Eyes That Watch You [= The Case of the Talking Eyes]

The house was a pleasant two-story suburban set in its own plot of ground, not close enough to its neighbors to impair privacy and seclusion, but not far enough away to be lonely or isolated. You could catch glimpses of them all around it through the trees and over the tops of the hedges that separated the lawns. You couldn’t command a full view of any of them, and they couldn’t command a full view of the house, either.

It had a back porch and a front one, and it had rambler roses trained around the porch posts both in front and in back.

It was midafternoon and Mrs. Janet Miller was sitting in her chair on the back porch. That was because the back of the house faced west and got the afternoon sun. Mornings she sat on the front porch, afternoons on the back. Life had long ago been reduced to its barest essentials for her. The feel of the warm sun on her, the sight of the blue sky over her, the sound of Vern Miller’s voice in her ears — those were the only things it held any more, those were the only things left to her. She didn’t ask for more, so long as those weren’t taken from her as everything else had been.

She sat there uncomplaining, content, almost — yes, almost happy, in her rubber-tired wheelchair, a blanket tucked snugly about her feet and lap. She could feel the sun on her, she could see the sky out through the porch posts, and as for the sound of his voice, that would come a little later — it was too early for that yet. She had that much more to look forward to, at least.

She was sixty, with a pink-cheeked, unlined face, snow-white hair, trustful pottery-blue eyes. She was completely, hopelessly paralyzed from head to foot, had been for the past ten years.

It seemed long ago, another lifetime ago now, that she had last walked on floors, moved up and down stairs, raised her hands to her hair to brush it, to her face to wash it, to her mouth to feed it, or expressed the thoughts that were still as clear, as undimmed as ever in her mind, by the sound of words issuing from her mouth. All that was gone now, gone and unlamented. She had trained herself, forced herself, steeled herself, not to lament it.

No one would ever know what it had cost her to accomplish that much, no one would ever know the private purgatory she had been through, the Via Dolorosa she had traversed. But she had emerged now, she had won her battle. She held tight to what remained to her. No monster-god ever worshipped by the most benighted savages could be cruel enough to take that pitiful remainder from her. The sun, the sky, Vern’s voice, remained. She had achieved resignation, acceptance, content. So she sat there motionless in the slanting sun, behind the twining rambler-rose tendrils. Something human, something living, that wanted its happiness too.

The doorbell rang around on the other side of the house, and the footsteps of Vera, Vern’s wife, started from the floor above to answer it. But quickly, with a rush, as though she had been waiting for this summons, as though she had seen who it was from one of the upper windows. It must be company then, and not just a tradesman or peddler.

Janet Miller could hear the front door open, then quickly close again, from where she sat. But no gush of feminine salutations followed. Instead a man’s voice said, cautiously muted, but not too muted to carry to the sharp ears whose sensitivity had increased rather than diminished since the loss of other faculties: “You alone?”

And Vera’s voice answered: “Yes. Did anyone see you come in?”

That first, husky, guarded voice hadn’t been the voice, hadn’t been Vern’s. It couldn’t be this early — not for another hour or more yet. Who could it be then? A man — that meant it was a friend of Vern’s, of course. She knew all his friends and tried to place this one, but couldn’t. They never came at this hour. They were all busy downtown, as Vern was himself.

Well, she’d know in a minute. One thing about Vern’s friends, the first thing they all did was come and say hello to her, ask her how she was, usually bring her something, some little trifle or dainty. Vera would bring him out with her to see her, or else wheel her in to where he was. She liked to meet company. That wasn’t one of the three essentials; that was a little pampering she allowed herself.

But instead of coming through the hall that bisected the house, out to where she was, they turned off into the living-room, and she heard the door close after them, and from then on there wasn’t another sound.

She couldn’t understand that. Vera had never closed the door like that when they had company before. It must have been just absentmindedness on her part. She’d done it without thinking. Or else maybe it was some little surprise they were preparing, for herself or for Vern, and they wanted to make sure of keeping it a secret. But Vern’s birthday was long past, and her own didn’t come until February—

She waited patiently but the door stayed closed. It seemed she wasn’t to meet this caller, or be wheeled in to him. She sighed a little, disappointedly.

Then suddenly, without warning, they came through into the back of the house, the kitchen. It had a window looking out on the back porch, just a little to one side of where she was seated. She could even see into a very narrow strip of the room by looking out of the far corners of her eyes. She could move her eyes, of course.

Vera came in there first, the caller after her. She seemed to set something down on the kitchen table, then she started to undo it with a great crackling and rattling of paper. Some sort of parcel, evidently. So they were busied about a surprise, a gift, after all.

She heard Vera say, “Where’d you ever get this idea from?” with a sort of admiring, complimentary ring to her voice.

The man answered: “Reading in the papers about how they were passing them out over in London and Paris, when they were scared war was going to break out. Someone I know was over there at the time and brought some of them back with him. I got hold of these from him.”

“D’yuh think it’ll work?” she asked.

He said: “Well, it’s the best idea of the lot we’ve had so far, isn’t it?”

“That doesn’t say much for some of the others,” Vera answered.

The crackle of unwrapping paper had continued uninterruptedly until now. It stopped at last.

There was a moment’s silence, then she said: “Aren’t they funny-looking things?”

The man said: “They’ll do the trick, though. Never mind how they look.”

The paper crackled one last time, then Vera said: “What’d you bring two for?”

“One for the old lady,” he answered.

Janet Miller experienced a pleasant little glow of anticipation. They had something for her, they were going to give her something, some little present or memento.

“What for?” she heard Vera say impatiently. “Why not both of them at once?”

“Use your head,” the man growled. “That’s the one thing we want to avoid. She’s our immunity; don’t you get it? Sort of like an alibi. As long as nothing happens to her, it’s good for an accident. But if they both go then it looks too much like we wanted the decks cleared. Don’t let’s load the dice against ourselves. One out of three people in a house, we can get away with. But two out of three, and it’ll begin to smell fishy. Don’t forget you’re in the same room with him. She’s up at the other end of the hall. How’s it going to look if he goes and you, right next to him, don’t? And then she goes too, all the way out in another room, with a couple of closed doors in between?”

“All right,” Vera conceded grudgingly. “But if you had to push her around all day and wait on her like I do—”

The sunlight falling on Janet Miller seemed to have changed. It was cold, baleful now. She could hear her heart beating, pounding against her ribs, and her breath was coming fast, through fear-distended nostrils.

The man went on: “You better let me show you how to put it on right while I’m here, so you’ll know how it goes when the time comes.”

Vera started to say something, but her voice was blurred out as though she had stuck her head into a bag.

Suddenly she came too close to the window, moved inadvertently within that narrow segment of the room that the far corners of Janet Miller’s eyes could encompass. Her whole head had vanished. If the paralytic had been capable of sound, she would have screamed. Vera had what looked like a horse’s feed bag up over her entire face. A nozzle protruded from this and went down somewhere out of sight. Two round gogglelike disks for eyes.

A gas mask!

She shifted further back into the room, out of sight again. Her voice sounded clearly once more. She must have taken it off. “Whew! Stuffy. Are you sure it’ll work? I’m not in this to take any chances myself, you know.”

“They’re made to stand much worse stuff than you’re going to get tonight.”

“Where’ll I keep them? I don’t want him to find them before I’m ready for them. I’m afraid if I take them up to the room with me he’ll—”

Janet Miller heard the clang of the oven door being opened, pushed closed again. “Here’s a place he’ll never look into in a million years. Supper’s all cooked. I can just warm it on top of the stove. He never bothers with the kitchen much. I’ll come down and get them the last thing, after he’s asleep. Take the paper out with you.”

More crackle of paper, this time being smoothed and folded small, to fit into someone’s pocket.

The man’s voice said: “That’s that. Now have you got everything straight? Put the spare on the old lady. Don’t cross me up on that. We’re just laying ourselves wide open if you let her go with him. Don’t put your own on ahead of time — he’s liable to wake up and see you wearing it. Hold out as long as you can before you get into it; it won’t hurt you to get a little of the stuff in you. Remember you’ve got an inhalator squad to buck afterwards.

