Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 14, No. 71, October 1949

Blind Date{Copyright, 1935, by Cornell Woolrich} by Cornell Woolrich

Larry didn’t even know his father was in the house until he met him coming down the stairs. It was a little after five and he’d just come in from the beach. “Hello Dad,” he said and held his hand out in welcome. “You didn’t tell us you were coming down from New York tonight!” Then he said: “Gee, you look white! Been working too hard?”

Larry idolized his father and worried continually about the way he kept slaving to provide for and indulge his family. Not that they weren’t comfortably well off now — but the doctor had told the elder Weeks that with that heart of his it was only a matter of months now.

Mr. Weeks didn’t answer, nor did he take his son’s outstretched hand. Instead he sat down suddenly in the middle of the staircase and hid his face behind his own hands. “Don’t go upstairs, kid!” he groaned hollowly.

Larry did just the opposite. His own face grown white in dread premonition, he leaped past his father and ran on up. He turned down the cottage’s short upper hallway and threw open the door at the end of it and looked in. It was the first room he’d come to. It was the right room.

She lay partly across the bed with her head hanging down above the floor and her light brown hair sweeping the carpet. One arm was twisted behind her back; the other one flailed out stiff and straight, reaching desperately for the help that had never come. She was his father’s wife, Larry’s stepmother. The dread he had felt on the stairs became a certainty now as he looked in. He had expected something like this sooner or later.

He turned her over, lifted her up, tried to rouse her by shaking her, by working her lower jaw back and forth with his hand. It was too late. Her eyes stared at him unblinkingly, her head rolled around like a rubber ball. Her neck had been broken. There were livid purple marks on her throat where fingers had pressed inward.

Larry let her drop back again like a rag doll, left the room and closed the door behind him. He stumbled down the hall to the head of the stairs. His father was still sitting there halfway down, his head bowed low over his knees. Larry slumped down beside him. After a while he put one hand on his father’s shoulder, then let it slip off again. “I’m with you,” he said.

His father lifted his head. “She gone?”

Larry nodded.

“I know she must be,” his father said. “I heard it crack.” He shuddered and covered his ears, as though he were afraid of hearing it over again.

“She asked for it and she got it,” Larry remarked bitterly.

His father looked up sharply. “You knew?”

“All the time. He used to come down weekends and she’d meet him at the Berkeley-Carteret.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“She was your wife,” Larry said. “Wouldn’t I have looked great.”

On a little table down at the foot of the stairs the telephone started to ring, and they both stiffened and their pale faces grew even paler. They turned and looked at each other without a word while it went on shattering the ominous stillness of the house.

“I’ll get it,” Larry said suddenly. “I know all the answers.” He got up and went down to it, while his father gazed after him fearfully. He waited a minute to brace himself, then swiftly unhooked the receiver. “Hello,” he said tensely. Then with a quick let-down of relief, “No, she hasn’t come back from the beach yet.” He exchanged a glance with his father, halfway up the stairs. “Why don’t you pick her up there instead of calling for her here at the house? You know where to find her. She won’t be back for hours yet, and you’d only have to hang around here waiting.” Then he added: “No, I don’t mean to be inhospitable, only I thought it would save time. ’Bye.” He puffed his cheeks and blew out his breath with relief as he hung up. A couple of crystal drops oozed out on his forehead. “Helen’s boy-friend,” he said, turning to the man on the stairs. Helen was his sister. “If he does what I told him, it’ll give us a couple of hours at least.”

The older man spoke without his lifting his head at all. “What’s the use? Better phone the police and get it over with.”

Larry said: “No.” Then he yelled it at the top of his voice. “No, I tell you! You’re my father — I can’t, I won’t let you! She wasn’t worth your life! You know what the doctors said. You haven’t much time anyway — Oh, God!” He went close and jabbed his knee at Weeks to bring him to. “Pull yourself together. We’ve got to get her out of here. I don’t care where it happened, only it didn’t happen here — it happened some place else.”

Twenty-one years of energy pulled forty-two years of apathy to its feet by the shoulders. “You— you were in New York. You are in New York right now, do you get me? You didn’t come down here, just as none of us expected you to.” He began to shake his father, to help the words and the idea that was behind them to sink in. “Did anyone see you on the train, at the depot just now, or coming into the house? Anyone who knows you by sight?”

Weeks ran his hand across his forehead, “Coming in, no,” he said. “The street was dead, they were all down at the beach or on the boardwalk. The depot I’m not sure about, some of the redcaps might know me by sight—”

“But they only see you one day every week. They might get mixed up after a day or two in remembering just the exact day. We gotta take a chance. And make sure they see you tomorrow when you do come down, that’ll cover today. Talk to one of them, lose something, stumble and get helped up, anything at all. Now about the train. The conductor must know you by sight—”

Weeks’ face brightened all of a sudden, as the idea began to catch on, take hold of him. The self-preservation instinct isn’t easily suppressed. He grasped his son by the lapel of his coat. “Larry,” he said eagerly, “I just remembered — my commutation ticket—”

Larry’s face paled again. “And I,” he groaned, “forgot all about that. The data’ll be punched — we can’t get around that—”

“No, wait a minute. Just today — something that never happened before all summer — my mind was haywire I guess on account of what I’d found out — but when I got to Penn Station I found I didn’t have it with me, I’d left it at the office. I had to buy an ordinary ticket to get down here—”

“Then it’s a push-over!” exclaimed Larry. “It’s a Godsend. It’d be a crime not to take advantage of a break like that. Doesn’t it convince you what the best thing to do is? If I were superstitious I’d call it—” He stopped short. “Wait a minute, round-trip I hope? Or will you have to step up and buy a return ticket at this end?”

