The 9 Dark Hours

by Lenore Glen Offord

  I sat hugging myself, trying to shrink into the smallest possible space, but acutely aware of physical contact. Barney’s arm lay across the back of the seat, behind my shoulders, and in the crowded space his knee touched mine. On the other side my hand brushed the folds of Garwood’s loose overcoat.

  In the right-hand pocket of the overcoat was a folded paper, stuffed in so carelessly that it was about to fall out.

  Paper, I thought, and my mind offered an instant translation: message.—If I only had a pencil! My right arm, crossed so that the hand was out of Barney’s sight, was free to work the paper out of Garwood’s pocket and lay it against my thigh. But what could I use?—I didn’t dare search farther into the pocket for something to write with—

  Lipstick. Lipstick, in my own pocket.

  I had to put my hands in my lap for a moment, since it took both of them to screw the stick of paste into the top of the container. That was the worst moment, though I could have pretended to be nervously fiddling with it. Barney’s head was still turned away, though, and I got my arms crossed again and felt the paper under my fingers.

  “Barney is the Cork,” was what the point of the lipstick traced across the fold of paper. I couldn’t look at it; there was no telling how legible the message might be. No more could I guess when Garwood might see it; and, if he should happen to find it within the next few minutes, would he have sense enough to recognize it as a secret communication? I had to take the chance.

  He didn’t notice when I slid the paper back into place. Barney had rapped out, “The boys are still watching? They’ll signal?” and Garwood said yes.

  “There’s a chance. Jay and Fingers may feel they’re safe now,” Barney muttered.

  Garwood said heavily, “But they still have Melissa. Have you thought what may happen when—when they do discover that they’re caught?”

  “I’ve thought of it. Gertie and the child vanished into thin air after the other two left. I searched all three of those apartments, and she wasn’t in any of them. We’ll get the men, with any luck, but she’s still at large. That means we have to work fast.”

  His shoulder jerked suddenly. I hadn’t realized that he was keeping a close watch on the dark reaches of the street, and it was only by chance that I saw, far down at the next corner, a point of light that winked on and off, on and off.

  “Somebody coming,” he said, and was on the sidewalk before either of us could reply. Garwood pushed me toward the door, and when I was nearly out of the car Barney picked me up at arms’ length and swung me half across the walk. We were running toward the front door of El Central with such haste that I seemed to be carried along between the two men.

  “They’ll make for the alley, most likely,” Barney’s words jerked out almost as fast as he was moving. “That’s the way they came out, tradesman’s door—next to Bassett’s back entrance. I’ll stay there. Jack, you take—front. No noise if you can help it. Don’t want to—wake up the house.”

  We had reached the foyer, and he gave me a shove toward the staircase. “Get up there, Cameron, into your own apartment. Run. If O’Shea tries to interfere, tell him we’re bringing them up. Shut your door and don’t come out.”

  I went. He had flattened himself against the wall in the darkness of the rear entry, and was watching me, listening to my feet on the stairs. Garwood was staying there, too; no chance to get him alone.

  That part of my brain that was functioning clearly under the swirling waves of panic told me what I must do. The key, it said: the door, round the corner to the right in the second floor hall.

  He’d still be listening. Deliberately I tripped on the top step of the first flight, and fell full length. It was just possible to reach the door of the broom closet with an outstretched arm. I felt for the crack, and slid the key through it; it rasped across bare boards inside.

  I could have sworn I heard a slight answering movement, but there was no time to lose. I was on my feet again, hurrying up the two remaining flights and gaining sanctuary in my own room.

  The brain had not functioned quite long enough. Not until I was standing breathless behind the closed door did I realize what would have been a better move; I should have dodged aside into one of the dark upper halls and waited there until those two and their captives had gone past; then it would have been easy to return.

  And now it was too late. Even as I reached the third floor, abnormally sharpened hearing had registered the opening of a door below, and the sound of muffled movement. I turned out the lights in my apartment and waited, my ear pressed against the door-panel.

  They were coming. There was little need for caution now, for footsteps were plainly audible in the corridor, the steps of four men at least. They made a confused, shuffling noise as if some of them were reluctant to move.

  The board outside 4-B creaked loudly, and I heard a door open.

  Not the least fantastic feature of this incredible night had been the silence, the lowered tones in which everyone had spoken. My own voice had scarcely reached a normal pitch since the first moment when I’d opened my door and walked into a nightmare. Now, for almost the only time, I heard a loud noise.

  It cut through the stillness in a dreadful shriek of despair. I hope I never have to hear a sound like that again; it was the voice of one who has thought himself safe from a just but terrible punishment, and who has come suddenly face to face with the executioner.

  “Colly!” it said. Then the door closed, and silence came down once more.

  Shaking from head to foot, I stood there listening. There was no sound in the next apartment now. I couldn’t imagine, I couldn’t let myself try to think, what was happening to those two wretched criminals who had been dragged in there. I remembered only that Colly O’Shea had been promised revenge. Would he have it before or after they had been questioned?

