William Irish

The Man Upstairs

At dawn Mrs. Collins slowly climbed the stairs to her lodger’s room on the second floor, bringing him his hot shaving water. That was the only way it could be supplied; there was no hot running water in her decrepit old house. Daybreak came late these bleak winter mornings. Outside the town was still fast asleep and the streets were dark. A chill, tomblike silence hung over the house; her creaking tread on the worn staircase was the only sound that broke it. She knocked at the door and waited.

He’d lodged with her for over ten years now, ever since — well, ever since Jerry, her stepbrother, had had that trouble and been put away. If it wasn’t for him, old Mr. Davis, she would have lost the very roof over her head, battered and tumble-down as it was. The pittance he paid her for his room each week was her sole means of subsistence. People said he was a miser. They asked her if it was true that he had a large sum of money hidden away up there in the room with him. She didn’t know for sure. But even if she had, she wouldn’t have told them about it. He was her only friend.

He was a little slow in answering her today. She knocked again, more loudly. “Mr. Davis, here’s your hot water,” she called out.

A low-voiced groan reached her. There was something about the sound of it she didn’t like. It was more like the groan of someone dying than the groan of someone waking up. She hastily set the water down and tried the doorknob. The door was open. He always slept with it that way. He felt safe in her house. She pushed it open, and at the very first widening of the seam her nose told her the answer. Coal gas. The insidious death that can’t be seen. That old defective, potbellied stove he had in there. She’d warned him not to try to use it. He must have tried to warm the room with it before he started to dress.

She moved fast and without stopping to think of her own safety. She flung up her apron, held it to her nose with one hand, and darted across the room toward the window. That was the first thing that had to be done, get fresh air in. The death loading the air was invisible to the eye; it was there nonetheless. A faint heat refraction dancing lazily above the smothered-out stove was the only telltale sign. A half-dressed figure lay sprawled backward across the bed, one arm protectively across its face. He had been overcome while in the act of bending to put on his shoes.

She flung the window up as high as it would go. Then she ran back to him, managed to roll him off the bed into her arms, and half dragged, half carried him over to it. He was quite a burden for a frail, elderly little body to manage, but she succeeded in her purpose. She held him propped by the open window and fanned him vigorously with her apron.

She saw that it had almost happened. In another minute or two at the most it would have been too late. But after a breathless moment or two his eyes flickered open, and he coughed strangledly and clutched weakly at his own throat. She’d pulled him through.

She poured water into the malignant stove, to quench it altogether. Then she wetted the corner of her apron and came back and dabbed his forehead with it.

“Wh-what happened?” he faltered. “I... I guess you saved my life.”

“I told you not to go near that stove,” she scolded him. “See what you nearly did to yourself?”

But by the time she left the room and returned to her household duties downstairs he was already up and around on his feet again, a little shaky, but otherwise none the worse for his narrow escape.

When he came down later, on his way to his bookshop for the day, she was sweeping out the doorstep. He kept a little bookstall, singlehanded, over at the other end of town. It must have been purely a labor of love; it was seldom anyone entered it to buy anything. But he loved books so himself, it made him happy just to be among them, browsing all day long. He never came back to the house until late at night. And there were times he even made jaunts out of town, for two and three days at a time, simply to buy some collector’s item, some rare and highly prized volume that he had heard was being offered for sale at some book auction in one of the large cities. Which was probably what had started the rumor about his hoarded wealth.

Mrs. Collins placidly continued her sweeping of the doorstep while she watched him trudge down the street. Her eyes followed his spare, slow-moving figure until it had turned the corner and was gone from sight. Then she suddenly stopped sweeping, re-entered the house, and locked the door after her on the inside. She laid aside her broom, went to the back of the hall, and descended a flight of gloomy stairs that led down to a tightly shut cellar door.

She knocked cautiously on this, and a dog’s low growl sounded somewhere on the other side of it. A bolt was withdrawn, and the door swung back on the crack. Two eyes looked out at her, one above the other — one a human eye, the other the round black bore of a revolver.

“He’s gone for the day,” she whispered. “You can come up now for your coffee, Jerry.”

The lower eye disappeared; the door widened, and a haggard, unshaven man of about fifty stood glowering at her. He had the unmistakable pallor of prison all over his face. “It’s about time,” he answered surlily. “It’s damp enough down here to freeze your bones! Make sure the shades are down on all the windows, get me?”

