Black Curtain (18 page)

The man sat down now, across Townsend's thoulders, holding his head as in a vise between sinewy thighs. A pocket light clicked into pallid beings found his face, dazzling him after the long darkness.

The liquid gurgled again, as though it had changed hands.

The man said, "Hold his head up off the step. He can't hurt you, I'm holding down his arms with my knee here."

His head suddenly bent upward, from the neck only. at an acute angle. She had him by the hair. The whites of his eyes showed against the torch beam.

Something small, like a stopper, went down on wood with a tap.

The liquid gurgled more rebelliously this time, as though it had been reversed within its container.

A freezing horror percolated through Townsend's veins. The horror that only comes of not knowing precisely what's going to be done to you. The terror of imagination.

A cloying reek swirled around his head. A soaked pad closed in over his mouth and nose from behind. He was only breathing sickening sweetness, not air any more. He tried to get his nose out of the way, from side to side, but the application just rode with it, backed up by a hand. He could still see over it, for a moment or two longer. A pair of eyes, reflected luminously against the torch glow, stared into his with pitiless, clinical interest. Then after a moment they started to blur.

He could still hear for a moment or two more after that, even after sight had dimmed.

"Watch his eyes and lemme know when he's had enough--"

Then hearing went, creeping away into the distance.

"There he goes. They're closing."

Feeling went last of all. He felt one of his eyelids prodded up, then allowed to droop down again, through no muscular reflex of his own. Then it was all jerked out from under him, like something on a rug: hearing and seeing and knowing and being.

The anesthetic wore off sometime during the next quarter hour or so and left a brief nauseous reaction that reminded him of the time he'd had his appendix out years before. Only this time, he knew, the operation was still to come.

He was in a sloped sitting position, shoulder blades but little higher than his kidneys, across what felt like the projecting seat of an overstuffed chair. For a moment he mistakenly thought his hands had been freed, the harsh bite of the bonds was no longer there. But when he tried to spread them, instantly constriction caught at them again, this time through the insulation of stiff leather. They'd been rebound over driving gauntlets, presumably to leave no telltale traces of chafing on his wrists. From that fact he deduced that at some future time it was to be made to appear that he had not been bound.

The shade or shades were drawn, but there was enough of a gap left at the bottom for a glimmering of moon wash to boil over and spill across the sill.

Something thick and braided was holding him fast to the chair; it felt like the sinewy multistranded sort of cording that is used to sash drapes and is almost impossible to break. One coil of it passed under his chin, directly across his throat. Too much pressure against it at that point would have garroted him.

For the first moment or two he thought he was alone in the room, although something that sounded like labored breathing had faintly caught his ear once or twice. But the flow of moonlight across the window sill was not static; as the moon climbed upwards over the house, the bar of reflection on the wall opposite to the crevice was foreshortened, began to be pulled down it to the bottom. It was at about elbow height from the floor when he first saw it. In a very few moments' time it had struck the top of a sofa immediately under it and begun to billow downward over the convex surface of that.

The first betraying turmoil of hair that it silvered, like a squashed-down halo, told him Ruth was in the room with him. She must be absolutely motionless, for the glimmering head made no move.

He spoke to her across the darkness long before the luminous visor had reached her eyes. "Ruth!" he whispered urgently. "Ruth!" She didn't answer. Why so silent? What had they done to her? He'd have to wait for that cauterizing bar to climb down to her eyes.

When it had, they were wide open, staring at him in helpless, limpid appeal. He knew that she must be gagged. He wondered why they hadn't silenced him as well. Perhaps because a woman is far more likely to scream out than a man. More likely, she had already been bound up in here when he had edged into the trap, and they had made sure she couldn't warn him.

People in peril don't make memorable remarks to one another. Language is apt to be anticlimactic at such times. He could think of nothing to say to her but: "Hello, Ruthie." Then he tried desperately to think of phrases that might comfort her. Nothing came to his mind, but he forced himself to speak to her several times, while the moonlight lingered on her eyes. Things like: "It'll work itself out all right. Something'll turn up." And once, in complete inanity, "My feet are asleep, how about yours?" Simply to keep her going, take her mind off their danger. He must keep her going a little while longer.

It was pathetic when her eyes went up into the darkness, as the bar worked its way lower down her face. It was like someone drowning in re verse. She writhed and tried to lower her head, to keep this window of visual communication open between them another half moment, another ten seconds. Finally she couldn't overtake it any more, her eyes went up into the smoldering gloom, and the gag across her lips slowly came into view.

A door opened somewhere upstairs, softly in the silence, and his skin prickled all over. "Steady, now, steady," he slurred reassuringly across at her.

A man's tread was coming down the stairs. It hit floor level, came on toward the closed door outside. The door opened, a switch snapped, and the room shot into unbearable, blinding brightness. When his eyes began to function again he was getting his first good look at Bill Diedrich, standing motionless in the open doorway.

He was squat and thick-set. He had that yeasty look that light-haired people get when they've hit dissipation beyond a certain point; his complexion was the color of unbaked dough. His hair was straw-colored, with a nasty tight little crinkle in it. He looked as if he might have been a nice guy--if he'd been somebody else. He had on a plumcolored bathrobe over blue rayon pajamas. Townsend knew he hadn't been either sleeping or bathing. The costume must be part of the act. He'd undressed for the murder, for reasons best known to himself.

He'd brought a revolver down with him, was holding it negligently, muzzle pointed to floor.

He grinned at Townsend.

