Rear Window (4 page)

 
They'd already finished before the warning caught them.
 
I could tell that by the way they straightened up and stood facing one another frustratedly for a minute.
 
Then both their heads turned sharply, as at a tip-off by doorbell that he was coming back.
 
They got out fast.

 
I wasn't unduly disheartened, I'd expected that my own feeling all along had been that they wouldn't find anything incriminating around.
 
The trunk had gone.

 
He came in with a mountainous brown-paper bag sitting in the curve of one arm.
 
I watched him closely to see if he'd discover that someone had been there in his absence.
 
Apparently he didn't.
 
They'd been adroit about it.

 
He stayed in the rest of the night.
 
Sat tight, safe and sound.
 
He did some desultory drinking, I could see him sitting there by the window and his hand would hoist every once in awhile, but not to excess.
 
Apparently everything was under control, the tension had eased, now that — the trunk was out.

 
Watching him across the night, I speculated: Why doesn't he get out?
 
If I'm right about him, and I am, why does he stick around — after it?
 
That brought its own answer: Because he doesn't know anyone's on to him yet.
 
He doesn't think there's any hurry.
 
To go too soon, right after she has, would be more dangerous than to stay awhile.

 
The night wore on.
 
I sat there waiting for Boyne's call.
 
It came later than I thought it would.
 
I picked the phone up in the dark.
 
He was getting ready to go to bed, over there, now.
 
He'd risen from where he'd been sitting drinking in the kitchen, and put the light out.
 
He went into the living room, lit that.
 
He started to pull his shirttail up out of his belt.
 
Boyne's voice was in my ear as my eyes were on him, over there.
 
Three-cornered arrangement.

 
"Hello, Jeff?
 
Listen, absolutely nothing.
 
We searched the place while he was out——"

 
I nearly said, "I know you did, I saw it," but checked myself in time.

 
" — and didn't turn up a thing.
 
But——"
 
He stopped as though this was going to be important.
 
I waited impatiently for him to go ahead.

 
"Downstairs in his letter box we found a post card waiting for him.
 
We fished it up out of the slot with bent pins——"

 
"And?"

 
"And it was from his wife, written only yesterday from some farm up-country.
 
Here's the message we copied: 'Arrived O.K.
 
Already feeling a little better.
 
Love, Anna.'"

 
I said, faintly but stubbornly: "You say, written only yesterday.
 
Have you proof of that?
 
What was the postmark-date on it?"

 
He made a disgusted sound down in his tonsils.
 
At me, not it.
 
"The postmark was blurred.
 
A corner of it got wet, and the ink smudged."

 
"All of it blurred?"

 
"The year-date," he admitted.
 
"The hour and the month came out O.K.
 
August.
 
And seven thirty P.M., it was mailed at."

 
This time I made the disgusted sound, in my larynx.
 
"August, seven thirty P.M. — 1937 or 1939 or 1942.
 
You have no proof how it got into that mail box, whether it came from a letter carrier's pouch or from the back of some bureau drawer!"

 
"Give up, Jeff," he said.
 
"There's such a thing as going too far."

 
I don't know what I would have said.
 
That is, if I hadn't happened to have my eyes on the Thorwald flat living room windows just then.
 
Probably very little.
 
The post card had shaken me, whether I admitted it or not.
 
But I was looking over there.
 
The light had gone out as soon as he'd taken his shirt off.
 
But the bedroom didn't light up.
 
A match-flare winked from the living room, low down, as from an easy chair or sofa.
 
With two unused beds in the bedroom, he was still staying out of there.

 
"Boyne," I said in a glassy voice, "I don't care what post cards from the other world you've turned up, I say that man has done away with his wife!
 
Trace that trunk he shipped out.
 
Open it up when you've located it — and I think you'll find her!"

 
And I hung up without waiting to hear what he was going to do about it.
 
He didn't ring back, so I suspected he was going to give my suggestion a spin after all, in spite of his loudly proclaimed skepticism.

 
I stayed there by the window all night, keeping a sort of deathwatch.
 
There were two more match-flares after the first, at about half-hour intervals.
 
Nothing more after that.
 
So possibly he was asleep over there.
 
Possibly not.
 
I had to sleep some myself, and I finally succumbed in the flaming light of the early sun.
 
Anything that he was going to do, he would have done under cover of darkness and not waited for broad daylight.
 
There wouldn't be anything much to watch, for a while now.
 
And what was there that he needed to do any more, anyway?
 
Nothing, just sit tight and let a little disarming time slip by.

 
It seemed like five minutes later that Sam came over and touched me, but it was already high noon.
 
I said irritably: "Didn't you lamp that note I pinned up, for you to let me sleep?"

 
He said: "Yeah, but it's your old friend Inspector Boyne.
 
I figured you'd sure want to——"

 
It was a personal visit this time.
 
Boyne came into the room behind him without waiting, and without much cordiality.

 
I said to get rid of Sam: "Go inside and smack a couple of eggs together."

