Time and Again

by Jack Finney

  "Oh, no," Byron answered Maud. "At least that's not all it means. I don't expect he minds knocking a man about a little when he knows he's guilty. As why shouldn't he? I don't think we need have any niminy-piminy fancies against that. Would you have him let a criminal go scot-free, to society's peril, for want of a little persuasion? The man's not vealy; he's the most experienced policeman in the city! He's unscrupulous, true, and often acts beyond his authority and legal powers. And it's a known fact that he accepts—if not money, stocks or bonds—inside information from the Wall Street millionaires he's befriended. He's said to be rich as a result. But we should think of him as like a good first sergeant; if he runs the company properly, you mustn't inquire too closely into his methods. And if he receives a few perquisites not found in regulations, it's only right and proper, else why should he take the trouble? He's far more than a crude bully, and if I'd seen him pass in his carriage, as did your acquaintance in the park, Mr. Morley, I'd have touched my hat brim. His famous 'third degree' is usually more than merely beating a confession out of some ruffian; have you heard how he solved the Unger murder case?"

  "Yes!" said Felix with such anxiousness to tell the story that Byron smiled, and said, "Go ahead, Felix; you tell it."

  "Well, sir, Byrnes tortured the suspect, actually tortured him"—Felix glanced around the table to see if he'd had an effect—"without placing so much as a finger upon him. For three days he kept him locked in a cell almost in complete darkness; the only light came from a window far down at the end of the corridor outside it. No one spoke to him. Nor did he even see a human face; food was slid under his cell door while he slept. He had nothing to do but pace his tiny gloomy cell or lie on the lounge which was its only furnishing. Just before dawn of the fourth day, the prisoner's spirit at lowest ebb"—Felix glanced around the table again; he had his audience's attention, all right—"Byrnes silently took his place at the barred door of the prisoner's cell. And now, for the first time, he lighted the lantern hanging from the ceiling just outside the cell door. The unaccustomed light shone upon the face of the sleeping wretch, and he awoke with a start. Byrnes stood motionless, staring at him, and they say that the coldness and menace of his gaze can burn holes through a man. Blinking in the light, the prisoner caught sight of those two cold eyes staring in at him, and sat up with a cry. And precisely as Byrnes had foreseen, he now caught sight, for the first time, of the lounge on which he had spent the greater part of three days and nights. It was spattered—stained in great smears—with dried gore! This was the lounge on which he had murdered his sleeping victim! With a great cry the prisoner sprang from it and fell to his knees before Byrnes, his hands clutching the bars of his cell, begging to be released, and confessing everything! Byrnes had a stenographer waiting with a notebook, and not till the prisoner had dictated and signed his complete confession was he led from the cell with the bloodstained couch into another. A month later, soon after his trial, he was hanged."

  "Horrible. Horrible," said Aunt Ada, and Julia and Maud nodded, while Byron shrugged.

  "That trick may just possibly have been a violation of his civil rights," I murmured, but no one paid any attention to that.

  Jake took the cigar from his mouth, and said, "I have heard he is not above arranging false evidence, if he can't get proof any other way."

  "Possibly." Byron shrugged again. "It's generally acknowledged that he is without moral purpose or even the comprehension of it. But the boys in Wall Street have not been heard to complain."

  "No," said Jake. He nodded thoughtfully, and I felt certain he was thinking that after tonight he'd be one of those boys himself. I thought of asking whether Byrnes had had any success in apprehending blackmailers but didn't bother. We talked a little more about Byrnes; then about Guiteau, as always; and finally everyone but me joined in a thorough condemnation of Mormonism. From several references I learned that apparently polygamy was still going strong out on the Utah prairies, and no one here approved of that, though Byron seemed more amused than incensed. Then Julia and Aunt Ada passed around winter-apple pie for dessert.

  It was a horrible evening; for me and for Jake. He was up and down, picking up a magazine or newspaper and reading for a few minutes, then hopping up to cross the room and talk to someone, hardly listening. For a while he sat alone at the dining-room table playing solitaire. Twice he went up to his room—for a drink, I suspected—and came right down again.

