Night and Fear

The idea in swapping is to start out with nothing much and run it up to something. I started out with a buckle without a tongue and a carved peach pit, that day, and swapped it to a kid named Miller for a harmonica that somebody had stepped on. Then I swapped that to another kid for a pen-knife with one blade missing. By an hour after dark, I had run my original capital up to a baseball with its outside cover worn off, so I figured I’d put in a pretty good afternoon. Of course, I should have been indoors long before then, but swapping takes time and makes you cover a lot of ground.

I was just in the middle of a deal with the Scanlon kid, when I saw my old man coming. He was still a block away, but he was walking fast like when he’s sore, and it’s hard to use good business judgment when you’re being rushed like that. I guess that’s why I let Scanlon high-pressure me into swapping for a piece of junk like he had. It was just somebody’s old castoff glass eye, that he must have picked up off some ash heap.

“You got a nerve!” I squalled. But I looked over my shoulder and I saw Trouble coming up fast, so I didn’t have much time to be choosy.

Scanlon knew he had me. “Yes or no?” he insisted.

“All right, here goes,” I growled, and I passed him the peeled baseball, and he passed me the glass eye, and I dropped it in my pocket.

That was about all I had time for before Trouble finally caught up with me. I got swung around in the direction in which I live, by the back of the neck, and I started to move over the ground fast — but only about fifty per cent under my own speed. I didn’t mind that, only people’s Old Men always have to make such long speeches about everything, I don’t know why.

“Haven’t I got troubles enough of my own,” he said, “without having to go on scouting expeditions looking for you all over the neighborhood every time I get home? Your mother’s been hanging out the window calling you for hours. What time d’ye think it is, anyway?” And all that kind of stuff. I got it for five solid blocks, all the way back to our house, but I just kept thinking about how I got swindled just now, so I got out of having to hear most of it.

I’d never seen him so grouchy before. At least not since that time I busted the candy-store window. Most times when he had to come after me like this, he’d take a lick at the bat himself, if we were playing baseball for instance, and then wink at me and only pretend to bawl me out in front of Ma when we got back. He said he could remember when he was twelve himself, and that shows how good he was, because twenty-three years is a pretty long time to remember, let me tell you. But tonight it was the McCoy. Only I could tell it wasn’t me he was sore at so much, it was something else entirely. Maybe his feet hurt him, I don’t know.

By the time we got through supper my mother noticed it too. “Frank,” she said after a while, “what’s eating you? There’s something troubling you, and you can’t fool me.”

He was drawing lines on the tablecloth with the back of his fork. “I’ve been demoted,” he said.

Like a fool I had to butt in right then, otherwise I could have listened to some more. “What’s demoted mean, Pop?” I said. “Is it like when you’re put back in school? How can they do that to you, Pop?”

Ma said, “Frankie, you go inside and do your homework!”

Just before I closed the door I heard her say, kind of scared, “You haven’t been put back into blues, Frank, have you?”

“No,” he said, “but it might just as well have been that.”

When they came out after a while they both looked kind of down-hearted. They forgot I was in there or else didn’t notice me reading Black Mask behind my geography book. She said, “I guess now we’ll have to move out of here.”

“Yeah, there’s a big difference in the salary.”

I pricked my ears at that. I didn’t want to have to move away from here, especially since I was marbles champion of the block.

“What hurts most about it,” he said, “is I know they couldn’t find a thing against me on my record. I’m like a burnt sacrifice, the captain practically admitted as much. Whenever the Commissioner gets these brain waves about injecting more efficiency into the division, somebody has to be made the goat. He calls that getting rid of the deadwood. If you haven’t cracked six cases in a row single-handed, you’re deadwood.”

“Well,” she said, “maybe it’ll blow over and they’ll reinstate you after a while.”

“No,” he said, “the only thing that’ll save me is a break of some kind, a chance to make a big killing. Once the order goes through, I won’t even be on Homicide any more. What chance’ll I have then, running in lush-workers and dips? What I need is a flashy, hard-to-crack murder case.”

Gee, I thought, I wish I knew where there was one, so I could tell him about it. What chance did a kid like me have of knowing where there was a murder case — at least that no one else knew about and he could have all to himself? I didn’t even know how to begin to look for one, except behind billboards and in vacant lots and places, and I knew there wouldn’t be any there. Once in a while you found a dead cat, that was all.