 
Boyne began in a galvanized-iron voice: "Jeff, what do you mean by doing anything like this to me?
 
I've made a fool out of myself thanks to you.
 
Sending my men out right and left on wild-goose chases.
 
Thank God, I didn't put my foot in it any worse than I did, and have this guy picked up and brought in for questioning."

 
"Oh, then you don't think that's necessary?" I suggested, dryly.

 
The look he gave me took care of that.
 
"I'm not alone in the department, you know.
 
There are men over me I'm accountable to for my actions.
 
That looks great, don't it, sending one of my fellows one-half-a-day's train ride up into the sticks to some God-forsaken whistle-stop or other at departmental expense——"

 
"Then you located the trunk?"

 
"We traced it through the express agency," he said flintily.

 
"And you opened it?"

 
"We did better than that.
 
We got in touch with the various farmhouses in the immediate locality, and Mrs. Thorwald came down to the junction in a produce-truck from one of them and opened it for him herself, with her own keys!"

 
Very few men have ever gotten a look from an old friend such as I got from him.
 
At the door he said, stiff as a rifle barrel: "Just let's forget all about it, shall we?
 
That's about the kindest thing either one of us can do for the other.
 
You're not yourself, and I'm out a little of my own pocket money, time and temper.
 
Let's let it go at that.
 
If you want to telephone me in future I'll be glad to give you my home number."

 
The door went whopp!
 
behind him.

 
For about ten minutes after he stormed out my numbed mind was in a sort of straitjacket.
 
Then it started to wriggle its way free.
 
The hell with the police.
 
I can't prove it to them, maybe, but I can prove it to myself, one way or the other, once and for all.
 
Either I'm wrong or I'm right.
 
He's got his armor on against them.
 
But his back is naked and unprotected against me.

 
I called Sam in.
 
"Whatever became of that spyglass we used to have, when we were bumming around on that cabin-cruiser that season?"

 
He found it some place downstairs and came in with it, blowing on it and rubbing it along his sleeve.
 
I let it lie idle in my lap first.
 
I took a piece of paper and a pencil and wrote six words on it.
  
What have you done with her?

 
I sealed it in an envelope and left the envelope blank.
 
I said to Sam: "Now here's what I want you to do, and I want you to be slick about it.
 
You take this, go in that building 525, climb the stairs to the fourth-floor rear, and ease it under the door.
 
You're fast, at least you used to be.
 
Let's see if you're fast enough to keep from being caught at it.
 
Then when you get safely down again, give the outside doorbell a little poke, to attract attention."

 
His mouth started to open.

 
"And don't ask me any questions, you understand?
 
I'm not fooling."

 
He went, and I got the spyglass ready.

 
I got him in the right focus after a minute or two.
 
A face leaped up, and I was really seeing him for the first time.
 
Dark-haired, but unmistakable Scandinavian ancestry.
 
Looked like a sinewy customer, although he didn't run to much bulk.

 
About five minutes went by.
 
His head turned sharply, profile-wards.
 
That was the bell-poke, right there.
 
The note must be in already.

 
He gave me the back of his head as he went back toward the flat-door.
 
The lens could follow him all the way to the rear, where my unaided eyes hadn't been able to before.

 
He opened the door first, missed seeing it, looked out on a level.
 
He closed it.
 
Then dipped, straightened up.
 
He had it.
 
I could see him turning it this way and that.

 
He shifted in, away from the door, nearer the window.
 
He thought danger lay near the door, safety away from it.
  
He didn't know it was the other way around, the deeper into his own rooms he retreated the greater the danger.

 
He'd torn it open, he was reading it.
 
God, how I watched his expression.
 
My eyes clung to it like leeches.
 
There was a sudden widening, a pulling — the whole skin of his face seemed to stretch back behind the ears, narrowing his eyes to Mongoloids.
 
Shock.
 
Panic.
 
His hand pushed out and found the wall, and he braced himself with it.
 
Then he went back toward the door again slowly.
 
I could see him creeping up on it, stalking it as though it were something alive.
 
He opened it so slenderly you couldn't see it at all, peered fearfully through the crack.
 
Then he closed it, and he came back, zigzag, off balance from sheer reflex dismay.
 
He toppled into a chair and snatched up a drink.
 
Out of the bottle neck itself this time.
 
And even while he was holding it to his lips, his head was turned looking over his shoulder at the door that had suddenly thrown his secret in his face.

 
I put the glass down.

 
Guilty!
 
Guilty as all hell, and the police be damned!

 
My hand started toward the phone, came back again.
 
What was the use?
 
They wouldn't listen now any more than they had before.
 
"You should have seen his face, etc."
 
And I could hear Boyne's answer: "Anyone gets a jolt from an anonymous letter, true or false.
 
You would yourself."
 
They had a real live Mrs. Thorwald to show me — or thought they had.
 
I'd have to show them the dead one, to prove that they both weren't one and the same.
 
I, from my window, had to show them a body.