“Get rid of all the papers and rags stuffed under the windows before they get here. And when you phone the alarm, don’t speak over the phone. Your voice is liable to sound too strong. Just knock the receiver off and leave it that way; that’ll bring ’em. It’ll take a little longer, but what’ve you got to lose? You’re in a fade-out on the floor near the door, just couldn’t make it. But the most important thing of all is the masks. If they’re found around here afterwards, we’re cooked. Take hers and yours off before they get here, when you’re sure he’s finished, and lock ’em both in the rumble seat of the car, out in the garage. You won’t be using it after he’s gone. You don’t even know how to drive. In a day or two you phone the Ajax Garage — that’s my place — to come and get it, take it off your hands, sell it for you. I’ll take them out at my end, return them as soon as I can. No one’ll ever know the difference.”

“How long’ll I give him? I’ve heard of them pulling people through after working over ’em an hour, sometimes more. We want to make sure that don’t happen.”

“Just see that he soaks up enough, and you can bet all the oxygen in the world won’t pull him through. Watch his face. When that gets good and blue, all mottled, you got nothing more to worry about. You better lie low for about a month afterwards. Give them a chance to settle up the estate and all that. I’ll give you a ring in — say thirty days from tonight. Are you sure everything’s shaped up right?”

“Yeah. He’s insured up to his ears. All his stock’s been bought in my name. The business has been doing pretty good, and there are no other relatives to horn in. We’ll be set for life, Jimmy darling. That’s why I held out against doing it any other way but this. There wouldn’t’ve been any sense to it.”

“Where’s the old lady?” he asked unexpectedly.

“On the back porch where she always is.”

“Hey, she can hear us, can’t she? Let’s get out of here!”

She laughed callously. “Suppose she does? What can she do? Who can she tell? She can’t talk, she can’t write, she can’t even make signs.”

They didn’t even bother looking out at her to see whether she was dozing or awake.

“All right,” was the last thing he said. “Don’t get frightened now. Just keep your head about you, and everything’ll pan out. See you in a month.” They exchanged a kiss. A blood-red kiss of death.

Then they went out of the kitchen, back into the living-room. They opened the side door of that, came out into the hall. The front door opened and closed again and Janet Miller was left alone in the house — with her knowledge and the potential murderess of her son.

Vernon Miller was a genial, easy-going, goodhearted, unsuspicious sort of man, the kind that so often draws a woman like Vera to be his life partner. He was no easy mark, no sap. He was wary enough in business, in the outside world of men and affairs could even be implacable, hard-boiled, if the occasion warranted. The trouble was, he let his defenses down in the wrong place — laid himself wide open in the home.

Janet Miller heard his key in the door. He said “Hello, there!” to the house in general. Vera came down the stairs, and Janet Miller heard them exchange a kiss. A Judas kiss.

Then he came on out to the back porch, to see her, and the third component of her trinity, the sound of his voice, was vouchsafed her.

“Did you enjoy the sun?”

Her eyes.

“Want me to take you in now?”

Her terrible eyes.

“Look what I brought you.”

Her eyes, her terrible imploring eyes.

“Did you miss me? Glad I’m back? Is that why you’re looking at me like that?” He squatted down to the level of the chair, cupped his hand to his knees. “What’re you trying to tell me, darling?”

Her eyes, her haunted eyes.

“Shall I try for you? Blink them once for no, twice for yes.” This was an old established code between them, their only link. “Are you hungry?” No. “Are you chilly?” No. “Are you—”

Vera called out from the kitchen, interrupted them as if guessing what Janet was trying to do: “Don’t stay out there all night, Vern. I’m all ready for you.”

Her eyes, her despairing eyes.

He straightened up, shifted around behind the chair, out of her sight, and rolled her into the living-room ahead of him. Left her there for a minute while he went upstairs.

Even her only weapon, the use of her eyes, was blunted, for they almost always followed him around a room, in and out of doors, even on other nights when they had no terrible message to deliver, so how could he be expected to tell the difference tonight?

Vera finished setting the table. “All right, Vern,” she called up.

He came down again, hands freshly washed, guided her chair into the dining room, pushed it close up beside Vera at the table, sat down opposite them. Vera was the one who always fed her.

He opened his napkin, looked down, began to spoon soup.

Vera broke the brief preliminary silence. “She won’t open her mouth.”

She was trying to force a spoonful through Janet Miller’s clenched teeth. Janet Miller had retained just enough muscular control of her jaws still to be able to close or slightly relax her mouth, sufficiently to take food. It was tightly shut now.

He looked over at her and she blinked at him. Singly, three times. No, no, no.

“Don’t you feel well? Don’t you want any?”

“She’s just being stubborn,” Vera said. “She was perfectly all right all day.”

Yes, I was, thought Janet Miller harrowingly, until you let death into my son’s house.

She kept trying to force the spoon through. Janet Miller resisted it. It tilted and the soup splashed off. “Now look at that!” she exclaimed short-temperedly.

“Do you want me to feed you?” he asked.

She couldn’t signal those three double blinks fast enough. Yes, yes, yes.

He got up and moved the wheelchair around beside his own.

Vera began to apply herself to her own meal with a muttered: “You can have the job; see if I care.”

So far so good. She was over beside him now, in closer contact. So near and yet so far. Her pitiful, desperate plan was first to rivet his attention to the fact that something was wrong, something was troubling her, and hold it there. That was the easiest part of it. Once that was accomplished, she must find some way of centering his interest on that oven wherein the two gas masks lay concealed. Get him to go to it, open it himself if possible. Failing that, get him to force Vera to go to it, open it.

In such event Vera would undoubtedly attempt to smuggle them out of their hiding place, find another for them without letting him see her do it. But they were large, bulky, not easily concealed. The chances of his discovering them would be that much greater. Even if he did discover them, that by no means guaranteed that he would understand their implication, realize they meant his own intended death. Vera would probably find some explanation to fob off on him. But she might lose her nerve, it might result in a postponement if nothing else. Lacking speech with which to warn him, that was the most Janet Miller could hope for.

So she took the long, devious, roundabout path that was the only one open to her, to try to focus his attention on the gas oven — by refusing to touch, one by one, all the dishes that had been prepared on the open burners on top of the stove.

“She’s not touching a thing,” he said finally. He put his hand solicitously to her forehead, to feel if she had a temperature. It was moist with anguish.

“Don’t humor her so much,” Vera snapped. “There’s nothing the matter with this food.”

“What is it, dear, aren’t you hungry?” She’d been waiting for that! She gave him the yes-signal an infinite number of times.

“She is hungry!” he said in surprise.

“Then why doesn’t she eat what’s put before her?” Vera said furiously.

“Maybe she wants something special.”

Step two! Oh, if it only kept up like this. If she was only given the chance to save him...

“I like that,” sniffed Vera disdainfully. She was still not on guard against her. As soon as that happened, Janet Miller knew, it would double her difficulties.

He leaned toward her tenderly. “Do you want something special, dear? Something that’s not on the table?”

Yes, yes, yes, yes, came her agonized messages.

“See, I knew it!” he said triumphantly.

“Well, she’s not going to get it,” Vera snapped.

He gave her a rebuking look. All he said, mildly but firmly, was: “Yes, she is.” But his meaning was plain — “would you deprive anyone so unfortunate of a little thing like that, if you knew it would make her a little happier?”

Vera saw she’d gone too far. She tried to cover up her blunder. “How you going to tell what it is, anyway?” she asked sulkily.

“I’ll make it my business to,” he said, a little coldly.

Janet Miller’s thoughts were racing ahead. Many things could be prepared in that oven, but most of them, roasts, pies, and so forth were out of the question, needed long cooking ahead. It must be something that could only be made in there, and yet would not take any time. It held a wire rack in it, a grill. That was it! Bacon. That could be made almost instantly, and there was always some in the house.

He was patiently running through a list of delicacies, trying to arrive at the right one by a process of elimination. “Do you want croquettes?” No. “Succotash?” No—

“Meantime your own meal is getting cold,” Vera observed sarcastically. Her nerves were a little on edge, with what she knew lay ahead. She was not ordinarily so heartless about Janet, to give her her due. Or rather she was, but took good pains to keep it concealed from him. His mother could have told him a different story of what went on in the daytime, when he wasn’t home.

