Cornell Woolrich

The Case of the Killer-Diller

Chapter One

Death of a Sandman

In the streets outside it was broad daylight already, but down in the basement-room night shadows still lingered on. Through stratified layers of hours-old cigarette smoke, unable to find its way out of the poorly ventilated place, two motionless forms, both in grotesque postures, were indistinctly visible. One was a girl huddled asleep on a piano bench, her head and arms resting on the keyboard. The other was a man, toes pointed downward, head on chest, finger-tips touching his sides, as though he were staring entranced at something on the floor.

The basement itself was no different from any other sub-street-level space of its kind. Bare whitewashed walls, an oblong vent fitted with opaque wire-meshed glass high up on one side, that looked out at about the level of passersby’s insteps, an array of steam and water pipes of varying girths that ran out parallel to the ceiling for half its length, then disappeared through it by means of elbow-joints. It was what the cellar contained that set it apart.

There were numbers of ordinary, unpainted wooden kitchen chairs scattered about, most of them overturned. For nearly every chair there was a complementary gin bottle lying discarded somewhere nearby — empty or with only a finger’s-width left in it at the most — and a musical instrument: trap-drum, clarinet, sax, and so on. There was a table too, scalloped around the edges with cigarette burns, some of them with ash cylinders still in them. Loose orchestration sheets and more empty bottles littered its surface, bringing the bottle ratio up to nearly two per chair.

A venturesome cockroach traveled across an orchestration-leaf of Ravel’s Bolero that had fallen to the floor. It didn’t look so different from the other notes, except that it was bigger and kept moving slowly along the clef-bars instead of staying in one place. There was a peculiar acrid pungency in the air that didn’t come from liquor, and that no ordinary cigarette ever made either.

As the daylight filtered in more and more strongly through the clouded sidewalk-level pane, the girl who slept with her arms on top of the yellowed piano-keys, stirred a little, raised her head. Nearly two whole octaves of pressed-down keys, freed of her weight, reared up into place with a series of little clashing discords. The sound woke her more fully.

“In the groove,” she murmured dreamily, and blinked her eyes open.

Her silky butterscotch-colored hair, worn smooth and long, came tumbling down over her face, and she brushed it back with one hand. Then her eyes went upward, took in the other figure, who seemed to be dancing there before her in the hazy air, to unheard notes. She shot up from the piano-bench.

“Hal!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing up—” She choked it off short. He was being dead up there, hanging by his neck from a thick electric cord that looped down between two of the exposed steam pipes.

She stumbled back against the keyboard and her hand struck it, brought forth another discordant jangle. She sidestepped, terrified even by that harmless sound. The exploring cockroach scampered off the orchestration-sheet, scurried back toward its cranny.

“They’ve all gone, left me here alone with... it,” she sobbed.

She stared distractedly at the overturned chairs, turned and fought her way through the stagnant air toward the closed wooden door at the back of the place.

She threw it open and looked up and down the dim basement passage lit by a single wan bulb. Rows of empty ashcans were pyramided at one end of it. She was on the verge of hysteria by now. It was not alone what she had just seen, it was also partly due to the depression that always set in after the over-stimulation of one of those jam-sessions — a sort of musical hang-over, so to speak. How the men in the outfit must be feeling, she could only imagine. She didn’t drink gin or blaze reefers the way they did.

“Fred! Frankie! Dusty!” she whispered hoarsely, standing there in the open doorway. The long brick-walled passage echoed to it hollowly, like a tomb. She shuddered, crouched back against the wall. A black cat slunk out between two of the ashcans and she gave a tinny little bleat, half superstitious reflex, half actual alarm.

A door grated open far down at the other end of the passage and a grizzled old man in overalls looked out at her. Instinctively she reached behind her, pulled shut the door of the room from which she had just come, so he couldn’t look in if he should pass by. “Oh. Mr. Hoff, did the boys — did the rest of the crew leave already?” she faltered.

He shrugged as he shuffled down the passage toward her. “If they ain’t in there, then they must have gone. I tell you one thing, I be glad if they go and never come back. Such noise! What the landlord was thinking about to rent them a room down here. With three doors in between I still heard it.” He was opposite the closed door now and she was standing in front of it, as though to prevent him from going in. She was loyal to the men she worked with. This was a matter that concerned the entire orchestra. She had to find the others first, consult them, before she let a stranger—

“Have you got a cigarette, Mr. Hoff?”

Her bag was somewhere inside there, with a package of cigarettes in it, but she couldn’t bear the thought of going back in again — and facing that — to get it. He gave her a loose one from his overall pocket, scraped a kitchen match down the brickwork. The cigarette shook pitifully in her hand and kept on shaking even after she had it lit and between her lips.

“Yah, look at you,” he said disapprovingly. “Fine life for a young girl, shtaying up all night banging and hollering with a bunch of drunk musickaners! You bet if you vas my daughter—”

He’d often said that to her, but today, for the first time, she was inclined to agree with him.

“I’d like to give it up myself,” she said sickly.

He trudged on up the passage toward his daily chores and disappeared around a corner. She threw down the cigarette she had just lit, tried the door to make sure it was securely closed, then fled up the passage in the other direction. She opened a door, ran up a flight of basement steps, came out at the rear of the ground-floor hallway of the cheap “residence club,” that was just a rooming-house under another name. A couple of the orchestra members had rooms here in the building.

She ran around to the front, up the main stairs to the second floor — the place had no elevator — and knocked briefly on a door near the head of the stairs. She threw it open — the knock was just for propriety’s sake — and looked in.

Fred Armstrong, the outfit’s clarinet-player, was lying soddenly on his back on the bed, mouth open to the ceiling, the gin bottle he’d brought up from downstairs still clutched in his hand, as though it were too precious to let go even after everything it had had in it was inside him instead.

She shook him fruitlessly a few times, tried to rouse him by calling “Fred! Fred!” urgently in his ear. His mouth didn’t even close. He’d be that way for hours, she realized. She turned and ran out again, closing the door after her.

Halfway to the stairs again she stopped short in her tracks, turned aside. There was a little enamel sign sticking out at right-angles to the wall — Bath. A flicker of motion from the partly open door had caught her eye. She pushed it open and saw a pale-faced youth her own age, standing there looking at her. Strings of damp hair straggled down over his forehead. His coat-collar was turned up around his neck, and he had a black eye.

“Frankie!” she breathed. “What are you hiding out like this for up here?”

He had to swallow a couple of times before he could get his voice out. “I’m not — hiding out. What’s the matter, Billie?”

“Hal Thatcher’s dead down in that room in the basement where we have our jam-sessions! I woke up just now and — he was right there in front of me, hanging from the pipes.” She stared at him. “Frankie! Pull yourself together. Didn’t you hear what I just said to you?”

He held up three fingers, looked at her with fear-dilated eyes.

She seemed to understand what he meant by the gesture. “Yes, it looks like we’re jinxed. But if we once let ourselves believe it, then we are jinxed for fair.”

“I’m going to get out of this crew,” he stammered. “I’m... I’m quitting right now. I’d rather be out of work than... than—”

“This is no time to talk that way! We can’t let Dusty down now, of all times. This is when we should stick by him. Don’t be a welsher, Frankie. You haven’t told me yet why you were skulking up here, peeping out through a crack in the door at me.”

His eyes dropped before her scrutiny. “I wandered up here when the session wound up. I tried to get some sleep curled up in the bathtub. It was the only thing I could find for a bed.”

“How’d you get your hair all wet like that?”

“My head was splitting. I ran some water from the shower on it just now when I woke up, trying to get it down to its right size again.”

Her eyes sought the nickeled dial of the shower fixture. It was dry as sandpaper. Not a drop clung to it. She didn’t say anything.