  I was physically quieter but my mind was screaming. Twice I had to beat down the nearly irresistible temptation to get up, walk out to the kitchen where Julia and her aunt were washing dishes, and tell her everything I had to tell—about where I'd come from, why I was here, and everything I'd learned about Jake.

  I just didn't know what to do, and I don't remember whether I even tried to read. A little after ten—his mind, I was certain, filled with what was about to happen—Jake couldn't stand it anymore: he said an abrupt good-night to Julia, who was sitting at the dining-room table now, mending a towel, and went upstairs. Maud went up to her room a few minutes later, and within another five minutes—this was an early-rising household—Byron and Felix, who'd been sitting in the parlor matching pennies, had gone up, too. Aunt Ada came in from the kitchen, and when I heard her in the hall locking the front door, there was nothing left for me to do but say good-night, too, and go on up to my room. As I climbed the stairs, Julia and her aunt were turning out lamps and discussing the breakfast menu.

  In my room I stood in the dark with my ear at the door crack, heard Aunt Ada and Julia go up to the third floor to their rooms, heard their good-night to each other, listened a few moments longer, and heard no one out in the second-floor hall. Then—now or never—I opened my door, stepped out, closed it silently, and climbed quickly and without a sound to the third floor. Julia's room faced the street, I knew, and there was a crack of light under her door. I walked to it and rapped very lightly with a fingernail. Julia opened the door, and I said, "I waited till you came up here; I have something to tell you that no one else must know."

  She hesitated only the fraction of a moment, then nodded. "Come in." I walked into a small room with a single dormer window, a window seat underneath it, a cot with a white spread, a small desk, a rocking chair. Julia motioned politely to the chair, but I said, "No, you take it," and sat down on the window seat. Julia took the chair, facing me, and with her wrists crossed on her lap, smiling at me pleasantly, she sat waiting.

  I said the only thing I'd been able to think of during that long long evening, and maybe it was the best thing I could have said, because it was uncomplicated. "I'm a private detective," I told her, and in her nod I thought I could see a kind of satisfaction as though this answered a question. "I'm here to investigate one of your boarders, I'm sorry to say." I waited a moment, then added, "For blackmail." Her eyes grew bigger; she knew I wasn't talking about Felix or Byron, and I nodded in confirmation of what she was thinking. "When this will become generally known, I'm not sure. Perhaps it never will be. It might even be successful; I'm not from the police." I hesitated, then said, "Julia, I couldn't let you marry him; I had to tell you this."

  Her voice level, neither disputing nor agreeing, she said, "And whom do you say he is blackmailing?"

  I told her; the name meant nothing to her. But then in almost his own words I described Jake's preparations of over two years, his real reason for working at City Hall; and watching her face, I suspected it had the sound of plausibility to her, that some old questions in her mind had just been given a possible answer. I told her about the meeting planned for tonight, that I was going to eavesdrop, and how. Then for quite a while, as long as three or four minutes, which is a long time in those circumstances, Julia sat silently considering what I had said. Before her bed lay an oval hooked rug, faded from many washings, and she'd stare at that, glance up at me appraisingly, then down at the rug again. I sat leaning back against the window, feeling the coldness of the glass through my coat, looking around the room; it was very
neat, very spare. There were a couple of framed pictures on the wall, of no consequence, and half a dozen books and a church paper stacked on the window ledge; I couldn't see the book titles. The walls were papered to within a yard or so of the ceiling; clean white plaster after that. The single gas jet, directly over the head of her painted iron bedstead, was fitted with an opaque white globe.

  This was a comfortable enough room, an acceptable retreat for a busy person who didn't spend much time in it. But it had a temporary ownerless character, almost deliberately so; looking around it, then glancing again as I did now at Julia—her lower lip was caught under her front teeth, and she was frowning at the rug, moving it slightly with the toe of one buttoned shoe—I thought I could guess what she might be thinking. This was an intelligent forceful girl who helped her aunt run a boardinghouse for a living. There must have been some rough times in that; she'd have a feeling for reality. She'd thought about her own future, and it wasn't in this room but in marriage. Yet as soon as she heard what I'd said about Jake, she knew it might be true.