“It’s here,” panted Weeks, fumbling in his coat. “I was burning so, I didn’t even notice—” He dragged it out and they both gave a simultaneous sigh of relief.

“Swell,” said Larry. “That unpunched commutation ticket is going to be an A-one alibi in itself. Hang onto it whatever you do. But we’ll fix it all up brown. Can you get hold of someone in the city to pass the evening with you — or better still two or three of your friends?”

“I can get in touch with Fred German. He always rolls up a gang of stay-outs as he goes along.”

“Go to a show with ’em, bend the elbow, get a little lit, stay with them as late as you possibly can manage it. And before you leave them — not after but before, so they all can see and hear you — call me long-distance down here. That means your name’ll go down on the company’s records from that end. I’ll have your cue ready for you by that time. If she’s not dead yet, then the rotgut made you sentimental and you wanted to talk to your family, that’s all. But if I have everything under control by that time, then I’ll have bad news for you then and there. You can stage a cloudburst in front of them and continue under your own speed from that point on. But until that happens, watch your step. Keep the soft pedal on. Don’t be jerky and nervous and punchy. Don’t give ’em an idea you’ve got anything on your mind. The better you know people, the better they can tell when something’s wrong with you. Now all that is your job. Mine” — he drew in his breath — “is upstairs. Got your hat?” He took out his watch. “Get back to the station, the six o’clock pulls out in ten minutes. They’re starting to drift back from the beach, so go to Charlton Street, one over, and keep your head down. Don’t look at anyone. Thank God she wasn’t much on getting acquainted with the neighbors—” He was leading him toward the door as he spoke.

“What’re you going to do?” asked Weeks with bated voice.

“I don’t know,” said Larry, “but I don’t want an audience for it, whatever it is. All I need is darkness, and thinking how swell you’ve been to me all my life — and I can do the rest. I’ll pull through. Stand behind the door a minute till I take a squint.” He opened the door, sauntered out on the bungalow doorstep, and looked casually up in one direction, then down in the other, as though seeking a breath of air. Then suddenly he was back in again, pushing his father irresistibly before him. “Hurry up, not a living soul in sight. It may not be this way again for the rest of the evening.”

Weeks’ body suddenly stiffened, held back. “No, I can’t do it, can’t let you! What am I thinking of anyway, letting my own son hold the bag for me. If they nab you doing this they’ll hang it on you—”

“Do you want to die at Trenton?” Larry asked him fiercely. The answer was on Weeks’ face, would have been on anyone’s face. “Then lemme do it my way!” They gripped hands for a second. Something like a sob sounded in Weeks’ throat. Then he was over the threshold and Larry was pushing the door silently after him.

Just before it met the frame Weeks pivoted abruptly, jumped back, and rammed his foot into the opening. There was a new urgency in his voice. “Helen. I see her coming!”

“Get back in!” snapped Larry. “Can’t make it now. Her eyes are too good, she’ll spot you even from a distance.” He closed the door on the two of them. “He with her?”

“No.”

“Then they missed connections. I’ll send her right out again after him.” He swore viciously. “If you’re not out of here in five minutes, you don’t make that train — and the later you get back the riskier it gets. As it is, you have three hours you can’t account for. Here — the clothes closet — be ready to light out the first chance you get.”

Weeks, pulling the door of the hall closet after him, murmured: “Don’t you think the kid would—”

All Larry said was: “She was pretty chummy with Doris.”

Her key was already jiggling in the front door. Larry seemed to be coming toward it as she got it open and they met face to face. She was in her bathing suit. He’d overlooked that when he’d spoken to her boy friend.

“Who was that came to the door just now, before I got here?” she asked.

“Me,” he said curtly.

“I know, I saw you, but I thought I saw someone else too, a minute later. It looked like two people from where I was.”

“Well it wasn’t,” he snapped.

“Oh, grouchy again.” She started for the stairs. “Doris back yet?”

“No,” he said firmly.

“Good, then I can swipe some of her face powder while she’s out.” She ran lightly up the stairs. He went cold for a minute, then he passed her like a bullet passing an arrow. He was standing in front of the door with his back to it when she turned down the upstairs corridor. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked drily. “Feel playful?” She tried to elbow him aside.

“Lay off,” he said huskily. “She raised Cain just before she went out about your helping yourself to her things, said she wants it stopped.” He got the key out of the door behind his back and dropped it into his back pocket.

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “That isn’t like her at all. I’m going to ask her to her face when she comes ba—” She rattled the doorknob unsuccessfully.

“See, what’d I tell you?” he murmured. “She must have locked it and taken the key with her.” He moved down the hall again, as if going to his own room.

“If it was already locked,” she called after him, “why did you jump up here in such a hurry to keep me out?”

He had an answer for that one though, too. “I didn’t want you to find out. It’s hell when trouble starts between the women of a family.”

“Maybe I’m crazy,” she said, “but I have the funniest feeling that there’s something going on around here today — everything’s suddenly different from what it is other days. What was the idea freezing Gordon out when he tried to call for me?”

She had stopped before her own door, which was next to their stepmother’s. He was nearer the stair-well than she was, almost directly over it. From below came the faint double click of a door as it opened then shut again. Even he could hardly hear it, she certainly couldn’t. The front door — he’d made it. Larry straight-armed himself against the stair railing and let a lot of air out of his lungs.