“What’re you asking me all kinds of questions for?” he flared out suddenly, nerves on edge.

“Try to pull yourself together, Frankie,” she said coldly, turning away. “Run out and drink some black coffee. I thought I was shot, but I’m all in one solid chunk compared to you.”

He took out a pocket comb, ran it through his hair. “What’re you going to do?” he asked her apprehensively.

“Where did Dusty go? We’ve got to get hold of him and tell him.”

“Back to his hotel, I guess. Or maybe to a Turkish bath.”

“If I can’t reach him, I’ll have to notify the police on my own.”

He dropped the comb, picked it up again, blew through its teeth. “It’s not going to look so hot for me, y’know.”

“Why should it look bad for you? I suppose you mean because he gave you that shiner last night. What do you suggest we do, not notify the police? Bury him under the cellar floor or something?” She dropped her voice and tapped his shirt-front with one finger. “I don’t like the way you’re acting, Frankie. Before I ring anyone else in on this, you’d better tell me — do you know more about this than you’re letting on? Did you know it had happened before I came up and told you just now? Had you already seen him like that? Is that why you ran and hid up here?”

His weak, chalky face twitched spasmodically. His hand started toward her arm, appealingly, then he dropped it again. “N-no,” he said, “I didn’t.”

The girl gave him a skeptical look. “I hope for your own sake that’s on the level,” she said. “Here goes for the cops.”

Chapter Two

Two Out of Three

A detective named Lindsey was the first one to get there, even before Dusty Detwiller, the band-leader. She’d put in her call direct to headquarters, without bothering to send out for a neighborhood cop. They’d been through this twice before, and she knew by now the policeman was just an intermediate step. Headquarters was always notified in the end anyway.

She was holding the fort alone, down in the jam-session room, when he got there. Armstrong was still stupefied up in his room, Frankie was around the corner trying to steady himself on coffee, Detwiller was getting an alcohol-rub downtown at the Thebes Baths, and she hadn’t been able to locate Kershaw, the fifth member of the Sandmen. Her nerves were calmer now, she didn’t mind going back in there as much as at first. Besides, she wanted to make sure that nothing was touched. They always seemed to attach a lot of importance to that, though of course that was in cases of murder. This was plainly a suicide.

She had had no reason to like Hal Thatcher while he was still alive, so she couldn’t really feel bad about his going. She wondered what had made him do it. She sat with her back to him, on the piano-bench, looking the other way. She kept her face down toward the floor. It was pretty horrible when you looked squarely up at him. It was bad enough just to see his long attenuated shadow on the basement floor, thrown by the light coming in more strongly now through the sidewalk-vent.

The voice of Hoff, the janitor, sounded outside, asking questions, so she knew that her vigil was over at last. “Somebody in the house sent for you? Who? That’s the first I know about anyt’ing being wrong. Them musickaners, I bet. I knew it! I’m only surprised it didn’t happen already before now—”

The door flung open and this detective came in, a uniformed cop behind him. She looked up relievedly, threw down her cigarette.

He wasn’t a particularly handsome individual, but she thought what a relief it was to see a man with healthy brown color in his face for a change, instead of the yeasty night-pallor she was used to. His eyes went up toward the ceiling behind her, came down again. Then they switched over to her.

“You the girl that phoned in?”

“Yes,” she said quietly.

“Pretty cool little number, aren’t you?” he told her. She couldn’t tell whether he meant it admiringly or unfavorably. To tell the truth she didn’t care much.

“The boys’ instruments are all in here, and I thought I’d better keep an eye on them until you people got here,” she explained. “I woke up in here with him, so I didn’t think it would hurt to stay a minute or two more.”

“All right, let me have his name, please.” He took out a little notebook.

“Hal Thatcher.”

He scribbled. “You say you found him like this when you woke up, Mrs. Thatcher?”

A circumflex accent etched the corner of her mouth. “No, you don’t understand. I’m not married to him. We worked together in the same band, that’s all. I’m the canary and he played the slush-pump.” She saw his face redden a little, as if he felt he’d made a social error. “Oh, because I said I woke up— No, we were having a jam-session, and I fell asleep there at the piano, that’s what I meant. We rent this room from the building-owner, come up here after work about two or three in the morning every once in a while and play for our own amusement — you know, improvise. That’s what a jam-session is.”

He nodded almost inattentively, but she had a feeling he’d heard every word. “What went on last night, to the best of your recollection? Better let me have your name too, while we’re about it.”

“Billie Bligh. The formal of that is Wilhelmina. About last night — nothing any different from any other time. The way these sessions come up is, Dusty — he’s our front man, the leader, you know — will say ‘How about having a session tonight?’ and so we all agree and have one. We left the Troc, that’s the club where we work, about three, and piled into a couple of taxis, instruments and all, and came on up. We sat around chinning and smoking for a while, waiting for the spirit to move us—”

He eyed the gin bottles meaningfully, but didn’t say anything.

“Some of the boys had a few nips to warm up,” she agreed deprecatingly. “Then finally somebody uncased his instrument and started tootling around, and one by one everyone else joined in, and first thing you know we were all laying it in the groove. That’s how those things go. In about two hours we were all burned out, they started dropping out again one by one. That’s when I laid my head on the piano and dozed off. The others must have left after that, and Thatcher stayed behind, and the willies got him and—”

“Not the willies,” he assured her.

“What do you mean?”

He didn’t act as though he intended telling her, anyway, but just then the cop who had been left outside the basement door rapped, stuck his head in, and said: “Two of the others just showed up.”

Lindsey motioned at random and Dusty Detwiller came in alone, flaring camel’s hair coat belted to almost wasp-waisted tightness around him. He didn’t look particularly jaunty at the moment, though.

“This is awful,” he said to Billie, shoving his hat far back on his head and holding his hand pressed to it. “What’ll we do about tonight? Who’s this man?”

“Name of Lindsey, headquarters... No, don’t pick up any of those chairs. I want everything left just the way it is. You’ll have to stand up.”

Detwiller started unfastening his coat, then changed his mind, tightened it up again. “Hope I don’t catch cold coming out like this right out of a steam-room,” he mourned.

“Do I have to stay in here any longer?” Billie asked, with her eyes on the elongated shadow on the floor. Then she looked up, glimpsed Frankie standing just outside the door with the cop. “That’s all right,” she corrected herself hastily. “I’d better stay. You may need me, I was the only one who wasn’t drinking.”

Lindsey just looked at her, then at the doorway, but he didn’t say anything. “At what time did you leave here?” he asked Detwiller.

“A little before five. It hadn’t started to get light yet.”

“Who was still here when you left?”

“They all were. I was the first one to break away. Armstrong and Kershaw were still playing, but they couldn’t lay it in the groove much any more. Frankie was here too, but he was high on weed. Billie was already falling asleep over the piano. And Hal... Hal seemed all right. He was leaning back there, on two legs of his chair, against the wall. He had a little gin in him, but he seemed all right. He kept shimmying with his hands in his pockets.”

“You went where?”

“The Thebes Baths. I always go there after a session.”

“That’ll be all for just now. Send the other one in, Dugan.”

Frankie came in. The coffee didn’t seem to have done him much good. He looked nervous and jumpy even before Lindsey had opened his mouth to ask him anything.

“Your name?”

“Frank Bligh.”

Lindsey looked at the girl.

“He’s my brother,” she said, moistening her lips.

“You were under the influence of marihuana, I’m told.”

The pallid youth cringed. “So was everyone else except Billie. We all blazed it a little. We always do,” he said defensively. “I show it more, that’s all.”

“Did you stay on to the end?”

“Y-yeah, I guess so.”

“Just be definite about it, will you?” Lindsey said tonelessly. “Who’d already left this room and who hadn’t?”