A dog’s muzzle peered from between his legs, continuing to growl at her suspiciously. The man looked down, suddenly vented all his latent ill-humor on this helpless victim of his whims. “Shut up!” he said viciously. “You’ll be giving me away yet, doing that, one of these times! I’ll teach you to keep quiet!” He began stripping a rawhide belt from his own waist and coiling it around his fist so that the loaded buckle on one end swung free.

“Jerry, don’t...!” Mrs. Collins pleaded.

“You mind your own business,” he grated, avidly moistening his lips. “Crawl out here where I can get at you, Rags!”

She turned and fled up the stairs for dear life, pressing her hands over her ears to try to shut out the horrid sounds of what was about to take place. The cellar door closed, but the hissing bit of the belt and the howling screams of pain filtered thinly through it even after it had.

When he came up to the kitchen after her presently, he was wiping off the belt buckle with a piece of rag, a piece of rag that showed flecks of red on it. She shuddered and turned away.

He refastened the belt, sat down heavily at the kitchen table. She brought him coffee and he sucked it in noisily. She went back to the stove. Presently she spoke, without looking at him. “You can’t stay here any longer, Jerry. You’ve been here three days now. They’ll find out you’re hiding here sooner or later. I never had my window shades down in the daytime like this before. Folks’ll start talking.”

“Then get me some money, like I told you, so I can get out of here.”

“I’ve given you all I had. I haven’t any more.”

“Nickels and dimes!” he jeered. “I mean real money. Enough to take me far enough away so they can’t catch up with me.”

“Where am I to get it?”

He gave a knowing look upward at the ceiling. “What about him up there? He must have a wad of it stashed away in that room.”

She turned away quickly, without answering.

He sat watching her, a cigarette dangling loosely from the corner of his mouth. “What happened up there before? I heard you jumping around kind of smart.”

“Nothing,” she said in a smothered voice.

He reached out and caught her by the wrist, jerked her around so that she had to face him. “Don’t gimme any of that! Come on, answer me, what was it?”

She had to tell him then, against her better judgment. He let go of her wrist. He slitted his eyes at her evilly.

“The stove, huh?” His mouth twisted into a crooked grin, “Too bad you had to horn in,” he purred. “It would’ve been just made to order.”

“What do you mean?” she said frightenedly. “What are you saying?”

He flicked ashes onto the floor, eyed them thoughtfully.

“Well, now, for instance, if you hadn’t got in there in time — whatever dough he has socked away would be rightfully yours, him being without any family or friends.” He winked at her. “And I’m your loving stepbrother, ain’t I? Fair and square all around.”

Her face was white and quivering. “Why, if I hadn’t tried to save him, that would have been — murder!” she gasped. “Jerry, you’re bad all the way through!”

He kept on grinning at her, unmoved. “Don’t look so scared. Who said anything about murder? If anything happened with the stove like that a second time — without nobody laying a hand on him — would that be murder?”

He pushed his chair back, slowly rose to his feet, stretched enjoyably. Then he deliberately winked at her once more, in ghastly mockery, and ambled out of the kitchen.

She stood there without moving after he’d gone, as if she were turned to stone. What he’d just said kept ringing in her ears over and over, in a sort of terrifying refrain. “Would that be murder? Would that be murder?”

The next day at dawn again she slowly climbed the stairs, carrying the hot shaving water. The same deathlike silence brooded over the house, her creaking tread the only sound that broke it. She stopped before the door and knocked. There was no answer — this time not even a groan, nothing. She didn’t wait to knock again. She quickly put the water down, thrust her face close to the door seam, sniffing. A faint reek seemed to cling to the woodwork. A little like sulphur, a little like rotten eggs, a little like — death in its grave.

She wrenched the door open. Then she stopped short, stood there, staring. The room was empty; he wasn’t in it.

The air on the inside was fresh and clean. The window stood wide open. But around the soft, spongy woodwork of the doorframe, where there were cracks and seams, that lethal odor still exuded, as if left over from before.

The bed had been slept in; its coverings were all awry. The old-fashioned nightshirt that he wore was nowhere in sight. But neither were his outer clothes, his daytime clothes. As though he had put them on over it. And when did he ever do that?

She went over to the stove, reached down, and touched the rounded belly of it. It was still warm. Lukewarm, about blood heat, from recent use.

She raised the lid and peered down into it. The ashes were caked. In their center a little pool of water, that somebody had cast in to quench them, still lingered undissolved. It hadn’t had time to work through them and disappear yet. It wasn’t the water that she had flung in twenty-four hours ago; that would have been absorbed long ago.

