The 9 Dark Hours

by Lenore Glen Offord

  This won’t do. Come on, get out onto the hypotenuse, don’t stop to think how narrow it is. Yes, it will bear your weight. It’s solid enough at both ends. Nobody’s heard you, nobody knows what you’re doing.

  And start, put your knees on the nearest rung and reach forward for a hold on the next one. That’s what you did when you were creeping across the rafters; tell yourself that what’s below you is only a shallow hole full of plaster, not—not a black void, not an emptiness—

  Think of the recipe for cup custard. Two eggs, two tablespoons of sugar—Consider what o’clock it is. Consider what a great girl you are. Keep putting your hands ahead, holding tight even if the treads of the ladder dig into your knees. Don’t look down, whatever you do. Pretend you’re nearsighted, and look only at the rectangle of that half open window, coming nearer, nearer—

  There were only eight rungs to the ladder, after all. It can’t have taken me more than a minute to make the journey, to feel the solid sill under my groping hand and thrust head and shoulders inside the opening, pushing gently upward until the window rose with the faintest of creaks and I could wriggle inside. Getting in head foremost was part of the job I hadn’t counted on, but it was made easier than I deserved by the discovery under the window of the radiator, and an end of the bathtub beside it. Once more I could have screamed with thankfulness to find solid floor under my feet.

  I was in 4-C, and nobody had heard me. With some surprise I realized that the storm’s breathing spell was over, and the wind was tearing over the housetops once more, driving in a new detachment of pouring rain. I turned toward the door of the bathroom, and felt a damp wad of cloth under the stockinged sole of my foot. Gertie must have left the baby in here, or brought her in to change clothing.

  I would not look again at the window, nor at the ladder.

  The apartment was dark, but as I eased open the door of the bathroom I thought there were sounds of stealthy movement in the main room, and once a little gasping cry. Gertie wouldn’t have made a noise like that.—She has her orders, I thought. Maybe she wouldn’t kill the child unless it became strictly necessary; but she has to keep it quiet.

  The door to the living room was ajar. The shades were down on the front windows, but just enough dim light seeped through them to let me make out the woman’s figure. The chesterfield was between me and the windows. She was bending over it, her back to me.

  Some power quicker than mind, stronger than conscious will, pushed me forward. I was across the room before I fairly knew it, and had pounced upon the stooping woman, crooking one arm around her neck, snatching for her hands with the other. She came up with a choked grunt of surprise, and something dark and soft flew from her grasp and struck the floor behind me. A pillow—she’d had a pillow over the child’s face, pressing it down—

  For a brief second I had the advantage of a surprise attack. Then my captive began to fight, with the terrible strength of panic. Her body straightened with a vicious lunge, and jerked forward until my hold nearly broke. Gertie’s foot caught under an edge of the carpet and she went down, carrying me with her. The thud sounded as if it would shake the building, and in a vague recess of my mind a thought registered: we’ll be heard, someone will come to help her. But nobody came, and she writhed under me without a sound, flailing wildly behind her with ineffectual arms.

  But of course; she couldn’t cry out, because my forearm was still pressed against her windpipe. Now we were on our feet again, somehow, and she was trying to drag me across the room. With a sudden twist she wrenched herself half free and launched a kick backward.

  Her hard shoe-heel caught me on the knee, sending a crackling wave of pain through my whole body. Gertie, seizing her advantage, brought the heel down with a cruel stamp on my foot, and almost succeeded in loosening my grip on her wrist. We were in the middle of the room now, locked together, staggering to and fro, and she knew where I was most vulnerable. I had to twist and sidestep to escape another vicious lash from her heel; her mop of long-bobbed hair dangled temptingly in front of me, and I wound a hand in it and jerked violently. The woman’s head came back with a faint moan of pain, and she dropped suddenly to the floor.

  I was caught off balance and pulled down beside her; and Gertie, with a great heave and twist, flung me aside and was up, free, blundering toward the hall door.

  Sick and giddy with pain, I couldn’t have got up for anything on earth. All I could do was to reach out feebly and grasp her ankle as she went past.