“Dusty had left, and Armstrong had gone upstairs to his room already, and Kershaw had stumbled out by that time, too. I don’t know where he went.” His eyes traveled up toward the ceiling, dropped again “He was still here,” he said reluctantly.

“Then you were the last one out, except Miss Bligh and the dead man—” Lindsey broke off short. “How’d you get the black eye? Bump into something while you were high?”

It was one of those verbal traps. Frankie’s head started to go up and down affirmatively.

The girl looked up suddenly from the floor. “No, Frank, don’t,” she forestalled him. “Tell him the straight of it, that’s the wisest way in the end. Thatcher gave it to him,” she said to the detective.

“Why?” the latter asked quietly.

“He’d been making passes at me for a long time. That didn’t bother me, I can handle myself. I didn’t tell Frankie. But he found out about it last night for the first time, and they had a scrap in the taxi coming up here. Thatcher hit him in the eye, but then the rest of us patched it up between them, smoothed it over. Dusty won’t stand for any quarreling in the organization. It’s bad for our work. We even stopped for a minute outside a lunchroom and they got a little piece of raw meat for Frankie’s eye and brought it out to him.” She smiled placatingly at the dick. “Frankie’s been worried about it, though, ever since he heard Hal did that to himself this morning. I told him not to—” Then as there was no answering smile, her own froze. “Why are you looking at the two of us like that?” she faltered.

“What do you want me to do, smile, Miss Bligh? This man never hung himself up there. He was murdered.”

Frankie flinched as though he’d been hit. The girl’s face paled.

“I could see that the minute I stepped into the room!” Lindsey snapped. “Either you people are still groggy from your jam-session, or you’re trying to cover up something — and not being very good at it either!”

Frankie Bligh’s cheeks were hollowing and filling like a fish out of water. He gave a stricken yell at his sister. “Now see what you’ve done! Now see what you’ve done! I told you it wasn’t going to look good for me!” He turned and bolted out the door.

“Grab that young fellow, Dyer!” the dick shouted remorselessly after him. “Hang onto him!”

A blue-sleeved arm shot out, fastened itself to Frankie’s shoulder, twirled him around like a top.

Lindsey walked leisurely out to the two of them. “What’d you do it for, kid?” he asked gruffly.

The terrified Frankie’s eyelids fluttered a couple of times, then he sagged limp as a dishcloth into the cop’s arms.

Lindsey had all the surviving members of Dusty Detwiller and his Sandmen ushered back into the jam-pot again about an hour later.

Frankie Bligh hadn’t been booked for the murder yet and was still with them in a bad state of semi-collapse, his wrists manacled together. Armstrong had been sobered up by now, chiefly by heroic methods that had nothing to do with letting nature take its course. Kershaw, the missing member of the original sextet, had been located by an alarm and brought in from the bar where he had gone in all seriousness to brace up on a lethal mixture compounded of paprika, tomato juice and rye.

“Now, if you people still want to do your chore tonight at the Troc,” Lindsey warned them, “you’ll cooperate with me in this. You’re not getting out of here until I’ve had this reconstructed to suit me.”

And as Detwiller commenced to say something, he cut him off with a curt: “If you try getting in touch with a mouthpiece, we’ll simply adjourn someplace else where he can’t find you right away.”

“You can’t do this to us!” Dusty fumed.

“No, but I’m doing it.”

Billie looked at him hopefully. If he put them all through their paces like this together, instead of just concentrating on Frankie and grilling him alone, maybe it meant he wasn’t altogether convinced of her brother’s guilt yet. But then she glanced at the cuffs on his wrists and her hopes died again.

Lindsey had two other dicks working with him now, but they must have been third-graders. Mostly, she noticed, they just did the errands. Thatcher’s body had been taken down, of course, and removed to the morgue, after both he and the room had been photographed.

An ominous loop still remained in the heavy, insulated wiring where his neck had been. A stepladder against the wall showed how he had been disengaged without bringing the wire down from the ceiling, simply by expanding the loop a little and pulling his head through it. That loop, Billie recalled, had always been there, ever since they’d begun using the room — a long oval hanging down between two of the pipes, just clear of the tops of their heads, to take up slack in the wire. Otherwise the heavy hundred-watt bulb in which the cord ended on the other side of the pipe, would have hung down too low toward the floor, been smashed a dozen-times over in the course of their high-jinks.

“Let’s talk about this contrivance a little,” Lindsey said drily, “before we start getting down to cases. Did a licensed electrician put up such a botched job for a light-extension?”

Several of them shook their heads. “I didn’t think so,” Lindsey concluded.

“Hoff, the janitor, rigged that up for us,” Dusty explained. “You see, there was no wiring for light at all in here when we rented this part of the basement. He tapped the nearest wire, which is outside in the passageway there, clamped on an outlet on the wall by it. Then he had to bore a hole up there over the top of the door, to pass the wire through to us on this side. He got hold of a long length of wire, ran it through, put a plug on one end and a socket for a light-bulb on the other.

“To save himself the trouble of having to clamp it up against the ceiling, he just threaded it over the tops of those two pipes and let them do the work. But he’s a dope. When he got all through, the wire was long enough to lay the bulb on the floor, like an egg. So instead of taking his pliers and cutting it and taping it together again, he just took this big loop he had between the two pipes that supported it, taking up the slack and lifting the bulb about to where it should go. Then to make sure it would stay that way, he made a big knot in the wire just on the outside of the last pipe, too thick to go through the slit between pipe and ceiling.

“Clear enough,” Lindsey complimented him. “In other words that knot held it fast on the outside of the two pipes. But on the inside, toward the door and basement passage, it formed a perfect pulley arrangement. That loop could be drawn tight or relaxed at will by someone standing outside the door there, simply by pulling the plug out of the outlet — thereby plunging this room into darkness — taking a good grip on the wire, and pulling it taut out through that hole above the door. And if someone’s head happened to get caught in that loop as it contracted, and he couldn’t extricate it again quickly enough, it’d be just too bad. He’d probably corkscrew the loop as he threshed around, until his neck broke. A perfect case of garrotting. That’s how it was done.”

“But he was held fast up there between the two pipes, as high as he could go, when I woke up and saw him,” Billie said. “How could he stay up there like that, unless the murderer kept pulling the cord taut out there in the passage, held onto it for hours? And there was no one out there when I—”

“No, he wouldn’t have to do that. He only had to hold it long enough to get a good thick knot bunched in it just past that bunghole over the door, to keep it from slipping through again with the weight of Thatcher’s body. You may have missed seeing that second knot, but I didn’t. It’s out there big as life right now.”

“Well then, that let’s Frankie out, without going any further!” she said decisively. “Thatcher may not have been a heavyweight, but my brother hasn’t got enough strength in his arms to hold a cord tight so a man’s full weight is kept clear of the floor, and at the same time tie a knot into it.”

“That doesn’t let your brother or anyone else out,” Lindsey let her know firmly. “The pipes acted somewhat on the principle of pulleys, took a lot of the direct strain out of it. And another thing, marihuana, like any other narcotic can lend a man abnormal strength temporarily. Overstimulation. We’ve got the method now. That points equally at any one of you, except you yourself, Miss Bligh. We’ve got the motive. And that points only at you, so far, Bligh. No one else had one. All we’ve got to learn now is who had the opportunity. Two out of three rings the bell as far as I’m concerned,” he concluded ominously.

He turned to Frankie. “Now, according to your own admission made to me before you supposedly knew it was a murder that was involved and not just suicide, you were the last one to leave here, except your sister and the dead man. I suppose you want to retract that now.” He didn’t wait to hear whether he did or not. “I don’t need your own testimony on that point. I can get it by elimination, from your yellow-bandsmen. Now tell me who was the first to get up and go out of here?”