Without turning his head he knew she was standing there up the hall, watching him, waiting. What the hell was she waiting for? Oh yes, she’d asked him a question, she was waiting for the answer. That was it. Absently he gave it to her. “You weren’t here, I only told him where to find you.” She went into her room and banged the door shut.

And with that sound something suddenly exploded in his brain. The connecting bathroom, between her room and Doris’s! She could get in through there! Not only could but most certainly would, out of sheer stubborness now, because she thought Doris was trying to keep her out. Women were that way. And when she did — there in full view upon the bed, what he had seen, what his own loyalty had been strong enough to condone, but what might prove too much for hers. He couldn’t take the chance. His father’s life was at stake, he couldn’t gamble with that.

He dove back to that door again and whipped the key from his pocket. He got the door open as quietly as he could, but he was in too much of a hurry and it was too close to her own room to be an altogether soundless operation. Then, when he was in, with the twisted body in full view, he saw what had covered him. She was in the bathroom already, but she had the water roaring into the washbasin and that kept her from hearing. But the door between was already open about a foot, must have been that way all afternoon. Just one look was all that was needed, just one look in without even opening it any more than it already was. She hadn’t given that look yet. He could be sure of that because her scream would have told him, but any minute now, any fraction of a second— He could see her in the mirror. She had the straps of her bathing suit down and was rinsing her face with cold water.

There was no time to get the body out of the room altogether. He didn’t dare try. That much movement, the mere lifting and carrying of it, would surely attract her attention. And the long hall outside — where could he take it? The thought of trying deftly to compose and rearrange it where it lay, into the semblance of taking a nap, came to him for a moment and was rejected too. There wasn’t time enough even for that, and anyway he’d already told her she was out. All this in the two or three stealthy catlike steps that took him from the door to the side of the bed.

As he reached it he already knew what the only possible thing to do was, for the time being. Even to get it into the clothes closet was out of the question.

He dropped to his knees, crouched below the level of the bed on the side away from the bathroom, pulled the corpse toward him by one wrist and one ankle, and as it dropped off the side, his own body broke its fall. It dropped heavily athwart his thighs. The way the arms and legs retained their posture betokened rigor already, but made it easier to handle if anything. From where it was, across his lap, two good shoves got it under the bed, and he left it there.

Under and beyond the bed, on a level with his eyes, he could see the threshold of the bathroom. While he looked, and before there was any chance to scurry across the room to the hall door, Helen’s feet and ankles came into view. They paused there for a moment, toes pointed his way, and he quickly flattened himself out, chin on floor. She was looking in. But she couldn’t see under the bed, nor beyond it to the other side where he was, without bending over.

He held his breath. Maybe she’d go away again, now that she’d glanced in. But she didn’t. The bare ankles in houseslippers crossed the threshold into the room. They came directly over toward him, growing bigger, like in a nightmare, as they drew nearer. They stopped on the other side of the bed from him, so close that her knees must be touching it. And one slipper was an inch away from Doris’s rigidly outstretched hand. Oh my God, he thought, if she looks down at the floor — or if she comes around to this side!

What did she want there by the bed, what did she see, what was she looking at? Was there blood on it? No, there couldn’t be, no skin had been broken, only her neck. Had something belonging to the dead woman been left on the bed, something he’d overlooked?

The bedclothes on his side brushed his face suddenly, moved upward a little. The danger signal went all over his body like an electric shock, until he understood. Oh, that was it! In dislodging the body he’d dragged them down a little. Womanlike she was smoothing the covers out again, tugging them back in place. Her feet shifted down toward the foot a little, then back toward the head again, as she completed her task. Momentarily he expected to see one of them go in too far and come down on the dead flesh of that upturned palm. Momentarily he expected her to come around to his side. Or even see him over the top of the bed, if she leaned too far across it. He lived hours in those few seconds. But she didn’t do any of those things.

The feet turned, showed him their heels, and started back across the room growing smaller again. He was too prostrated even to sigh, he just lay there with his mouth open like a fish. She didn’t go out, though. The feet skipped the opening to the bathroom and stopped before Doris’s dresser over to one side. Helping herself to the face powder. But now she had a mirror in front of her, damn it! And he knew what mirrors were. If, for instance, it was tilted at a slight angle, it would show her the floor behind her — better than she could see it herself.

He heard the thud of Doris’s powder-box as she put it down again. He waited for the scream that would surely come as she raised her eyes to the quicksilver before her. He lay there tense, as rigid as that other form next to him even if a little warmer. He wondered why he didn’t get it over with by jumping up and showing himself, saying, “Yes, I’m here — and look what’s beside me!” But he didn’t. The time to do that had been when she first came in downstairs. That time was past now.

And then just when he’d quit hoping, there was a little shuffling sound and her feet had carried her back over the threshold and out of the room, and he was alone with the dead.

He couldn’t get up for a while — even though he knew that right now was the best time, while she was busy dressing in her own room, to get out of there. He felt weak all over. When he finally did totter upright it wasn’t to the outside door that he went but to the one to the bathroom.

He carefully eased it shut and locked it on his side. Let her suspect what she wanted, she wasn’t going to get back in there again until the grisly evidence was out of the way! And that would have to wait until she was out of the house. He cursed her bitterly, and her pal Gordon even more so, for unknowingly adding to his troubles like this. He even cursed the dead woman for not dissolving into thin air once she were dead. He cursed everyone but the man who was by now speeding back to New York and safety; he was loyal to him to the last breath in his body. He went out into the hall and once more locked the dead woman’s door behind him, once more extracted the key.