  Was she thinking about marrying him anyway? Warning him about me? Maybe, but I didn't think so. It was a risk I had to take. I didn't know what she'd felt about Jake when she'd agreed to marry him. It was hard for me to believe it was love, but who ever knows about that, or even what the word means to anyone else? She'd felt something for him; she may have been calculating to a degree—forced to be—but she wasn't ruthless. She felt something for Jake but she was also real-minded about herself and her future; she wasn't simply accepting my word against him, but she wasn't denying the possibility either. I don't know whether I saw a movement from a corner of my eye—probably I did—but I turned my head to look down at the street, and Jake was just stepping off the bottom step of the front stoop, buttoning his coat, and I stood up quickly to get out of sight in case he looked up.

  Julia knew instantly what I'd seen. She stepped to a curtain, moved it a half inch from the wall, then stood—I was behind her now, looking over her shoulder—watching Jake walk quickly to the Twentieth Street corner and out of sight. I think Julia would have decided as she did anyway, but this cinched it. She stood staring after him for a moment or so after he'd gone from sight, then turned and—not asking, just telling me—said, "I'm going with you tonight."

  I nodded. "All right. Meet me in the front hall in two minutes."

  19

  Jake was in his office: it was eleven thirty-five and Julia and I stood in the darkened doorway of the Morse Building directly across Nassau Street from the Potter Building entrance, and I counted floors and then windows; on the third floor up from the Nassau Street entranceway the second window to the right was a tall rectangle of yellow light. It was Jake's office, the only room lighted in the entire dark face of the old building. Ten minutes later it lowered, flickered redly for a moment, then was out.

  Julia's arm was under mine, and I felt it tighten. To herself she murmured, "He's leaving," and I nodded in the darkness. There was a three-quarter moon out, very high in the sky, but we stood far back, deep in the complete darkness of the doorway. I pictured Jake ... locking his office door now ... walking down the short hall in the faint light from outside, perhaps using a match, though I could see no light. Down the stairs then, a hand on the banister. And now, just about now, he'd be turning to walk through the long hall the length of the building toward Park Row and City Hall Park. Crossing the street toward it, he'd glance up at the City Hall clock; it would say ten or eleven minutes to twelve. Perhaps far across the park in the moonlight Carmody, too, would be entering it, a heavy satchel at the end of one arm.

  I pressed Julia's arm to step forward, and—you can never entirely anticipate what anyone else will do—Jake stepped out of the entrance directly across the street onto the sidewalk, and stood looking carefully around in every direction. Was he listening, too? We'd instantly frozen motionless, not breathing. Could my pounding heartbeat actually be audible in the complete silence? Had our feet shuffled and made a sound? Across the street, Jake walked on past our doorway to Beekman Street and then across Beekman, on down toward Ann Street, his footsteps loud and echoing between building walls.

  Of course he hadn't left by the Park Row entrance to be seen by Carmody and whoever else might have been waiting and watching just across the street in the park. Instead, he would come toward City Hall Park now, walking north on Broadway and entering it from the west, keeping the location of his office a secret till he was ready to lead Carmody toward it himself.

  We waited, listening, watching from our doorway. I saw Jake reach Ann Street and turn west out of sight, the sound of his steps instantly cut off. Then we hurried across Nassau Street—we had minutes at most—and up the moonlit stairs, and down the short hall to Jake's doorway. I had my key out, found the lock, turned the key, and the door opened. I struck a match and walked, shielding it with my hand, to the jet over the desk, turned it up, touched the match to the tip, and it popped redly into flame. I lowered it to steadiness, then actually ran across the room to reach under the bottom board of the covered-over doorway, and find my hammer.