Then he turned his head. "Alma," he called impatiently. "Are you ready? Hurry it up. I want to get this over with." He crossed the room and took a precautionary hitch at the shades, so that the gap below was effaced. Then he went back to the doorway again.

Another step came down the stairs. The woman's form joined his in the opening. The ubiquitous gardenia fragrance came back with her again. She was a little white in the face herself, with nervous tension, but there was no other sign of indecision. Townsend didn't waste much time looking her over, kept his eyes on the man.

Diedrich stabbed a hand impatiently at her coiffure, rumpled it. "Lookit your hair, like you just came out of a beauty parlor! Get a little realism into this, will you! What's the idea of the hat and coat?"

"I'm going out, you fool, to get the police! With the phone wires cut, what other way is there?"

"Yeah, but not looking like you just came out of a bandbox. We were in our beds when this guy tried to murder us. When you run out of a house for your life, to bring help, after you've just seen what you're supposed to have seen, you don't stop to put on a hat and coat!" He tried to control his fury.

"What d'you want me to do, drive down to the village naked?"

"Put on a robe over that nightgown, like I've got on me. And bring in that knife when you come back. There's something I want you to do before you go."

They were both so matter-of-fact about it. They might have been discussing what clothes to wear to a show. Well, as a matter of fact, they were.

So that was what it was going to be. A murder masquerading as a legitimate case of self-defense. Well, they had the law on their side. He was a wanted killer. Not too many questions would be asked. And Ruth would go with him, to shut her up.

She came back with a long-bladed kitchen knife, attired now in the more appropriate dishabille he had indicated.

"What d'you want this for?" Townsend thought he could detect a note of heightened nervousness in her voice. She didn't mind his committing a murder, but she didn't want to have to see it happen in front of her eyes.

"This guy's supposed to mark me up, before I drop him. I can't just get away without showing anything. You do it for me."

"For the love of--!" she gasped.

"It's gotta be done! Come on, this is no time to be finicky. As long as you don't have to show any nicks, what do you care? Just don't dig in too deep, that's all."

He tensed his forearm, like someone about to have a blood count taken. "One across there. The back of it, not the inside. Easy, now."

They did it right there standing in the doOrway. She closed in so that her back was to Townsend. He couldn't see the act itself, but he could see the man's face across her shoulder, looking absorbedly down. It twitched slightly.

"Don't close your eyes like that," he instructed coldly. "You're liable to bungle it. Now try one on the chest."

The rearward point of her elbow moved slightly.

"Whew!" He sucked in breath with the sting.

"Now a thin one across the forehead. Just with the point of it. Careful now, I don't want to have to take stitches."

That time Townsend could see the blade move. It traced an invisible line, that only reddened moments afterward. She stood back. "Hurry up, we haven't got all night."

He was blowing along the upraised side of his arm, to try to cool it. "All right, get the car out."

It was their cold-blooded matter-of-factness that lent such grisly horror to the situation. If they'd whispered, if they'd glared, if they'd leered. But they were talking it over as if she were going on an errand to the grocery store and he was promising to repair some household gadget for her while she was gone. Townsend in his time had heard more dramatic emphasis displayed about the destruction of a mouse.

They turned and went out into the hall together, stopped just short of the front door. They remained faintly audible out there for a moment or two longer, while he gave her last-minute instructions, impressed upon her what had already been arranged between them.

"It's nine-twenty now. It'll take you thirty minutes in and back, even doing sixty. -Don't bring them back under that-, whatever you do! Can I rely on you? I'm going to need a good halfhour, at least, to get rid of the portiere cords and fix them the way they should look. If you find that you've gotten to the police too fast, throw a faint or something from fright, tack on another five minutes that way. But make sure you do it -before- you tell them what's happened. Once you've told them you won't be able to control their speed getting back here. It'll be out of your hands, and those state highway cars shoot fast. Remember, -thirty minutes-. Here's the garage key."

The front door opened. Townsend heard her parting remark. "Bill, will we ever be able to sleep again?"

And he heard the sound of a kiss, and the answer that went with it. "I'll stay awake nights from now on for the two of us. You can buy a lot of sleep with a dollar sign. This is on me."

So there was love in it. Love of a sort. It hadn't been only for money that they had wanted Harry Diedrich out of the way.

The door closed. He didn't come right in again; he must have stood there waiting by it, to see that she got off in good order. Townsend could hear the hollow sound the car engine made starting up inside the garage walls. Then it thinned as 'it came out into the open, switched back and forth a little, finally opened up into an even hum and faded out down the cut off toward the highroad.

She had gone to get help--for something that hadn't happened yet. The murderer and the murdered-to-be were left alone together.

He came back along the hall, but his destination was still not this room, this execution chamber. He stopped in it a moment in passage to pick up the knife, went out with it again and on up the stairs.

He was very quiet about the whole thing. Little revealing sounds were all that came down. But then murder doesn't make much noise. First a key wrangled in a keyhole, somewhere up above. Either he was slightly nervous himself, or the aperture was balky from infrequent use.

Adela, the girl they said was insane. Kept locked in her room for years. A dollar sign, he'd said just now to Alma at the door. This Addie must be a beneficiary in the estate, insane or not. And this was her own brother, standing at the door, key in one hand, knife--probably--crouched behind his back.

The key had found its right depth and angle at last. Townsend heard the grunt the door gave in breaking away from its frame. Then Diedrich's voice, in casual, treacherous salutation from the threshold: "Still awake, Addie? I thought you'd be in bed long ago. Cook wants to know what you'd like for dessert tomor--" The door closed, cutting the rest of it off short.