Just as he got in the clear once more, the phone started downstairs. It wasn’t New York yet, too early. The train hadn’t even got there yet. Helen stuck her head out of her room and called: “If it’s Gordon, tell him I’m ready to leave now, not to be so impatient!” But it wasn’t Gordon. It was an older voice, asking for Doris. The masculine “hello” Larry gave it seemed to leave it at a loss. Larry caught right on; he did some quick thinking. She’d been ready to leave an hour ago, she’d been going to this voice, and had never got there because death had stopped her in her own room.

Larry thought savagely, “It was your party. You’re going to pay for it!” He tried to make his voice sound boyish, cordial. “She’s gone out,” he said with a cheerful ring, “but she left a message in case anyone called up for her. Only I don’t know if you’re the right party—”

“Who is this speaking?” said the voice suspiciously.

“I’m Helen’s boy friend.” That ought to be all right. He must know by now that Doris had been pretty thick with Helen, that therefore any friends of the latter would be neutral, not hostile like himself.

The voice was still cagey though. “How is it you’re there alone?”

“I’m not. Helen’s here with me, but she’s upstairs dressing. Can’t come to the phone, so she asked me to give the message—”

“What is it? This is the right party,” the voice bit in.

“Well, Mrs, Weeks was called out this afternoon. Some people dropped in from the city and she couldn’t get away from them. She said if anyone called, to say she’d gone to the Pine Tree Inn for dinner. You know where that is?” Why wouldn’t he? Larry himself had seen the two of them dancing there more than once, and had promptly backed out again in a hurry each time.

But the voice wasn’t committing itself. “I think so — it’s a little way out on the road to Lakewood, isn’t it?”

“You can’t miss it,” said Larry pointedly. “It’s got a great big sign that lights up the road.”

The voice caught on. “Oh, then she’s going to wai— Then she’ll be there?”

“These people are only passing through, they’re not staying. She’ll be free at about nine thirty. You see they’re not bringing her back, so she thought if you wanted to pick her up with your car out there — Otherwise she’d have to phone for a taxi and wait until it got out there.”

“Yeah, I could do that,” said the voice hesitantly. “Y’sure she said she’ll be — free by nine thirty?” Alone, was the word he wanted to use, Larry knew.

“That’s the time Helen told me to say,” he reassured. “Oh, and I nearly forgot—” Like hell he had! It was more important than everything else put together, but it had to be dished out carefully so as not to waken suspicion. “She said you don’t have to drive right up to the place if you don’t feel like it, you can sound your horn from that clump of pines down the road. You can wait there. She’ll come out to you.”

He would go for that idea, Larry felt, if only to avoid getting stuck with any possible bill that she might have run up in the roadhouse. That clump of pines wasn’t new to him anyway. Larry’d already seen his car berthed in it while they were inside dancing — all to get out of paying the extra charge the inn made for parking. He’d known whose it was because he’d seen them both go back to it once to smoke a cigarette out under the stars.

He heard Helen coming down the stairs, dressed at last and ready to clear out, yet he didn’t dare break the connection too abruptly.

“Who you talking to?” she said in her clear, shrill voice and stopped beside him. But he’d counted on her saying something, and the mouthpiece was already buried against his shirt-front by the time she spoke. Her voice couldn’t reach it.

“Sweetie of mine,” he said limply. “Have a heart, don’t listen—” His eyes stared tensely at her. While she stood there he couldn’t uncover the thing and speak into it himself. One peep from her and the voice at the other end would ask to speak to her, and she wasn’t in on the set-up. On the other hand he had to keep talking, couldn’t just stand there like that.

“All right, son,” the voice sounded into his ear. “I’ll do that. You sure you got the message straight now?”

“Looks like you’ve got a bad case of it,” said Helen derisively. “Your eyes are staring out of your head. I wish you could see yourself—” But she moved away, started for the front door.

“Absolutely. Just like I told you,” he said into the instrument.

“All right, thanks a lot,” the voice came back. There was a click at the other end. He felt himself caving in at his middle.

“Give her my love,” Helen was saying from the open doorway.

“There’s a fresh dame here sends you her love, honey,” he said into the dead phone. “But she’s not as pretty as you are.”

As his sister banged the front door after her, the fake grin left his face with it. He parked the phone and leaned his head weakly against the wall for a minute or two. He’d been through too much in just one hour, too much to take without leaning against something. And there was lots to come yet, he knew. Plenty.

He was alone in the house now with the body of a murdered woman. That didn’t frighten him. It was getting it out of there that worried him — with a double row of porches to buck in either direction, porches jammed with the rocking-chair brigade on sentinel duty. Yet out it must go, and not cut up small in any valise either. That body had a date with its own murder. It had to travel to get there, and it had to travel whole. Though at this very minute it was already as dead as it would ever be, its murder was still several hours off and a good distance away. Nine thirty, in a clump of trees near Pine Tree Inn, just as a starting-point. Details could come later. The important thing was to get it away from this house, where no murder had ever taken place, and have it meet up with its murderer, who didn’t know that was what he was yet, and wasn’t expecting to kill.

