A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

The Death of Me

As soon as the front door closed behind her I locked it on the inside. I’d never yet known her to go out without forgetting something and coming back for it. This was one time I wasn’t letting her in again. I undid my tie and snaked it off as I turned away. I went in the living-room and slung a couple of pillows on the floor, so I wouldn’t have to fall, could take it lying down. I got the gun out from behind the radio console where I’d hidden it and tossed it onto the pillows. She’d wondered why there was so much static all through supper. We didn’t have the price of new tubes so she must have thought it was that.

It looked more like a relic than an up-to-date model. I didn’t know much about guns; all I hoped was that he hadn’t gypped me. The only thing I was sure of was it was loaded, and that was what counted. All it had to do was go off once. I unhooked my shaving mirror from the bathroom wall and brought that out, to see what I was doing, so there wouldn’t have to be any second tries. I opened the little flap in back of it and stood it up on the floor, facing the pillows that were slated to be my bier. The movie show wouldn’t break up until eleven-thirty. That was long enough. Plenty long enough.

I went over to the desk, sat down and scrawled her a note. Nothing much, just two lines. “Sorry, old dear, too many bills” I unstrapped my wrist watch and put it on top of the note. Then I started emptying out the pockets of my baggy suit one by one.

It was one of those suits sold by the job-lot, hundreds of them all exactly alike, at seventeen or nineteen dollars a throw, and distributed around town on the backs of life’s failures. It had been carrying around hundreds of dollars — in money owed. Every pocket had its bills, its reminders, its summonses jabbed through the crack of the door by process-servers. Five days running now, I’d gotten a different summons each day. I’d quit trying to dodge them any more. I stacked them all up neatly before me. The notice from the landlord to vacate was there too. The gas had already been turned off the day before — hence the gun. Jumping from the window might have only broken my back and paralyzed me.

On top of the whole heap went the insurance policy in its blue folder. That wasn’t worth a cent either — right now. Ten minutes from now it was going to be worth ten thousand dollars. I stripped off my coat, opened the collar of my shirt and lay down on my back on the pillows.

I had to shift the mirror a little so I could see the side of my head. I picked up the gun in my right hand and flicked open the safety catch. Then I held it to my head, a little above the ear. It felt cold and hard; heavy, too. I was pushing it in more than I needed to, I guess. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and jerked the trigger with a spasmodic lunge that went all through me. The impact of the hammer jarred my whole head, and the click was magnified like something heard through a hollow tube or pipe — but that was all there was, a click. So he’d gypped me, or else the cartridges were no good and it had jammed.

It was loaded all right. I’d seen them in it myself when he broke it open for me. My arm flopped back and hit the carpet with a thud. I lay there sweating like a mule. What could have been easier than giving it another try? I couldn’t. I might as well have tried to walk on the ceiling now.

Water doesn’t reach the same boiling-point twice. A pole-vaulter doesn’t stay up in the air at his highest point more than a split second. I lay there five minutes maybe, and then when I saw it wasn’t going to be any use any more, I got up on my feet again.

I slurred on my coat, shoved the double-crossing gun into my pocket, crammed the slew of bills about my person again. I kicked the mirror and the pillows aside, strapped on my wrist watch. I’d felt sorry for myself before; now I had no use for myself. The farewell note

I crumpled up, and the insurance policy, worthless once more, I flung violently into the far comer of the room. I was still shaking a little from the effects of the let-down when I banged out of the place and started off.

I found a place where I could get a jiggerful of very bad alcohol scented with juniper for the fifteen cents I had on me. The inward shaking stopped about then, and I struck on from there, down a long gloomy thoroughfare lined with warehouses, that had railroad tracks running down the middle of it. It had a bad name, in regard to both traffic and bodily safety, but if anyone had tried to hold me up just then they probably would have lost whatever they had on them instead.

An occasional arc-light gleamed funereally at the infrequent intersections. Presently the sidewalk and the cobbles petered out, and it had narrowed into just the railroad right-of-way, between low-lying sheds and walled-in lumber yards. I found myself walking the ties, on the outside of the rails. If a train had come up behind me without warning, I would have gotten what I’d been looking for a little while ago. I stumbled over something, went down, skinned my palm on the rail. I picked myself up and looked. One had come up already it seemed, and somebody who hadn’t been looking for it had gotten it instead. His body was huddled between two of the ties, on the outside of the rail, had tripped me as I walked them. The head would have been resting on the rail itself if there had been any head left. But it had been flattened out. I was glad it was pretty dark around there; you didn’t have to see if you didn’t want to.

I would have detoured around him and notified the first cop I came to, but as I started to move away, my raised leg wasn’t very far from his stiffly outstreched one. The trouser on each matched. The same goods, the same color gray, the same cheap job-lot suit. I reached down and held the two cuffs together with one hand. You couldn’t tell them apart. I grabbed him by the ankle and hauled him a little further away from the rail. Now he was headless all right.

I unbuttoned the jacket, held it open and looked at the lining. Sure enough — same label, “Eagle Brand Clothes.” I turned the pocket inside out, and the same size was there, a 36. He was roughly my own build, as far as height and weight went. The identification tag in the coat was blank though; had no name and address on it. I got a pencil out and I printed “Walter Lynch, 35 Meadowbrook” on it, the way it was on my own.