“Would that be murder? Would that be murder?” dinned in her ears.

There was a pinched look of certainty on her face. She noticed other things about the room, telltale signs, but they were secondary to this one main fact: that the death stove had been lighted a little while ago, and that the old man wasn’t to be found now. She noticed places where the wallpaper had been gashed, as if with a penknife. Places where the baseboards around the walls had been loosened and pried out. Even the seat of an overstuffed chair had been ripped, and some of the hair filling had been spilled out. As if someone had been in here looking for something. She tottered down the stairs, clinging to the banister rail with both hands for support. There was one more test. The bolt, on the inside of the front door. If Mr. Davis had left this house on his own two feet, unharmed, it would be still open. He had no way of closing it behind him on the inside.

She reached the door and the bolt was closed tight, drawn all the way across into its socket, as far as it could go. There was no further room for doubt now. He hadn’t left this house alive. And, more than likely, he hadn’t left it at all. She crept down the gloomy steps to the cellar door. She stopped and stood listening. She could hear a heavy foot stamping down on something. Over and over again. Not as in walking, but as in flattening something out, evening it off.

She stood there, afraid to move. He must have heard her. The sound stopped. There was a watchful silence, one of them on each side of the door listening to the other, neither making a sound.

She palmed the door frightenedly at last with the flats of her two hands. “Jerry, open this door! Let me in!” She heard something heavy scrape across the floor, as if it were being dragged. She couldn’t tell what it was, whether it was the leg of a chair or some long-handled implement.

She pounded again, frantic.

“Jerry, for the love of heaven, open this door!”

Suddenly it swung back and he was standing there in front of her. He was fumbling with his hands, furtively stroking them down his sides as if to clean them off. He kept standing there in her way, as if to keep her from going in.

“Let me in here,” she said in a choked voice.

“What’s the rush?” he asked coolly. “How about some coffee? Don’t I feed today?” But he stood aside and let her pass. “Can you?” she said accusingly, as she reeled past him. “Can you, after what...?”

“Sure I can,” he said callously. “Why not?” He started to roll a cigarette, and he struck the match with his thumbnail. She saw the nail; it was black underneath, as if he’d been digging in fresh earth with it...

She looked around her, and the cellar spoke. The cellar told her its ghastly story. Far more eloquently, far more truthfully, than he would have, if she’d asked him instead. It was dim, but there was enough light to see by. Murder needs very little light to be revealed. A dusty bulb hung against the wall at the end of a loose wire, and by its dingy light she could see the story the cellar had to tell her.

The cot stood in a different place than yesterday. He’d moved it all the way across, from one wall all the way over to the other. And underneath where it stood now there was a peculiar shadow on the floor that overlapped it a little at one end. It wasn’t a shadow made by the light bulb, because it was at the wrong end of the cot for that; it overlapped the cot at the same end that the light was, instead of at the opposite one, as normal shadows do. So maybe it was a damp patch on the floor, where the underfill had been dug up and then battened down again. Her eyes were not as sharp as they had once been.

Over in the corner stood a shovel that belonged upstairs, that had not been down here until today. She’d used it at times to shovel snow away from the door, and the last time she’d seen it had been all tawny-red from rust, from its cutting edge up to its neck. It wasn’t now any more. There was a dark wavy line running along its bite, as if it had recently been thrust into damp earth.

“Cold down here, ain’t it?” he said with brutal relish. “That why you’re shivering?”

Her teeth were chattering. “Where is he?” she said. “He isn’t up in his room.” She kept her eyes on that shadowy patch under the cot.

“I know he ain’t,” he said. “He left the house. I saw him go. I had the cellar door open on a crack.”

“But he never goes without waiting for his shaving water.”

“Well, he did this time. Here, he left something for you.”

He fumbled in his clothes and brought out a rumpled scrap of paper. “He put it on the table just inside the front door. I picked it up and brought it down here with me.” It said in pencil: “Mrs. C. — I won’t be back tonight, you can lock front door. Mr. D.”

She looked at him accusingly. “That’s not like his writing. I’ve seen his writing.”

He shrugged satirically. “Maybe his hands were too numb with the cold to be able to write like other times. I heard him blowing on them while he was standing there.”

She let the note drift to the floor. She had only one more question to ask. “How could he have bolted the door on the inside, after he went out?”