  There was nothing to do but accept a certain amount of squealing protest from the nails as I pulled them. But I drew slowly with an even pressure, keeping the noise down; and as soon as they were loosened, I pried the board off silently with the hammer claws. Two boards off, then a third, leaving a foot-and-a-half opening a couple of feet above the floor; I helped Julia as she ducked, her hands on the board just below the opening. She got one leg through, then lowered her shoulders, ducked her head under, and cried out in fright. I looked through the opening: The room was lighted dimly by moonlight through its single tall window, and most of its floor was gone, nothing but black space below.

  They'd worked, the carpenters, since I'd seen them last; finishing the second floor below, then moving up to this one, and sawing out the floor boards up here, exposing the long joists. They'd worked—possibly this afternoon—from the far wall, back toward the doorways, and now there was left only a corner of the floor, an approximate triangle from this boarded-over doorway to the door to the hall.

  There was enough left to stand on, perhaps to sit, and after a moment longer and keeping a tight grip, Julia crawled on through. I followed as fast as I could move. We'd lost a few moments we might need if Carmody had been waiting in the park and they'd started right back. They could be in the entranceway now, starting to climb the stairs.

  I had to take the risk, accepting the noise and hoping. Holding the last of the three boards I'd pried off back in its place, nail points fitted into their original holes, I was able to hammer it back precisely in place, plenty of room for my arm to swing, easily able to see. I had the second board in place, feeling a little cramped now, but my projecting arm still able to swing the hammer. My arm was actually raised, ready to come down, when I remembered.

  I dropped board and hammer clattering onto the floor of Jake's office, and then—squeezing, forcings not worrying about a ripped-off coat button so long as it fell on our side, scratching my face from cheekbone to ear—I fought through the two-board opening, stumbled into Jake's office, nearly falling down, then ran the two steps toward his desk, my arm reaching out before me. Then my fingers were on the gas-jet key, twisting, the light popped out as Jake had left it, and in the new darkness I scrambled back, forcing my way into the empty, nearly floorless room. Julia had my hammer and the dropped board ready for me, and blinking my eyes, trying to speed up their adjustment to the dim moonlight, I fitted the nails into their original holes, and pounded them in to their original depth. I remembered to lay my hammer on our side of the doorway, and as I picked up the third board we heard the City Hall clock, very faintly, the bulk of the, building between us and it, begin to slowly bong out the hour. We didn't wait to count; it leisurely sounded twelve times while Julia and I, each with our fingers curved around top and bottom of an end of the board, pulled it into the last opening, and—by trial and error, sliding it around—we found
the nail holes, finally, the points dropping into place. Each with our hands at first one end of the board, then the other, we pulled it in toward us with all our strength while I prayed silently to somebody or something not to let us slip and shoot backward into the dark emptiness behind and below us. The final slow bong sounded, the board was as secure as we could get it, and with my fingers through the cracks above and below the board, I felt for the nailheads. They projected a good half inch, and when I tried the board it wobbled. But it was firm enough, I told myself, and would look all right from the other side.

  We had a minute or two, it turned out, and it may have been as long as three, to get settled. As comfortably as we could, our outer coats folded as cushions, we sat in the nearly dark room facing the boarded-up doorway. We sat, knees drawn up, arms around our ankles, as close as we could bring our eyes to the cracks without showing the tips of our shoes at the opening below the bottom board. I reached out to touch Julia's knee and patted it reassuringly; at least that was the intention.

  We heard nothing of them out in the hall, no footstep, voice, or even the creak of a floorboard. A key rattling suddenly into the lock of Jake Pickering's office was the first sound of them, and Julia's hand shot out and gripped my forearm. Then they were in, a confusion of footsteps on the wooden floor, and, sounding terrifyingly inside the room with us, Carmody's voice said, "What's this!" its sound hollow in the empty space we sat in, and Julia's hand on my arm squeezed down hard.

  The gaslight in the next office rose high, projecting in knotholes and slits of light onto the far wall of our room the wavering shape of the boarded-up doorway, and down its center was the shape of a man peering in. In the open few inches at the bottom of the doorway the tips of a pair of boots almost touched mine, and beside them on the floor was the silver tip of an ebony cane.