I was beginning to shake again, but this time with excitement. I looked up and down the tracks, and then I emptied out every pocket he had on him. I stowed everything away without looking at it, then stuffed all my own bills in and around him. I slipped the key to the flat into his vest-pocket. I exchanged initialled belts with him. I even traded his package of cigarettes for mine — they weren’t the same brand. I’d come out without a necktie, but I wouldn’t have worn that howler of his to — well, a railroad accident. I edged it gingerly off the rail, where it still lay in a loop, and it came away two colors, green at the ends, the rest of it garnet. I picked up a stray scrap of newspaper, wrapped it up, and shoved it in my pocket to throw away somewhere else. Our shirts were both white, at least his had been until it happened. But anyway, all this wasn’t absolutely necessary, I figured. The papers in the pockets would be enough. They’d hardly ask anyone’s wife to look very closely at a husband in the shape this one was. Still, I wanted to do the job up brown just to be sure. I took off my wrist watch and strapped it on him. I gave him a grim salute as I left him. “They can’t kill you, boy,” I said, “you’re twins!”

I left the railroad right-of-way at the next intersection, still without seeing anybody, and struck out for downtown. I was free as air, didn’t owe anybody a cent — and in a couple weeks from now there’d be ten grand in the family. I was going back to her, of course. I wasn’t going to stay away for good. But I’d lie low first, wait till she’d collected the insurance money, then we’d powder out of town together, start over again some place else with a ten grand nest-egg.

It was a cruel stunt to try on her, but she’d live through it. A couple weeks grief was better than being broke for the rest of our lives. And if I’d let her in on it ahead of time, she wouldn’t have gone through with it. She was that kind.

I picked a one-arm restaurant and went in there. I took my meal check with me to the back and shut myself up in the washroom. I was about to have an experience that very few men outside of amnesia victims have ever had. I was about to find out who I was and where I hung out.

First I ripped the identification tag out of my own suit and sent it down the drain along with the guy’s stained necktie. Then I started unloading, and sorting out. Item one was a cheap, mangy-looking billfold. Cheap on the outside, not the inside. I counted them. Two grand in twenties, brand new ones, not a wrinkle on them. There was a rubber band around them. Well, I was going to be well-heeled while I lay low, anyway.

Item two was a key with a six-pointed brass star dangling from it. On the star was stamped “Hotel Columbia, 601.” Item three was a bill from the same hotel, made out to George Kelly, paid up a week in advance. Items four and five were a smaller key to a valise or bag, and two train tickets. One was punched and one hadn’t been used yet. One was a week old and the other had been bought that very night. He must have been on his way back with it when he was knocked down crossing the tracks. The used ticket was from Chicago here, and the one intended to be used was from here on to New York.

But “here” happened not to be in a straight line between the two, in fact it was one hell of a detour to take. All that interested me was that he’d only come to town a week ago, and had been about to haul his freight out again tomorrow or the next day. Which meant it wasn’t likely he knew anyone in town very well, so if his face had changed remarkably overnight who would be the wiser — outside of the clerk at his hotel? And a low-tipped hat-brim would take care of that.

The bill was paid up in advance, the room-key was in my pocket and I didn’t have to go near the desk on my way in. I wanted to go over there and take a look around Room 601 with the help of that other little key. Who could tell, there might be some more of those nice crisp twenties stowed away there? As long as the guy was dead anyway, I told myself, this wasn’t robbery. It was just making the most of a good thing.

I put everything back in my pockets and went outside and ordered a cup of coffee at the counter. I needed change for the phone call I was going to make before I went over there. Kelly, strangely enough, hadn’t had any small change on him; only those twenties.

I stripped one off and shoved it at the counterman. I got a dirty look. “That the smallest you got?” he growled. “Hell, you clean the till out all for a fi’ cent cup of coffee!”

“If it’s asking too much of you,” I snarled, “I can drink my coffee any other place.”

But it already had milk in it and couldn’t be put back in the boiler. He almost wore the twenty out testing it for counterfeitness, stretched it to the tearing point, held it up to the light, peered at it. Finally, unable to find anything against it, he jotted down the serial number on a piece of paper and grudgingly handed me nineteen-ninety-five out of the cash register.

I left the coffee standing there and went over to call up the Columbia Hotel from the open pay telephone on the wall. 601, of course, didn’t answer. Still he might be sharing it with someone, a woman for instance, even though the bill had been made out to him alone. I got the clerk on the wire.

“Well, is he alone there? Isn’t there anybody rooming with him I can talk to?” There wasn’t. “Has he had any callers since he’s been staying there?”

“Not that I know of,” said the clerk. “We’ve seen very little of him.” A lone wolf, eh? Perfect, as far as I was concerned.

By the time I got to the Columbia I had a hat, the brim rakishly shading the bridge of my nose. I needn’t have bothered. The clerk was all wrapped up in some girl dangling across his desk and didn’t even look up. The aged colored man who ran the creaking elevator was half blind. It was an eerie, moth-eaten sort of place, but perfect to hole up in for a week or two.

When I got out of the cage I started off in the wrong direction down the hall. “You is this heah way, boss, not that way,” the old darky reminded me.

I snapped my fingers and switched around. “Need a road map in this dump,” I scowled to cover up my mistake. He peered nearsightedly at me, closed the door, and went down. 601 was around a bend of the hall, down at the very end. I knocked first, just to be on the safe side, then let myself in. I locked the door again on the inside and wedged a chair up against the knob. This was my room now; just let anyone try to get in!

He’d traveled light, the late Kelly. Nothing there but some dirty shirts over in the corner and some clean ones in the bureau drawer. Bought right here in town too, the cellophane was still on some and the sales slip lying with them. He must have arrived without a shirt to his back.