Let him worry about getting rid of it after that! Let him find out how much harder it is to shake off the embrace of dead arms than it is of living ones! Let him try to explain what he was doing with it in a lonely clump of trees at the side of the road, at that hour and that far from town — and see if he’d be believed! That is, if he had guts enough to do the only thing there was for him to do — raise a holler, report it then and there, brazen it out, let himself in for it. But he wouldn’t, he was in too deep himself. He’d lose his head like a thousand others had before him. He’d leave it where it was and beat it like the very devil to save his own skin. Or else he’d take it with him and try to dump it somewhere, cover it somehow. Anything to shake himself free of it. And once he did that, woe betide him!

The eyes of the living were going to be on hand tonight, at just the wrong time for him — just when he was pulling out of that clump of trees, or just as he went flashing past the noon-bright glare in front of the inn on the road away from Asbury, to get rid of her in the dark open country.

She would be reported missing the first thing in the morning, or even before — when his father phoned — Larry would see to that. Not many people had seen them dancing together and lapping their Martinis together and smoking cigarettes in a parked car together — but just enough of them had to do the damage.

He said to himself again what he’d said when he answered the man’s phone-call. “It was your party; you’re gonna pay for it, not Dad. She’s gonna be around your neck tonight choking you, like he choked her!”

Only a minute had gone by since Helen had banged the front door after her. Larry didn’t move, he was still standing there leaning his head against the wall. She might come back, she might find out she’d forgotten something. He gave her time to get as far as the Boardwalk, two blocks over. Once she got that far she wouldn’t come back any more, even if she had forgotten something. She’d be out until twelve now with Gordon. Three minutes went by — five. She’d hit the Boardwalk now.

He took his head away from the wall but he didn’t move. He took out a cigarette and lit it. He had all the time in the world and he wanted that last silvery gleam of twilight out of the sky before he got going. It was a lot safer here in the house with her than out in the open under those pine trees. He smoked the cigarette down to its last inch, slowly not nervously. He’d needed that. Now he felt better, felt up to what was ahead of him. He took a tuck in his belt and moved away from the wall.

He wasn’t bothering with any fake alibi for himself. His father had a peach and that was all he cared about. If, through some unforeseen slip-up the thing boomeranged back to their own doorstep in spite of everything, then he’d take it on — himself. He didn’t give a rap, as long as it wasn’t fastened on his father. His own alibi, if worst came to worst, would be simply the truth — that he’d been in the house here the whole time.

He pulled down all the shades on all the windows. Then he lit just one light, so he could see on the stairs. From the street it would look like no one was home and a night-light had been left burning. Then he went upstairs and got her out from under the bed.

He was surprised at how little she weighed. The first thing he did was carry her downstairs and stretch her on the floor, over to one side of the stairs. To go out she had to leave by the ground floor anyway. Then he sat down next to her, on the lowest step of the stairs, and for a long time nothing else happened. He was thinking. The quarter hour chimed from somewhere outside. Eight fifteen that was. He still had loads of time. But he’d better be starting soon now, the Pine Tree Inn wasn’t any five minutes away from here. The thing was — how to go about it.

It was right there under his eyes the whole time, while he’d been racking his brains out. A spark from his cigarette did it — he’d lit another one. It fell down next to her, and he had to put his foot on it to make it go out. That made him notice the rug she was lying on. About eight by ten it was, a light-weight bright-colored summer rug. He got up and beat it over to the phone directory and looked under Carpet Cleaners.

He called a number, then another, then another, and another. Finally he got a tumble from someone called Saroukian. “How late do you stay open tonight?”

They closed at six, but they’d call for the article the first thing in the morning.

“Well, look,” he said, “if I bring it over myself tonight, won’t there be someone there to take it in? I’ll just leave it with you tonight, and you don’t need to start work on it until you’re ready.”

They evidently lived right in back of, or right over, their cleaning shop. At first they tried to argue him out of it. Finally they told him he could bring it around and ring the bell, but they wouldn’t be responsible for it.

“That’s O. K.,” he said. “I won’t have time in the morning and it’s gotta be attended to.” He hung up and went over to get it ready for them.

He moved her over right into the middle of it, the long way. Then he got his fountain pen out, shoved back the plunger, and wrecked the border with it until there was no more ink in the thing. It took ink beautifully, that rug. He went and got some good strong twine, and he rolled the rug around her tight as a corset and tied it at both ends, at about where her ankles were and at about where her broken neck was. It bulged a little in the middle, so he tied it there too and evened it out. When he got through it wasn’t much thicker than a length of sewer pipe. Her loosened hair was still spilling out at one end though, and there was another round opening down where her feet were. He shoved the hair all back in on top of her head where it belonged, and got two small cushions off the sofa and wedged one in at each end, rammed it down with all his might. They could stand cleaning too, just like the rug. That was the beauty of a bloodless murder, you weren’t afraid to leave anything at the cleaner’s. He hoisted the long pillar up onto his shoulder to try it out. It wasn’t too heavy, he could make it.

He put it down again and went upstairs to the room where it had happened, and lit up and looked around for the last time. Under the bed and on top of it and all over, to make sure nothing had been overlooked. There wasn’t a speck of anything. He went to her jewel case and rummaged through it. Most of the gadgets just had initials, but there was a wrist-watch there that had her name in full on the inside of the case. He slipped that in his pocket. He also took a powder compact, and slipped a small snapshot of herself she’d had taken in an automatic machine under the lid, just for luck. He wanted to make it as easy for them as he could.