Next morning I waited until Ma was out of the room, and I asked him, “Pop, how does somebody know when a murder case has happened?”

He wasn’t paying much attention. “Well, they find the body, naturally.”

“But suppose the body’s been hidden some place where nobody knows about it, then how do they know there was a murder case?”

“Well, if somebody’s been missing, hasn’t been seen around for some time, that’s what first starts them looking.”

“But suppose no one even tells ’em somebody’s missing, because nobody noticed it yet, then how would they know where to look?”

“They wouldn’t, they’d have to have some kind of a clue first. A clue is some little thing, that don’t seem to belong where it’s found. It’s tough to explain, Frankie, that’s the best I can do. It could be some little thing belonging to someone, but the person it belongs to isn’t around; then you wonder why he isn’t, and what it’s doing where you found it instead of where it ought to be.”

Just then Ma came back in again, so he said, “You quit bothering your head about that stuff, and stick to your school work. That last report you brought back wasn’t so hot, you know.” And then he said, more to himself than to me, “One flop in the family is enough.”

Gee, it made me feel bad to hear him say that. Ma must have heard him, too. I saw her rest her hand on his shoulder, and kind of push down hard, without saying anything.

I looked the Scanlon kid up after school that afternoon, to ask him about that eye I’d traded off him the night before. It was about the only thing I had in the way of a clue, and I couldn’t help wondering...

I took it out and looked it over, and I said, “Scanny, d’you suppose anyone ever used this? I mean, really wore it in his puss?”

“I dunno,” he said. “I guess somebody musta when it was new; that’s what they’re made for.”

“Well, then, why’d he quit using it, why’d he throw it away?”

“I guess he got a new one, that’s why he didn’t want the old one no more.”

“Naw,” I said, “because once you’ve got one of these, you don’t need another, except only if it cracks or breaks or something.” And we could both see this wasn’t cracked or chipped or anything. “A guy can’t see through one of these even when it’s new; he just wears it so people won’t know his own is missing,” I explained. “So why should he change it for a new one, if it’s still good?”

He scratched his head without being able to answer. And the more I thought about it, the more excited I started to get.

“D’you suppose something happened to the guy that used to own it?” I whispered. I really meant did he suppose the guy that used to own it had been murdered, but I didn’t tell him that because I was afraid he’d laugh at me. Anyway, I couldn’t figure out why anybody would want to swipe a man’s glass eye, even if they did murder him, and then throw it away.

I remembered what my old man had said that morning. A clue is any little thing that don’t seem to belong where it’s found. If this wasn’t a clue, then what was? Maybe I could help him. Find out about somebody being murdered, that nobody else even knew about yet, and tell him about it, and then he could get re— whatever that word was I’d heard him and her use.

But before I could find out who it belonged to, I had to find out where it come from first. I said, “Whereabouts did you find it, Scan?”

“I didn’t find it,” he said. “Who tole you I found it? I swapped it off a guy, just like you swapped it off me.”

“Who was he?”

“How do I know? I never seen him before. Some kid that lives on the other side of the gas works, down in the tough part of town.”

“Let’s go over there, try and find him. I want to ask him where he got it.”

“Come on,” he said, “I bet I can show him to you easy. He was a little bit of a runt. He was no good at swapping, either. I cleaned him just like I cleaned you. That’s why he had to go inside his father’s store and bring out this peeper, he didn’t have anything else left.”

I got sort of disappointed. Maybe this wasn’t the right kind of a clue after all. “Oh, does his father sell them kind of glims in his store?”

“Naw, he presses pants.”

I got kind of relieved again. Maybe it still was a useful clue.

When we got over there on the other side of the gas works, Scanny said, “Here’s where I swapped him. I don’t know just where his father’s store is, but it must be around here some place, because it didn’t take him a minute to go back for that glim.” He went as far as the corner and looked down the next street, and then he said, “I see him! There he is!” And he stretched his mouth wide and let out a pip of a whistle.