Detwiller said, almost reluctantly, as though he felt it was taking an unfair advantage: “I was.”

“Corroboration?” snapped Lindsey.

They all O.K.’d it. “Yeah.”... “That’s right, he was.”

“Then you’re out of it,” Lindsey told him. The band-leader looked apologetically at the others, as though he would have been glad to take the rap if he could have.

“Who was next?”

“Armstrong,” said Kershaw, and the girl nodded.

“I was starting to fall asleep already,” she said, “but I remember the sound of his slamming the door roused me for a minute. I looked up and Kersh and Thatcher and — Frankie — were still here with me.”

“And after him?” He looked at Kershaw. No answer. He looked at Frankie. The latter’s eyes dropped and he stared down at the floor. He looked at the girl finally. “I can’t help you out on that one,” she said almost defiantly. “I was sound asleep by then. That time the door didn’t wake me.”

“I was pretty binged,” Kershaw drawled unwillingly, kneading the back of his neck. “I wouldn’t care to get a pal in Dutch by saying something I ain’t one hundred percent sure of. It seems to me Bligh and Thatcher and Billie were still in here, though. I kind of remember saying ‘Good-night’ three times. That’s the only way I can tell.”

“Don’t be so damn noble on my working-time,” Lindsey squelched him. He turned back to Frankie again. “How about it? You want to use the out your pal here is giving you?”

He looked up and met his sister’s gaze. She stared at him hard without saying a word. “No,” he groaned. “I guess what I told you in the beginning still goes. I was pretty high and hazy, but I remember being alone in here with Thatcher at the very end. Billie, too, of course, but she was asleep.” Then his voice rose, he shook his manacled hands pleadingly toward the dick. “But I know I didn’t do anything like that! I wasn’t in any condition even to figure out that I could snare him by means of the loop in that light cord. It was all I could do to find the stairs and get up them—”

“I’m sorry, Bligh,” said Lindsey, “but the opportunity jibes, too. There’s my two out of three. I’m going to have to hold you. The rest of you can go.”

Chapter Three

Kill Crazy

As they filed out one by one giving him sympathetic looks, Dusty went to him and rested his hand encouragingly on his bowed shoulder for a minute. “Buck up, kid,” he murmured, “we’re with you. We’ll get you out of this. You’ll be back laying it in the groove with us in no time!” Then, all business again, he hurried out, remarking: “I gotta get down to the Mad House[1] in a hurry and see if the Warden[2] can find me someone to take his place. That means a rehearsal too, to break him in—”

The door closed and Lindsey saw that the girl was still sitting there on the piano bench, hadn’t gone with them. “Wouldn’t grasping that wire, pulling it, even though it was heavily insulated, have left bums or marks on the palms of whoever did it? Frankie’s hands are smooth and white.”

“So are everyone else’s. I took a look at them all. That don’t amount to a row of pins anyway. It would have been easy enough to slip on a pair of gloves or even twist a folded handkerchief around them.”

“I want to talk to my brother alone for a few minutes, won’t you let me do that, please?”

He motioned the other two dicks toward the door, and went out after them.

As soon as the door had closed, Billie went over beside Frankie. He was holding his head dejectedly with both hands, even though they were linked. “I’m scared, Sis,” he moaned. “I got a feeling I’ll never be able to get out of this! And I didn’t do it. You gotta believe me!”

“I know you didn’t do it. But that’s why you’ve got to answer me. You’ve got to tell me why you acted so funny this morning, when I caught you behind the bathroom door, hiding up there. You knew about it then, already, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” he whispered fearfully. “I came down here again after I left the first time. I was full of weed, but my idea was vaguely to wake you up so we could go back to our own flat together. It must have just happened. I thought I saw a shadow duck behind those empty ashcans, at the end of the passage out there. And then when I opened the door, the light was out in here. He was already up there. I didn’t see him, but I stumbled around and went into him face-first. I could feel his legs hanging limp before me. You know how the weed’ll give you the horrors over anything like that. I got ’em bad. I forgot about you being in here. I forgot about calling for help. I only wanted out. I heat it upstairs and hid in that bathtub. That’s all it was, sis, just bad kicks from the weed. But I can’t tell them that. If I tell them, they’ll be surer than ever I did do it. I can’t prove I didn’t, not even to you, but somehow I know it wasn’t me. You see, I wouldn’t have been so scared if I had done it. The mere fact that I was so scared shows I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t turn on any shower. My hair was that wet from my own cold sweat coming out all over me. What am I going to do?”

“You’re pretty badly sewed up,” she admitted worriedly. “And with every move you’ve made, you’ve only made it look worse for yourself. The way you bolted for that door, when he first said murder, and then fainted dead away in the cop’s arms out there.”

“Nerves,” he said. “You don’t know what that weed does to you the day after. And then, knowing that I was the last one down here, and that I’d had that fight with him over you last night when he gave me the black eye—”

The door opened and Lindsey came in again. “Time enough?” he asked the girl. He motioned his assistants. “Take him with you, boys.”

Frankie stumbled to his feet, pale and terrified, as though he were going to be executed instantly. “Pull yourself together, Frankie,” the girl urged. “The truth’ll come out, it’s got to. It looks bad now, but remember it’s always darkest before the dawn.”

Then as the door closed, she turned back to the dick again. “And now it’s you that I’d like to talk to.”

“Shoot,” he consented, eyeing her curiously.

“I know my brother never did that.”

“I do too,” was the unexpected answer.

It took her a half-minute to get her breath back. “What? Well then, why did you have him taken in for it?”

“There are a couple of good reasons. Officially we’ve got a swell circumstantial case against him that I can’t ignore at this stage of the game. I’d be remiss in my duty if I didn’t have him booked for murder, after what’s been brought out. Secondly, it’ll be a good deal easier to catch whoever did do it, if he thinks he’s fooled us, thinks we aren’t still on the look-out for him. He’ll be off his guard this way.”

“How come you’re giving Frankie the benefit of the doubt?”

“Simply my knowledge of human nature. He acted so damned, flagrantly guilty, that he couldn’t be anything but innocent. That may sound paradoxical but it’s true nevertheless. If he’d been guilty, no matter how frightened he was, he’d at least have tried to cover himself up. He didn’t even try. He’s a nervous wreck, his control all shot. That made him do and say the very things he wanted to avoid most. Now was there anything more you wanted to speak to me about?”

“Yes,” she said. “It may be disloyal to Dusty and the boys, it may wash us up as an organization, attach a jinx to us, but I can’t help it. My brother’s life is at stake. Mr. Lindsey, this thing’s happened twice before.”

“What?” His jaw dropped. Then he clamped it decisively shut again. “Let’s hear about it,” he said.

She sat down on the bench, thrust the point of her elbow back on the keyboard. It gave an eery little plink! “You notice not a word was said about it to you. That’s for business reasons. There’s been an unspoken understanding among all of us to soft-pedal it. There’s nothing I hate worse than a stoolie, but I think the time for keeping it quiet is past. It wasn’t written down as murder the first two times, but now that I look back, I think it was. It must have been. The details were too much like today’s. The dicks that investigated were easier to fool, that was all.”

She drew a deep breath. “There’s a murderer among us in the band, and there has been all along. He only strikes at certain unaccountable times.”

He was leaning toward her intently, devouring every word. “Give me everything you can on those first two times it happened. Every little detail that you can remember. Our whole hope of getting the right man, of clearing your brother, may lie in some little detail — repeated three times.”

She contorted her face remorsefully. “If I’d only realized what it was at the time! I don’t think any of us did — except him, of course, whoever he is. It’s so long ago now—”

“Try, try,” he urged, jack-knifing a finger at her chest. “Don’t give up so easily.”

