Small Felonies - Fifty Mystery Short Stories (28 page)

The source of the light was a glassed-in cubicle toward the middle of the warehouse. Shadowy shapes—crates of some kind—loomed toward the ceiling on either side. He advanced in hesitant, wary steps, seeing no sign of movement in the gloom around him. At last he reached the cubicle, stood in the light. A watchman's office. He stepped up close to look through the glass.

A cry rose in his throat when he saw the man lying motionless on the floor inside; he managed to stifle it. Blood stained the front of the man's khaki uniform jacket. He had been shot twice.

Dead, murdered! Get out of here, call the police!

Mr. Conway turned—and froze.

A hulking figure stood not three feet away, looking straight at him.

Mr. Conway's knees buckled; he had to put a hand against the glass to keep from collapsing. The murderer! His mind once again compelled him to run, run, but his legs would not obey. He could only stare back in horror at the hulking figure—at the pinched white face beneath a low-brimmed cloth cap, at rodentlike eyes and a cruel mouth, at the yawning muzzle of a revolver in one fist.

"No!" Mr. Conway cried then. "No, please, don't shoot!" The man dropped into a furtive crouch, extending the pistol in front of him.

"Don't shoot!" Mr. Conway said again, putting up his hands.

Surprise, bewilderment, and a sudden trapped fear made a twisted mask of the man's face. "Who's that? Who's there?"

Mr. Conway opened his mouth, then closed it again. He could scarcely believe his ears. The man was standing not three feet away, looking right at him!

"I don't understand," Mr. Conway said before he could stop the words.

The murderer fired. The sudden report caused Mr. Conway to jump convulsively aside; the bullet came nowhere near him. He saw the gunman looking desperately from side to side, everywhere but at him—and in that instant he did understand, he knew.

"You can't
see
me," he said.

The gun discharged a second bullet, but Mr. Conway had already moved again. Far to one side of him a spider-webbed hole appeared in the glass wall of the cubicle. "Damn you!" the murderer screamed. "Where are you?
Where are you?"

Mr. Conway remained standing there, clearly outlined in
the light, for a moment longer; then he stepped to where a board lay on the floor nearby, picked it up. Without hesitation, he advanced on the terrified man and then struck him on the side of the head; watched dispassionately as the other dropped unconscious to the floor.

Mr. Conway kicked the revolver away and stood over him. The police would have to be summoned, of course, but there was plenty of time for that now. A slow, grim smile stretched the corners of his mouth. Could it be that the remarkable collecting feat he had performed, his devotion and his passion, had stirred some supernatural force into granting him the Power that he now possessed? Well, no matter. His was not to question why; his was but to heed the plaintive cries of a world ridden with lawlessness.

A deep, chilling laugh suddenly swept through the warehouse. "The weed of crime bears bitter fruit!" a haunting, Wellesian voice shouted. "Crime does not pay!"

And The Shadow wrapped the cloak of night around himself and went out into the mean streets of the great metropolis . . .

T
he taxi let Giroux off in a residential area six blocks from Hopper Industrial Park. The night wind was chill; he turned up the collar on his overcoat as he walked rapidly toward the park. The gun in his right coat pocket was cold against his palm.

It was just past nine when he reached the deserted industrial complex. There was no sign of the night security patrol. Keeping to shadows, he made his way to the squat structure that housed the Moore Plumbing Supply Company. A single light burned in the office, behind blind-covered front windows. As was his custom on Thursday evenings, Moore was working late and alone on the company books.

Giroux moved around to the rear of the building. Only one car waited in the parking area—Moore's, of course, one he knew well. Not only did he see it every day, parked in the drive of the Moore house diagonally across the street from his own home, but he had written the insurance policy on it.

He walked to the base of the cyclone fence that ringed the supply-yard enclosure, blended into the blackness there. Now, as he waited, he did not feel the chill of the wind. His thoughts insulated him—thoughts of Judith. She was vivid in his mind, as always: long dark hair, gentle brown eyes, high cheekbones, and slim sensuous body. How often did he dream of her? How often did he long to hold her in the warm silent hours of all the nights to come?

"Soon now, Judith," he whispered in the cold silent hour of this night. "Soon . . ."

He did not have to wait long. Habitually precise, Moore left the building at ten o'clock. Giroux tensed, his fingers moving over the surfaces of the gun, as he watched Moore walk to his car and begin to unlock it. Then, quickly, he stepped out and approached the other man.

Moore heard him and glanced around in a jerky way, startled. Giroux stopped two paces away. "Hello, Frank," he said.

Recognition smoothed the nervous frown on Moore's face. "Why—hello, Martin. You gave me a jolt, coming out of the darkness like that. What are you doing here at this hour?"

"Waiting for you."

"What on earth for?"

"Because I'm going to kill you," Giroux said.

Moore stared at him incredulously. "Kill me?"

"That's right."

"Hey, listen, that's not funny. Are you drunk?"

Giroux took out the gun. "Not at all. I'm quite serious."
"Martin, for God's sake, put that thing away." There was a mixture of fear and anger in Moore's voice now. "What's the matter with you? Why would you even think of killing me?"

"For love," Giroux said.

"For . . . what?"

"Love. You're in the way, Frank; you stand between Judith and me. Does it all become clear now?"

"You and Judith? No, I don't believe it. My wife loves me, she's devoted to me . . ."

Giroux smiled faintly. "Have you ever wondered about the perfect murder, Frank? Whether there is such a thing? I have, often. And I believe there is, if it's properly planned and executed."

"Judith would never be party to such a thing!"

"Whether she would is irrelevant, isn't it?"