But that small key I had belonged to something, and when I went hunting it up I found the closet door locked and the key to it missing. For a minute I thought I’d overlooked it when I was frisking him down by the tracks, but I was sure I hadn’t. The small key was definitely not the one to the closet door. It nearly fell through to the other side when I tried it. I could have called down for a passkey, but I didn’t want anyone up here. Since the key hadn’t been on him, and wasn’t in the door, he must have hidden it somewhere around the room. Meaning he thought a lot of whatever was behind that door and wasn’t taking any chances with it. I started to hunt for the key high and low.

It turned up in about an hour’s time, after I had the big rug rolled up against the wall and the bed stripped down and the mattress gashed all over with a razor blade and the whole place looking like a tornado had hit it. The funny little blur at the bottom of the inverted light-bowl overhead gave it away when I happened to look up. He’d tossed it up there before he went out.

I nearly broke my neck getting it out of the thing, had to balance on the back of a chair and tilt the bowl with my fingertips while it swayed back and forth and specks of plaster fell on my head. It occurred to me, although it was only a guess, that the way he’d intended to go about it was smash the bowl and let it drop out just before he checked out of the hotel. I fitted the key into the closet door and took a gander.

There was only a small Gladstone bag over in the corner with a hotel towel over it. Not another thing, not even a hat or a spare collar. I hauled the bag out into the room and got busy on it with the small key I’d taken from his pocket. A gun winked up at me first of all, when I got it open. Not a crummy relic like the one I’d bought that afternoon, but a brand new, efficient-looking affair, bright as a dollar. When I saw what it was lying on I tossed it aside and dumped the bag upside down on the floor, sat down next to it with a thump.

I only had to break open and count the first neat little green brick of bills, after that I just multiplied it by the rest. Twenty-one times two, very simple. Forty-two thousand dollars, in twenties; unsoiled, crisp as autumn leaves. Counting the two thousand the peculiar Mr. Kelly had been carrying around with him for pin-money, and a few loose ones papering the bottom of the bag — he’d evidently broken open one pack himself — the sum total wasn’t far from forty-five. I’d been painlessly run over and killed by a train to the tune of forty-five thousand dollars!

The ten grand insurance premium that had loomed so big a while ago dwindled to a mere bagatelle, with all this stuff lying in my lap. Something to light cigarettes with if I ran out of matches! And to think I’d nearly rung down curtains on myself for that! I could’ve hugged the chiseler that sold me that faulty gun.

But why go through with the scheme now? I had money. Let them keep the insurance. I would come back to life. It was all in cash too — good as gold wherever we went; better, gold wasn’t legal any more.

I jammed everything back into the bag, everything but the gun. That I shoved under one of the pillows. Let them find it after I was gone; it was Kelly’s anyway. I locked the bag, tossed it temporarily into the closet, and hurriedly went over his few personal belongings once more. The guy didn’t have a friend in the world seemingly. There wasn’t a scrap of writing, wasn’t a photograph, wasn’t a thing to show who or what he was. He wasn’t in his own home town, the two railroad tickets told that, so who was there to step forward and report him missing? That would have to come from the other end if at all, and it would take a long time to percolate through. My title to the dough was clear in every sense but the legal one; I’d inherited it from him. I saw now the mistake I’d made, though. I shouldn’t have switched identities with him. I should have left him as he was, just taken the key to the bag, picked up the money, gone home and kept on being Walter Lynch. No one knew he had the money. I wouldn’t have even had to duck town. This way, I was lying dead by the tracks; and if Edith powdered out with me tonight it would look funny, and would most likely lead to an investigation.

I sat down for a minute and thought it out. Then it came to me. I could still make it look on the up-and-up, but she’d have to play ball with me. This would be the set-up: she would write a note addressed to me and leave it in the flat, saying she was sick of being broke and was quitting me cold. She’d get on the train tonight — alone — and go. That would explain her disappearance and also my “suicide” down by the tracks, a result of her running off. We’d arrange where to meet in New York. I’d follow her on a different train, taking care not to be seen getting on, and using the very ticket Kelly had bought. That way I didn’t even have to run the risk of a station agent recalling my face later.

I was almost dizzy with my own brilliance; this took care of everything. My only regret was I had destroyed my own original suicide note to her. It would have been a swell finishing touch to have left it by the body. But her fake note at the flat would give the police the motive for the suicide if they were any good at putting two and two together. “And here I’ve been going around trying to convince employers I have brains!” I gloated.

She’d only just be getting back from the movie show about now. There’d be nothing to alarm her at first in my not being there. I’d taken the gun out with me and the farewell note too. But she’d turn on the lights, maybe give the radio a try, or ask one of the neighbors if they’d seen me. She mustn’t do any of those things, she was supposed to have gone long ago. I decided to warn her ahead over the phone to lie low until I got there and explained, to wait for me in the dark.

I picked up the room phone and asked for our number. It was taking a slight chance, but it was better than letting her give herself away; she might stand by the brightly-lighted window looking up and down the street for me, in full view of anyone happening along. He put through the call for me. It rang just once at our end, where she and I lived, and then was promptly answered — much quicker than Ethel ever got to it.

A deep bass voice said: “Yeah?” I nearly fainted. “Yeah? What is it?” the voice said a second time. I pulled myself together again. “I’m calling Saxony 4230,” I said impatiently. “They’ve given me the wrong num— Damn that skirt-chasing clerk downstairs.”

The answer came back, “This is Saxony 4230. What is it?” I put out one hand and leaned groggily against the table, without letting go the receiver. “Who are you?” I managed to articulate.

“I’m a patrolman,” he boomed back.

My face was getting wetter by the minute. “Wh-what’s up?” I choked.