  I heard a nauseating sort of thump; and then, for the second time that evening, the sound of a body slumping inertly to the floor beside me. The ankle was still in my grasp. For a moment I lay there stupidly, holding on tight but totally unable to figure what had happened.

  For that moment there was no sound in the room but my own labored, sobbing breaths. Then I became vaguely aware of a little stir on the couch behind me, and the faintest peep of a voice.

  The baby wasn’t dead.

  I think that for the last few minutes I had believed Gertie a murderess. That’s the only way I can explain the surprise, the numbing shock of relief, that I felt at hearing the small voice of Melissa Cleveland. She’s crying, I thought, and Gertie doesn’t care; what’s the matter, why doesn’t she get up and do something? I couldn’t stop her.

  Then a slight ripple of sense stirred my mind, and I hauled myself painfully to a sitting position. Gertie lay there, out like a dead mackerel. Conscientiously I began feeling over her in the dark, and she didn’t stir. Groping about her head, my fingers touched the leg of a table, then the mass of frizzy hair, and then her temple; from the last they came away wet.

  So that was it: a fall, the corner of a table, unconsciousness. Sheer luck, I added vaguely. Luck, and the final blow on the head of this affair, which had been so monotonously concerned with head wounds.—But I didn’t intend it, I thought, sitting stupidly on the floor; and was shaken by meaningless, helpless laughter.

  The baby peeped again, a forlorn little breath of sound. I brought up a hand to my aching head. Things were clearing, slowly, and the terrible pain in my knee had subsided to intermittent pangs. Maybe I could get up in a minute. Why, yes; I’d have to! This was only a waypoint to victory.

  Gertie stirred, and gave a choking moan. All at once I came to myself. Good grief, I couldn’t throw away a chance like this! She was hors de combat, but she wouldn’t stay that way long; and if I left her, it wouldn’t be many minutes before she could call for reinforcements.

  Blindly staggering to my feet, I thought that rope was what I needed—good strong thin rope. And where would one find that? The next time I’d bring some with me.

  And presently, still half unconscious, I found myself in the kitchen, groping in the dimness for a dishtowel: then back in the living room, kneeling beside the woman and stuffing the towel into her mouth, tying another tightly about her jaw. I never bound and gagged anyone before in all my life; somehow the situation hadn’t arisen. I had to do the best I could on instinct, and with makeshift material such as Gertie’s stockings.

  —I hope they’re her best chiffon ones, I thought, and again rocked weakly with idiotic laughter. The brain was definitely affected, though little by little improving; but my hands, shaky as they were, knew what to do: pull the woman’s arms over her head, fasten her wrists to the leg of a heavy chair, and lash her ankles to the bar of the table. That ought to hold her—if I haven’t tied granny knots by mistake. This will puzzle them at Scotland Yard.

  And still nobody came.

  Why, I was free! I was going to get out of this mess, and take the baby with me; all I had to do was open the window and climb down the fire escape to the street, and then run—run anywhere, to light and safety and someone who’d help me—the police—

  The child made a soft heavy bundle in my arms. She must have been sick and dopey still, because she made no other sound after the despairing cry that had roused me from stupor. I could hear her breathing, though. The blanket in which they
had wrapped her was damp, and the small face and hands were cold.

  I opened the window and stepped out into a fury of lashing rain.

  * * *

  I had forgotten so many things: I had not remembered that the fire escapes didn’t go clear to the ground, and that to all intents I was still trapped in the building. Crawling step by step down the iron stairs, painfully because the bars seemed to be cutting through my unprotected soles, I had to revise my plan of campaign. Alone, I might have hung by my hands and dropped that comparatively short distance to the sidewalk. With the child, it couldn’t be done, and no more could I leave her on the steps, exposed to a soaking downpour, while I went for help.

  I peered up and down the dim reaches of the street. There was not a soul in sight; not one of the reporters who had been on guard earlier, not a milk wagon, not a single person who’d hear a call. Moreover, any of my enemies, prowling through the halls and staircases, might see me as I went past the landing windows. Pausing for breath where the blank wall sheltered me, I thought, “That’s where Gertie hid while the three apartments were searched. She waited out here until the searchers had left, and as soon as they cleared out of the Spelvin apartment she ducked in there.”