He began to run out of food names; his suggestions came slower, were about ready to falter to a stop. Fear stabbed at her. She widened her eyes at him imploringly to go on.

Vera came to her aid without meaning to. “It’s no use, Vern,” she said disgustedly. “Are you going to keep this up all night?”

Her latent opposition only served to solidify his determination, spurred him on to further attempts. “I’m not going to let her go away from this table hungry!” he said stubbornly, and started in again, this time with breakfast dishes, for he had run out of supper ones. “Cereal?” No. “Ham and eggs?” No. Oh, how close he was getting. “Bacon?”

Yes, yes, yes, went her eyes. Her heart sang a paean of gratitude.

He smacked his palm down on the table in vindication.

“I knew I’d get it finally.”

Her eyes left him, shifted appraisingly over to Vera. All the color had drained from her face; it was white as the tablecloth before her. The two women, the mother and the wife, the would-be savior and the would-be killer, exchanged a long measured look. “So you heard us!” was in Vera’s look. “So you know.” And then with cruel, easily read derision, “Well, try to tell him. Try to save him.”

He said plaintively: “You heard what she wants, Vera. What’re you sitting there for? Go out and broil her a few strips.”

Vera’s face was that of a trapped thing. She swallowed, though she hadn’t been chewing just then. “I should say not. I got one meal ready. I’m not going to get up in the middle of it and start another! It’ll get the stove all greasy and— and—”

He threw his napkin down. “I’ll do it myself then. That’s one of the few things I do know how to cook — bacon.” But before he could move she had shot up from her chair, streaked over toward the doorless opening that led to the kitchen, as though something were burning in there.

“Can’t you take a joke?” she said thickly. “What kind of a wife d’you take me for? I wouldn’t let you, after you’ve been working hard all day. Won’t take a minute...”

He was so defenseless, so unguarded — because he thought he’d left all antagonists outside the front door. He fell for it, grinned amiably after her.

Oh, if he’d only keep looking, only keep watching her from where he was! He could see the oven door from where he was sitting. He could see what she’d have to take out of it in another minute, right from in here. But there was no suspicion in his heart, no thought of treachery. He turned back toward Janet again, smiled into her face reassuringly, patted one of her nerveless hands.

For once her eyes had no time for him. They kept staring past him into the lighted kitchen. If only he’d turn and follow their direction with his own!

She saw Vera glance craftily out at them first, measuring her chances of remaining undetected in what she was about to do. Then she crouched down, let out the oven flap. Then she looked again, to make sure the position of his head hadn’t shifted in the meantime. Then she crushed the two bulky olive-drab masks to her, turned furtively away with them so that her back was to the dining room, sidled across the room that way, sidewise, and thrust them up into a seldom-used cupboard where preserves were kept.

So it hadn’t been just an evil dream. There was murder in the house with them. Janet Miller’s eyes hadn’t been idle while the brief transfer was occurring. They had shifted frantically from Vera to him, from him to Vera, trying to draw his own after them, to look in there.

She failed. He misunderstood, thought she was simply impatient for the bacon. “You’ll have it in a minute now,” he soothed, but he kept on eating his own meal without looking into the kitchen.

Vera came in with it finally, and the smile she gave Janet Miller was not a sweet, solicitous one as he thought, it was a she-devil’s smile of mockery and refined cruelty. She knew Janet had seen what she’d done in there just now, and she was taunting her with her inability to communicate it to him.

“Here we are,” she purred. “Nice and crispy, done to a turn!”

“Thanks, Vera.” The doomed man smiled up at her gratefully.

The meal finished, he retired to the living-room to read his paper, wheeled her with him. Vera, with a grim, gloating look at her, went back into the kitchen to wash the dishes.

Janet Miller’s eyes were on his face the whole time they sat in there alone, but he wouldn’t look up at her; he remained buried in the market reports and football results. Oh, to have a voice — even the hoarsest whispered croak — what an opportunity, the two of them in there alone like that! But then if she’d had one, the opportunity wouldn’t have been given to her. She probably wouldn’t have been allowed to overhear in the first place.

Even so, Vera was taking no chances on any circuitous system of communication by trial and error, such as he had used at the table to find out what she wanted. Twice she came as far as the living-room door, stood there and looked in at them for a moment, dishcloth in her hand, on some excuse or other.

His doomed head remained lowered to his paper, oblivious of the frenzied eyes that bored into him, beat at him like electric pulses to claim his attention.

Vera directed an evil smile at the helpless woman at his side, returned whence she had come, well content.

Time was so precious, and it was going so fast. Once Vera came in here with them finally, she’d never leave them again for the rest of the evening.

He felt her imploring eyes on him once, reached out and absently stroked her veined hand without looking up, but that was the closest she got to piercing his unawareness. A football score, a bond quotation, a comic strip, these things were dooming him to death.

Vera came in to them at last, helped herself to a cigarette from his coat pocket, turned on the radio. He looked up at her, said: “Oh, by the way, did you phone the gas company to send a man around to look at that hot-water heater in the bathroom? I’d like to take a bath tonight.”

A knife of dread went through Janet Miller’s heart. So that was how it was going to be done! That defective water heater in the upstairs bathroom. She closed her eyes in consternation, opened them again. She hadn’t known until now what to expect — only that it would be gas in some form or other.

Vera snapped her fingers in pretended dismay. “I meant to, and it slipped my mind completely!” she said contritely.

It hadn’t. Janet Miller knew. She’d purposely refrained from reporting it. That was part of their plan, to make it look more natural afterwards. An unavoidable accident.

“We’ve used it this long, once more can’t hurt,” she said reassuringly.

“I know, but it’s dangerous the way that thing leaks when you turn it on. We’re all liable to be overcome one of these nights. If a man wants anything done around here he’s got to attend to it himself,” he grumbled.

“I’ll notify them the first thing in the morning,” she promised submissively.

But there wouldn’t be any morning for him.

A moment later she artfully took his mind off the subject by calling his attention to something on the radio. “Did you hear that just then? That was a good one! Don’t let’s miss this — I think those two are awfully funny.”

A joke on the radio. What could be more harmless than that? Yet it was helping to kill a man.

A station announcement came through — “Ten p.m., Eastern Standard Time—”

“Things are picking up. If they keep on like this, I think we’ll be able to take that cruise next summer.”

No you won’t, Janet Miller screamed at him in terrible silence; you’re going to be killed tonight! Oh, why can’t I make you hear me?

The station announcement came through again. It seemed to her like only a minute since they’d heard the last one. “Ten thirty p.m., Eastern Standard Time—”

He yawned comfortably. “Before you know it the holidays’ll be here. What do you want for Christmas?”

“Anything you want to give me,” she simpered demurely.

He turned and looked at Janet, then scrutinized her more closely. “What’s the matter, dear? Why, there are beads of sweat on your forehead.” He came over, took his handkerchief and gently touched them off one by one.

But Vera quickly jumped into the breach. She was on her guard now. Janet had her to combat as well as her own incapacity. The odds were insuperable. “The room is too close, that’s all it is. I feel it myself...” Vera pretended to mop her own brow.

He reached down and touched Janet’s hands.

“But her hands are so cold! That can’t be it—”

“Oh, well—” Vera dropped her eyes tactfully. “Her circulation, you know,” she murmured under her breath, as if trying not to hurt the paralytic’s feelings.

He nodded, satisfied.

Janet’s eyes clung to him desperately. Hear me! Why can’t you hear me! Why can’t you understand what I’m trying so hard to tell you!

He got up, stretched. “I think I’ll go up and light that thing, get ready for my bath and go to bed. I had a tough day.”

“I think we may as well all go up,” Vera said accommodatingly. “There’s nothing but swing on all the stations from now on and it gets monotonous.” The dial-light snapped out. On such a casual, everyday, domestic note began the preparations for murder.

He picked Janet carefully up in his arms and started for the stairs with her. Her chair was always left downstairs. It was too bulky to be taken up at nights.

She thought distractedly, while the uncarpeted oak steps ticked off beneath him one by one, “Who’ll carry me down in the morning? Oh, my son, my son, where will you be then?”

