The Long Night

by
HARTLEY HOWARD

This book was written for my wife—through whom I shall always be in debt.

CHAPTER I LADY ON THE PHONE

CHAPTER II ASCENT TO OBLIVION

CHAPTER III AWAKE TO MURDER

CHAPTER IV THE LONG NIGHT

CHAPTER V A KIND OF LOUSE

CHAPTER VI BEAUTY IN THE PARLOUR

CHAPTER VII THE DEAD CAN LAUGH

CHAPTER VIII ODD MAN OUT

CHAPTER IX EVEN MORE ODD

CHAPTER X GUN UNDER THE PILLOW

CHAPTER XI STRANGE ENCOUNTER

CHAPTER XII THE SILVER PEACOCK

CHAPTER XIII NOTHING EXPLAINS ANYTHING

CHAPTER XIV STRYCHNINE IS MORE PERMANENT

CHAPTER XV A DARN FUNNY BUSINESS

CHAPTER XVI TWO BOTTLES OF RYE

CHAPTER XVII ONLY FOOLS PAY

CHAPTER XVIII IN CASE OF ACCIDENT

CHAPTER XIX INVITATION TO A RIDE

CHAPTER XX WHEN YOU PLAY WITH FIRE

CHAPTER XXI THE CORPSE MIGHT DIE

CHAPTER XXII INTO THE PIT

CHAPTER XXIII “SEE YOU IN HELL. . .”

CHAPTER XXIV THE LOVELY HANDS OF DEATH

The Voice on the phone was a honeyed, velvet voice with a faint slur that might've been due to the bottle. Any other time of the day, I'd have called it the soft-fingers-stroking-the-short-hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck kind of voice. But not at two a.m. And my bedside clock said it was two a.m.

I tilted the shade of the reading lamp so the light wouldn't shine in my eyes and I found a more comfortable position for my elbow. By that time I was wide awake. I said. “You sure you got the right number?”

She made a little, husky sound in her throat that could've been a laugh. In the same drawling tone, she said, “Sure I'm sure. You're Glenn Bowman . . . aren't you?”

“Yes,” I said. “But that doesn't explain why you should call me at two o'clock in the morning to say ‘Hello, darling!' Should I know you?”

“That all depends. Would you like to?” She was still laughing at me.

“Look,” I said. “If this is a gag, only one of us is enjoying it.”

“You disappoint me . . . darling. Do you always wake up in an irritable mood?”

“When I'm wakened from a sound sleep just to listen to a load of double-talk, what do you expect me to be but irritable? Who are you, anyway?”

“I'm Judith Walker,” she said. And she said it as if that explained everything.

“I don't know any Judith Walker,” I told her. “Do you mind telling me what you want?”

She didn't answer straight off. My clock ticked away ten seconds before she said, “I'm sorry you feel like that. I just wanted to talk with you . . . but I can see it was a mistake.” Her voice was still cool velvet but it had lost the drawl. I got the idea she was sorry.

“Talk about what?” I said.

Another ten seconds went by. Then she said, “Oh, nothing particular. I couldn't sleep—that was all. I thought . . . but it doesn't matter. Good night.”

“Hold it,” I said. “I don't get any of this. Why pick on me to share your insomnia? There are eight million people in New York. Why make it my lucky night?”

“Because”—she sounded farther away from the phone—“I saw you somewhere . . . once. And you looked as if you might . . . oh, it was all very silly of me. Please forget it. And good night again.”

“There's nothing to forget,” I said. “I was half asleep and I didn't understand.”

“Do you understand better now?”

“Sure. You stayed up drinking instead of going to bed. And when you got sick of the bottle, you thought you'd like to cry out your troubles on somebody else's shoulder and you chose mine.”

“How'd you know I've got any troubles?”

“To-morrow, when you think things over,” I said, “you'll realise what a silly question that is. We've all got our troubles. Only some of us don't let them keep us awake nights.”

With the careful articulation of the well stewed, she said, “Psycho-analysis by remote control . . . what's wrong with a girl trying to drown her sorrows?”

“Most times, liquor only irrigates them,” I told her. “That's what's wrong.”

She laughed unsteadily. She said, “There's mamma's clever boy. Wish I'd got to know you before.”

“Before when?”

“Before it was too late.” In a thick tone overlaid with impatience, she added, “And for Pete's sake, don't pull any cracks about it never being too late. I know better.”

I said, “Any dame who hits the bottle the way you've been doing doesn't know anything. What you needed was a couple of phenobarbs.”

“What I need is another drink. Just one more for the road.”

“Come morning,” I said, “and you'll be singing the booze blues, sister. You're going to have a head as big as a freight car.”

“For me”—she took plenty of time and she delivered each word like she didn't want to part with it—” there won't be any to-morrow.”

A flurry of rain pattered on my bedroom window and the panes rattled in a sudden gust of wind. The draught that seeped across the bed was cold. I said, “What's that supposed to mean—if it means anything?”

“D'you want me to spell it out for you?” Now her voice had gone distant again and I could just hear her.

“You wouldn't be that crazy,” I said.