“I did that, after he left. So no one else could get in.”

She nodded to herself, as though she’d expected him to answer that even before he did.

She pointed. She kept her finger stretched out, frozen. “That’s a grave under there,” she said hollowly.

He turned to look, as if he hadn’t seen it before himself. “Oh yeah, that,” he said glibly. “Yeah, I know it is. That’s Rags, he’s under there. I buried him a little while ago. I guess I beat him once too often.”

A three-foot dog in a six-foot grave, she thought.

He smiled, as though he’d read her mind. “I hit a water pipe under the cellar floor,” he said. “I had to tack over a ways, after I’d already begun. That made it twice as long.”

Her finger continued stiffly pointing, as if she’d lost all power of moving it. He had to slap it brutally down finally, or it would have stayed like that forever.

“Then where is the dog, if you think he ain’t in there?” he growled. “Where is he, if you’re so smart? You don’t see him around here, do you?”

She didn’t answer that. It was too easy. He’d probably driven it out of the house ahead of time, so that animal wouldn’t betray him. Dogs were known to act strangely — when there was anything buried.

He began pacing feverishly back and forth, as if irritated by her unspoken accusation. “Well, don’t let it worry you,” he snarled. “I’m going to get out of here. I’m cooler now; they’ve lost the trail. I’m going right tonight, as soon as it gets dark enough.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t go without money?”

“I’ve got some now.” He stopped, took something out of his clothing with a sort of murderous derision, and gave her a quick glimpse of it. Then he put it away again. It looked like a lot; it looked like several hundred dollars.

“I know whose it is,” was all she said. “I know what you’ve done.”

He grinned at her. “It started out to be like you think,” he said, “but it wasn’t. That fool dog of mine saved him. I got the stove started, but the mutt began to whine outside the door when he smelled the gas. He musta sneaked up after me without my noticing. I dragged him down below with me again and brained him. Before I could go back up again and finish it, the old guy had roused himself and put it out. I heard him leave the house. Then I went up there afterward and — found the dough.”

Lies, all lies, made up as he went along. “I know what you’ve done,” she kept saying. “I know what you’ve done.” She followed him to the door that night when he left. Not to give him her parting blessing, but to close it upon him forever.

“Don’t ever come back here again, Jerry,” she said. “I gave you refuge when you came here, because you were the son of my own father. You killed a man before you went in. You killed another when you broke out. Now you’ve killed a third, right here in my own house. There’s too much blood on you now to be forgiven. Remember, if you try to come here again—”

“Hallelujah,” he jeered. The door closed and he was gone.

Within half an hour a knock sounded. She thought it was the police, coming here after him, but when she opened the door a cautious inch or two, it was he, back again. His breath fanned into her face from the gloom outside, hot and panting, like that of a hunted animal looking for a hole to crawl into.

“Let me in. You’ve got to. They’re all around here, thick as flies. I can’t make it. I can’t get past them. They nearly—”

She tried desperately to hold him out. His greater weight, on the outside, slowly, implacably pushed the door back, and her silent, straining figure with it. He slipped through, and it was no good trying to hold it any longer.

“Close it, what’s the matter with you?” he hissed. He drew the bolt that her fingers refused to touch. Then he sagged with his back against it for a moment, mopping his face with the back of his hand.

“I’ll be all right, just have to lie low some more and wait. They don’t know about you. They don’t know for sure I’m here in town at all. It’s just that the trail led this way, and then they lost it.”

“I told you not to come back here.”

His open hand slashed across her face. “Shut up. Get back in your own room and stay there. I’m taking over here now. If you try anything, I’ll let you have it like I would one of them!”

Something he was holding in his hand clicked in the dark. She couldn’t see what it was. She didn’t have to; she knew. He gave her a push. She went back to her own room and closed the door softly after her. She didn’t put on the light. She sat there in the dark, listening. There was a window, but it was no good to her. Her time of climbing out of windows was over and done with, twenty years past. She would only have fallen to the ground and lain there helpless, and he would—

She heard him go to the back door and lock it and take the key out, so she couldn’t get out that way. Then he returned to the front door again. He didn’t go down to the cellar this time any more. He knew Mr. Davis wasn’t coming back; he knew it was safe for him to stay upstairs all night. Who should know that better than he? She heard him spread out something on the floor, in the hall there by the front door, and lie down on it.

She sat and waited. When you’re old, you’re patient.