On the stairs their two faces were closer together than at other times. Her frozen lips strained toward him, striving to implant a kiss. He said jocularly: “What are you breathing so hard for? I’m doing all the work.”

He carried her into her own room, set her down on the bed, promised, “I’ll be in to say good night to you in a minute,” and went out to start heating the water for his bath.

It was Vera who always prepared her for bed.

She never needed to be completely undressed, for she no longer wore street clothing, only a warm woolen robe and felt slippers. It was simply a matter of taking these off and arranging the bed coverings about her.

Vera came in and attended to the task as inscrutably, as matter-of-factly, as though there were no knowledge shared between them of what was to happen tonight. This woman bending over her was worse than a murderess. She was a monster, not human at all. Janet’s eyes were beseeching her, trying to say to her: “Don’t do this; don’t take him from me.” It was useless; it was like appealing to granite. There were two impulses there too strong to be deflected, overcome — passion for another man, and greed. Pity didn’t have a chance.

He was in the bathroom now. There was the soft thud of ignited gas. He called in, just as Vera finished arranging Janet in bed: “Hey, Vera! Do you think it’s all right to light this thing? There must be a whale of a leak in it. The flame is more white than blue, with the air in it!” There was a faint but distinct hum coming from the hot-water heater. That, however, was not a sign of its being defective, but a normal accompaniment to its being used.

“Of course it’s all right,” Vera called back unhesitatingly. “Don’t be such a sissy! You’d better not put off taking that bath tonight. You’re always too rushed in the morning, and then raise hob with me!”

A thread of acrid warning drifted into Janet’s bedroom, dissolved unnoticeably after a single stab at her nostrils. Vera had gone into their bedroom to begin undressing herself. He came in to Janet, in bathrobe and slippers, and he looked so young, so vigorous — to die this soon! He said: “I’ll say good night to you now, hon. You must be tired and want to go to sleep.”

Then as he bent toward her to kiss her forehead, he saw something, stopped short. He changed his mind, sat down on the edge of the bed instead, kept looking at her steadily. “Vera,” he called over his shoulder, “come in here a minute.”

She came, the murderess, in pink satin and foamy lace, like an angel of destruction, stroking her loosened hair with a silver-backed brush.

“What is it now?” She said it a little jumpily.

“Something’s troubling her, Vera. We’ve got to find out what it is. Look, there are tears in her eyes. Look, see that big one, rolling down her cheek?”

Vera’s face was a little tense with fear. She forced it into an expression of sympathetic concern, but she had an explanation ready to throw at him, to forestall further inquiry. “Well after all, Vern,” she said in an undertone, close to his ear, as though not wanting Janet to overhear her, “it’s only natural she should feel that way every once in a while. She has every reason to. Don’t forget, we’ve gotten used to — what happened to her, but it must come back to her every so often.” She gave his shoulder a soothing little pat. “That’s all it is,” she whispered.

He was partly convinced, but not entirely. “But she doesn’t take it so hard other nights. Why should she tonight? Ever since I came home tonight she’s been watching me so. I’ve had the strangest feeling at times that she’s trying to tell me something...”

There was no mistaking the pallor on Vera’s face now, but it could so easily have been ascribed to concern about the invalid’s welfare, to a wifely sharing of her husband’s anxiety.

“I think I’ll sit with her awhile,” he said.

Yes, stay in here with me, pleaded the woman on the bed, stay in here, stay awake, and nothing can happen to you.

Vera put her arms considerately about his shoulders, gently raised him to his feet. “No, you go in and take your bath. The water must be hot now. I’ll sit with her. She’ll be all right in the morning, you’ll see.”

But he won’t, my son won’t.

Vera threw her a grimace meant to express kindly understanding, as he turned and padded out of the room. “She’s just a little downhearted, that’s all.”

She moved over to the window, stood looking out with her back to the room. She couldn’t bear to face those accusing eyes on the bed. There was a muffled sound of splashing coming through the bathroom door, and then after a while he came out.

“Sure you turned that thing off now?” Vera called in to him warningly. A warning not meant to save, and that couldn’t save.

“Yeah,” he said through the folds of a towel, “but you can notice the gas odor distinctly. We’ve got to get that thing fixed the first thing tomorrow. I’m not going to shut myself up in there with it any more. How’s Mom?”

“Shh! I’ve got her to sleep already. No, don’t go in, you’ll only wake her.” She reached up, treacherously snapped the light out.

No! Let me say good-bye to him at least! If I can’t save him, at least let me see him once more before you—

The door ebbed silently, remorselessly closed, cutting her off. Help! Help! ran the demented whirlpool of her thoughts.

There was the murmured sound of their two voices coming thinly through the partition wall for a while. Then a window sash going up. Then the muted snap of the light switch on their side. It seemed she could hear everything through the paper-thin wall. Not even that was to be spared her. Sweat poured down her face, though a cool fresh night wind was blowing in through her own open window.

Silence. Silence that crouched waiting, like an animal ready to pounce. Silence, that pounded, throbbed like a drum. Silence that went on and on, and almost gave birth to hope, it was so protracted.

Then a very slight sound from in there, barely distinguishable at all — the slither of a window sash coming down to the bottom, sealing the room up.

Her own door opened softly, and a ghostly white-gowned form slithered silently past along the wall, lowered the window in here, stuffed rags around its frame. She must have had the water heater turned on for quite some time already — without being lit this time, of course. The sharp, pungent, acrid odor of illuminating gas drifted in after her, thickened momentarily. She slipped out again, on her errand of death.

One of the lower steps of the staircase, far below, creaked slightly at her passage. Even the slight grinding of the oven door, as it came open, reached Janet Miller’s straining ears in the stillness. She must have put them back in there again, while she was washing the dishes.

The odor thickened. Janet Miller began to hear a humming in her ears, at first far away, then drawing nearer, nearer, like a train rushing onward through a long echoing tunnel. He coughed, moaned a little in his sleep, on the other side of the wall. Sleep that was turning into death. He must be getting the effects worse in there. He was nearer the bath, nearer the source of annihilation.

The form glided into Janet’s room again. It looked faintly bluish now, not white any more, from the gas refraction. Janet Miller wanted to be sick at her stomach. There was a roaring in her ears. A train was rushing through her skull, in one side out the other now — and the room was lurching around her.

She was pulled up from the pillow she rested on, a voice seemed to say from miles away, “I guess you’ve had enough to fool them,” and something came down over her head. Suddenly she could breathe pure sweet air again. The roaring held steady for a while, then began receding, as if the train were going in reverse now. It died away at last. The blue dimness went out too.

My son! My son!

Through two round goggles she saw the light of dawn come filtering strangely into the room about her. A wavering figure appeared before them presently, one arm out to support herself against the wall as she advanced. Vera, wavering not because Janet Miller’s vision was defective any longer, but because the quantity of gas accumulated in the airtight rooms was beginning to affect her, even in the short time since she’d taken off her own mask. She held a wet handkerchief pressed to her mouth in its place, and was evidently striving to hold her breath.

She had sense enough to go over to the window first, remove the rags, open it a little from the bottom before she came back to the bed, reared Janet up to a sitting position and fumblingly pulled the mask off her.

The humming started up again in Janet’s ears, the train was coming back toward her.

Vera was gagging into the handkerchief. “Hold your breath all you can, until I get back here,” she sobbed. “I’m telling you this for your own sake.” She trailed the mask after her by its nozzle, went tottering in a zigzag course out of the room.

Janet Miller could hear her floundering, rather than walking, down the stairs. A door far at the back of the house opened, stayed that way.

The humming kept on increasing for a little while, but then drifts of uncontaminated air from the open window began knifing their way in, neutralized it. Gas must still be pouring out of the heater in the bath down the hall, however.

Hold your breath as much as you can, she had said just now. That was to live, though. He’s gone, Janet Miller thought. He must be by now, or she wouldn’t have come in here to take the mask off me. Maybe I can go with him, that’s the best thing for me to do now. She began to take great deep breaths, greedily draw in all the poisoned air she could, hold it in her lungs. Like going under it purposely, in a dentist chair, when they gave you a breath count.