He put out the lights and went downstairs. He opened the front door wide and went back in again. “From now on,” he told himself, “I don’t think; I let my reflexes work for me!” He picked the long cylinder up with both arms, got it to the porch, and propped it upright against the side of the door for a minute while he closed the door after him. Then he heaved it up onto his right shoulder and kept it in place with one upraised arm, and that was all there was to it. It dipped a little at both ends, but any rolled-up rug would have. Cleopatra had gone to meet Caesar like this, he remembered. The present occupant was going to keep a blind date with her murderer — three or four hours after her own death.

Someone on the porch of the next cottage was strumming Here Comes Cookie on a ukulele as he stepped down to the sidewalk level with the body transverse to his own. He started up the street with it, with his head to one side to give it room on his shoulder. He came to the first street-light and its snowy glare picked him out for a minute, then handed him back to the gloom. He wasn’t walking fast, just trudging along. He was doing just what he’d said he’d do: not thinking about it, letting his reflexes work for him.

“This is a rug,” he kept repeating. “I’m taking it to the cleaners. People taking rugs to the cleaners don’t go along scared of their shadows.”

A rocking chair squeaked on one of the wooden platforms and a woman’s nasal voice said: “Good evening, Larry. What on earth are you doing, trying to reduce?”

He showed his teeth in the gloom. “Gotta get this rug to the cleaners.”

“My stars, at this hour?” she queried.

“I’ll catch it if I don’t,” he said. “I was filling my fountain pen just now and I got ink all over it.” He had deliberately stopped for a moment, set the thing down, shifted it to his other shoulder. He gave her another flash of his teeth. “See you later,” he said, and was on his way again.

She gave a comfortable motherly laugh. “Nice young fellow,” he heard her say under her breath to someone beside her. “But that stepmother of his—” The sibilant whispers faded out behind him.

So Doris was already getting a bad name among the summer residents — good. “Go to it!” he thought. “You’ll have more to talk about in a little while.”

Every porch was tenanted. It was like running the gauntlet. But he wasn’t running, just strolling past like on any other summer evening. He saw two glowing cigarette ends coming toward him along an unlighted stretch of the sidewalk. As they passed under the next light he identified one — a girl he knew, a beach acquaintance, and her escort. He’d have to stop. He would have stopped if he only had a rug with him, so he’d have to stop now. The timing wasn’t quite right though. Instead of coming up to them in one of the black stretches between lights, the three of them met face to face in one of the glaring white patches right at the foot of a street lamp.

“Hello old timer.”

“Hello babe.” He tilted his burden forward, caught it with both arms, and eased it perpendicularly to the pavement.

“Johnny, this is Larry.” Then she said: “What in the world have you got there?”

“Rug,” he said. “I just got ink all over it, and I thought I could get it taken out before I get bawled out.”

“Oh, they’ll charge like the dickens for that,” she said helpfully. “Lemme look, maybe I could do it for you, we’ve got a can of wonderful stuff over at our house.” She put out her hand toward the top opening and felt one of the wedged-in cushions.

He could feel his hair going up. “Nah, I don’t want to undo it,” he said. “I’ll never get it together again if I do.” He didn’t, however, make the mistake of pushing her hand away, or immediately trying to tip the thing back on his shoulders again. He was too busy getting his windpipe open.

“What’s that in the middle there?” she said, poking her hand at the cushion.

“Sofa pillows,” he said. “They got all spotted, too.” He didn’t follow the direction of her eyes in time.

“How come you didn’t get it all over your hands?” she said innocently.

“I was holding the pen out in front of me,” he said, “and it squirted all over everything.” He didn’t let a twitch get past his cuff and shake the hand she was looking at, although there were plenty of them stored up waiting to go to work.

Her escort came to his aid; he didn’t like it because Larry’d called her “babe.” “Come on, I thought you wanted to go to the movies—”

He started to pull her away.

Larry tapped his pockets with his free hand; all he felt was Doris’s wrist-watch. “One of you got a cigarette?” he asked. “I came out without mine.” The escort supplied him, also the match. Larry wanted them to break away first. They’d put him through too much, he couldn’t afford to seem anxious to get rid of them.

“My, your face is just dripping!” said the girl, as the orange glare swept across it.

Larry said: “You try toting this on a warm night and see how it feels.”

“ ’Bye,” she called back, and they moved off into the shadows.

He stood there and blew a long cloud of smoke to get into gear again. “That was the closest yet,” he thought. “If I got away with that, I can get away with anything.”

He got back under the thing again and trudged on, cigarette in mouth. The houses began to thin out; the paved middle of the street began to turn into the road that led out toward Pine Tree Inn, shorn of its two sidewalks. But it was still a long hike off, he wasn’t even half-way there yet. He was hugging the side of the roadway now, salt marshes spiked with reeds on all sides of him as far as the eye could reach. A car or two went whizzing by. He could have got rid of her easy enough along here by just dropping her into the ooze. But that wasn’t the answer, that wouldn’t be making him pay for his party.

There was another thing to be considered though. Those occasional cars tearing past. Their headlights soaked him each time. It had been riskier back further where the houses were, maybe, but it hadn’t looked so strange to be carrying a rug there. The surroundings stood for it. It was a peculiar thing to be doing this far out. The biggest risk of all might be the safest in the end; anything was better than attracting the attention of each separate driver as he sped by. A big rumbling noise came up slowly behind him, and he turned and thumbed it with his free hand.

The truck slowed down and came to a stop a foot or two ahead; it only had a single driver. “Get in,” he said facetiously. “Going camping?” But it had been a rug back further, so it was still going to be a rug now, and not a tent or anything. Switching stories didn’t pay. Only instead of going to the cleaners it would have to be coming from there now; there weren’t any cottages around Pine Tree Inn.