"This is insane," Moore said. "You're insane, Giroux!"

"Not at all. I'm merely in love. Of course, I do have my practical side as well. There's the hundred-thousand-dollar double-indemnity policy my company has on your life, which will take care of Judith's and my needs quite nicely once we're married. After a decent interval of mourning, naturally. We can't have the slightest suspicion cast on her good name or mine."

"You can't do this," Moore said. "I won't let you do it." And he made a sudden jump forward, clawing at the gun.

But his fear and his anger made him clumsy, and Giroux was able to sidestep with ease and then club him with the barrel. Moore fell moaning to the pavement. Giroux hit him again, even more sharply. Then he finished opening the car door, dragged the unconscious man onto the floor in back, and slid in under the wheel.

As he drove out of Hopper Industrial Park, he was watchful for the night security patrol; still saw no sign of it. Observing the exact speed limit, he followed the route Moore always took home—a route that included a one-mile stretch through Old Mill Canyon. The canyon road was little used since the construction of a bypassing freeway, but Moore considered it a shortcut.

At the top of the canyon road was a sharp curve with a bluff wall on the left and a wide shoulder edged by a guardrail on the right. Beyond the rail was a sheer two-hundred-foot drop into the canyon below. No cars were behind Giroux as he drove up to the crest. From there he could see for perhaps a quarter of a mile past the curve, and that part of the road also seemed empty.

Giroux stopped the car a hundred feet from the shoulder. He took and held a long breath, then pressed down hard on the accelerator and twisted the wheel until the car was headed straight for the guardrail. While it was still on the road he braked sharply; the tires burned against the asphalt, providing the skid marks that would make Moore's death seem a tragic accident.

He managed to fight the car to a stop ten feet from the guardrail. Rubbing sweat from his forehead, he reversed to the roadway, set the emergency brake, and got out to look both ways along the road. Still no headlights in either direction. He dragged Moore out of the rear, propped him behind the wheel, and wedged his foot against the accelerator pedal. The engine roared. Giroux grasped the release lever for the emergency brake, braced himself, jerked the brake off, and flung his body out of the way.

The car hurtled forward. An edge of the open driver's door slapped against his hip, knocking him down, but he wasn't hurt. He rolled over in time to see the car crash through the guardrail, seem to hang in space for a moment amid a shower of splinters, and plunge downward. The thunderous rending of metal filled the night as the machine bounced and rolled into the canyon.

Giroux gained his feet, went to the edge. There was no fire, but he could make out the mangled wreckage far below. He said softly, "I'm sorry, Frank. It's not that I hated you, or even disliked you. It's just that you were in the way."

Then, keeping to the side of the road, he began the long three-mile trek home.

At six the following evening, Giroux stepped up onto the front porch of the Moore house. He rang the bell, waited with damp palms and constricted chest for Judith to answer.

There were steps inside, the door opened—and at the sight of her his love swelled inside him until it was almost like physical pain.

"Hello, Judith," he said gravely. "I just heard about Frank, and of course I came right over."

Her grief-swollen mouth trembled. "Thank you, Martin. It was such a terrible accident, so . . . so sudden. I guess you know how devoted Frank and I were to each other; I feel lost and terribly alone without him."

"You're not alone," Giroux told her, and silently added the words my love. "It's true that we've never been anything but casual neighbors, Judith, but I want you to know that there isn't anything I wouldn't do for you. Not anything I wouldn't do . . ."

T
he woods were dark and wet and cold after the recent rain. The old man could feel the chill and dampness against his face, against the whole of his left hand—but nowhere else. Except for that left hand, resting on the arm of his wheelchair, he was completely paralyzed from the neck down.

He did not know these woods, though he had lived at the edge of them for eighteen years. His spinster daughters, Madeline and Caroline, never took him there. But he had sat many times on the enclosed back porch of their house, looking out at the unbroken line of green and brown, thinking of what lay within, and wishing he could go there. Alone. That was the important thing: alone.

The opportunity had finally come.

Today, as on every Thursday afternoon, Madeline had left at two o'clock to do the week's shopping and Caroline had gone off to her Literary Society meeting; but on this Thursday, the remainder of the ritual had been broken. Mrs. Gregor, who always arrived promptly at two-thirty to care for him until his daughters returned at five, had not come.

He didn't know why she failed to show up, and he didn't care; he was merely thankful that she hadn't, and that he had been able to talk Caroline into leaving on faith that Mrs. Gregor would come. It had been eighteen years since the accident, when the drunken salesman had run Martha and him down as they were crossing a rain-slick street, killing her instantly and permanently damaging his spine. Eighteen years, and at long last he was alone. No one in the next room, listening; no one in the house popping in to see if he needed anything, to bother him with unwanted chatter. Alone!

Getting out of the house had not been easy. All the doors were open leading to the rear porch, beyond which a ramp had been installed in place of the back stairs; but the screen door that gave access to the ramp was closed with an eye hook—a barrier, a wall, a simple screen door that he could not open.

Still, he had managed it. The wheelchair was motorized, with a control panel on the left arm. By using his thumb on the forward and reverse buttons and hooking his ring finger around the steering mechanism, he could take himself from room to room, propel himself along sidewalks when Madeline and Caroline took him out for one of his periodic airings. (They hadn't wanted to let him have the motorized chair—though they were well-meaning, they thought of him as a helpless child—but he had pleaded and demanded and refused to eat until finally they had given in.)

At a distance of ten feet, he had pressed down on the forward button and sent the chair rushing into the screen door. Seven times he had done that, before the eye hook finally popped loose and the door fluttered open. Then he was down the ramp and moving slowly across the rear yard toward the woods.