The humming advanced on her again, became a deep-throated roar. The room became a dark-blue pinwheel, spinning madly, rapidly darkening around its edges as it spun.

“We’ll fool them, Vern, we’ll go together,” she thought hazily. The darkness had reached the center of the pinwheel now; only a pinpoint of blue remained at its exact core. Glass tinkled somewhere far off, but that had nothing to do with her.

The pinpoint of blue went out and there was nothing.

She was very thirsty and she kept drinking air. Such delicious air. It poured down her and she couldn’t get enough of it. She couldn’t see anything. She was inside a big tent, something like that anyway, but she could hear a murmur of voices. Then there was a blinding flash of light and the delicious flow of air stopped for a minute. Then the kindly darkness returned, the flow of air resumed.

“She’s coming up. She’ll be all right.”

“Wonderful, isn’t it? You’d think just a whiff of it, anyone in her condition—”

The flash of light repeated itself. Then again, and again, faster and faster all the time, like a flickering movie film, and suddenly it stayed on permanently, there was no more darkness, and her eyes were open.

She was violently sick and, although she thought that was a bad thing, the faces all around her looked on encouragingly and nodded, as though it were a very good thing.

“She’s O.K. now. Nothing more to worry about.”

“How’re the other two?” someone called inside to another room.

“The wife’s O.K.,” the voice of somebody unseen answered. “The husband’s gone.”

They picked her up — she must have been on a stretcher — and started to carry her out. Just before they left the room with her, a desolate screaming started up somewhere within the house. “No, no, don’t stop! Bring him back! You must! Oh, why couldn’t it have been me instead? Why did it have to be him?”

They carried Janet Miller out and put her into the back of an automobile, and she didn’t hear any more of the screaming.

A pallid, mournful figure came into the room with the nurse. It was hard to recognize Vera in the widow’s weeds. This was two days later.

“You’re going home now, dear,” the nurse told Janet Miller cheerfully. “Here’s your daughter-in-law come to take you back with her.”

Janet Miller blinked her eyes. No, no, no. It was no use. They didn’t know the old code she and Vern had had.

“Can you manage it?” the nurse asked Vera.

“I have a friend waiting downstairs with a car. If you’ll just have somebody wheel the chair down for me, we can take her right in it with us.”

She was taken down in an elevator, still blinking futilely, rolled out to the hospital driveway by the orderly, and a man got out of a sedan waiting there. So now she saw her son’s other murderer for the first time.

He was taller than Vern had been and better-looking, much better-looking, but his face was weaker, didn’t have as much character in it — the kind that the Veras of this world go to hell for.

He and the orderly lifted her out of the chair and got her onto the front seat of the car. Then the chair was fastened to the outside, in back. It was too bulky to go inside the car.

Vera got in next to her — she was between the two of them now — and they drove away from the hospital. She hadn’t been kept there all this time because of the gas, of course, but simply so she could be cared for properly during the first, acute stages of Vera’s “grief.”

“That cost plenty!” Vera said explosively as the hospital receded behind them.

“It looked good though, didn’t it?” he argued. “Anyway, what the hell. We’ve got plenty of it now, haven’t we?”

“All right, but why waste it on her? What’re we going to do, have her hanging around our necks like a millstone from now on?”

The shoulders of both of them were pressed against hers, one on each side, yet they spoke back and forth as though she were five miles away, without pity for her helplessness.

“She’s our immunity. How many times do I have to tell you that? So long as she stays with us, under the same roof, looked after by us, there won’t be a whisper raised. We gotta have her around — for a while anyway.”

Vera flipped back her widow’s veil, put a cigarette in her mouth. “I’ll have time for just one before we get up to our own neighborhood. Gee, I’ll be glad when this sob-act is over!”

She threw the cigarette out of the car, lowered the veil again, as they turned down the street that led to the house that had belonged to Janet Miller’s son. A residue of smoke came through the mesh of the veil, made her look like the monster she was.

Vera went in first, head bowed in case the neighbors were looking. He carried Janet in his arms, came back for the chair and took that in afterwards.

“Now come on, clear out,” Vera said to him as soon as Janet had been installed in it. “You can’t begin to hang around here yet; they may be watching.”

“Let me get a pick-up, at least,” he growled aggrievedly. “What’s the idea of the bum’s rush?” He downed two fingers of Vern’s brandy with a single streamlined motion, from decanter to tumbler to mouth.

“I thought you were the one wanted to be careful. We gotta take it easy.”

She came back into the room again after she’d sped him on his way, slung off her widow’s hat and veil. She found Janet’s eyes fastened on her remorselessly, like two bright stones.

She helped herself to a drink like he had, a little jerkily, not quite so streamlined. “Now I’m going to tell you one thing,” she flared out at her unexpectedly. “If you want to stay out of trouble, keep those eyes of yours off me. Quit staring at me all the time! I know what you’re thinking. You may as well forget it; it won’t do you any good!”

His visits increased in number and lengthened in duration each time until, about three weeks after they’d brought her back from the hospital, they were married. They didn’t announce it, of course, but Janet Miller heard them talking about it when they came home one day, and he didn’t leave the house again from then on. He just moved in with them, so she knew what it meant. She found out what his name was then, too, for the first time. Haggard, Jimmy Haggard. Murderer of Vernon Miller.

The community at large would probably think it was one of those “whirlwind” courtships. Young widow alone in world turns to only person who has shown her sympathy in her distress — very natural. Its haste might shock them, but then after all, another three or four weeks would elapse before it could be definitely confirmed, and by then it would seem that much less abrupt.

Janet Miller lived in a state of suspended animation for a while, a trancelike condition between being dead and alive. She undoubtedly drew breath and imbibed nourishment, so technically she was alive, but little more than that could be said for her. Not only the voice was gone now, but the other two primaries had gone with it — the sun and the blue sky. None of the three would ever return again. And so she would surely have died within a month or two at the most, for sheer lack of will to live, when slowly but surely a spark ignited, a new vital force began to glow sullenly, taking the place of the three that had vanished. Revenge.

From a spark it became a flame, from a flame an all-consuming conflagration. She was more alive now than she had ever been since her disabling catastrophe had overtaken her. Fiercely it burned, by day, by night. It needed no replenishment, no renewal. Time meant nothing to it. Hours meant nothing, days meant nothing, years meant nothing. She would wait. She would live to be a hundred, if need be, but she would wreak her retribution on this pair before she went. Surely, inescapably. Someday, somehow.

They played into her hands. They found her a burden, a nuisance. They began to bicker and quarrel about her. Neither one wanted to be annoyed moving her chair or feeding her. He had more humanity than the woman. No, that was not it either — not real humanity, consideration. It was just that he was less reckless than Vera, more craven.

“But we can’t just let her starve, and she can’t feed herself! She’ll die on our hands for lack of attention, and then they’re liable to find out we neglected her, and one thing’ll lead to another, and first thing you know they’ll reopen the other thing, start putting two and two together, asking questions.”

“Well then, hire somebody to look after her. I’m not staying home all the time to spoon mush into her mouth, tuck her into bed! Get a companion for her. We’ve got dough enough for that now. Or else get rid of her altogether, farm her out to some nursing home.”

“No, not yet. We gotta keep her with us a few months, at least, until we’ve cooled off,” he insisted. “And yet I don’t like the idea of letting a stranger in here with us. It’s kind of risky. Especially somebody from the neighborhood that used to know Miller. We’ve got to be careful. One of us is liable to shoot our mouths off when we’ve got a lot of booze in us.”

While he was trying to make up his mind whether or not to take a chance, advertise or go to an agency, the matter was decided for him by one of those fortuitous coincidences that sometimes happen. A well-spoken young fellow, apparently down on his luck, was passing by one morning, and seeing Haggard on the front porch, approached timorously and asked if there was any work he could do, such as mowing the lawn or washing the windows. He explained that he was hitchhiking his way across country, and had just reached town half an hour before. As a matter of fact, he was packing a small bundle with him, apparently the sum total of his worldly goods.

Haggard looked him over speculatively. Then he glanced at the old lady. That seemed to give him an idea. “Come in a minute,” he said.