“You a friend of the Lynches? They’ve just had a death here.” Then in the background, over and above his voice, came a woman’s screams — screams of agony from some other room, carried faintly over the wire. Blurred and distorted as they were, I recognized them; they were Ethel’s. A second feminine voice called out more distinctly, presumably to the cop I was talking to: “Get her some spirits of ammonia or something to quiet her!” One of the neighbors, called in in the emergency.

Pop! went my whole scheme, like a punctured balloon. My body had already been found down by the tracks. A cop had already broken the news to her. He and the ministering neighbor were witnesses to the fact that she hadn’t run off and left me before I did it. For that matter, the whole apartment building must be hearing her screams.

The entire set-up shifted back again into its first arrangement, and left me where I’d been before. She couldn’t leave town now, not for days, not until after the funeral anyway. The affair at the tracks was an accident once more, not a suicide. I daren’t try to get word to her now, after making her go through this. She’d either give herself away in her relief, or uncontrollable anger at finding out might make her turn on me intentionally and expose me.

“Just a friend of theirs,” I was saying, or something like that. “I’ll call up tomorrow, I guess—”

“Okay,” he said, and I heard the line click at the other end.

I forked the receiver as though it weighed a ton and slumped down next to it. It took me a little time to get my breathing back in shape. There was only one thing to do now — get out of town by myself without her. To stay on indefinitely was to invite being recognized by someone sooner or later, and the longer I stayed the greater the chances were of that happening. I’d blow to New York tonight. I’d use Kelly’s ticket, get the Flyer that passed through at midnight.

I stealthily eased the chair away from under the doorknob, picked up the bag, unlocked the door, gave it a push. As though it was wired to set off some kind of an alarm, the phone began to ring like fury just as the door swung out. I stood there thunderstruck for a minute. They’d traced my call back! Maybe Ethel had recovered enough to ask them to find out who it was, or maybe the way I’d hung up had looked suspicious. Let it ring its head off. I wasn’t going near it. I was getting out of here while the getting out was good! I hotfooted it down the hall, its shrill clamor behind me.

Just before I got to the turn in the hallway, the elevator-slide sloshed open. I stopped dead in my tracks. I could hear footsteps coming toward me along the carpet, softened to a shuffle. I hesitated for a minute, then ducked back, to wait for whoever it was to go by. I closed the door after me, stood listening by it. The bell was still ding-donging in back of me. The knock, when it came, was on my own door, and sent a quiver racing through me. I started to back away slowly across the room, bag still in my hand. The knock came again.

“What is it?” I called out.

It was the old colored man’s whine. “Mista Kelly, somebody wants you on de foam pow’ful bad. We done tole ’em you must be asleep if’n you don’t answer, but dey say wake you up. Dey say dey know you dere—”

I set the bag down noiselessly, looked at the window. No soap, six stories above the street and no fire-escape, regulations to the contrary. The damn phone kept bleating away there inside the room, nearly driving me crazy.

“Mista Kelly—” he whined again.

I pulled myself together; a voice on the phone wasn’t going to kill me. “All right,” I said curtly.

If they knew I was here, then they knew I was here. I’d bluff it out — be a friend of the late Lynch’s that his wife had never heard about. I took in a chestful of air, bent down and said, “Yep?”

The second word out of the receiver, I knew that it was no check-up on the call I’d made ten minutes ago. The voice was very cagey, almost muffled.

“Getting restless, Hogan?” I lowered my own to match it. Hogan?

First I was Lynch, then I was Kelly, now I was Hogan! But it wasn’t much trouble to figure out Kelly and Hogan wore the same pair of shoes; I’d never had much confidence in the names on hotel-blotters in the first place.

“Sorta,” I shadow-boxed. “Kelly’s the name, though.”

The voice went in for irony by the shovelful. “So we noticed,” he drawled. Meaning about my being restless, evidently, and not what my name was. “You got so restless you were figuring on taking a little trip, without waiting for your friends, is that it? Seems you even walked down to the depot, asking about trains, and bought yourself a ticket ahead of time. I had a phone call from somebody that saw you, about eight this evening. I s’pose you woulda just taken an overnight bag—” A pause. “—a little black bag, and hopped aboard.”

So others beside Kelly knew what was in that Gladstone! Nice cheering thought.

The voice remonstrated with a feline purr: “You shouldn’t be so impatient. You knew we were coming. You shoulda given us more time. We only got in late this afternoon.” Another pause. “Tire trouble on the way. We woulda felt very bad to have missed you. It woulda inconvenienced us a lot. You see, you’ve got my razor in your bag, and some shirts and socks belonging to some of the other boys. Now, we’d like to get everything sorted out before you go ahead on any little trips because, if you just go off like that without letting us know, never can tell when you’d be coming back.”

I could almost feel the threat that lurked under the slurring surface of the words flash out of the receiver into my ear like a steel blade. He was talking in code, but the code wasn’t hard to decipher; wasn’t meant to be. They wanted a split of what was in the black bag; maybe they were entitled to it, maybe they weren’t, but they sounded like they were going to get it, whoever they were. Kelly, I gathered, had been on the point of continuing his travels without waiting for that little formality — only he’d taken the back way to and from the depot to avoid being seen, had been seen anyway, and then a freight train had come along and saved him any further trouble. But since I was now Kelly, his false move had gotten me in bad and it was up to me to do the worrying for him.

I hadn’t said two words so far; hadn’t had a chance to. I already had a dim suspicion in the back of my mind about where, or rather how, all that crisp new money had been obtained. But that thought could wait until later. I had no time just now to bother with it. All I knew was there wasn’t going to be any split, big or little; just one look at my face was all they needed and I’d be left with only memories.