She heard the scrape of a match, one time, on the woodwork, and for a moment or two there was a feeble flicker along the seams of her room door. Then a whiff of tobacco smoke drifted in to her. He’d rolled himself a cigarette, to ease his ragged nerves. That was his weakness. He could kill people without compunction, but he couldn’t do without those little cylinders he rolled for very long.

She didn’t move. She just sat there in the dark. She could wait. She had all night.

Again she was astir in the pre-dawn darkness, just as she had been every day for years past. But this time her mission was a different one. Not hot shaving water to be taken up to the second floor. Mr. Davis wasn’t up there any more. Mr. Davis would never be up there again. Mr. Davis was in the cellar now, lying quiet, lying still.

The door of her room was narrowly open behind her. It had taken a long time to open it so that it didn’t creak, didn’t make a sound. Long, stealthy minutes of pushing it a little, then stopping, then pushing it a little more, then stopping. But she had a lot of time. And now she was creeping with snaillike slowness along the floor, on her hands and knees, toward where the front door lay ahead, unseen in the sooty gloom. She could hear his heavy breathing in the stillness, and it guided her. He was stretched out lengthwise across the inside of the door, like a sort of human bolt, barring her way out, barring anyone else’s way in.

It hurt to lie flat like that and pull yourself along; it made you ache, but she didn’t mind that. Her skirt would rustle a little, and she would stop and wait, to make sure he hadn’t heard it. Then she’d go on again.

Nearer and nearer, inch by inch. She was nearly up to him now. He’d rolled up his own coat behind his shoulders for a headrest. She could see the white of his shirt sleeves faintly peering at her in the gloom. They guided her, too, they and the heavy, thick breathing.

She was there now. She couldn’t get any closer without touching him. She could make out things better now; her eyes were getting more used to the dark. And the dark itself was beginning to thin a little; daybreak was on the way.

He was holding the gun clenched tightly in his hand, even in his sleep. It was pointing toward the door, ready for instant use. He could have pulled the trigger even before his eyelids were all the way up. She couldn’t have gotten it away from him even if she’d tried, but she didn’t want to, she wasn’t after that. She’d never held one in her life; she wouldn’t have known how to use it; he would only have taken it right away from her again.

She looked all around him on the floor, her face inches away from the worn floor boards. There was a tiny, crushed, white thing there beside him. That was the cigarette he’d smoked before dropping off to sleep. She didn’t want that. Then she saw them. They were on the other side of him, in the narrow little lane left between his body and the door. Just a little fiat square, a folder, with white showing around the edges. He’d left them out. The little sack of tobacco that she’d seen him use, with a drawstring, that was buried somewhere in his rolled-up coat, underneath his head. She couldn’t get at that. But this was what she wanted; this was what she had to have.

Three times her arm reached out tremblingly, trying to arch over him and then go down on the inside, to reach it and gather it up. The angle was too severe, she couldn’t bend it right. And, quivering with fear, it was fractions of inches above his sleeping bulk, it was all but brushing against him. If he’d made the slightest move in his sleep... She tried again, this time hovering over him with her whole head and shoulder. Her fingertips touched it, drew it up. Then she almost lost her balance, for there was only one hand supporting her against the floor now while the other one was doing this. She could feel her taut muscles threatening to collapse, drop her flat on top of him. She writhed back and averted the toppling fall just in time, then had to stay there a moment and rest, huddled beside him. Then slowly she turned and trailed back again the way she’d come. Her door seemed far away, but finally she reached it, undetected. She crawled through and on the other side of it pulled herself up to a standing position once more. Then she softly guided it closed and leaned there on the inside with her head against it, exhausted.

In her hand she held a package of cigarette papers. That was all she’d wanted; that was all she’d gone out there to get, where death lay sleeping.

He kept reaching into his pockets all the time and bringing his hand out empty. “I thought sure I had some,” she heard him mumble. “I musta dropped ’em when I ran back here so fast to get in again.”

He’d forgotten about the one he’d rolled before falling asleep on the floor.

He started to walk back and forth, behind the windows with the shades carefully pulled down. She stood at the stove, with her back to him, appearing not to notice. She could wait. She had all day.

Finally he couldn’t stand it any more. “I’ve gotta have some cigarette papers or I’ll go crazy. Go out to the store and buy your groceries like you do, and slip in some. Tell them it’s for the old geezer, if they say anything.”

She’d been waiting for that for hours past. She moved unhurriedly toward the door, keeping her face averted, trying not to show too much eagerness.