Janet Miller could hear him talking to him in the living-room. Then he called Vera down and consulted with her. She seemed to approve — probably only too glad to have someone take the old lady off their hands.

She brought him outside with her right after that, minus his bundle now.

“Here she is,” she said curtly. “Now you understand what’s required, don’t you? We’ll be out a good deal. You’ve got to spoon-feed her, and don’t take any nonsense from her. She’s got a cute little habit of going on hunger strikes. Pinch her nose until she has to open her mouth for air, if you have any trouble with her. You sleep out, but get here about nine so you can take her down on the porch. You don’t need to worry about dressing her, just wrap her in a blanket if I’m not up. Take her back to her room at night, after she’s been fed. That’s about all there is to it. I want someone in the house with her while we’re out, just to see that nothing happens.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said submissively.

“All right — what’s your name again?”

“Casement.”

“All right, Casement. Mr. Haggard’s already told you what you’re to get. That about covers everything. You can consider yourself hired. Bring out a chair for yourself, if you want one.”

He sat down to one side of the rubber-tired wheelchair, where he could watch her, hands on knees, legs apart.

They looked at each other, the old woman and the young man.

He smiled a little at her, tentatively. She could read sympathy behind it. She sensed, somehow, that this was his first case of the kind, that he’d never come into contact with anything like this before.

After about half an hour he got up, said, “I think I’ll get a glass of water. You want one too?” as though she could have answered. Then remembering that she couldn’t, he stood there at a loss, looking at her. He was very inexperienced at a job like this; that could be seen with half an eye. He mumbled, half to himself, “How’m I going to tell when you...” Then rubbed his neck baffledly.

He turned and went inside anyway. He came out again in a minute, bringing one for her. He carried it over to her and stood with it, looking down at her uncertainly. She blinked her eyes twice to show him she was thirsty. To show him — if possible — a little more than that. He held it to her lips and slowly let its contents trickle into her mouth until it was empty.

“Want any more?” he asked.

She blinked once this time.

He put the glass down on the floor and stood looking at her, thoughtfully stroking his chin. “Sometimes you blink twice in a hurry, sometimes you just blink once. What is that for, yes and no? Well now, let’s find out just to make sure.” He picked up a newspaper, found the word “yes” in it, held his finger under it and showed it to her. She blinked twice. Then he found a “no,” showed that to her. She blinked once.

“Well, now we’re that much ahead, aren’t we?” he said cheerfully.

Her eyes seemed to be smiling — they were very expressive eyes. The code — she had her old code with Vern back again, as easy as that! He was a very smart young man.

The afternoon waned. He pushed her chair in to the supper table, sat and spooned her food to her mouth for her, a little awkwardly at first, but he soon got the hang of it, learned he must not load the spoon too much, as her jaws could only open to a limited extent.

Vera gave him a look. “You seem to have better luck with her than we did ourselves. She’ll swallow for you, at least.”

“Sure,” he said comfortably without taking his eyes from what he was doing, “Mrs. Miller and I are going to be great friends.”

Janet Miller couldn’t account for it, but he had spoken the truth. She could feel a sense of confidence, almost of alliance with him, without knowing why.

He carried her up to her room later and she didn’t see him any more that night. But she lay there in the dark, content. The flame burned high, unquenchable. Perhaps...

In the morning he came up to get her, carried her downstairs, gave her orange juice to drink, and sat with her on the front porch. For a while he just sat, basking as she was. Then presently he turned his head and glanced behind him at the front windows of the house, as if to ascertain whether anyone was in those rooms or not. But the way he did it was so casual she didn’t read any meaning into it. Perhaps he was just thinking to himself that the Haggards were late risers.

He said in a rather low voice, almost an undertone: “Do you like Mr. Haggard?”

Her eyes snapped just once, like a blue electric spark.

He waited awhile, then he said: “Do you like Mrs. Haggard?”

The negative blink this time was almost ferocious.

“I wonder why,” he said slowly, but it didn’t sound like a question.

That sense of alliance, of confederacy, came over her again, stronger than ever. Her eyes were fastened on him hopefully.

“It’s too bad we can’t talk,” he sighed and relapsed into silence.

Vera came downstairs, and then presently Haggard followed her. They began to bicker and their voices were clearly audible out on the porch.

“I gave you fifty only last night!” she snarled. “Go easy, will you?”

“What’re you trying to do, keep me on an allowance?”

“Whose money is it, anyway?”

“If it wasn’t for me, you—”

There was a warning “Sh!” followed by, “Don’t forget the old lady ain’t by herself out there no more.”

The sudden restraint spoke more eloquently than any reckless revelation could have. Janet Miller’s eyes were on Casement’s face. He gave not the slightest sign of having heard anything that surprised him.

Haggard went out to get the car, brought it around to the front door. Vera came out, threw Casement a careless “You know what to do,” and got in. They drove off.

Almost before they were out of sight down the long tree-lined street, he’d got up and gone inside. Not hurriedly or furtively, simply as though he had something to do that couldn’t be postponed any longer.

He stayed in there a long time. She could hear him first in one room, then in another. He seemed to go through the entire house upstairs and down while he was about it. She could hear a drawer slide open from time to time, or a desk-flap being let down. If it hadn’t been for that peculiar, inexplicable confidence with which he seemed to inspire her, she might have thought him a burglar who had taken the job just for an opportunity to ransack the house in its owners’ absence. Somehow the idea never occurred to her.

He came back outside again finally, after almost an hour, shaking his head slightly to himself. He sat down beside her, reached into his inside pocket, took out a little oblong book — a pocket dictionary.

“You and I have got to find some way of getting beyond yes and no,” he murmured. “I’d like to talk to you. That’s why I wangled this job.”

He glanced out between the porch posts, across the front lawn, up and down the sunny street. There was no one in sight. He took something from his vest pocket. Janet Miller thought it was a watch for a minute, until she saw that it was shield-shaped, not round. It had the State seal engraved on it. He let her see it, then put it away again. “I’m a detective,” he said. “I came up here and examined the premises immediately after it happened, just in the line of duty. Mrs. Haggard, as I at first reconstructed it, was awakened by the gas, managed to stagger down to the floor below, break the glass pane in the front door, then get over to the phone to try and call for help. She only had strength left to take the receiver off, then fell down with it and was found there on the floor by the telephone, overcome.

“However, I happened to question the switchboard operator who had sent in the alarm, and she insisted it was the other way around. She distinctly heard the crash of glass, over the open wire, after the receiver was already off. That made it a little hard to understand. That was a plate-glass inset in that door, not just thin window glass. She had to swing a heavy andiron at it to shatter it. Now if a person is not even strong enough to whisper ‘Help’ over the phone, how in the world is she able to crash out a solid square of plate glass?

“Furthermore, once she was at the door why did she turn around and go all the way back to the phone, which was already disconnected, and fall down there? There is a considerable length of hall between the two. It wasn’t at the door she was found, you understand, it was at the phone.

“As peculiar as that struck me, I think I would have let it go by, but I visited the hospital while she was there being treated and asked to see her things. The light satin bedroom slippers she’d had on were discolored around the edges from dew, and I found traces of moist earth and a blade of grass adhering to their soles. She’d been outside the house before she was overcome, then went in again, closed the door after her, and smashed the glass panel in it from the inside.

“Then on top of all that, the usual neighborhood gossip has begun to drift in to us, about how soon afterwards she and Haggard were married. Even an anonymous letter or two. I tell you all this because, although this is going to be one of the toughest things I’ve ever come up against, I think you may be able to help me before we’re through.”

She could hardly breathe. The flame leaped heavenward and she blinked her eyes — twice — as rapidly as she could.

“Then there is something you can tell me about it? Good. Well, the main thing I want to know is: did he lose his life accidentally or not?”

No!

He gave her a long look. But she could see there was really no surprise in it, only confirmation. He thumbed the pocket dictionary, put his thumbnail below a word, held it up to her.

“Murder,” it read.

Yes.

“By his wife?” His mouth was tightening up a little.

She stopped and thought a minute. If she once set him off on a false scent, or on an only partially correct scent, which was just as bad, there might be no possible way for her to correct him later.