“We all knew each other in school,” she began slowly. “There was Dusty and Armstrong and Frankie and Kershaw — and the two who have gone now — Lynn Deering and Freeman. They were the charter-members. They’d already formed the band in school, helped pay their way by playing at prom dances and things like that. I wasn’t included yet. That was in the early thirties, when crooners were all the rage. This lad Deering used to whisper huskily through a megaphone, and sweet young things would swoon all over the room.

“We all got out of school and went our separate ways, didn’t see each other for about a year and a half. But the depression had hit its full stride just about then, and you can imagine how tough the going was. Then Dusty got in touch with all of us and suggested re-forming the band — professionally this time. Well, we did. That was a little over two and a half years ago. Nothing happened the first six months. Then the summer before last we were playing a resort hotel in Michigan, and we started to hold these jam-sessions down in the basement, just like here. I still wasn’t a member, but I was there with them on account of Frankie being in the band. I was present at the jam-sessions too.

“There was a society girl there that had been carrying the torch heavily for Lynn Deering all summer, and just two days before it happened her old man showed up and hauled her off by the scruff of the neck. Of course that gave them a ready-made motive to slap on — after it had happened. But here’s the thing. I spoke to Lynn about it only the day before, asked him if he felt bad about it, and he told me he was glad to be rid of her, that she’d been a nuisance. And I could see he was telling the truth.

“Anyway, one morning after a session, he was found down there hanging from the rafters. It wasn’t nearly as much of a give-away as you found this one to be. An inquest was held, they handed down a verdict of suicide while of unsound mind, and that was that. The hotel had it hushed up, and the boys took me in to canary in Deering’s place.

“Well, just about a year later, that’s last summer, we were playing the Nautilus Pier at Atlantic City on a season’s contract, and we used to hold our after-work sessions in a little shack across the railroad tracks on Arctic Avenue. One scorching night in August we went over there to hold a session. The heat had gotten Freeman down, he was picking fights with everyone — and there again, you see, they had a plausible motive at hand. There was a rigged-up light-attachment in the shack, just like there is here. I didn’t stay until the end. I got out just before dawn and went over to the Boardwalk to get a breath of air. One by one all the others followed me.”

“Who was the last one to leave?”

“Two of them came away together, luckily for them. Frankie and Armstrong with him. Freeman was left there alone. But none of us ran into each other right away. You know how long the Boardwalk is down there. Any one of us could have slipped back a moment before joining the rest. Freeman never showed up, and when we went back to try to coax him into a good humor, he was hanging there. Again the coroner’s inquest finding was suicide while of unsound mind, due to the heat and too much alcohol. That’s about all. We took Thatcher in to replace him. And now—”

Lindsey said: “All right, you’ve given me the general outline of the thing. Now let’s get down to cases. Were there any grudges between this Deering and the others?”

“No, all the fellows liked him. He was a swell guy, even if he was a crooner.”

“How about Freeman?”

“All of them had trouble with him that night. But nothing serious enough to create any animosity, just grouchiness. Dusty was the only one he was careful not to talk out of turn to, because after all Dusty is the boss.”

“Could there have been some private trouble that you didn’t know anything about?”

“No. I was like that with all of them.” She crossed two fingers. “I knew the very laundry-marks on their shirts by heart. You have about as much privacy as a goldfish, in our racket.”

“How about money?”

“No. We’ll none of us die rich and we don’t give a rap about money.”

“Women?”

“None of them ever stepped on the other boys’ toes in that respect.”

“No offense, but how about you yourself? Thatcher did annoy you lately. You admit that yourself. Either of the other two do that? Because I’ve still got to count your brother in on this, after all is said and done.”

“Lynn Deering didn’t have time enough to tip his hat to anyone while that society deb was around his neck. And Freeman was a man’s man, not much of a chaser. Frankie isn’t the protective sort. It’s the other way around. I’ve had to look after him half the time.”

“Then I’m afraid any rational motive is out, and we’re up against the worst kind of thing — irrational homicidal mania. Doesn’t care who he kills when the kill-mood is on him. But what brings it on? If we only knew that, we could set a trap for him. There’s some link there that we’ve got to get. Something that aroused it last night, and the time before, and the first time. And didn’t operate all the many other times you’ve held jam-sessions. We can’t sit back and wait another six months for it to occur again. He’s smart, they always are. We won’t know then any more than we know now, unless we’re on our guard ahead of time — one up on him.

“I’ll send for a copy of the inquest findings both from Atlantic City and the other place, but I know already they won’t tell me anything. If they were able to tell me anything now, they would have told the officials on the spot something at the time. Did any of them ever show any signs of being not quite right? I mean act unaccountably at times?”

She shook her head. “Not that I could distinguish. Of course, it could be that I’m with them so much. I’ve grown so used to all their traits, that I can’t tell the difference any more. It would take an outsider.”

“Well, were any of them ever in any accidents?”

She looked mournfully down at the floor. “The wrong one was,” she said slowly. “Frankie and I were both in a pretty bad car smash-up about a year after we got out of school. His nervous system’s never been the same since. But his head wasn’t hurt, nothing like that—” She hid her face suddenly behind her hands. “The more that comes out, the more points to him — and yet I’m as sure as I’m sitting here—”

“I can’t be, of course,” he told her gently, “but I’m hoping. Look, let’s not give up yet. I’m afraid he’ll have to start going through the mill. It’s not in my power to stop that, but if we keep at it, we’ll turn up something yet, I’m sure of it. And of course, not a word to any of them that we’ve had this talk, that the case is still wide open as far as I’m concerned. Do you understand? That would be fatal. Whoever the killer is, he must feel that my colleagues and I are definitely off the scent, are satisfied we have the right man.”

“But even so,” she whimpered, “he won’t show his hand again until... until Frankie’s out of the way and it’s too late. Maniac or not, he’ll realize that if it happens again while Frankie’s being held in jail, that’s proof-evident that Frankie didn’t do it, and the whole thing’ll be reopened. He’ll lie low—”

“He’ll try to, you mean, if we let him. But remember this is something he can’t control. If we can find the link, the right impetus that sets him off, he won’t be able to.”

“Suppose there isn’t any?”

“There has to be. There always is, even in the worst cases of this type.”

“There was a knock at the door, and Hoff the janitor stuck his head in. Your boss is on the wire,” he told Billie. “They got a new man, he says, and they’re down at Dryden Hall, ready to begin rehearsing. They want you down there right away.”

“My brother’s in jail accused of murder, and I’ve got to make sweet music.” She smiled bitterly at the dick.

“Keep your eyes open, now,” Lindsey warned her under his breath. “Watch all of them, watch every little thing that goes on, no matter if it seems important to you or not. And keep in touch with me. Give me your address and phone number, in case I want to reach you.”

He took out a pencil stub, jotted down her address and number, stuck the slip in his pocket.

Chapter Four

Bolero

The new man supplied by the Mad House to take Thatcher’s place was named Cobb. He wouldn’t have been a union-member if he hadn’t known how to handle his instrument, and the tunes were the tunes of the day, familiar to every professional, so it was just a matter of blending him in with the rest of them, smoothing down the rough edges, and memorizing the order in which the numbers came. Even so, Dusty kept them at it until half an hour before it was time to climb on the shell at the Troc. It was, if nothing else, as good a way as any of taking their minds off what had happened.

“We can’t keep it from breaking in the papers,” Dusty told them while they grabbed a quick bite on their way over to work, “because it’s in New York this time and not out in the sticks, but with a little luck we may be able to keep them from digging up about what happened the other two times. Keep your mouths closed now, all of you. Don’t talk to any reporters. The agents’ll all wash their hands of us, and we won’t be able to get a booking for love or money if we once get tagged as a jinx-band. Those things spread around awful quick, and are hard to live down. People don’t want to dance with... with death kind of peering over the musicians’ shoulders at them.” This was said out of earshot of the new man. “And keep quiet about the first two times in front of Cobb.”

