FOUR NOVELLAS OF FEAR
by Cornell Woolrich
CONTENTS
1. Eyes That Watch You
2. The Night I Died
3. You’ll Never See Me Again
4. Murder Always Gathers Momentum
“Eyes That Watch You” © 1939 All Rights Reserved
Originally published in Dime Detective, September 1939, as “The Case of the Talking Eyes.”
“The Night I Died” © 1936 All Rights Reserved
Originally published in Detective Fiction Weekly, August 8, 1936.
“You’ll Never See Me Again” © 1939 All Rights Reserved
Originally published in Detective Story, November 1939.
“Murder Always Gathers Momentum” © 1940 All Rights Reserved
Originally published in Detective Fiction Weekly, December 14, 1940.
EYES THAT WATCH YOU
The house was a pleasant two-story suburban set in its own plot of ground, not close enough to its neighbors to impair privacy and seclusion, but not far enough away to be lonely or isolated. You could catch glimpses of them all around it through the trees and over the tops of the hedges that separated the lawns. You couldn’t command a full view of any of them, and they couldn’t command a full view of the house, either.
It had a back porch and a front one, and it had rambler roses trained around the porch posts both in front and in back.
It was midafternoon and Mrs. Janet Miller was sitting in her chair on the back porch. That was because the back of the house faced west and got the afternoon sun. Mornings she sat on the front porch, afternoons on the back. Life had long ago been reduced to its barest essentials for her. The feel of the warm sun on her, the sight of the blue sky over her, the sound of Vern Miller’s voice in her ears—those were the only things it held any more, those were the only things left to her. She didn’t ask for more, so long as those weren’t taken from her as everything else had been.
She sat there uncomplaining, content, almost—yes, almost happy, in her rubber-tired wheelchair, a blanket tucked snugly about her feet and lap. She could feel the sun on her, she could see the sky out through the porch posts, and as for the sound of his voice, that would come a little later—it was too early for that yet. She had that much more to look forward to, at least.
She was sixty, with a pink-cheeked, unlined face, snow-white hair, trustful pottery-blue eyes. She was completely, hopelessly paralyzed from head to foot, had been for the past ten years.
It seemed long ago, another lifetime ago now, that she had last walked on floors, moved up and down stairs, raised her hands to her hair to brush it, to her face to wash it, to her mouth to feed it, or expressed the thoughts that were still as clear, as undimmed as ever in her mind, by the sound of words issuing from her mouth. All that was gone now, gone and unlamented. She had trained herself, forced herself, steeled herself, not to lament it.
No one would ever know what it had cost her to accomplish that much, no one would ever know the private purgatory she had been through, the Via Dolorosa she had traversed. But she had emerged now, she had won her battle. She held tight to what remained to her. No monster-god ever worshipped by the most benighted savages could be cruel enough to take that pitiful remainder from her. The sun, the sky, Vern’s voice, remained. She had achieved resignation, acceptance, content. So she sat there motionless in the slanting sun, behind the twining rambler-rose tendrils. Something human, something living, that wanted its happiness too.
The doorbell rang around on the other side of the house, and the footsteps of Vera, Vern’s wife, started from the floor above to answer it. But quickly, with a rush, as though she had been waiting for this summons, as though she had seen who it was from one of the upper windows. It must be company then, and not just a tradesman or peddler.
Janet Miller could hear the front door open, then quickly close again, from where she sat. But no gush of feminine salutations followed. Instead a man’s voice said, cautiously muted, but not too muted to carry to the sharp ears whose sensitivity had increased rather than diminished since the loss of other faculties: “You alone?”
And Vera’s voice answered: “Yes. Did anyone see you come in?”
That first, husky, guarded voice hadn’t been the voice, hadn’t been Vern’s. It couldn’t be this early—not for another hour or more yet. Who could it be then? A man—that meant it was a friend of Vern’s, of course. She knew all his friends and tried to place this one, but couldn’t. They never came at this hour. They were all busy downtown, as Vern was himself.
Well, she’d know in a minute. One thing about Vern’s friends, the first thing they all did was come and say hello to her, ask her how she was, usually bring her something, some little trifle or dainty. Vera would bring him out with her to see her, or else wheel her in to where he was. She liked to meet company. That wasn’t one of the three essentials; that was a little pampering she allowed herself.
But instead of coming through the hall that bisected the house, out to where she was, they turned off into the living-room, and she heard the door close after them, and from then on there wasn’t another sound.
She couldn’t understand that. Vera had never closed the door like that when they had company before. It must have been just absentmindedness on her part. She’d done it without thinking. Or else maybe it was some little surprise they were preparing, for herself or for Vern, and they wanted to make sure of keeping it a secret. But Vern’s birthday was long past, and her own didn’t come until February—
She waited patiently but the door stayed closed. It seemed she wasn’t to meet this caller, or be wheeled in to him. She sighed a little, disappointedly.
Then suddenly, without warning, they came through into the back of the house, the kitchen. It had a window looking out on the back porch, just a little to one side of where she was seated. She could even see into a very narrow strip of the room by looking out of the far corners of her eyes. She could move her eyes, of course.
