Crime is Murder (19 page)

Suddenly the street wasn’t dark and empty any more. Suddenly it plunged into a wide square that was bisected by a busy boulevard and ringed with light. Now the city was alive, neon-lighted and alive with happy twosomes hurrying off to the gay places where Larry expected to lose those butterflies in his stomach. Sprinkled across one side of the square were the little stands where tourists bought open-faced sandwiches and natives bought hot dogs, and on the other side, beyond the boulevard and behind a huge fountain, rose the shadowy hulk of a great red-brick building with a tall bell tower. Viggo’s directions came to mind, and Larry unfolded his street map. As he did so, the chimes in the tower began to toll off another hour. Ten o’clock and all was well with those who didn’t walk alone.

There must have been some kind of magic in the chimes that made Larry forget the Map. It was a happy sound, and this was a happy night, or should have been. This was a part of what he’d been working for most of his thirty-odd years, so that one night he could stand on a bright corner of a gay foreign city and tell himself what a successful man he was and what a wonderful time he was having … tell himself over and over again so he wouldn’t wonder at the emptiness and waste time composing post cards to someone who no longer cared.

Cathy, darling
,

I miss you. I’ve had to come all this distance to realize how much I miss you, and that’s a strange thing because I’ve missed you all these lonely years…
.

For a few moments all of the happy twosomes vanished and the square and the streets were as empty as lost time. The night wind rustled the map in Larry’s hand so that it fluttered and flew back against the face of someone passing by. He muttered an apology, wondering what another human was doing on this lifeless planet, and the sound of his voice was a kind of signal to bring back the people and the lights. Gradually they returned—the sandwich buyers in the square, the twosomes strolling arm in arm, and finally, because he was so conspicuously out of step with the passing scene, the man who came running toward him out of one of the bright streets threading off to Larry’s left.

At the instant Larry saw him, he felt a peculiar kinship for the running man. He would have liked to run, too, and not because the city was hostile, but because there were no devices in it. No telephones to be answered. No appointments to be kept. But the man who came darting and dodging his way along the narrow sidewalk wasn’t running from himself. He was a stocky, muscular-looking fellow with some kind of cap on his head and some kind of wings on his heels. Once, about a dozen yards off, he broke stride long enough to glance back over his shoulder at the street behind him, and then came on with a fresh burst of speed that threatened to bowl over any obstacle in his path. Larry tried to step out of the way, but even then he seemed to know that it was useless. Some things had to happen. Some things were as inevitable as those bells still working away on the hour of ten.

When it did happen, there was no resisting the viselike grip on his arm that jerked Larry about like a puppet on a string. And it was no accident. The man had come straight for him as if he’d recognized a friend just this side of hell.

“McDonald!” he cried.

But it wasn’t McDonald. It was a tall, sandy-haired American wearing a new trench coat and a startled expression; but it wasn’t McDonald. The man drew back, looking as if he’d just been slapped, and that’s when Larry got a good look at him. The cap was navy blue with a little gold anchor in braid just above the leather visor. Beneath the cap was a square, sun-browned face, and below the face was a heavy knit sweater and a pair of faded denim pants. All of these things he saw in a moment, because a moment was all he had. The sun-browned face turned away, searching the night in a wild, hopeless manner, and then the man dropped to one knee so suddenly that Larry didn’t realize what was happening until he came up again and pressed the folded map into his hands.

“Thanks,” Larry said. “I didn’t even know that I’d dropped it—” But by this time he was talking to himself. The running man was running again, already lost to sight in the semidarkness of the street Larry had just taken from his hotel, and the small black sedan was just turning the corner fast on his heels … the very small black sedan with its headlights burning dimly in the European manner, and its driver, an incredibly ugly man wearing a soft black hat, crouched over the steering wheel like a malevolent giant.

Of course it hadn’t really happened. That’s what Larry tried to tell himself when it was all over and his blood had started flowing again. To be more accurate, it had happened but not at all the way it seemed. A man could run without being in fear of his life. He could be late for an appointment. He could be trying to catch a streetcar.