  Yes, and here was the window from the staircase landing where she must have crept out, after Jay and Fingers went to the rendezvous. Possibly there was too much disturbance in the halls, she didn’t want to risk meeting anyone; there’d be only the first flight to negotiate after she left Bassett’s apartment. No, she couldn’t have been in there. That had been only my own silly theory. Where had she hidden? Oh, what did it matter?

  I got in the window. Everything was quiet in the dark halls, and on a venture I crept up the half flight to listen at the door of the broom closet. There was no sound from within; the door, when I tried it, was still locked.

  Then Bassett could not have awakened. He was in there yet, sleeping off his binge, and my maneuvers with the key had been in vain.

  Well, no matter. I had outflanked the enemy now, and without their knowledge I was facing a clear track. The door was open to the street and freedom.

  But what did one do about the baby—take her out in this frightful storm? She was chilled already, and I hadn’t so much as a jacket to wrap around her. If I could only get to a telephone, I thought; call the police, and the Cleveland family, and an ambulance! Presumably all around me were tenants, sleeping peacefully, each with a telephone for making business appointments; and I didn’t know one I could trust, nor did I have an idea of how to arouse them without making a commotion that would call the pursuit from the top floor. I did not dare to linger in the darkness of these corridors, for at any moment someone might go into my apartment and find that I had got out. And yet, what did one do about the baby?

  But of course, I reminded myself wearily, Bassett’s apartment—if I can only get in. It will be warm and sheltered at least, and I can wait there until the police come.

  The door to the hall was locked. I had expected that, and I knew when I pressed the bell-button that nobody would answer. It was done only for form’s sake, because I had another idea how I might get in. From some unexpected source of memory, I had dredged up a picture of the manager’s back door, the one opening on the alley beside the tradesmen’s entrance. Once, looking down Mrs. Ulrichson’s inner hall, I had seen that door; it had a glass pane in the upper half.

  I was out in the alley, stepping carefully on the slimy dampness of the paving and feeling about me for a loose piece of rock, before I thought that Jay and Fingers had presumably intended to get in by this rear entrance—No, that couldn’t have been it, unless they were in collusion with Bassett, and of course that was not so. My head wasn’t very clear yet. I shook it impatiently, and on impulse tried the door.

  It was unlocked. Shucks, I thought with a suddenly light heart, there goes my chance to break a pane of glass with a brick; I’ve always wanted to do that. Anyway, here’s a stroke of luck at last. After all that terrible business with the ladder and Gertie, maybe I have this coming to me.

  And we were inside, moving through the dark and unfragrant entry, coming into the dingy living room where the light from the bead-fringed lamp dazzled me with its brightness. There were the tidies, there the Yard of Kittens (and what, I wondered, would Mr. O’Shea think of that?) and there, thank Heaven, was the telephone.

  Here in my arms was Melissa Cleveland, aged eleven months.

  I had my first look at her as I stood there, savoring momentarily the exquisite feeling of safety. Her small face was pinched and pallid and the auburn curls above it draggled, but I could see how sweet she was, how she must have been loved and petted. As I looked, she stirred in my arms, and seemed to find them experienced in holding babies, for her head turned to nestle against my shoulder.

  “Poor little frog,” I said under my breath, “it won’t be long now. You’ll have your mother.”—Had there been times when she waked to full consciousness, and was frightened and bewildered at the strange hard faces around her? How had they drugged her—by mouth, or by plunging a needle into a shrinking small arm?

  And who would be punished for this crime, against a child so young that she could never strike back? Jay and Fingers might suffer for it, and the woman who held the pillow over the baby’s face; but I wanted complete justice—complete, to include the man who had planned the whole hideous affair in a last gamble to save his skin. He might get away with it, too, if it weren’t for me.

  In a last minute access of caution, I turned a big chair to the wall and carefully laid the child down so that she was invisible from the rest of the room.