  For half a second I wondered why the Cork should turn over his own associates to their enemy; the part played by O’Shea puzzled me more than anything else.—But there could be any number of reasons for that; this could be the Cork’s way of insuring their silence, or another play to the gallery.

  There wasn’t time to figure it out. In the grip of my obsession I could think only that I had to do something—something to outwit the man who had so cleverly and unmercifully used me, to turn the tables on him.

  And I was helpless.

  It was so still! I could have sworn that no one was awake in the whole apartment house, or for blocks around. The whine of wind in the light shaft, which had been so loud when last I was alone here, had died also; no rain had fallen for an hour, so that even the drip of moisture outside the windows was stilled. You get moments like this sometimes, in the midst of a winter storm. They make you feel that the elements are holding their breath, gathering strength for another onslaught.

  It’s queer to look back on that now, and realize how much depended on those few minutes of quiet. Depended—that’s the right word for it, because as I stood in the dark hall I felt that everything around me was hanging by a spider thread, motionless between sky and earth. It didn’t seem right to breathe. My pounding heart, which a minute since had been almost audible, quieted to an imperceptible throb.

  Then I heard it. I couldn’t believe my ears at first. I’d lied about that sound before; was I imagining it now, had I thought it into being?

  Just as I had described it, the noise might have been made by a cat—but I knew it wasn’t.

  Somewhere quite near me a baby had given a single muffled wail.

  TWELVE

  Doubled and Vulnerable

  YOU KNOW, UNTIL THAT moment I hadn’t actually thought of the baby as real. Yes, yes, I’d heard her and seen her and heard a description, I’d felt a normal bitter loathing toward the kidnappers; but from the dramatic aspects of Barney’s story she’d come to seem more of an object, a symbol, than a human being. She was something to be bargained with, to be searched for and saved. Now for the first time I was in touch with reality.

/>   That small stilled wail might have come from Sandy Crosley, waking up sick and feverish and wanting someone to come to him. How many times I’d been roused from sleep by just such a sound—a sound inaudible to the ears of anyone who hasn’t cared for children!

  But where was the baby that I could have heard her so plainly? For an insane moment I thought she must actually be in my apartment. I stood still, trying to remember from what direction the cry had come. Then I heard it again, and heard it abruptly cut off.

  The kitchen window was open. Going toward it on silent feet, I could see into the light well. My kitchen and that of 4-C were side by side, and both looked into the well from the north; the bathrooms of the two, on east and west, faced each other across the deep shaft, at right angles to the kitchen windows.

  The gray of a coming dawn filtered through the blackness, just enough so that I could see the bathroom window of the next apartment. It also was open about six inches from the bottom.

  While I stared at it the frosted glass was brightened with a diffused light, seemingly from a lamp in a hallway. Someone had come hurriedly into the bathroom, and that person was leaving now, for the light faded. The baby did not cry again.

  Gertie, I thought; and what’s she doing to that frightened little scrap? She won’t let the baby get noisy, surely.—I’ve got to get in there somehow! No matter what else comes out of this, the child’s life is the important thing.—

  And there was nobody I could get to help me. I had left one message in the hands of a man who might not find it for hours, if ever. I had given the means of release to another who for all I knew was still unconscious, and who couldn’t be reached in any case. Next door were four men who wished for my silence. The newspaper reporter was somewhere, but how was I to call him away from the others? In that moment I distrusted even him; I had only Barney’s word, notoriously worthless, that Garwood was what he seemed.

  No need to point out that I wasn’t thinking very clearly. In the haste and panic of those minutes all I knew was that I had to play a lone hand. There was no time to lose.

  O’Shea had said something, all those hours ago, about inspecting 4-C from the front. The fire escape on my side, the rear of the building, led to the roof via a straight ladder. I’d never consciously noticed the escape on the front, but there was every reason to believe that it was similar. If I could get out, past the window of 4-B, and cross the roof, I might be able to surprise the woman and—and do something; I didn’t know what.

  Get in there somehow; get into the Spelvin apartment.

  A cold touch of reason told me that Gertie would have locked the door, to which Barney held the extra key; and that if she had any sense she’d lock the window onto the fire escape also. Never mind, perhaps I could break it in.

  I was across the living room, this idea firmly fixed in my head before I had time to evaluate it. Thank goodness, the big window had been oiled, so that it went up quietly. I slid out onto the iron platform.

  The bay window of 4-B was also open, the merest crack, and light shone dimly through the shade. A voice was speaking inside, babbling on a breath of pure terror. “I don’t know,” it said hopelessly. “I tell you I don’t know, I don’t—”

  The shade jerked up as I came abreast the opening. It was not possible to see what went on inside, for Barney’s broad shoulders blocked the whole window. He’d heard me—

  “Get back!” he said savagely. “Get back in your room!”

  Half sobbing with frustration, I obeyed. I couldn’t get out that way. I couldn’t tell him what I had heard or where I was going; let him think I’d come only out of curiosity—Heaven send he didn’t suspect I was trying to escape.

  Through the corridor? On the front of the building the fire escapes could be reached through windows in the stair landings. I had little hope of that, for my enemies were keeping a close watch. Nevertheless I eased my door open and looked out.