Suddenly his hand fell heavily on her shoulder, pinning her where she stood. “Wait a minute.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “How do I know I can trust you? You warned me you’d be on their side if I came back here again...”

She stood there passive in his grasp.

Suddenly something seemed to occur to him. He grinned. “I’ve got it. Bring me that prayer book you’ve got in your room.”

She brought it.

He took it from her with a leer. “Now put your hand on this and take an oath that if I let you out of here you won’t open your mouth to anyone you meet, no matter who it is, cops or otherwise, about me being here. You’ll just buy your stuff and come straight back, without stopping.”

She could feel her heart dropping inside of her.

He packed a fist, backed it threateningly. “Go ahead, I say!” he growled.

She put her hand on the book and looked him unflinchingly in the eye. “I swear I won’t open my mouth to anyone about your being here. I’ll just buy my things and come straight back without stopping.”

“That’ll hold you.” He pitched the book aside. “I know you. You’re strict about religion and stuff like that.”

She moved quietly to the front door and stood there waiting. He came after her and freed the bolt, with his other hand on his gun. She stepped out, and he closed it behind her again. She walked slowly up the street, shopping basket on her arm, just as she did other days at this same hour. She rounded the corner and was out of sight of the house, but even then she didn’t hurry. She went up a block the other way and into the store she always dealt at.

There were two men standing at the counter talking to the proprietor when she came in. They weren’t buying anything; they were just standing there talking in low voices, as though they were asking questions. She’d never seen them before. They were both in ordinary clothing, but there was something keen and piercing and police-like in the stares with which they turned to greet her. They looked like professional hunters of men.

One of them signaled permission to the proprietor, and he sidled over to wait on her, while they stayed where they were, waiting for him to finish.

“Morning, Mrs. Collins,” he greeted her.

She spoke more loudly than she usually did, in a voice that carried from end to end of the store. “..and a can of soup. And — oh yes — a package of cigarette papers.”

The storekeeper chuckled. He had to have his little joke.

“Don’t tell me you’ve taken to rolling your own, Mrs. Collins!”

“No, of course not,” she answered with quiet dignity.

His smile faded and a look of surprise appeared on his face, as an afterthought. “Come to think of it, I didn’t know Mr. Davis smoked either. First time I ever heard of it. I always understood he was an abstainer—”

“He is,” she said in a clear ringing voice. “He never touches it.”

The storekeeper scratched the back of his neck. “Then if he doesn’t, and you don’t... Who else is there in the house but you two?”

She didn’t answer that. She didn’t have to. She turned and stared hard at the two men further along the counter, who were drinking in every word. They stared back at her equally hard.

Suddenly they both moved swiftly, brushed past her on their way out of the store and into the street. She heard a whistle blow faintly somewhere off in the distance while she was waiting for the storekeeper to wrap her purchases. Heavy footsteps sounded, running back and forth along the board sidewalk out there, but she didn’t turn to look.

When she emerged herself a minute or two later, a detaining hand fell on her shoulder. One of the two men who had just been inside the store was standing out there. “You better wait here until it’s over,” he said to her. “You better not go right back there. You might get hurt, Mrs. Collins.” He seemed to know her name and to know where she lived. She didn’t answer him. He must be a detective, and she’d taken an oath not to open her mouth to any of them. A vow was a vow; that was what made you different from murderers and criminals — your obligation to keep your word once you’d given it. Even if it was to one of them you’d given it.

He called the storekeeper outside and turned her over to him. “See that she stays here for the next couple minutes, will you? There’s liable to be some trouble, down there around the corner—”

There were some men down there at the corner. They were acting strangely. They were moving forward one behind the other, close up against the wall. They were moving forward half-crouched, as if they were getting ready to spring. He went down and joined them.

That whistle blew again, far off in the distance; it sounded like from the next street over, behind her house. The men at the corner suddenly charged forward, turned it, and disappeared.

She kept straining away from the storekeeper, trying to break his well-meaning but stubborn hold on her. She could talk to him; he wasn’t a policeman or detective.

“Let me go back to my house. I promised. You’re making me break a promise.”

“You heard what he said. He knows what’s best.”

Suddenly a shot blasted out, somewhere out of sight around the corner. She’d never heard one before. She’d lived a life of peace. It was louder than the crack of a whip. It was even louder than one of the giant firecrackers little boys set off on the Fourth of July.