The girl just sat there at the end of the counter, sipping her coffee quietly and looking covertly at them one by one. “One of you,” she thought, “sitting so close to me I could reach out and touch you, is a killer. But which one?” It seemed so hard to believe, watching them.

There was the strain of what had happened on all their faces, of course, but there was no private guilt, no furtive remorse, no sign of self-consciousness or wariness. “Maybe,” she thought, “he doesn’t even remember it himself after it happens each time, in which case— Oh Lord, how am I ever going to be able to tell?”

“O.K., ready, folks?” Dusty asked, slipping down from his high stool. “Let’s go over and climb in the box.”

Everyone paid for himself. There was no Frankie to pay for her now, but just as she was opening her pocketbook, Dusty thoughtfully waved her aside and put the money down for her.

“What’d that dick have to say after we left?” he asked her on the way over.

“Oh, nothing. He’s dead sure Frankie did it. Nothing’ll change his mind about that.”

“I know this sounds like hell, but what do you think yourself?”

“I’m afraid he did, Dusty. Where there’s smoke there’s fire. He acted too funny about it from beginning to end.”

He slipped his arm around her waist, tightened it encouragingly for a moment. “Keep your chin up, pal,” he said.

The men climbed right into the box to play for the rather second-rate supper show the Trocadero put on, but Billie, who didn’t have to canary until the straight dance-numbers later on, went down to the dressing-room and dispiritedly changed into evening dress. “If I were only a mind-reader,” she thought. “If I could only see behind their faces. One of them is a mask hiding death!”

There was a perfunctory rap at the door. “They’re starting number one now.” She got up and went upstairs, stood in the entryway to one side of the box, out of sight of the tables in front. Number one was Sing for Your Supper. It looked funny to see Cobb sitting up there in Thatcher’s chair. She watched their faces closely one by one. Nothing showed. Just guys making music.

Dusty looked over to see if she was ready, then they slowed a little to let her come in and pick it up. She stepped out in front of them and a spotlight picked her out.

The phone was ringing when she let herself into her flat at half past three that morning. It was Lindsey. “Did you notice anything?” he asked.

“I couldn’t tell. He’s good, whoever he is.”

“Keep watching. It’s too soon yet. Anyone come back with you?”

“Dusty wanted to bring me home, but I told him I’d be all right.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing else.” She hung up the phone and suddenly threw her head down and burst into tears.

Lindsey turned away from the window when Billie started to speak. “We’ve got to do something soon, Lindsey,” she said. “It’s six weeks now. Do you know what this is doing to my brother? He’ll be bugs by the time we get him out of there. I saw him yesterday, and he’s ready to fall apart.”

“I know. I’ve tried everything I can think of, and it’s no go,” the detective answered. “I’ve been over those coronary findings until I know them backwards. I’ve communicated with the officials in Michigan and I’ve interviewed the ones down in Atlantic City. They couldn’t help me. I even went over personally and looked at that shack while I was down there. It’s still about the same as when you people used it, but it didn’t tell me a thing.”

She sat down at the piano and started to play aimlessly.

“I’ve even dropped in at the Troc more times than you know, watching them while they didn’t know it.”

“You have?” she said in surprise. “I didn’t see you.”

“I had a get-up on. I couldn’t detect a sign of anything on any one of them. It must be so damn deep, so latent, that he doesn’t know he’s got it himself.”

She went ahead playing. “Then what good is it trying to find it? It may never come out again.”

He started pacing back and forth. “It’s got to, it always does.”

“What makes you so restless, Lindsey?” she asked over her notes. “You’re as bad as one of us jitter-bugs. Sit down and relax.”

He sank into a chair, immediately got up again, began parading around some more. “It’s got my goat!” he seethed. “I know I’ve got it figured right, I’m dead sure of it, but I’ve got to sit back with my hands folded until he’s good and ready to give himself away again!”

He took out a cigarette, lit it, raised his hand at full arm’s length above his head and banged it down on the floor a moment afterwards. Then he took a kick at the chair he’d just been in, so that it swung around in a half-circle.

“Lindsey, this is my flat you’re in, not the back room at headquarters,” she remonstrated mildly. “I never saw you like this before, what’s the matter with you?”

He trod out the sparks on the rug. “I don’t know myself,” he grunted. “I felt all right until a few minutes ago. I’ve been plugging away too hard, not getting enough sleep, I guess. I’ve got a pip of a peeve on right now. I feel like busting someone in the face!”

“Not me, I hope.” She smiled as her fingers continued traveling over the keys.

He was stalking around the room behind her with his locked hands draped across the back of his neck. He looked over at her a couple of times, started to say something, clamped his mouth shut as though thinking better of it. Finally it got away from him. His voice exploded in an ungovernable shout that nearly hoisted her clear of the bench. “For Pete’s sake, can’t you quit playing that damn piano for a minute! It’s got me on edge, I can’t stand it any more!”

She turned and looked at him in undisguised astonishment. There was a sudden silence in the room.

He was already ashamed of the outburst. “Or at least play something else. What is that screwy thing anyway?”

“Ravel’s Bolero. It’s a long-hair number but we swing it once in awhile.”

“I didn’t think I could stand it for another minute.”

“It is a monotonous sort of thing,” she agreed. “The same theme over and over and over. You just change keys.”

“It sure is an irritant, I know that much! I’m sorry, Billie,” he apologized. “I didn’t know a little thing like that could get me that way. Shows you how jumpy I must be.” He grabbed for his hat. “I better get out of here before I put my foot in it any deeper, get some sleep. This case has me down. I guess. See you tomorrow,” he called back from the door.

She stared after him with a puzzled frown on her face. Then she struck three random notes of what she’d just been playing, with one finger. Suddenly the piano-bench toppled over and she was flying toward the door he’d just closed behind him. She tore it open. Luckily he hadn’t gone down yet, was still out there waiting for the elevator.

“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” she shrieked, as though she herself had gone insane. “Come back here!”

He came inside again. “What the hell—”

She was too excited to explain. “Have you got a gun?” she asked breathlessly, closing the door after him.

“Sure, I always carry one,” he said, mystified.

“Good! You’re going to need one if this works out the way I think it may.”

She’d taken him into the bedroom. “Here, get into this closet and keep your eyes open. Can you see me at the piano from in here?”

“No, it’s not in a straight line with the door.”

“Well, we’ll shove it over further. I want to make sure your eyes are on me every minute of the time, through the crack of this closet-door, or it’s going to be just too bad for me!”

They shifted the piano, then she jumped up on a chair, unslung a heavy framed mirror from the opposite wall. “Hang this from the molding over the piano, Lindsey. It’ll give you a view of the rest of the room, from in there. Now get back in there, leave the door open a crack, and have your gun ready. You’re going to have to listen to that thing steadily for the next few hours. Can you stand it? Your own nerves were pretty much on edge just now. Better take a good stiff drink before you get in there.”

He got what she was driving at finally. “You mean — that piece? You think—”

“I’m sure of it, and this’ll prove it. That’s our link, our impetus. We jammed it that night. I think we must have the other two times, too, although I can’t remember for sure now any more. We never play it for general dancing. You saw what it did to you just now, just from lack of sleep. It’s monotonous, insistent, frays the nerves the way it slowly builds to a climax, the same arrangement of notes over and over and over. And he’s off-balance to begin with. Conceivably it topples him over completely each time he hears it, starts the wheels going.”

“Gin with it, and a few puffs of weed,” he suggested, “to give it the same priming as at the jam-sessions.”