I had one trump-card though: they couldn’t tag me. I could walk right by them with the whole satchelful of dough and they wouldn’t know the difference. All I needed was to stall a little, to keep them from coming up here.

“You’ve got me wrong,” I murmured into the phone. “I wouldn’t think of keeping anyone’s razors or shirts or socks—”

“Can’t hear you,” he said. “Take the handkerchief off the thing, you don’t need it.” He’d noticed the difference in voices and thought I was using a filter to disguise mine.

“You do the talking,” I suggested. “It was your nickel.”

“We don’t talk so good with our mouths,” he let me know. “We talk better with other things. You know where to find us. All that was arranged, but you got a poor memory, it looks like. Check out and come on over here — with everything. Then we’ll all see you off on the train, after everything’s straightened out.”

Another of those threats flashed out. I sensed instinctively what Kelly’s “seeing off’ would be like if he had been fool enough to go near them at this point. He was in too bad to redeem himself. He’d never make that New York train standing on his own feet.

“How soon you want me to be over?” I stalled.

The purr left the voice at this point. “We’ll give you thirty minutes.” Then, while the fact that a net was closing in on me slowly sank in, he went on: “I wouldn’t try to make the depot without stopping by here first. Couple of the boys are hanging around there in the car. They like to watch people get off the trains. They like to watch them get off much better than they like to watch ’em get on, funny isn’t it?”

“Yeah, funny,” I agreed dismally.

“You’re in 601, over at that dump,” he told me. “You can see the street from there. Step over to the window for a minute, I’ll hold the wire—” I put down the receiver, edged up to the window, took a tuck in the dusty net curtains and peered down. It was a side-street, not the one the hotel entrance faced on. But at the corner, which commanded both the window and the entrance, a negligent figure slouched under the white sputtering arc-light, hat-brim down, idly scanning a newspaper. While I watched he raised his head, saw me with the light behind me, stared straight up at the window. Unmistakably my window and no other. I let the curtains spread out again, went back to the phone.

“Like the view?” the voice at the other end suggested. “Nice quiet street, hardly anyone on it, right?”

“Nice quiet street, hardly anyone on it,” I intoned dazedly.

“Then we’ll be seeing you in — twenty-five minutes now.” The line clicked closed, but not quickly enough to cut off a smothered monosyllable. “Rat,” it had sounded like. It wouldn’t have surprised me if it was, old-fashioned and overworked as the expression was.

All of which left me pretty well holed-in. I knew the penalty now for trying to get on the New York train, or any other. I knew the penalty for simply walking away from the hotel in the wrong direction. I knew the penalty for everything in fact but one thing — for staying exactly where I was and not budging.

And what else could that be but a little surprise visit on their part, preferably in the early morning hours? This place was a pushover with just a night clerk and an old myopic colored man. I certainly couldn’t afford to call in police protection beforehand any more than the real Kelly could have.

There was always the alternative of dropping the bag out the window and letting that finger-man out there pick it up and walk off with it intact, but I wasn’t quite yellow enough to go for that idea. Forty-five grand was forty-five grand; why should a voice on the wire and a lizard on a street corner dish me out of it? The postman may knock twice, but not Opportunity.

The obvious thing was to get out of 601 in a hurry. I split the phone for the third time that night. “This is Kelly, six-one. I’d like my room changed. Can you gimme an inside room on the top floor?”

The broad I’d seen him with must have put him in good humor. “That shouldn’t be hard,” he said. “I’ll send the key up.”

“Here’s the idea,” I went on. “I want this transfer kept strictly between you and me, I don’t want it on the blotter. Anyone stops by, I’m in 601 as far as you know. They don’t find me there, then I’m not in the building.”

“I don’t see how I can do that, we’ve got to keep the record straight,” he said for a come-on.

“I’m sending a sealed envelope down to you,” I said. “You open it personally. I’ll keep 601—keep paying for it — if that’ll make it easier for you. I’m in a little personal trouble, wife after me. Don’t want any callers. You play along with me and you won’t come out the short end. Send Rastus up with the key.”

“I’m your man,” he said. When the old darky knocked I left the black bag in the closet, locked 601 after me and took the key with me. The lights were out and he didn’t notice the dummy I’d formed out of Kelly’s shirts under the bedding. Nor the bulge all those packages of twenties gave my person. The bag was full of toilet-paper to give it the right weight if snatched up in a hurry. They wouldn’t be likely to show their faces a second time after filling a perfectly good mattress with lead in the middle of the night and rousing the whole hotel. Kelly’s dandy little gun I took with me.

He showed me into a place on the eighth floor back with a window that looked out on a blank brick shaft, and I had him wait outside the door for a minute. I put three of the twenties into an envelope, sealed it for the clerk, and told him to take it down to him.

“Yessa, Mr. Kelly,” he bobbed.

“No, Mr. Kelly’s down in 601, there’s no one in this room,” I told him, and I gave him a twenty for himself. “You ask your boss downstairs if you don’t believe me. He’ll put you right. You didn’t show me up here; this is so you remember that.” His eyes bulged when he looked at the tip.

“Yas, sir!” he yammered.

I locked the door, but didn’t bother with any mere chair this time. I sealed it up with a big top-heavy chest of drawers that weighed a ton. The room had its own bath. I stretched out on the bed fully dressed with the money still on me and the gun under my pillow and lay there in the dark waiting.