She writhed hectically in the storekeeper’s grasp. He’d forgotten to hold onto her effectively for a minute, his own mouth open in awe at the dramatic events taking place so near at hand. She broke free, started running down the sidewalk away from him.

He was heavy and corpulent. He took a few half-hearted steps after her, then he gave up, let her go. He didn’t want to get too close to the line of fire himself.

A second shot sounded before she had reached the corner, in ravening answer to the first.

She turned the corner, darted up the next street, the familiar street that led to her house. She could see it just up ahead, with a little smoke haze hanging around the front of it, as though the chimney weren’t drawing very well. There were men crouched in doorways and behind hedges, on both sides of the street, but she’d scurried past them all before they were even aware of her.

There was a stunned pause behind her. Then a voice shouted in the stillness: “Hold your fire! Bring her back here! She’ll be killed!”

She ran on, oblivious. She only had a little way further to go now. She hadn’t run so fast or so long since she was a young girl. But a promise on the Good Book was a promise. She’d sworn she’d come right back, and come right back she would. Not all the guns and all the bullets and all the policemen in the whole world could keep her from making good her vow.

There was another shot. It came from her own house, from in front of her, not in back. Something hit her in the shoulder and made it smart, as though a bee had stung her there, and she stumbled and fell down. The fall dismayed her more than the thing that had hit her. She tingled and felt ashamed. “A body my age falling in the street like this, in front of everybody!” she lamented. “What’ll folks think?”

Behind her that same voice she’d heard before roared out in fury: “Get him for that! Shoot to kill! No quarter!”

And then there were so many shots all at once that she couldn’t count them any more, couldn’t tell them apart. She stayed down, as she’d fallen, her eyes fixed on her own house just ahead. The door slowly swung open. But no one came out. It just stayed that way. All the way down at the bottom somebody’s hand was lying, stretched out. It opened, and a gun slid out. The hand didn’t move any more after that, lay still.

The rain of shot stopped, and it was quiet again. Men came running up and bent down over her. She looked up at them and said falteringly, “Please take me into my house. It’s just up ahead. I promised I’d come right back — and my promise has to be kept.”

They picked her up gently and carried her in. They covered something over, that was lying just inside the doorway, so she wouldn’t have to see it. She knew what it was, though. She whispered to them, “Put me down on the sofa, in the parlor.”

Then when they had, she motioned to them to come closer. They bent down so they could hear her. “Mr. Davis. Down in the cellar, right under where the cot is standing. You’ll have to take the shovel. Please do it right away. Don’t let him stay there in such a place — it isn’t right.”

A grim, low-voiced order was given, and she heard two or three of them go trooping down the cellar stairs. She closed her eyes and gave a sigh of satisfaction. At least he wouldn’t have to stay there now...

A doctor came and looked at her shoulder. “You’ll be all right,” he said. “Just a nasty nick.” He put a dressing on it and told her to try and sleep.

Suddenly a confused murmuring of voices outside in the hall roused her. The men had come up again. One of them looked in and said blankly to the captain of detectives, who was standing beside her, “No, sir. Nobody in it but a dog. Its skull had been crushed with a shovel.”

Somebody jostled him aside, and Mr. Davis was standing there in the doorway, staring at all of them. He was holding a book-shaped package tightly clasped under one arm, as though it were very precious. There was a silvery glint on his cheeks, as though he hadn’t shaved in several days.

He came over to her frightenedly. “Mrs. Collins, what is it? What’s happened here? All these men — and I heard shots on my way over from the depot—”

Her lips moved in bated incredulity. “He didn’t... You did go away, just like he said—”

“I left yesterday morning, before dawn. I wanted to be sure of getting there on time, before this first edition got away from me. I left without even waiting for my hot shaving water. I wrote a little note for you, so you’d know what became of me, but my hands were so numb I could hardly hold the pencil right.”

Then he added: “It was the strangest thing. I found the stove lit in my room. I reckon I must have done it myself, while I was still half asleep, and then forgot about it. I put it out right away, remembering what nearly happened the day before. And just before I woke up, I dreamed I heard a little dog whimpering somewhere close by...”

She turned a stricken face to the captain of detectives. “It was all true,” she said contritely. “Every last thing he told me was true, and I didn’t—”

The captain put his hand on her arm consolingly. “Don’t feel too bad about it. That’s the way it goes. Even when a murderer’s telling the truth, nobody believes him anyway.”

Content

William Irish
The Man Upstairs