“There must be a couple of Frankie’s muggles still around the place somewhere. I’m going to test them out one at a time, to make sure they don’t show any inhibitions. I’ll be supposedly alone up here. For heaven’s sake, Lindsey, jump out as soon as you see anything. Don’t let anything happen to me. It’s going to be an awful feeling to sit here at the piano without being able to turn around, not knowing when I’ll feel a knife between my shoulders, or a pair of hands around my neck.”

“I’ll be watching, I’ll be on the job, just keep steady.”

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

She dialed a number on the phone. The closet door ebbed noiselessly back into its frame, without completely meeting it, in the darkened bedroom beyond.

“Hello, Armstrong? This is Billie. Doing anything?... Neither am I. I feel kind of lonely. No one to talk to. Why don’t you drop over for a few minutes, see if you can cheer me up. Don’t bring anyone else, I don’t want a mob around me.”

Armstrong said: “Yeah, and do you remember that time we were playing that cruise ship, and ran into a norther down in the Gulf, and had to play fastened to our chairs by our belts, so we wouldn’t come flying down out of the box on top of the dancers’ heads every time she tipped over?”

“What about me? I wasn’t attached to anything. Right in the middle of the second chorus of I Married an Angel I go shooting across the ballroom-floor and land square in the fat purser’s lap. What a night that was! Have another drink?”

“I’ve had two already.”

She sat down at the keyboard, lightly began the querulous opening measures of the Bolero. He was sprawled out in an easy-chair with his back to the bedroom doorway, drink in one hand, half-smoked reefer in the other. He fell silent, listening.

She changed keys. It began to come in a little heavier now, but the same torturing sequence of notes, on and on and on. She glanced furtively up into the mirror on the wall before her. She could see him in it. He’d let his eyelids droop dosed, but he wasn’t asleep, she could tell that. Just listening. He lifted his glass to his mouth, drank, lowered it again, all without opening his eyes. The closet door, dimly discernible in the shadowy interior of the next room, was slanting outward at more of an angle now. Lindsey probably had his gun out in his hand. Wouldn’t it be a joke if it got him on edge quicker than the suspect they were both testing? It wouldn’t, though, now that he was on guard against it.

The strain on her was terrific. She forced herself to keep her eyes down on the keyboard. She had to go on playing, just stealing an occasional glance upward. But any minute she might see a reared shadow loom on the wall and feel—

It was thundering toward its climax now. It was a good thing this place had thick soundproof walls, especially meant for musicians and vocalists. She stole another look via the glass. Eyes still closed. Wide awake though. He’d finished the marihuana cigarette and ditched it. Did she imagine it or had his hand twitched just then on the arm of the chair? No, there it came again. He’d given it a little spasmodic jerk, sort of shot his cuff back.

Her breath started to come faster. There was moisture seeping through the light dusting of powder on her forehead. She tried not to get tense, to keep her playing even. Was he the one? It was nearing the end now. Was he going to be able to hold out, or would he suddenly spring up and across at her?

She went into the last stretch, fortissimo, mounted to the almost unbearable climax, when — if you were like him — every nerve must be crying out, maddened beyond endurance.

It burst like shrapnel, and then there was sudden deafening silence in the room, and she just sat there limp, nearly prostrated herself.

He moved, opened his mouth and took a yawn that seemed to stretch from his eyebrows to his chin. “Gee, that was swell,” he said lazily. “I guess I’ll shove off now. There was a gnat or something bothering me the whole time you were playing.” He slapped the back of his own hand viciously. “Got it!”

When she’d closed the door after him, she turned and faced Lindsey, who’d come out. “Whew!” was all she said.

“Whew, is right!” he agreed. “But we’ve got something there and we’re not giving up yet. That thing nearly drives you nuts, especially when you’ve got to stand still in a closet listening to it.”

“Stretch your legs a minute while you’ve got the chance. Here goes for number two.” She started to dial again.

Chapter Five

Killer-Diller

Dusty said kiddingly: “I must think a lot of you. Nobody but you could drag me out of a nice warm steam-room at this ungodly hour of the night, kid.”

“You’re a life-saver, Dusty. I felt if I didn’t have someone to talk to, I’d go crazy. You know it’s awfully tough hanging around up here without Frankie.”

She sat down at the keyboard. He was in the same chair all the others had been in. She’d fixed it that way, so there was no other handy.

“Have you seen him lately?”

“I saw him yesterday. They let me visit him two or three times a week. The trial doesn’t come up until fall.” She started to play, as if absentmindedly. Her fingers were nearly coming off by now. “There’s a reefer of Frankie’s in that box there, if you want one.”

“Have one yourself.”

“I just finished one before you got here,” she lied.

She had to say that, in case he could still detect the fumes from previous ones smoked in the room, although she and Lindsey had opened the windows and aired it out before he got here.

He noticed what she was playing presently, after the first few bars had been gone over. “Don’t play that thing,” he remonstrated mildly. “I don’t like it.”

She shot a glance up into the mirror. “Why not, what’s the difference?” she said carelessly. “Anything just to keep my hands busy.” She went ahead.

“I got hold of a new number today for us to break in. Run over it instead of that one, see how you like it.” He came over, put some orchestration-sheets on the rack, went back and sat down again.

She ignored them. “All right, just let me finish this first. I like to finish anything I begin.”

Was that a sign of anything, his trying to switch her off the piece? Did he realize himself what it would do to him if she kept it up long enough. Was that why? Or was it just a harmless expression of preference? Anyone is entitled to dislike certain pieces of music and like others without necessarily being a murderer, she realized.

He shifted around a little in the chair, got up again, went over to the window, stood looking out. Then he came back, sat down once more, poured another drink. She quit breathing each time he passed in back of her, but went ahead playing.

He was showing more signs of being affected by it than either Armstrong or Kershaw had. It seemed to be making him restless. But was it that? She darted another swift glance up at the glass. He was tightening up a good deal, there was no doubt about that. Both his hands were clenched, and the toe of one foot, slung over the other, was twitching a little, almost like a cat’s tail does. On the other hand, she reminded herself, she mustn’t jump at hasty conclusions. He’d said he didn’t like the piece to begin with, and if he was either bored or annoyed by her playing of it in disregard of his request, he might still have shown these very same symptoms, without there being any sinister meaning to them whatever.

And then suddenly, when next she looked, he wasn’t moving at all, not even the tip of his foot now. He was sitting there as still as a statue, almost lifeless. His eyes, which had been on her back until then, were on the mirror themselves now. Had he seen something, caught some slight motion or waver on it, reflected by the closet-door? Had he sensed that this was a trap? If he had—

She watched at more frequent intervals now. He’d stopped looking up at the mirror after that one time she’d caught him at it, was looking steadily down at the floor now. He conveyed an impression of alert wariness, just the same. It wasn’t an abstract, unfocussed look, but a listening, watchful, cagey look.

The thing rose to its crescendo, shattered, stopped dead. The silence was numbing. He didn’t move. She didn’t breathe. A single bead of sweat glistened on his forehead, but the gin could have made him warm after coming out of a steam-room with all his pores open.

She refused to break the spell. Let him be the first to shatter it — for in that lay the answer.

He started to get up slowly. She could see the move coming long before his muscles carried it into effect. His overslung foot descended to the floor. Then there was a wait. His clenched hands drew back along the chair-arms, to give his body better leverage. Then another wait. His waist ballooned out and his knees drew in, straightened, carried his torso up to a standing position. Through it all, the position of his head alone did not change, remained tilted downward toward the floor. That managed to give an impression of secretive, furtive movement to his getting to his feet, like he was stalking someone.

Her nerves were stretched to the breaking-point. She wanted to scream with the suspense of sitting there waiting.