I didn’t have such a long wait at that. The firecrackers went off at about three in the morning. I could hear it plainly two floors above, where I was. It sounded like the guts were being blown out of the building. The shots came so close together I couldn’t count them; there must have been three or four revolvers being emptied at one time. All into Kelly’s rolled-up shirts, in the dark.

The whole thing was over within five minutes, less than that. Then, minutes after, like one last firecracker on the string going off, there came a single shot, much further away this time. It sounded as though it came from the lobby — either a cop had tried to head them off, or they’d taken care of the clerk on their way out.

The keening of police-cars, whistling up from all directions at once, jerked me upright on the bed. I hadn’t thought of that. They’d want to know what all the shooting was for. They’d want to ask the guy who’d been in 601 a lot of questions, especially after they saw the proxy he’d left on the bed to take his medicine for him. They’d want to know why and wherefore, and how come all that money, and the nice shiny gun, was it licensed? Lots and lots of questions, that Kelly-Hogan-Lynch was in no position to answer.

It behooved me to dodge them every bit as much as my would-be murderers. It was out for me. Now was the time for it anyway. Kelly’s friends would lie low until the police had cleared away. It was now or never, while the police cars were keeping them away.

I rolled the chest of drawers aside, unlocked the door, and squinted out. The building was humming with sounds and voices. I went back for the gun, laid it flat against my stomach under my shirt, with my belt to hold it up, buttoned my coat over it and started down the hall. An old maid opened her door and gawked. “Wha — what was that down below just now?”

“Backfiring in the street,” I said reassuringly, and she jumped in again.

The elevator was just rising flush with the floor. I could see the light and I had an idea who was on it. I dove down the fireproof stairs next to it, which were screened by frosted-glass doors on each floor.

When I got down to the sixth, there was a shadow parked just outside them, on the hall side. A shadow wearing a visored cap. There

was no light on my side. The lower half of the doors was wood. I bent double, slithered past without blurring the upper glass half, and pussyfooted on down.

The other four landings were unguarded as yet. The staircase came out in the rear of the lobby, behind a potted plant. The lobby was jammed, people in bathrobes and kimonos milling about, reporters barging in and out the two rickety phone booths the place boasted, plainclothesmen and a cop keeping a space in front of the desk clear.

Over the desk, head hanging down on the outside, dangled the clerk, showing his baldspot like a target, with a purple-black sworl in the exact middle of it. Outside the door was another cop, visible from where I was. I took the final all-important step that carried me off the staircase into the crowd. Someone turned around and saw me. “What happened?” I asked, and kept moving.

A press photographer was trying to wedge himself into one of the narrow coffin-like booths ahead of two or three others; evidently he doubled as a reporter, newspaper budgets being what they are. He unlimbered the black apparatus that was impeding him, shoved it at me.

“Hold this for me a sec,” he said, and turned to the phone and dropped his nickel in. I kept moving toward the door, strapped the camera around my own shoulder as I went and breezed out past the cop in a typical journalistic hurry.

“Hey, you!” he said, then: “Okay; take one of me, why don’tcha?”

“Bust the camera,” I kidded back. I unloaded it into an ashcan the minute I got around the corner, and kept going.

I was all the way across town from the Columbia when the first streak of dawn showed. The gun and the packs of twenties were both weighing me down, and I was at the mercy of the first patrolman who didn’t like my shape. But this was no time of night to check in at a second hotel. The last train in or out had been at midnight and the next was at seven. I had never realized until now how tough it was getting out of a town at odd hours — especially when you were two guys, neither one of whom could afford to be recognized. I had no car. A long-distance ride in a taxi would have been a dead giveaway; the driver would only have come back and shot his mouth off. To start off on foot wasn’t the answer either. Every passing car whose headlights flicked me stemming the highway would be a possible source of information against me later.

All I needed was just about an hour — hour and a half — until I could get that New York train. Kelly’s friends might still be covering the station, police or no police, but how were they going to pick me out in broad daylight? I certainly wasn’t wearing Kelly’s face, even if I was wearing his clothes. But the station waiting-room was too conspicuous a spot. The way to do it was hop on at the last minute when the train was already under way.

I saw a light through plate glass, and went into another of those all-night beaneries; sitting mum in there was a shade less risky than roaming the streets until I was picked up. I went as far to the back as I could, got behind a bend in the wall, and ordered everything in sight to give myself an excuse for staying awhile. It was all I could do to swallow the stuff, but just as I had about cleaned it up and had no more alibi left, a kid came in selling the early morning editions. I grabbed one and buried my nose in it.

It was a good thing I’d bought it. What I read once more changed the crazy pattern of my plans that I was trying to follow through like a man caught in a maze.

I was on the last page, just two or three lines buried in the middle of a column of assorted mishaps that had taken place during the previous twenty-four hours. I’d been found dead on the tracks. I was thirty-three, unemployed, and lived at 35 Meadowbrook. And that was that.

But the murder at the Columbia Hotel was splashed across page one. And Mr. George Kelly was very badly wanted by the police for questioning, not only about who his callers had been so they could be nailed for killing the clerk, but also about brand new twenty-dollar bills that had been popping up all over town for the past week or more. There might be some connection, the police seemed to feel, with a certain bank robbery in Omaha. Kelly might be someone named Hogan, and Hogan had been very badly wanted for a long time. Then again Kelly might not be. The descriptions of the twenty dollar bill spendthrift that were coming in didn’t always tally, but the serial numbers on his money all checked with the list that had been sent out by the bank.