She blinked once. Then immediately afterwards she blinked twice.

“Yes and no?” he said. “What do you mean by ...?” Then he got it! He was turning out to be a smart young man, this ally of hers, this Casement. “His wife and somebody else?”

Yes.

“Haggard and your son’s wife then, of course.”

Yes.

“But—” he said uncertainly. “She was overcome herself.”

No.

“She wasn’t overcome?”

No.

“But I’ve seen the report of the ambulance doctor who treated her. I’ve spoken to him. She was taken to the hospital.”

They wasted the rest of the morning over that. She wasn’t particularly interested in convincing him that Vera’s gas poisoning had been feigned — as a matter of fact, it had only been partially so — but she was vitally interested in keeping him from going past that point, in order to try to bring the gas masks into it. Once he did, she might never again be able to make him understand what method had been used.

They went at it again in the afternoon, on the back porch. “There’s something there that seems to be holding us up. How is it you’re so sure she wasn’t overcome? You were overcome yourself— Sorry, I forgot, I can only ask you questions that shape to a yes or no answer.”

He was plainly stumped for a while. Took out some papers from his pocket, reports or jotted notes of some kind, and pored over them for a few minutes.

“He and she were occupying that same room, up there, that the Haggards are using now. You insist she wasn’t overcome by the gas. Oh, I see what you mean — she saved herself by doing what I suspected from the looks of those bedroom slippers, stayed outside while the gas was escaping, came back inside again after it had killed your son, avoiding most of its effects in that way. Is that right?”

No.

“She didn’t save herself in that way?”

No.

“Did she stay in another room upstairs, with the windows open?”

No.

He was plainly confounded. “She didn’t stay in the same room with him, the back bedroom, the whole time the gas was escaping?”

Yes.

He riffled his hair distractedly. She focused her eyes downward on the pocket dictionary he still held in his hand, glared at it as though it were her worst enemy.

Finally he translated the look. “Something in there. Yes, but what word in it?” he asked helplessly.

Why didn’t he open it? If he didn’t hurry up and open it, he’d lose the thread of the conversation that had immediately preceded her inspiration. She didn’t even know whether the word was in there. If it was, she was counting on alphabetical progression...

“Well, we’ll get it if it takes all week. She stayed right in the bedroom with him while he was asphyxiated. She wasn’t harmed, you insist, and there’s some word in here you want. Something about bedrooms?”

No.

“Something about windows?”

No.

“Something about the gas itself?”

Yes! He almost tore the little book in half to get to the G’s.

“Gas. We’ll take it from there on, all right?”

Instead of blinking, for once, she shut her eyes.

She was saying a prayer.

He started to run his finger down the page, querying her as he went. “Gaseous?” No. “Gastric?” No. “Gastronomy?” No. Suddenly he stopped. He’d seen it himself, automatically; she could tell by the flash of enlightenment that lit up his face.

“Gas mask! Why didn’t I think of that myself! It’s been as obvious as the nose on my face the whole time!”

Tears of happiness twinkled in her eyes.

“So she saved herself by using a gas mask.”

Yes, she told him.

“Did she put one on you, too?”

Yes.

“Very smart angle, there. It would have been too obvious if they’d let you go with him. Who’d she get them from, Haggard?”

Yes, she told him.

“Was he here that night, while it was taking place?”

No.

“Too smart, eh? Well, he’s an accessory just the same.” He hitched his chair a little closer to her. “Now, you want to see these people punished, of course, Mrs. Miller. He was your son.”

How needless was the yes she gave him. The flame of vengeance was a towering pillar of fire now.

“You know they killed your son, and now I know it too. But I’ve got to have stronger evidence than that. And what other evidence is there but those two gas masks? Everything depends on whether I can recover them or not. You had one on, and she removed it before outsiders arrived, obviously. You must have been conscious at least for a short while after she removed it. Did you see what she did with them?”

Yes.

Technically, she hadn’t, of course. But the answer was yes just the same, because she had heard beforehand what they intended doing with them.

“Swell,” he breathed fervently, balling a fist. “I suppose we’ll have a hard time getting it, but we’ll keep at it until we do. Am I tiring you?” he broke off to ask solicitously. “We’ve got plenty of time, you know. I don’t want to hurt you by all this excitement in one day.”

Tiring her! The flame of vengeance burned so high, so white, so tireless within her that she could have gone on for hours. No, she signaled.

“All right. About what was done with them afterwards. Let’s try a few short cuts. She hid them someplace in the house?”

No.

“I didn’t think she would. It would’ve been too chancy. She hid them someplace outside the house?”

Yes.

“Do you know where?”

Yes.

“But how could you? Excuse me. Let’s see. Under one of the porches?”

No.

“The garage?”

She refused to answer yes or no, afraid once more of sending him off on a wrong trail and being unable to correct it later. He might leave her and go out there and start tearing the garage apart.

“Not the garage then?”

She still refused to answer.

“The garage no answer, and not the garage, no answer either.” He got it. Thank heaven for creating smart young men. “The car?”

Yes.

“The one they’ve got now?”

No.

“They’ve bought that since. That’s down here in my notes. A former car then. Did you hear them discussing it afterwards? Is that how you know?”

No.

“You weren’t in a position to see it being done at the time, and you didn’t hear them talking it over afterwards. You must have heard them discussing it beforehand then.”

Yes.

His face lit up. “That explains the whole thing. How it is you’re so hep to what went on. That’s swell. Did they know you overheard them?”

She couldn’t afford to tell him the truth on that one. It might weaken his credulity. But she was convinced they hadn’t deviated in the slightest from the plan she had heard them shape in the kitchen that afternoon, anyhow. No, was her response.

“She doesn’t drive.” He’d learned that already, probably by watching them come and go. “He came and took the car away for her, then, with the masks still in it? That it?”

She didn’t answer.

“I see. He sent someone else up to get it, probably without taking him into their confidence. Therefore the masks must have been concealed in it, and he got them out at the other end without being observed.”

Yes.

“He owned a garage and repairshop, didn’t he, before his marriage?” He didn’t ask her that; just looked it up in his notes. “Yes, here it is. Ajax Garage and Service Station, Clifford Avenue. I’m going down there and look around thoroughly. There’s not much chance that those two masks haven’t been destroyed by now. But there is a chance, and a good one, that they were imperfectly destroyed. If I can just turn up sufficient remnants identifiable as having belonged to one or more gas masks, scraps of metal even, that’ll do the trick. You’ve told me all you can, Mrs. Miller, reconstructed the whole thing for me. The rest depends entirely on whether or not I can recover those two masks, intact or in fragments.” He put the jotted notes, and the pocket dictionary that had served them so well, back into his coat. “We may get the two of them yet, Mrs. Miller,” he promised softly, as he stood up.

The flame of vengeance roared rejoicingly in her own ears. Her eyes were on him meltingly. He seemed to understand what they were trying to say. But then who could have failed to understand, they were so eloquent?

“Don’t thank me,” he murmured deprecatingly. “It’s just part of my job.”

Two days went by. He was there to look after her as usual, so he must have been pursuing his investigations at night, after leaving the house, she figured. More than once, when he appeared in the mornings, he looked particularly tired, dozed there on the porch beside her, while her eyes fondly gave his sleeping face their blessing.

There is no hurry, take your time, my right arm, my sword of retribution, she encouraged him silently.

He didn’t tell her what success he was having, although the Haggards were out as much as ever and there was plenty of opportunity. It was hard to read his face, to tell whether he was being successful or not. Her eyes clung to him imploringly now, as much as they had ever clung to Vern Miller.

“You want to know, don’t you?” he said at last. “You’re eating your heart out waiting to find out, and it’d be cruel to keep you guessing any longer. Well — I haven’t had any luck so far. Their car’s still there in the garage, held for sale. I practically pulled it apart and put it together again, posing as a prospective buyer. Not while he was around, of course. They’re not in it any more. What’s more to the point, no one around the garage, no one of the employees, saw him take them out to dispose of them, or saw them at all. I’ve questioned them all; I haven’t any doubts left on that score. I’ve searched the garage from top to bottom, sifted ashes, refuse, debris, in every vacant lot for blocks around. I’ve examined the premises where Haggard lived before he moved in here. Not a sign of anything.”