  Barely visible at the top of the stairs a man waited. In the darkness all I could see of him was that he was slender. Of all the people I did not want to meet, the chief was Colly O’Shea.

  There was no other way to get out. I thought desperately, in a movie Roger Tripp would miraculously have guessed that I needed help, or Mr. Bassett would have recovered, escaped, called the police. They’d come charging up the stairs just at the right moment. But this wasn’t on the screen; this was me, myself, trying wildly to get out of an impossible situation.

  I could have yelled “Police!” down the light well, as I had threatened to do a long time ago, before I had fallen under the spell of brilliantly handled propaganda and had begun to believe what wasn’t so. But such a cry would warn not only my enemies but Gertie.

  If I could only step across those few feet of space in the well: ten feet or less separated my bathroom window from the one facing it, the one that had been left so temptingly open. There had been no need for Gertie to lock that one. She would remember the distance that seemed so small and that not even a giant could span. She would be made confident by the sheer drop of four stories to the bottom of the shaft.

  Wasn’t there any way? I stood clenching and unclenching my hands in a rage of frustration, staring out into the dimness of the well. These windows were only about two feet wide, but I could get through the bottom half of mine. And then? Craning out, I saw that the kitchen of 4-C was tightly closed. There was a rickety drainpipe on the wall between, but even if it would support my weight I doubted that I could hang there long enough to force open the kitchen window beside it; and there would be noise—

  The bathroom, at right angles. Right angles—the sum of the squares of the sides of a triangle—

  If I had something to use for a bridge, if I could creep across to that open window—where was there something long and flat, and stout enough to hold me up? The ironing board wasn’t fastened to a fixture, it was something like that I needed; but it wasn’t long enough, only about five feet. Something much taller than I, to stretch across the hypotenuse.

  There was a ladder.

  On a wild surge of hope I swung around, measuring its height with a calculating eye. Length overall, eight feet or more, I thought. It might do; just barely, it might do.

  Maybe if I pushed the ladder half way out the window, I could gauge its length—no, that wouldn’t be safe; I had to know, for I could not risk the danger of dropping it if it should prove too short. I should, for certainty, measure it and the distance—and I had nothing with which to measure, nothing but a tape in my sewing basket, up in the rafters. There wasn’t time to climb up for it, nor would it do me any good, since I dared not turn on a light.

  Well, think, I challenged myself. I knew how tall I was. I knew how far my arm would stretch above my head, because at home there was a cupboard shelf seven feet above the floor, and I could get my fingers over the edge of that. The ladder’s top platform was possibly a foot above my normal reach.

  In a solemn frenzy I measured my length on the kitchen floor, the top of my head pressed against the wall. The door jamb struck midway up my shin, which meant that the kitchen wall was about four and a half feet; the well, then, was a bit more than nine feet across. Allow two feet to the edge of the window, maybe two feet to the bathroom window in the right-angle wall—seven square plus three feet plus four feet—oh, thunder, what a time to go horsing around with mathematics! How did it go? Square of the hypotenuse—yes, that was it; equal to the sum of the squares of the sides.

  Madly gabbling to myself in a whisper, lying down and scrambling up again, reaching as far as I could up the side of the ladder and mopping sweat from my brow between times, I looked like a top candidate for the loony bin; but I got it. It came out near enough, anyway, that I could afford to try pushing out the ladder.

  There was a bit of leverage formed by the windowsill and the top of the cabinet. Panting, growing blazing hot, I managed to slide the unwieldy thing partially through the window and point it toward the opening. It must be held firmly; I had to lean
far out to support it when its center had passed the point of balance. The wood scraped along the windowsill, and I gritted my teeth; the sill should have been padded, but I couldn’t let go now. The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of—You didn’t foresee this, Cameron, when you yawned over your algebra at school. You taught the young to develop their muscles in gym, but you never thought that all your strength would be needed—not like this.

  There was one horrible moment when I thought I should have to let go, and in anticipation I could hear the crash, the cracking of wood far below the window. Then the platform end of the ladder touched the wall. One more lift, and it was over the sill, securely hooked, and balanced at my end.

  But it balanced only on one side. On the outer edge, the slope of the sill fell away from under it; the least weight would tilt the ladder sideways.

  I was muttering under my breath, and to this day I don’t know what I said, curses or prayers. I hope the good Lord accepted it as a cry for help, no matter how it was phrased. Something helped me; something made me think of the ironing board, which could serve as a prop if it bridged the space to my own bathroom window. I could press it into service. Press the ironing board: ha ha, I thought dizzily; very funny.

  The dizziness served as a merciful anesthesia over that part of my mind which might have thought of consequences. Physically I was keyed up far enough to have started out walking on air; I didn’t hesitate, once the bridge was anchored, to kick off my shoes and tuck my dress skirt into its own belt. I’d need all the freedom of movement I could get.

  There was one more bad moment. Poised on the sill, I thought of the day I’d set cup custards to cool in the window, and had knocked one of them off. It had fallen—oh, heavens, how long it had taken to reach the bottom of the shaft, while I watched from above with a fascinated interest. The smash of broken crockery had come up only faintly to my ears.