Vera came in there first, the caller after her. She seemed to set something down on the kitchen table, then she started to undo it with a great crackling and rattling of paper. Some sort of parcel, evidently. So they were busied about a surprise, a gift, after all.
She heard Vera say, “Where’d you ever get this idea from?” with a sort of admiring, complimentary ring to her voice.
The man answered: “Reading in the papers about how they were passing them out over in London and Paris, when they were scared war was going to break out. Someone I know was over there at the time and brought some of them back with him. I got hold of these from him.”
“D’yuh think it’ll work?” she asked.
He said: “Well, it’s the best idea of the lot we’ve had so far, isn’t it?”
“That doesn’t say much for some of the others,” Vera answered.
The crackle of unwrapping paper had continued uninterruptedly until now. It stopped at last.
There was a moment’s silence, then she said: “Aren’t they funny-looking things?”
The man said: “They’ll do the trick, though. Never mind how they look.”
The paper crackled one last time, then Vera said: “What’d you bring two for?”
“One for the old lady,” he answered.
Janet Miller experienced a pleasant little glow of anticipation. They had something for her, they were going to give her something, some little present or memento.
“Use your head,” the man growled. “That’s the one thing we want to avoid. She’s our immunity; don’t you get it? Sort of like an alibi. As long as nothing happens to her, it’s good for an accident. But if they both go then it looks too much like we wanted the decks cleared. Don’t let’s load the dice against ourselves. One out of three people in a house, we can get away with. But two out of three, and it’ll begin to smell fishy. Don’t forget you’re in the same room with him. She’s up at the other end of the hall. How’s it going to look if he goes and you, right next to him, don’t? And then she goes too, all the way out in another room, with a couple of closed doors in between?”
“All right,” Vera conceded grudgingly. “But if you had to push her around all day and wait on her like I do—”
The sunlight falling on Janet Miller seemed to have changed. It was cold, baleful now. She could hear her heart beating, pounding against her ribs, and her breath was coming fast, through fear-distended nostrils.
The man went on: “You better let me show you how to put it on right while I’m here, so you’ll know how it goes when the time comes.”
Vera started to say something, but her voice was blurred out as though she had stuck her head into a bag.
Suddenly she came too close to the window, moved inadvertently within that narrow segment of the room that the far corners of Janet Miller’s eyes could encompass. Her whole head had vanished. If the paralytic had been capable of sound, she would have screamed. Vera had what looked like a horse’s feed bag up over her entire face. A nozzle protruded from this and went down somewhere out of sight. Two round gogglelike disks for eyes.
A gas mask!
She shifted further back into the room, out of sight again. Her voice sounded clearly once more. She must have taken it off. “Whew! Stuffy. Are you sure it’ll work? I’m not in this to take any chances myself, you know.”
“They’re made to stand much worse stuff than you’re going to get tonight.”
“Where’ll I keep them? I don’t want him to find them before I’m ready for them. I’m afraid if I take them up to the room with me he’ll—”
Janet Miller heard the clang of the oven door being opened, pushed closed again. “Here’s a place he’ll never look into in a million years. Supper’s all cooked. I can just warm it on top of the stove. He never bothers with the kitchen much. I’ll come down and get them the last thing, after he’s asleep. Take the paper out with you.”
More crackle of paper, this time being smoothed and folded small, to fit into someone’s pocket.
The man’s voice said: “That’s that. Now have you got everything straight? Put the spare on the old lady. Don’t cross me up on that. We’re just laying ourselves wide open if you let her go with him. Don’t put your own on ahead of time—he’s liable to wake up and see you wearing it. Hold out as long as you can before you get into it; it won’t hurt you to get a little of the stuff in you. Remember you’ve got an inhalator squad to buck afterwards.
“Get rid of all the papers and rags stuffed under the windows before they get here. And when you phone the alarm, don’t speak over the phone. Your voice is liable to sound too strong. Just knock the receiver off and leave it that way; that’ll bring ’em. It’ll take a little longer, but what’ve you got to lose? You’re in a fade-out on the floor near the door, just couldn’t make it. But the most important thing of all is the masks. If they’re found around here afterwards, we’re cooked. Take hers and yours off before they get here, when you’re sure he’s finished, and lock ’em both in the rumble seat of the car, out in the garage. You won’t be using it after he’s gone. You don’t even know how to drive. In a day or two you phone the Ajax Garage—that’s my place—to come and get it, take it off your hands, sell it for you. I’ll take them out at my end, return them as soon as I can. No one’ll ever know the difference.”
“How long’ll I give him? I’ve heard of them pulling people through after working over ’em an hour, sometimes more. We want to make sure that don’t happen.”
“Just see that he soaks up enough, and you can bet all the oxygen in the world won’t pull him through. Watch his face. When that gets good and blue, all mottled, you got nothing more to worry about. You better lie low for about a month afterwards. Give them a chance to settle up the estate and all that. I’ll give you a ring in—say thirty days from tonight. Are you sure everything’s shaped up right?”
