”

  “I don’t care what your name is. How can you expect me to take you on trust—now?”

  Barney put both hands on the back of a straight chair, and rocked it back and forth on its hind legs. “I have no right to expect that,” he said thoughtfully, “but I imagine you will—just because you’ve stayed in the game this far. Whether you meant to or not, you’ve placed a bet on my side.”

  “I certainly didn’t—”

  “Wait a minute.” The level eyes held me silent. “Believe it or not, this situation hurts me worse than it does you. It was a shock for you to come in your own door and see me here, but that was nothing to the way I felt when I realized who you were. And when I failed to bluff you out, I asked you to leave. You wouldn’t. That refusal put you into this affair, up to the neck.”

  He was right, of course. I’d had two chances to go, but curiosity and stubbornness had kept me here.

  “Neither of us can afford to give way,” he added. “We’re in it together, though not by choice. Come on,” and again he flashed that strangely appealing grin, “can’t we arrange a working truce?”

  I stood gazing at him, considering what he said in the light of reason. Reason told me I’d be more than foolhardy if I agreed to spend an unspecified portion of the coming night with a stranger; my reputation at the very least would be jeopardized, possibly a great deal more. Roger cared for my reputation. Did I want to risk losing his approval?

  All my conscious, sensible self warned me of danger, reminded me of the serpent-like ally within call in the next apartment, told me that after all I hadn’t been built for the role of adventurer.

  What I really listened to was the small voice of the opposition.

  —“Nobody will ever know—” it said. “—He told you that it was unsafe for you to leave, and you believed him.— Choose the known evil, the visible one.—You can take care of yourself.—”

  “All right,” I said abruptly, “for the time being. I suppose I’ve little choice.”

  “You’re quite right to reserve your judgment,” he said, meeting my eyes. “I hope you won’t feel that way long. Now that we’ve settled that much, won’t you take off your coat and sit down?”

  Keeping my glance warily on his, I unfastened my slicker and topcoat and gave them into his outstretched hands. Had he known instinctively that I’d refuse an offer of help? How much of his action was instinct, and how much extraordinarily acute design?

  There was, for instance, the matter of his voice and intonation. As he spoke to the O’Shea creature, he’d sounded hard as nails; with the landlord he managed to convey a threat and a warning under the cool straightforwardness of his tone. With me, nothing was apparent but courtesy, and what I could have sworn was innate fineness.

  Since he could change so easily, which of these manners was the true one?

  I sat down in the farther corner of the chesterfield, watching him narrowly. He made as if to seat himself beside me, was stopped short by my look, and stood reflecting for a moment; a quick glance considered and rejected the dubious comfort of the occasional chair. Then, completing an expressive bit of pantomime, he picked up from the table a pile of folded newspapers, and placed it in the middle of the chesterfield.

  “A sword,” he said gravely, gave the papers a satisfied pat, and lowered himself into the other corner.

  A chuckle almost caught me unawares. It wasn’t fair that he should have a taste for small absurdities.

  He reached a long arm for the ashtray. “Will you have a cigarette, Miss Ferris? Really, they’re not doped. I’ll bet you need one.”

  “What makes you think I smoke?” I inquired coldly.

  “Circumstantial evidence,” said Barney with an unabashed grin.

  “Of course. You pawed over all my possessions before you hid them.” He continued to hold out the cigarettes, and half against my better judgment I took one. He’d been quite right; I needed it.

  With ineffable modesty he replied to my remark. “When I came to the stuff in the chest of drawers, of course I closed my eyes. You are dealing with a perfect gent.”

  —Keep your face straight, Cameron! I thought. Remember your practice-teaching, and how those young hellions knew they could get away with anything if they could make you laugh first.

  I leaned back after accepting the proffered light, and asked, “What did the perfect gent do with his hostess’s suitcases and furnishings?”

  He had crossed his knees and was looking comfortable and settled.—Now, his manner indicated, we’re off on a friendly conversation.

  “In the kitchen,” he said, “there is a tall stepladder. In the hall ceiling there is a sort of trapdoor—scuttle hole, they call it—that you climb through to get to the electric wiring. Add these: total, one neat temporary hiding place. If you’d come back tomorrow, as we expected, you’d have found your belongings all back in place. There’d have been no signs that I’d ever been here.” He took a puff on his cigarette, and thoughtfully quoted my initials. “A. C. F. What’s the A. stand for?”

  —Really, I thought, is this a social call?—and heard myself answer, “Agnes.”r />
  “Nobody calls you that, I should imagine. You spoke of yourself as Cameron; that’s pleasant.”

  “So glad you approve,” I said. “Now that that’s settled, do you mind telling me the meaning of all this?”

  “Oh,” said Barney, as if recalled from an interesting train of thought. “You mean my having moved in here, and tried to make it look like home? But I had to have some place to entertain my friends!” There was mockery behind his innocent look.

  “Your friends; h’m. Do they include that albino snake next door?”

  “I gather that Colly didn’t appeal to you.”

  “Well,” I said, “when Eduardo Ciannelli turns up in a movie, nobody thinks he’s there for any good purpose. Your Mr. O’Shea doesn’t look like him, but—the impression is there.”

  Barney said, “He’s not entirely sinister, you know. There’s been education there, at some time—that careful speech is peculiar to him. He’s helped me to get here, too, at considerable risk to himself. By the way, it would be kind of you if—well, the fact is, Colly prefers not to appear in this case, except privately. He means to do his part, and then—just disappear. It’s owing to him, I think.”

  “And who is he?”

  Instead of answering, the big man chuckled again. “The first time I knew he was out—out west here,” he corrected himself hastily as if he’d made a slip—“was at the ’Thirty-nine Fair. I was going around the Fine Arts Building, and saw him; how come he’d got in there, I certainly couldn’t tell you. Anyway, he was studying the Dali.”

  Fascinated in spite of myself, I said, “Not Boiled Beans and Soft Construction?”

  You may have seen that remarkable painting. As I remember, the background consists of a landscape strewn with incongruous bits of bric-a-brac, and trees with sewing machines hung in the branches. The foreground, which nobody could forget if he tried, is occupied by a large human figure happily engaged in tearing itself limb from limb.

  “Yes,” said Barney. “He was spellbound in front of it.”

  “What did he think of it?” I inquired.

  “I didn’t ask him. One does not slap Colly on the back when he’s not aware of one’s presence, so I came away. He was just standing there, looking at it.”