“Nah,” Larry said. “I gotta get this rug out to Pine Tree Inn, for the manager’s office. Somebody got sick all over it and he had to send it in to be cleaned. Now he’s raising hell, can’t wait till tomorrow, wants it back right tonight.”

He handed it up to the driver and the man stood it upright against the double seat. Larry fallowed it in and sat down beside it, holding it in place with his body. It shook all over when the truck got going and that wasn’t any too good for the way it was rolled up. Nor could he jump down right in front of the inn with it, in the glare of all the lights and under the eyes of the parking attendants.

“Who do you work for?” said the driver after a while.

“Saroukian, an Armenian firm.”

“What’s matter, ain’t they even got their own delivery truck?”

“Nah, we used to,” said Larry professionally, “but we gave it up. Business been bad.”

The ground grew higher as they got back inland; the marshes gave way to isolated thickets and clumps of trees. The truck ate up the road. “Got the time?” said Larry. “I’m supposed to get it there by nine thirty.”

“It’s about nine now,” said the driver. “Quarter to when I started.” Then he looked over at Larry across the obstacle between them. “Who d’ya think you’re kidding?” he said suddenly.

Larry froze. “I don’t get you.”

“You ain’t delivering that nowhere. Whatever it is, it’s hot. You swiped it. You’re taking it somewhere to sell it.”

“How do you figure that?” said Larry, and curled his arm around it protectively.

“I wasn’t born yestidday,” sneered the driver.

Larry suddenly hauled it over his way, across his own lap, and gave it a shove with his whole body that sent it hurtling out the side of the truck. It dropped by the roadside and rolled over a couple of times. He got out on the step to go after it. “Thanks for the lift,” he said. “I’ll be leaving you here.”

“All right, bud, if that’s how you feel about it,” agreed the driver. “Hell, it’s not my lookout, I wasn’t going to take it away from you—” Without slowing up he reached out and gave Larry a shove that sent him flying sideways out into the night.

Larry fortunately sailed over the asphalt roadbed and landed in the soft turf alongside. None too soft at that, but nothing was broken, his palms and knees were just skinned a little. He picked himself up and went back to where the rug was. Before he bent for it he looked around. And then his swearing stopped. Even this hadn’t gone wrong, had come out right, very much right. He was so close to the inn that the reflection of its lights could be seen above the treetops off to one side. And the clump of pines would be even nearer, a five-minute walk from where he was.

But now, as he stooped over his grisly burden he was horrified to see that one of the cords had parted, that a pillow had fallen to the road and that the body had slid down till the forehead and eyes showed beneath the blonde hair that cascaded over the roadway. Larry looked up as a pair of approaching headlights floated around a distant corner. Hurriedly he worked the body back into position, shielding it with his own form from any curious glances that might be directed at him from the oncoming car. He had managed to get the pillow stuffed back in position and was retieing the cord as the car whizzed by without even a pause of interest. Larry heaved a sigh of relief and shouldering the load got going again. This time he kept away from the side of the road, going deeper and deeper among the trees.

The glare from the roadhouse grew stronger and kept him from losing his bearings. After a while a whisper of dance music came floating to him through the trees, and he knew he was there. He edged back a little closer toward the road again, until he could see the circular clearing in the pines just ahead of him. It was just big enough to hold a single car, but there wasn’t any car in it. He sank down out of sight with what he’d carried all the way out here, and got to work undoing the cords that bound it. By the time he was through, the rug and the two pillows were tightly rolled up again and shoved out of the way, and the body of the woman who had died at five that afternoon lay beside him. He just squatted there on the ground next to it, waiting. In life, he knew, Doris had never been the kind of woman who was stood up; he wondered if she would be in death.

When it felt like half the night was gone — actually only about twenty minutes had passed — a sudden flash of blinding light exploded among the trees as a car turned into the nearby clearing from the road. He was glad he hadn’t gone any nearer to it than he had. As it was he had to duck his head, chin almost touching the ground, for the far-flung headlight beams to pass harmlessly above him. They missed him by only two good feet. The lights swept around in a big arc as the car half turned, then they snapped out and the engine died. He couldn’t see anything for a minute, but neither could whoever was in that car. Nothing more happened after that. When his eyes readjusted themselves he knew by its outline that it was the right car. Then there was a spurt of orange as the occupant lit a cigarette, and that gave his face away. Same face Larry had seen with Doris. It was the right man, too.

Larry stayed where he was, didn’t move an inch. To do so would only have made every twig and pine needle around him snap and rustle. He couldn’t do anything anyway while the man stayed there at the wheel; the first move would have to come from him. True, he might get tired waiting and light out again — but Larry didn’t think he would. Not after coming all the way out here to get her. No one likes to be made a fool of, not even by a pretty woman. When she didn’t show up he’d probably boil over, climb out and go up to the inn himself to see what was keeping her. It became a case of seeing which one of them would get tired waiting first. Larry knew it wasn’t going to be himself.

The cushions of the roadster creaked as the man shifted his hips around. Larry could see the red dot of his cigarette through the trees, and even get a whiff of the smoke now and then. He folded his lapels close over his shirt-front and held them that way so the white wouldn’t gleam out and give him away. The red dot went out. The leather creaked again. The man was getting restless now.

All of a sudden there was a loud honking blast, repeated three times. Larry jumped and nearly passed out. He was giving her the horn, trying to attract her attention. Then the door of the car cracked open, slammed shut again, and he was standing on the ground, swearing audibly, Larry got the head of the corpse up off the ground and held it on his lap, waiting. About a minute more now.