One of the narrow streetcars rattled across the intersection at the far side of the square, and Larry told himself another story. What was so remarkable about a case of mistaken identity? It happened to somebody every day. And what was so terrible about a black sedan turning that particular corner at that particular moment? The streets were for public use, weren’t they? As for the evil-visaged driver, he’d been fooled once before tonight by a sinister face that broke into a broad smile when it was spoken to.

Larry Willis, you’re an idiot. A fat man stares at you in a hotel dining room, an ugly man in a black sedan chases a frightened sailor through the streets, and a girl you’ve all but forgotten follows you about like a migratory ghost. And why? Because you’re exhausted. Because you’ve bounced around in the sky for thousands of miles, too excited to sleep, and now you’re out on the town trying to cure an ailment that needs nothing more than a long session in that cozy feather bed back at the hotel
.

It was easy to make a sale to a customer who wanted to be sold. Logically and persuasively, Larry explained away everything he’d just witnessed and then shoved the map into his coat pocket and turned back toward the hotel. He had four whole days to play tourist. The bright lights could wait…. One block … two blocks. This time no dawdling before the shop windows and no staring at the front page of a newspaper he couldn’t read. This time just a fast return trip to a little hotel that must be along here somewhere. He vaguely remembered the small canopy over the entrance and the bright red mailbox that was fastened to the wall next to the door. But he didn’t remember all that excitement in the middle of the street….

Afterward it was easy to know what he should have done. He should have quit while he was ahead. He should have kept right on in pursuit of that feather bed and paid no attention to the excited people who were spilling out of a dozen doorways to gather around a terrible something in the street. Above all, he should have avoided Viggo, the little bellhop with the large vocabulary, who was suddenly running toward him with his tongue racing on ahead.

“Did you see it, Herre Willis?” the boy shouted. “A man is crossing the street. An auto comes speeding. Wham! The man is dead! Hit and run, just like in America!”

It was too late for all of the things Larry should have done. All he could do now was stand at the curbing like a tailor’s dummy and stare at an object in the gutter not three feet away. Stare and listen while Viggo babbled on.

“I saw everything, Herre Willis. I saw the man start across the street. I saw the black sedan swing around the corner—”

“The
black
sedan,” Larry echoed.

Of course it was a black sedan. Larry knew that without asking, but he had to say something to keep from shouting the rest of what he knew.

“The black sedan,” Viggo insisted. “I saw the whole thing because I’d just stepped outside to post this letter…. Oh, you’ve dropped yours, Herre Willis.”

The boy wasn’t making any sense. All Larry was trying to do was rake up his room key out of his coat pocket and get upstairs before the newly arrived policeman at this street scene got a look at his face and started asking questions. What did he know anyway? What did he really know? And what business of his was this grief in the street even if he did? H.J. wasn’t footing the bills to this convention so his special representative could get involved in somebody else’s funeral!

But now it seemed that something had dropped to the sidewalk, and Viggo was picking it up.

“Your letter, Herre Willis. It just now fell out of your pocket with the map. Do you want it posted? … Oh, it hasn’t been addressed.”

No sense at all. Just a babbling boy who’d seen a man killed and lost his wits. But he did thrust something into Larry’s hands before racing back to that crowd in the street, and the something was a folded map with an envelope protruding from the folds. A long, unsealed envelope that Larry had never seen before.

Turn it over and over. Lift up the flap and look inside. Try to make sense of it, just any kind of sense at all…. One … two … three. Three crisp one-hundred-dollar bills in United States currency, and in the gutter, not three feet away, a dead man’s cap. Navy blue with a little gold anchor in braid just above the leather visor.

Read more of Stranger in the Dark

Serving as inspiration for contemporary literature, Prologue Books, a division of F+W Media, offers readers a vibrant, living record of crime, science fiction, fantasy, and western genres. Discover more today:

www.prologuebooks.com

This edition published by
Prologue Books
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
www.prologuebooks.com

Copyright © 1956 by Helen Nielsen, Registration Renewed 1984
All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

eISBN 10: 1-4405-4131-0
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4131-5