  This was a moment to savor. “I’m the only one who knows who the Cork is,” I thought; and in the intensity of that hatred heard the words come out aloud, in a stage whisper that seemed to fill the quiet room. Push me around, would he! I’d get to the police first and tell them my story, and let them and the Cleveland family settle with him.

  For one moment I hesitated, nevertheless; then I thought, with a wry grin, “Service to your country—incidental to everything else!” and stepped forward to the telephone.

  I dialed at once, in a single sweep of the “0.” All you had to say was, “I want a policeman.” In a few minutes the whole thing would be over.

  The telephone was on a long cord—a very long one which seemed to reach clear into the bedroom. I held the transmitter close to my ear, waiting for an answer. Something was wrong. Shouldn’t it have buzzed when I picked it up?

  “You can put that down,” said a soft voice behind me.

  THIRTEEN

  Forfeit to the Dawn

  I KNEW, OF COURSE. Actually, I had known for minutes past, and had refused to face reality; the blindfold had been slipping from my eyes and I’d snatched it back deliberately—the thick muffling fabric of my own hurt vanity, that I had felt myself bound to use.

  Slowly, I faced about and saw what I knew I should see. In the bedroom doorway Mr. Bassett stood, quite sober in spite of the aroma which hung about him still. There was nothing wavering about his outlines now, and no trace of unsteadiness in the hand that held, pointed at my breast, a small but businesslike revolver.

  His face looked different, too. The yellowish pallor which I had seen before had faded to a dead white; and, by some trick of taut facial muscles, his eyes seemed to have receded into his skull. From their sunken caverns they looked out at me, inhumanly bright.

  The face and the eyes were those of a fanatic, who in the necessity of defending his deeds had pressed forward from venial sin to crime to more dreadful crime, until at last nothing was left but self-defense at any cost.

  “Put it down,” he repeated in that far-off voice.

  I looked at the dead telephone in my hand and replaced it in its cradle. A minute since I had voiced my thoughts aloud, and I knew he had heard me.

  It was a curious thing that I was not in the least frightened. Maybe I’d been scared so thoroughly and so often that night that I was at las
t immune; but all I felt was rage, with myself and him—and, coupled with it, a sudden icy clarity of mind.

  “You can’t get away with any violence, Mr. Bassett,” I said quite loudly. “You know what will happen if you shoot me. The sound of the shot will bring a dozen men here before you could get away.”

  “Oh, but I don’t want to shoot you—not in this apartment,” he said, in a tone that was dreadfully reasonable and polite. He was pleased with his mastery of the moment. “A shot’s my last resort, if you try any tricks. Maybe it’ll make things tough for me, but by that time you’ll be dead.”

  I shook my head, staring at him contemptuously. “It won’t work at all. You forget that Barney has suspected you from the first. No matter what I said, I’m not the only one who knows the identity of the Cork. He knows it too.”

  Bassett actually smiled, but with his mouth only. The sunken eyes gleamed steadily, their expression unchanged. “What does he know? He knows he’s got someone shut up in that broom closet, a man who might be the Cork—but he can’t prove a thing on that man. The Cork! There’s a damn fool name for you, trust the newspapers to think up something like that. But the closet’s locked. Nobody saw me come out, and nobody’ll see me go in again. I’ll have a perfect alibi, and that rat you call Barney will have given it to me himself! I can lock the door on the inside and nobody’ll ever find the key where I’ll hide it.”

  “And your hired crooks? Don’t you think they’ll talk?”

  “They want me alive and free to help them.” His pale tongue came out and licked once around his lips. “I’m not afraid they’ll sing. Come on. We’re wasting time here. You walk ahead of me into the alley.”

  “Like hell I will,” I said. “Go on, shoot. You care more for your safety, right at this moment, than for anything else. You don’t dare make a noise.”

  “How right you are, dear Miss Ferris,” said Mr. Bassett with loathsome geniality. “How cleverly you think things out. You slipped up just once this evening, when you let me out of the closet. Well, I owe you something for that. I’ll give you a chance to save the kid’s life.”