He was walking restlessly back and forth between the veranda posts while he spoke.

“Damn the luck anyway!” he spat out. “Those things are bulky. They can’t just be made to vanish into thin air. Even if he used corrosive acid, nothing could disappear that thoroughly. He didn’t take them out over deep water, send them down to the bottom, because I’ve checked back on his movements thoroughly. He hasn’t been on any ferries or boats, or near any docks or bridges. Where did they come from, where did they go?”

He stopped short, looked at her. “That’s it!” he exclaimed. “Why didn’t I think of that before? If I can’t find out where they went to, maybe I can find out where they came from. I may have better luck if I go at it the other way around. You don’t just pick up things like that at the five-and-ten. Did you hear him say where he got them from, when you heard them planning the thing?”

Yes, she answered eagerly.

“Did he buy them?”

No.

“Was he given them?”

No.

“Did he steal them?”

Yes.

“From a factory where they’re made?”

No.

“From an Army post?”

No.

He scratched his head. “Where else could he get hold of things like that? From some friend, somebody he knew?”

Yes.

“That doesn’t help much. Who is he? Where’d he get them from?”

She stared intently at the morning sun, blinked twice, then her eyes sought his. Then she did it again. Then a third time.

“I don’t get you. The sun? He got them from the sun?”

This time she looked slightly lower than the sun, midway between it and the horizon. “The East?” he caught on.

Yes.

“But we’re in the East already. Oh— Europe?”

Yes.

“Wait a minute, I know what you mean now. He swiped them from someone who brought them back from there.”

Yes.

“That does it!” he cried elatedly. “Now I know how I’ll find out who he is! Through the Customs office. He had to declare those things, especially if he brought in several with him at once. They’ll be down on his Customs declaration. Now I see too why I haven’t been able to find any traces of them in ash heaps or refuse dumps. He must be holding them intact somewhere, waiting his chance to return them if he hasn’t already. He’ll try to get them back unnoticed to where he got them from. That would be the smartest thing he could do. At last I think we’ve got a lead, Mrs. Miller — if only it isn’t too late!”

The telephone rang out shrilly in the almost total darkness of the room. Casement pushed back his cuff, glanced at the radium dial of his wrist watch. A quarter to twelve. He didn’t move, just let it go ahead ringing until it had stopped again of its own accord. He had an idea who it was — trying to find out for sure if there was anyone in this particular house or not. He guessed that if he answered it he wouldn’t hear anything — just a click at the other end, and his scheme would have been a failure.

“Not taking any chances, is he?” he grunted to himself. “Even though by now he must have gotten that post card in Hamilton’s handwriting I had routed through Boston.”

He was longing for a smoke, but he knew better than to indulge in one. The slightest little thing, such as a lighted cigarette glimpsed through the dark windows of this supposedly untenanted house could ruin the whole carefully prepared setup. He’d worked too hard and patiently to have that happen now.

He looked at his watch again presently. A quarter after now; half an hour had gone by.

“Due any minute now,” he murmured.

Within the next thirty seconds the soft purr of a car running in low sounded from outside. It slowed a little as it came opposite the house, but neither veered in nor stopped. Instead, it went on past toward the next corner, like a ghost under the pale streetlights. He smiled grimly as he recognized it. It would go around the block, reconnoitering, then come by a second time and stop. Its occupant was taking every possible precaution but the right one — staying away from here altogether.

The showdown was at hand. Casement finally left the big wing chair he’d sat in ever since dusk, felt for the gun on his hip and moved noiselessly out into the hall. He went back behind the stairs, where there was a door leading into a small storeroom built into the staircase structure itself.

He disappeared in there just as the whirr of wheels approached outside once more, from the same direction as before. This time they stopped. There was a brief wait, then the muffled sound of a car door clicking open. Then a furtive footfall from the porch. A key turned in the lock.

Casement nodded to himself at the sound. “Swiped Hamilton’s key, evidently. Took a wax impression for a duplicate, and then got it back to him somehow. That’s how he got them out of here in the first place.”

The door opened and a little gray light from the street filtered into the inky front hall. Through a hairline door-crack at the back of the stairs Casement could make out a looming silhouette standing there, listening. It was empty-handed, but that was all right. He was just taking every precaution.

The silhouette widened the door-opening. Then it bent down, scanning the three-days’ accumulation of dummy mail Casement had carefully planted just inside the door, under Hamilton’s letter slot. There was also a quart bottle of milk that he’d bought at a dairy standing outside. The inked-in figure straightened, turned around, and descended from the porch again, leaving the door open the way it was. Casement wasn’t worried, didn’t stir.

There was another wait. Again the porch creaked. The silhouette was back again, this time with a square object like a small-sized suitcase in one hand. The door closed after it and everything became dark again.

Cautious footfalls came along the carpeted hall toward the staircase. They didn’t go up it but came on toward the back. He was feeling his way, smart enough not to put on the lights or even use a pocket torch or match in the supposedly untenanted house.

The storeroom door under the stairs that Casement had gone through opened softly. Still nothing happened. There was the sound of something being set down on the floor. Then of two small suitcase latches clicking open one after the other. Then a great rattling of paper being undone, followed by something scratchy being lifted out of the paper.

There were hooks along the wall in there, with various seldom-used things hanging from them. Golf bags, cased tennis rackets — and gas masks that Hamilton had brought back from Europe as souvenirs.

An arm groped upward along the wall, feeling for a vacant hook. Casement had left two conveniently unburdened for just this situation.

The other found it, by sense of touch alone. The arm dipped down again toward the floor, came up with something in it that rustled — and then suddenly there was a sharp metallic click in the stillness of the enclosed little space.

There was a gasp of abysmal terror, something dropped with a thud to the floor, and a light bulb went on overhead, lit up the place wanly.

Haggard and Casement were standing there face to face, across an upended trunk belonging to the house’s owner. Haggard was on the outside of it, the detective on the inside, but they were already linked inextricably across the top of it by a manacle whose steel jaws must have been waiting there in the dark the whole time for Haggard to reach toward that empty hook, like bait in a trap.

An olive-drab gas mask lay at Haggard’s feet. A second one still nestled in the small suitcase by the storeroom door, waiting to be transferred.

“Pretty,” was all Casement said. “It’s taken a long time and a lot of work, but it was worth it!” He glanced down at the torn half of a cardboard tag still attached to the handle of the suitcase. “So that’s where you had them hidden all the time I was looking for them. Checked in a parcel room somewhere under a phony name, waiting for Hamilton to be away and the coast clear so you could smuggle them back in again unseen. Not a bad idea — if it had only worked.”

The sky was blue, the sun was bright, and Janet Miller sat there in her chair on the front porch. She looked at the man and the woman standing before her, each handcuffed to a detective, and the flame within her blazed heavenward, triumphant.

“Take a look at this woman, whose son you murdered,” Casement said grimly. “Face those eyes if you can — and deny it.”

They couldn’t. Haggard’s head fell before her gaze. Vera averted hers. They shifted weight uncomfortably.

“You’ll see her again. She’ll be the principal witness against you — along with Hamilton and his two gas masks. Take them away, boys.” He turned her chair around so she could watch them go.

“I guess you wonder how I knew just which night he’d show up there at Hamilton’s house,” he said to her. “I made sure it’d be last night. I went to Hamilton, told him the whole story, and he agreed to help me. He went to Boston, mailed Haggard a postcard from there day before yesterday. He said he was staying until today. That made last night the only night Haggard would supposedly have had a chance to get those masks back in the house undetected. I faked some mail and filled the letter box with it, and stood a bottle of milk at the door. He fell for it.”

An important-looking white-haired man came out of the house, went over to Casement, put his hand on his shoulder. “Great work,” he said. “You sure sewed that one up — and singlehanded at that!”

Casement motioned toward Janet Miller. “I was just an auxiliary. Here’s where the thanks and the credit go.”

“Who’ll look after her until the trial comes up?” the captain asked.

“Why, I guess there’s room enough over in our house,” Casement said.

The sky was blue, the sun was warm, and her eyes shone softly as they rested on him. She had three things to live for again.