Scuffling, crackling footsteps moved away from the car and out onto the road. He stood there looking down it toward the inn. Larry couldn’t see him but the silence told him that. No sign of her coming toward him. Then the soft scrape of shoe-leather came from the asphalt, moving away toward the inn. He was going up to the entrance to take a look in. Larry waited long enough to let him get out of earshot. Then he reared up, caught the body under the arms, and began to struggle toward the car with it, half carrying and half dragging it. The car was a roadster and Larry had known for a long time what he was going to do.

When he got up to the car Larry let the body go for a minute and climbed up and got the rumble-seat open. It was capacious, but he had a hard time getting the stiffened form into it. He put her in feet first, and she stuck out like a jack-in-the-box. Then he climbed up after her, bent her over double, and shoved her down underneath. He dug the wrist-watch with her name on it out of his pocket and tossed it in after her. Then he closed the rumble-seat and she was gone.

“You’re set for your last joy-ride, Doris,” he muttered. He would have locked the rumble, to delay discovery as long as possible, if he had had the key. He took the powder-compact with her snapshot under the lid and dropped it on the ground in back of the car. Let him deny that he’d been here with her! Then he moved off under the trees and was lost to sight.

A few minutes later he showed up at the door of the inn, as though he’d just come out from inside. The doorman was just returning to his post, as though someone had called him out to the roadway to question him. Larry saw a figure moving down the road toward the clump of pines he’d just come from. “What was his grief?” he asked, as though he’d overheard the whole thing.

“Got stood up,” the doorman grinned. He went back inside and Larry went down to the edge of the road. The headlights suddenly flared out in the middle of the pines and an engine whined as it warmed up. A minute later the roadster came out into the open backwards, straightened itself. It stayed where it was a moment. A taxi came up to the inn and disgorged a party of six. Larry got in. “Back to town,” he said, “and slow up going past that car down there.”

The man in the roadster, as they came abreast of it, was tilting a whiskey bottle to his lips. Larry leaned out the window of the cab and called: “Need any help? Or are you too cheap to go in and buy yourself a chaser?”

The solitary drinker stopped long enough to tell Larry what to do, then resumed.

“Step on it,” Larry told the driver, “I’m expecting a phone call.”

When he let himself into the house once more, something stopped him before he was even over the threshold. Something was wrong here. He hadn’t left that many lights turned on, he’d only left one dim one burning, and now— He pulled himself together, closed the door, and went forward. Then as he turned into the living room he recoiled. He came face to face with his father, who’d just got up out of a chair.

Weeks looked very tired, all in, but not frightened any more. “I took the next train back,” he said quietly. “I’d come to my senses by the time I got there. What kind of a heel do you take me for anyway? I couldn’t go through with it, let you shoulder the blame that way.”

Larry just hung his head. “My God, and I’ve been through all that,” he groaned, “for nothing!” Then he looked up quickly. “You haven’t phoned in yet, or anything — have you?”

“No. I was waiting for you to come back. I thought maybe you’d walk over to the station-house with me. I’m not much of a hero,” he admitted. Then he straightened up. “No use arguing about it, my mind’s made up. If you won’t come with me, then I’ll go alone.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Larry bitterly. “Might as well — I made a mess of it anyway. I see that now! It never would have held together. The whole thing came out wrong. I left the rug I carried her in, there under the trees. A dozen people saw me with it. I showed myself at the inn. I even told the taxi driver I was expecting a phone call. That alone would have damaged your alibi. How was I supposed to know you were going to call, if it wasn’t a set-up? And last of all my prints are all over her powder-compact and her wrist-watch. A big help I turned out to be!” He gave a crooked smile. “Let’s go. And do me a favor, kick me every step of the way getting there, will you?”

When they got to the steps of the headquarters building, they stopped and looked at each other. Larry rested his hand on his father’s shoulder for a minute. “Wait here, why don’t you,” he said in a choked voice. “I’ll go in and break it for you. That’ll be the easiest way.” He went in alone.

The sergeant on duty looked at him across the desk. “Well, young feller, what’s your trouble?”

“The name is Weeks,” said Larry, “and it’s about Doris Weeks, my stepmother—”

The sergeant shook his head as though he pitied him. “Came to report her missing, is that it?” And before Larry could answer the mystifying question, “Recognize this?” He was looking at the wrist-watch he’d dropped into the rumble seat less than an hour ago.

Larry’s face froze, “That’s hers,” he managed to say.

“Yeah,” agreed the sergeant, “the name’s on it. That’s the only thing we had to go by.” He dropped his eyes. “She’s pretty badly hurt, young feller,” he said unwillingly.

“She’s dead!” Larry exclaimed, gripping the edge of the desk.

The sergeant seemed to mistake it for apprehension and not the statement of a known fact. “Yeah,” he sighed, “she is. I didn’t want to tell you too suddenly, but you may as well know. Car smash-up only half an hour ago. Guy with her must have been driving stewed or without lights. Anyway a truck hit them and they turned over. He was thrown clear but he died instantly of a broken neck. She was caught under the car, and it caught fire, and — well there wasn’t very much to go by after it was over except this wrist-watch, which fell out on the roadway—”

Larry said: “My father’s outside, I guess I’d better tell him what you told me—” and he went weaving crazily out the doorway.

“It sure must be tough,” thought the sergeant, “to come and find out a thing like that!”