“What's crazy about taking a friendly guy's advice? You told me I ought to have taken a couple of phenobarb . . . good for putting a girl to sleep . . . and I wanna sleep . . . a nice long sleep . . . jus' go on sleeping . . . and sleeping——” She broke off and I got the idea she was giving her elbow some more exercise. Then she mumbled, “Funny . . . isn't it? Go on drinking long enough and you get sober again . . . I do' wanna be sober . . . 'n I do' wanna talk any more, either . . . should never have called you. . . . If you do' mind I'll let you go back to bed . . . 'n thanks for everything.”

“How do you expect me to be able to sleep?” I said. “Once I'm wakened, I stop awake the rest of the night. And I've run right out of phenobarb.”

“Sorry about that . . . but whadayou expect me to do?”

“Well, you started this. You can't walk out on me now. Why don't we get together and share that bottle you got?”

“Don' be silly. You'd be the one who was crazy if you came all the way out here jus' for the sake of a drink.”

“Maybe I like being crazy. And maybe I like the sound of your voice. You can't sleep and I can't sleep. Any reason why we shouldn't entertain each other?”

“But—you don't know me.” She came closer to the phone and I could almost smell her breath.

“That's easily remedied,” I said.

She went quiet for a while. The line frizzled and made tiny piping noises in the far distance while I waited. Outside my window, another gust of wind flung the rain against the glass in a brief tattoo. The draught from under the door was giving me goose-pimples.

Then she said, “What good would it do?”

“Let's find out. You never know what you might like until you try it.”

“Does that include a screwy dame?”

“All dames are screwy,” I said. “If they weren't, none of them would have any time for guys like me.”

“You don't mean that. You're just trying to talk me into letting you come up here. And I won't let you. Whadaya think you've got that'd make me change my mind?”

“I'm the guy you called darling,” I said. “I liked that, The way you said it made me feel good. Maybe you'd say it again when you got to know me better.”

“That wasn't me,” she said. “That was the rye. And you don't even know what I look like.”

“I'll take a chance. A guy oughtn't to be too choosy at a quarter after two in the morning. I think you've got a kind heart.”

The phone took some more time out for meditation. When she spoke again, she sounded like she was trying to talk through the cork. She said, “In case you're thinking what I'm thinking, you can forget it. My kind heart won't get you anywhere.”

“Supposing you're a thought-reader,” I said. “Just supposing . . . what have you got to worry about? You can't take it with you . . . can you?”

Without any hesitation, she said, “I see what you meant by ‘entertaining each other.' And it's no dice, brother. I'd rather not spend the rest of my time wrestling with a gorilla.”

“No one's asking you to. We were just supposing.”

“O.K. Then why d'you wanna come here?”

“When we've had a little drink and a little chat,” I said, “and I'm a couple of hours nearer breakfast-time, I'll leave you to kiss yourself good-bye with phenobarb or any other kind of one-way ticket. It's no skin off my nose whether you wake up in the morning or not. You sound old enough to know your own mind.”

In a small voice, she said, “I am old enough. I'm twenty-eight. It was my birthday yesterday. That's funny too, isn't it?”

“Very funny,” I said. “Many happy returns.”

For a long half-minute, she didn't make a sound. Then I heard her crying.

Any time a dame goes on a tear jag when I'm around, I stand well back so I won't get my feet wet. They don't want consoling. All they need is peace and quiet and the loan of a big handkerchief. An uninterrupted bout of the weeps does a woman more good than a blood-transfusion.

So I acted like I wasn't there while she went on making little whimpering noises as if she'd just celebrated her eighth birthday instead of her twenty-eighth. Only celebrated wasn't the right word.

And I passed the time wondering what she'd done that gave her such a yen to put herself under glass. Or what somebody else had done to her. And if Judith Walker was her real name or a phony. And why she had called me in the middle of the night. Maybe she hadn't meant to tell me she was going to take the Dutch cure; maybe it had been forced out of her. People say you only do a thing like that when you don't talk about it. At least, that's what they say. Me, I wouldn't know.

By then she had quietened down to a muffled sobbing and an occasional sniffle. I went on waiting and wondering.

At last she said, “Why didn't you hang up on me?”

“Because you haven't given me your address yet.” I hunched deeper into my pyramid of bedclothes and asked myself what the hell it had to do with me if some wacky female wanted to put an end to her misery. This town's full of dames who are sick of their lives for one reason or another. Most times it's for just that one reason.

She said, “There's no future in it for you.”

I said, “There's no future in an overdose of phenobarb, either. Let's face our no future together for an hour or two. Then I'll leave you to your date with the icebox. What d'you say?”

Her hesitation didn't last long. In a tone that had no feeling, she said, “I think it would be very easy to hate you. . . .”

“So I've often been told,” I said. “Give me your address and I'll make it easier still . . . if you aren't scared.”

“Why should I be scared? . . . My apartment's at 621
Gifford Street off Third Avenue . . . but I don't believe you'll come.”

“Don't bet on it, Judith. Why else should I want your address?”

“To give to the police soon's I ring off . . . and don't say you haven't already thought of it.”

“Sure I have. But I gave up the idea of calling copper when you told me your age.”

“Why?”

“The crew of a prowl car would spoil the kind of birthday party I've got in mind,” I said.

She retired into herself again for a while. Then she said doubtfully, “I wish I could believe you.”

“You can. At this hour of the morning, I'm not a very good liar.”