“Yeah. He’s insured up to his ears. All his stock’s been bought in my name. The business has been doing pretty good, and there are no other relatives to horn in. We’ll be set for life, Jimmy darling. That’s why I held out against doing it any other way but this. There wouldn’t’ve been any sense to it.”
“Where’s the old lady?” he asked unexpectedly.
“On the back porch where she always is.”
“Hey, she can hear us, can’t she? Let’s get out of here!”
She laughed callously. “Suppose she does? What can she do? Who can she tell? She can’t talk, she can’t write, she can’t even make signs.”
They didn’t even bother looking out at her to see whether she was dozing or awake.
“All right,” was the last thing he said. “Don’t get frightened now. Just keep your head about you, and everything’ll pan out. See you in a month.” They exchanged a kiss. A blood-red kiss of death.
Then they went out of the kitchen, back into the living-room. They opened the side door of that, came out into the hall. The front door opened and closed again and Janet Miller was left alone in the house—with her knowledge and the potential murderess of her son.
Vernon Miller was a genial, easy-going, goodhearted, unsuspicious sort of man, the kind that so often draws a woman like Vera to be his life partner. He was no easy mark, no sap. He was wary enough in business, in the outside world of men and affairs could even be implacable, hard-boiled, if the occasion warranted. The trouble was, he let his defenses down in the wrong place—laid himself wide open in the home.
Janet Miller heard his key in the door. He said “Hello, there!” to the house in general. Vera came down the stairs, and Janet Miller heard them exchange a kiss. A Judas kiss.
Then he came on out to the back porch, to see her, and the third component of her trinity, the sound of his voice, was vouchsafed her.
“Did you enjoy the sun?”
Her eyes.
“Want me to take you in now?”
Her terrible eyes.
“Look what I brought you.”
Her eyes, her terrible imploring eyes.
“Did you miss me? Glad I’m back? Is that why you’re looking at me like that?” He squatted down to the level of the chair, cupped his hand to his knees. “What’re you trying to tell me, darling?”
Her eyes, her haunted eyes.
“Shall I try for you? Blink them once for no, twice for yes.” This was an old established code between them, their only link. “Are you hungry?” No. “Are you chilly?” No. “Are you—”
Vera called out from the kitchen, interrupted them as if guessing what Janet was trying to do: “Don’t stay out there all night, Vern. I’m all ready for you.”
Her eyes, her despairing eyes.
He straightened up, shifted around behind the chair, out of her sight, and rolled her into the living-room ahead of him. Left her there for a minute while he went upstairs.
Even her only weapon, the use of her eyes, was blunted, for they almost always followed him around a room, in and out of doors, even on other nights when they had no terrible message to deliver, so how could he be expected to tell the difference tonight?
Vera finished setting the table. “All right, Vern,” she called up.
He came down again, hands freshly washed, guided her chair into the dining room, pushed it close up beside Vera at the table, sat down opposite them. Vera was the one who always fed her.
He opened h
is napkin, looked down, began to spoon soup.
Vera broke the brief preliminary silence. “She won’t open her mouth.”
She was trying to force a spoonful through Janet Miller’s clenched teeth. Janet Miller had retained just enough muscular control of her jaws still to be able to close or slightly relax her mouth, sufficiently to take food. It was tightly shut now.
He looked over at her and she blinked at him. Singly, three times. No, no, no.
“Don’t you feel well? Don’t you want any?”
“She’s just being stubborn,” Vera said. “She was perfectly all right all day.”
Yes, I was, thought Janet Miller harrowingly, until you let death into my son’s house.
She kept trying to force the spoon through. Janet Miller resisted it. It tilted and the soup splashed off. “Now look at that!” she exclaimed short-temperedly.
“Do you want me to feed you?” he asked.
She couldn’t signal those three double blinks fast enough. Yes, yes, yes.
He got up and moved the wheelchair around beside his own.
Vera began to apply herself to her own meal with a muttered: “You can have the job; see if I care.”
So far so good. She was over beside him now, in closer contact. So near and yet so far. Her pitiful, desperate plan was first to rivet his attention to the fact that something was wrong, something was troubling her, and hold it there. That was the easiest part of it. Once that was accomplished, she must find some way of centering his interest on that oven wherein the two gas masks lay concealed. Get him to go to it, open it himself if possible. Failing that, get him to force Vera to go to it, open it.
In such event Vera would undoubtedly attempt to smuggle them out of their hiding place, find another for them without letting him see her do it. But they were large, bulky, not easily concealed. The chances of his discovering them would be that much greater. Even if he did discover them, that by no means guaranteed that he would understand their implication, realize they meant his own intended death. Vera would probably find some explanation to fob off on him. But she might lose her nerve, it might result in a postponement if nothing else. Lacking speech with which to warn him, that was the most Janet Miller could hope for.
FOUR NOVELLAS OF FEAR: Eyes That Watch You, The Night I Died, You'll Never See Me Again, Murder Always Gathers Momentum Page 1