Then his head came up, and he said in the most matter-of-fact way, turning toward the door as he did so: “Guess I’ll shove off. My leg went to sleep.” He limped out into the hall, slapping at it to get back the circulation.

She reeled there at the piano bench, kept herself from falling by grasping the sides of it for a moment. Then she got up and went out after him.

At the door he chucked her under the chin in a big-brotherly sort of way. “S’-long, sweets,” he said. “See you at the bam tomorrow night.” The touch of his fingers, she couldn’t help noticing was ice-cold.

She closed the door after hint and looked behind her. Lindsey had slipped out of the closet, was coming up behind her. She warned him to silence, head tilted toward the door-seam, listening. “Sh! The elevator hasn’t taken him down yet.”

They waited a moment or two. Finally he eased the door open narrowly, peered through with one eye. “It must have, he’s not out there any more.”

“I usually can hear it slide shut.” She walked back into the living-room. “Well, it was no good, Lindsey,” she told him dejectedly, slapping her hands to her sides. “It didn’t work. It was the wrong answer. One time I thought he was getting steamed up, but then he subsided again, almost — almost as though he caught on you were in there.”

“If he did, he’s uncanny. I didn’t move a fingerjoint.” He kneaded his thatch baffledly. “Can’t figure it at all. It had to be the right answer. I still think it is, but — for some reason it muffed fire. It was the right time too, according to what the psychiatrists say. Just before daylight, when anyone’s power of resistance — including a murderer’s — is supposed to be at its lowest ebb.”

“What is there left? I’m so tired and discouraged. I’ll never get Frankie out of there!”

“Yes, you will,” he tried to hearten her. “You get some sleep. We’ll put our heads together again tomorrow. We’re not licked yet.”

She saw him to the door, closed it after him, and went in again. Almost immediately afterward the elevator door down the hall gave a hollow clang that penetrated to where she was. “Funny I didn’t hear that the first time,” she murmured, but didn’t bother any more about it.

She put out the light in the hall, lit up the bedroom, took off her dress, and put on a woollen wrapper. That took about three or four minutes. It was nearly five now, would be getting light in another quarter of an hour. The city, the streets outside, the rest of the building around her, were all silent, dead to the world. She remembered that she’d left the light on in the living-room. She went in there to snap it off. The place was still full of the acrid odor of the weed Dusty had smoked. She opened the window wide to let the fresh air in, stood there a minute, breathing it in.

There was a faint tap at the outside door of the flat, little more than the tick of a nail. She turned her head sharply in that direction to listen, not even sure if she’d heard it herself the first time. It came again, another stealthy little tap.

She moved away from the window and went out there to see. Probably Lindsey, coming back to tell her of some new angle that had just occurred to him. But what a way for him to knock, like an undersized woodpecker. He usually pounded like a pile-driver. He must be getting refined all of a sudden. She wasn’t frightened. The test had failed, and she didn’t stop to think that it might have delayed after-effect.

She opened the door and Dusty Detwiller was standing there. “Gee, I feel terrible bothering you like this,” he apologized softly. “I left the orchestration of that new number I was telling you about on your piano-rack. If you were asleep, I was going away again without disturbing you. That’s why I just tapped lightly like that.”

“Oh, that’s all right, Dusty, I’ll bring it right out to you.” She walked back into the living-room again, started to gather up the loose orchestration sheets and tamp them together. She thought she heard a slight click from the front-door lock, but didn’t pay any attention to it.

Suddenly there was a shadow looming on the wall before her eyes, coming up from behind her, from across her shoulder, the very thing she’d been dreading to see all evening long — and hadn’t until now. The loose orchestration sheets fell out of her hands, landed all over the floor around her feet. She couldn’t move for a minute, even to turn around.

“Don’t scream,” a furry voice purred close to her ear, “or you’ll only bring it on quicker. It won’t do you any good, you’re going to get it anyhow.”

She turned with paralytic slowness and stared into his dilated eyes. His whole face had changed in the few seconds since he’d come in from the door. He must have been holding the murder-lust in leash by sheer will-power until then. “I would have given it to you the first time, but I had a funny feeling we weren’t alone up here. Something told me somebody else was with us. I watched from the stairs going up to the floor above, and I was right. I saw that dick leave.”

His hands started to curve up and in toward her throat with horrible slowness, like the claws of a sluggish lobster. “But now you’re alone, there’s nobody here with you, and I’m going to do it to you. I told you not to play that piece. I don’t want to do these things, but that music makes me.”

If she could only reason with him long enough to get over to that phone on the opposite side of the room. “Dusty, don’t,” she said in a low, coaxing voice. “If you kill me, you know what they’ll do to you.”

His cleverness hadn’t deserted him, even now at the end. “The other guys were up here with you tonight too. They must’ve been — you wouldn’t have tried me out if you didn’t try them out too — so when they find you they still won’t know which of us did it. I got away with it the first three times, and I’ll get away with it this time, too.”

“But who’ll you get to do your canarying for you?” she choked, fighting desperately for time. She glanced once too often toward the phone, gauging its distance. He jumped sideways, like an ungainly dancing-bear on its hind legs, grabbed the phone-wire and tore it bodily out of the control-box.

Then he came back at her again, hands in that pincer-formation aiming at her throat.

She screamed harrowingly, unable to hold it in any longer, shifted madly sideways away from those oncoming, stretching hands, until the far wall blocked her and she was penned up in the angle formed by the two walls, unable to get any further away from him. The window she had opened before he came in was just ahead, in the new direction. “I’ll jump out if you come a step nearer,” she panted.

He was too quick. He darted in, the hands snaked out, locked around her throat just as she came in line with window-frame. For an instant they formed a writhing mass under one of the curtains.

There was a flash. His protruding eyes lit up yellowly as if he were a tiger, and then there was a deafening detonation beside her face that almost stunned her.

His hands unlocked again, but so slowly that she had to pry them off with her own before she was free of them. Then he went crazily down to the floor. His body fell across one of her feet, pinning her there. She just stood there coughing. A man’s leg came over the windowsill alongside of her, and then Lindsey was standing there holding her up with one arm around her, a fuming gun still in his other hand.

“Thank God there’s a fire-escape outside that window,” he breathed heavily. “I never would have made it in time coming up the inside way!”

He had to step over Detwiller with her in his arms, to get her to the piano-bench and sit her down.

“How’d you know I was in danger up here?” she asked.

“I didn’t for sure. I just saw something that struck me as a little strange.” He stopped, colored up a little. “I may as well admit I’ve gone kind of mushy. Every time I leave here I — sort of cross over and stand on the other side of the street watching your window until the lights go out. I was down there, and I saw you open this one and then turn your head quickly and stand there as if you were listening or heard something. I waited, but you didn’t come back again, and finally I started on my way. But the more I thought it over, the stronger my hunch got that everything wasn’t just the way it should be. I knew it wasn’t your phone you’d heard, because you wouldn’t have to stand there listening like that. You’d hear it without any trouble. So what else could it be but someone at your front door? By the time I got a block away, it got the better of me. I turned around and came running back — and I took the fire-escape to save time.”

“So you call that being mushy. Well you can’t be too mushy for me.” She looked over at the floor by the window. “Is he gone?” She shuddered.

“No, he’s not gone. He’ll live to take the blame for what he’s done. Only for him it’ll be an asylum, not the chair.” Detwiller stared at them vacantly.

“So now we know,” she murmured.

“Yes, now we know.”

Notes

1

Musician’s union.

2

Secretary of the union.

Content

Cornell Woolrich
The Case of the Killer-Diller

Chapter One Death of a Sandman

Chapter Two Two Out of Three

Chapter Three Kill Crazy

Chapter Four Bolero

Chapter Five Killer-Diller

Notes