The picture of Kelly given by a haberdashery clerk who had sold him shirts and by the station-agent who had sold him a ticket to New York didn’t quite line up with that given by the elevator boy at the hotel nor a coffee pot counterman who’d sold him java he hadn’t drunk — except that they all agreed he was wearing a light-gray suit.

The colored man’s description, being the most recent and detailed, was given more credence than the others; he had rubbed elbows with Kelly night and day for a week. It was, naturally, my own and not the other Kelly’s. He was just senile enough and frightened enough not to remember that I had looked different the first six days of the week from what I had the seventh, nutty as it seems.

And then at the tag end, this: all the trains were being watched and all the cars leaving town were being stopped on the highway and searched.

So I was staying in town and liking it; or to be more exact, staying, like it or not. A stationery store across from the lunchroom opened up at eight, and I ducked in there and bought a light tan briefcase. The storekeeper wasn’t very well up on his newspaper reading, there wasn’t any fuss raised about the twenty I paid for it with, any more than there had been in the eating place I’d just left. But the net was tightening around me all the time. I knew it yet I couldn’t do anything about it. I’d just presented them with two more witnesses to help identify me. I sent him into the back room looking for something I didn’t want, and got the money into the briefcase; it didn’t take more than a minute. The gun I had to leave where it was. I patted myself flat and walked out.

There was a respectable-looking family hotel on the next block. I had to get off the streets in a hurry, so I went in there, and they sold a room to James Harper. My baggage was coming later, I explained. Yes, I was new in town. Just as I was stepping into the elevator ahead of the bellhop, someone in horn-rimmed glasses brushed by me getting off. I could feel him turning around to look after me, but he wasn’t anyone that I knew, so I figured I must have jostled him going by.

I locked my new door, shoved the briefcase under the mattress, and lay down on top of it. I hadn’t had any sleep since two nights before. Just as I was fading out there was a slight tap at the door. I jacked myself upright and reached for the gun. The tap came again, very genteel, very apologetic. “Who is it?” I grated.

“Mr. Harper?” said an unctuous voice.

That was my name, or supposed to be. I went up close to the door and said, “Well?”

“Can I see you for a minute?”

“What about?” I switched a chair over, pivoted up on it, and peered over the transom, which was open an inch or two. The man with glasses who’d been in the lobby a few minutes ago was standing there. I could see the whole hall. There wasn’t anyone else in it. I jumped down again, pushed the chair back, hesitated for a minute, then turned the key and faced him.

“Harper’s the name, all right,” I said, “but I think you’ve got your wires crossed, haven’t you? I don’t know you.”

“Mr. Harper, I represent the Gibraltar Life Insurance Company, here in town. Being a new arrival here, I don’t know whether you’ve heard of us or not—” I certainly had. Ethel had ten thousand coming to her from them. He was way past the door by now. I closed it after him, and quietly locked him in the room with me. He was gushing sales talk. My eyes never left his face.

“No, no insurance,” I said. “I never have and never will. Don’t believe in it, and what’s more I can’t afford it—”

“There’s where you’re wrong,” he said briskly. “Let me just give you an instance. There was a man in this town named Lynch—” I stiffened and hooked my thumb into the waistband of my trousers, that way it was near the opening of my shirt. He continued. “He was broke, without a job, down on his luck — but he did have insurance. He met with an accident.” He spread his hands triumphantly. “His wife gets ten thousand dollars.” Then very slowly, “As soon as we’re convinced, of course, that he’s dead.” Smack, between the eyes!

“Did you sell him his policy?” I tried to remember what the salesman who’d sold me mine looked like. I was quivering inside like a vibrator.

“No,” he said, “I’m just an investigator for the company, but I was present when he took his examination.”

“Then, if you’re an investigator,” I said brittlely, “how can you sell me one?”

“I’ll be frank with you,” he said with a cold smile. “I’m up here mainly to protect the company’s interests. There’s a remarkable resemblance between you and this Lynch, Mr. Harper. In fact, downstairs just now I thought I was seeing a ghost. Now don’t take offense, but we have to be careful what we’re doing. I may be mistaken of course, but I have a very good memory for faces. You can establish your own identity, I suppose?”

“Sure,” I said truculently, “but I’m not going to. What’s all this got to do with me anyway?”

“Nothing,” he admitted glibly. “Of course this widow of his is in desperate need, and it will hold up the payment to her indefinitely, that’s all. In fact until I’m satisfied beyond the shadow of a doubt that there hasn’t been any — slipup.”

“What’ll it take to do that?”

“Simply your word for it, that you are not Walter Lynch. It’s just one of those coincidences, that’s all.”

“If that’s all you want, you’ve got it. Take my word for it, I’m not.” I tried to laugh as if the whole thing were preposterous.

“Would you put that in writing for me?” he said. “Just so my conscience will be clear, just so I can protect myself if the company says anything later. After all, it’s my bread and butter—”

I pulled out a sheet of hotel stationery. “What’s the catch in this?” I asked.

His eyes widened innocently. “Nothing. You don’t have to put your signature in full if that’s what’s worrying you. Just initial it. ‘I am not Walter Lynch, signed J. H.’ It will avoid the necessity for a more thorough investigation by the company—”

I scrawled it out and gave it to him. He blotted it, folded it, and tore off a strip before he tucked it in his wallet.

“Don’t need the second half of the sheet,” he murmured. He moved toward the door. “Well, I’ll trot down to the office,” he said. “Sorry I can’t interest you in a policy.” He turned the key without seeming to notice that the door had been locked, went out into the hall.

I pounced on the strips of paper he’d let fall. There were two of them. “I am not—” was on one and “J.H.” on the other. I’d fallen for him. He had my own original signature, standing by itself now, to compare with the one on file. He suspected who I was!

I ran out after him. The elevator was just going down. I rang for it like blazes, but it wouldn’t come back. I chased back to the room, got the briefcase, and trooped down the stairs. When I came out into the lobby he’d disappeared. I darted out into the street and looked both ways. No sign of him. He must have gone back to his own room for a minute. Just as I was turning to go in again, out he came. He seemed surprised to see me, then covered it by saying, “If you ever change your mind, let me know.”

“I have,” I said abruptly. “I think I will take out a policy after all. That your car?”

His eyes lighted up. “Good!” he said. “Step in. I’ll ride you down to the office myself, turn you over to our ace salesman.” I knew what he was thinking, that the salesman could back him up in his identification of me.

I got in next to him. When the first light stopped him I had the gun out against his ribs, under my left arm.

“You don’t need to wait for that,” I said. “Turn up the other way, we’re lighting out. Argue about it and I’ll give it to you right here in the car.”

He shuddered a little and then gave the wheel a turn. He didn’t say anything.

“Don’t look so hard at the next traffic cop you pass,” I warned him once. When we got out of the business district, I said: “Take one hand off the wheel and haul that signature out of your wallet.” I rolled it up with one hand, chewed it to a pulp, and spit it out in little soggy pieces. He was sweating a little. I was too, but not as much.

“What’s it going to be?” he quavered. “I’ve got a wife and kids—”

“You’ll get back to ’em,” I reassured him, “but you’ll be a little late, that’s all. You’re going to clear me out of town. I’ll turn you back alone.”

He gave a sigh of relief. “All right,” he said. “I’ll do whatever you say.”

“Can you drive without your glasses?” He took them off and handed them to me and I put them on. I could hardly see anything at first. I took off the light-gray coat and changed that with him too. The briefcase on my lap covered my trousers from above and the car door from the side.

“If we’re stopped and asked any questions,” I said, “one wrong word out of you and I’ll give it to you right under their noses, state police or no state police.”

He just nodded, completely buffaloed.

The suburbs petered out and we hit open country. We weren’t, newspapers to the contrary, stopped. A motorcycle cop passed us coming into town; he just glanced in as he went by, didn’t look back. I watched him in the mirror until he was gone. Twenty miles out we left the main highway and took a side road, with fewer cars on it. About ten minutes later his machine started to buck.

“I’m running out of gas,” he said.

“See if you can make that clump of trees over there,” I barked. “Get off the road and into it. Then you can start back for gas on foot and I’ll light out.”

He swerved off the road, bumped across grassy ground and came to a stop on the other side of the trees. He cut the engine and we both got out.

“All right,” I said, “now remember what I told you, keep your mouth shut. Go ahead, never mind watching me.”

I stood with one elbow on the car door and one leg on the running-board. He turned and started shuffling off through the knee-deep grass. I let him get about five yards away and then I shot him three times in the head. He fell and you couldn’t see him in the grass, just a sort of hole there where it was pressed down. I looked around and there wasn’t anyone in sight on the road, so I went up to him and gave him another one right up against his ear to make sure.

I got back in the car and started it. He’d lied about the gas; I saw that by looking at his tank-meter. It was running low, but there was enough left to get back on the road again and make the next filling station.

When I’d filled up, an attendant took the twenty inside with him and stayed in there longer than I liked. I sounded the horn and he came running out.

“I can’t make change,” he said.

“Well, keep it then!” I snapped and roared away.

I met the cops that his phone call had tipped off about ten minutes later, coming toward me not after me. Five of them — too many to buck. I’d thrown the gun away after leaving the gas-station, and I was sitting on the briefcase. I braked and sat there looking innocently surprised.

“Driver’s license?” they said. I had the insurance fellow’s in the coat I was wearing.

“Left it home,” I said.

They came over and frisked me, and then one of them took it out of my pocket. “No, you didn’t,” he said, “but it’s got the wrong guy’s description on it. Get out a minute.”

I had to. Two of them had guns out.

“Your coat don’t match your trousers,” he said dryly. “And you ought to go back to the optician and see about those glasses. Both side-pieces stick out about three inches in back of your ears.” Then he picked up the briefcase and said, “Isn’t it uncomfortable sitting this way?” He opened it, looked in. “Yeah,” he said, “Hogan,” and we started back to town, one of them riding with me with my wrist linked to his. The filling-station fellow said, “Yep, that’s him,” and we kept going.

“I’m Walter Lynch,” I said. “The real Hogan died down by the tracks. I took the money from his room, that’s all — changed places with him. Maybe I can go to jail for that, but you can’t pin a murder rap on me. My wife will identify me. Take me over to 35 Meadow-brook, she’ll tell you who I am!”

“Better pick a live one,” he said. “She jumped out a window early this morning — went crazy with grief, I guess. Don’t you read the papers?”

When we got to the clump of trees, they’d found the insurance guy already. I could see some of them standing around the body. A detective came over and said, “The great Hogan at last, eh?”

“I’m Walter Lynch,” I said.

The detective said, “That saves me a good deal of trouble. That insurance guy, lying out there now, put in a call to his office just before he left his hotel — something about a guy named Lynch trying to pull a fast one on the company. When he didn’t show up they notified us.” He got in. “I’ll ride back with you,” he said.

I didn’t say anything any more after that. If I let them think I was Hogan, I went up for murder. If I succeeded in proving I was Lynch, I went up for murder anyway. As the detective put it on the way to town, “Make up your mind who you wanna be — either way y’gonna sit down on a couple thousand volts.”