A minute later a dark, undersized kid came around the corner. The minute he saw Scanlon he started to argue with him. “You gotta gimme that thing back I took out of the shop yesterday. My fodder walloped me for picking it up off the eye-nink board. He says maybe the customer’ll come back and ask fer it, and what’ll he tell him?”

“Where’d it come from?” I butted in. I tried to sound tough like I imagined my old man did when he questioned suspects.

He made his shoulder go way up until it nearly hit his ear. “I should know. It came out of one of the suts that was brought in to be cleaned.”

“From the pocket?”

“Naw. It was sticking in one of the cuffs on the bottom of his pants. They were wide open and needed basting.”

“In the cuff!” Scanlon piped up. “Gee, that’s a funny place to go around carrying a glass eye in!”

“He didn’t know it was down there,” I said impatiently. “It musta bounced in without his knowing it, and he brought the suit over to be pressed, and it stayed in there the whole time.”

“Aw, how could that happen?”

“Sure it could happen. Once my father dropped a quarter, and he never heard it hit the door; he looked all over for it and couldn’t find it. Then when he was taking his pants off that night, it fell out of the cuff. He carried it around with him all day long and never knew it.”

Even the tailor’s kid backed me up in this. “Sure,” he said, “that could happen. Sometimes a thing rolls around to the back where the cuff is tacked up, and the stitching holds it in. People have different ways of taking their pants off; I’ve watched it in my fodder’s shop when they’re getting a fitting. If they pull them off by the bottom, like most do, that turns them opside down, and if something was caught in the cuff it falls out again. But if they just let them fall down flat by their feet and step out of them, it might still stay in, like this did.” He was a smart kid all right, even if his old man was just a tailor and not a detective. I had to hand it to him.

I thought to myself: The only way a thing like that could fall into a man’s trouser cuff without him seeing it would be from low down, like if the owner was lying flat on the floor around his feet and he was bending over him shaking him or something. That made it seem like maybe I could dig up a murder in this and help my old man after all. But I had to find out where that eye came from.

I said to the tailor’s kid, “Do you think this guy’ll come back, that left the suit?” If he’d really murdered someone, maybe he wouldn’t. But then if he wasn’t coming back, he didn’t have to leave the suit to be cleaned in the first place, so that showed he probably was.

“My fodder promised it for him by tonight,” he said.

I wondered if there was any blood on it. I guessed not, or the guy wouldn’t have left it with a tailor. Maybe it was some other kind of a murder, where wasn’t any blood spilled. I said, “Can we come in and look at it?”

Again his shoulder went way up. “It’s just a sut,” he said. “Didn’t you ever see a sut before? All right, come in and look at it if you gotta look at it.”

We went around the corner and into his father’s shop. It was a little dinky place, down in the basement like most of them are. His father was a short little guy, not much taller than me and Scanlon. He was raising a lot of steam from running a hot iron over something.

“This is it, here,” the kid said, and he picked up the sleeve of a gray suit hanging there on a rack with two or three others. The cuff had a little scrap of paper pinned to it: “Paulsen — 75c.”

“Don’t any address go with it?” I said.

“When it’s called for and delivered, an address. When it’s brought in and left to be picked up, no address, just the name.”

His father noticed us handling the suit just then and he got sore all of a sudden and came running at us waving his hands, with the hot iron still left in one. He probably wasn’t going to hit us with it, he just forgot to put it down, but it was no time to wait and find out. He hollered, “Kip your hands off those clinink jobs, you hear me, loafers? What you want in here, anyway? Outside!”

When we quit running, outside the door, and he turned back and went in again, I said to Sammy, that was his kid’s name, “You want these five immies I got with me?”

He looked them over. They weren’t as good as some of my others, but they were probably better than he was used to playing with. “Why should I say no?” he said.

“All right, then here’s what you gotta do. When the customer that left that suit comes in to get it, you tip us off. We’ll be waiting down at the corner.”

“So what do you want from him?” he asked, spreading his hands.

“This feller’s father is a—” Scanlon started to say. I just kicked him in time, so he’d shut up.

“We’re just playing a game,” I changed it to. I was afraid if we told him, he’d tell his father the first thing, and then his father would probably tell the customer.

“Soch a game,” he said disgustedly. “All right, when he comes I’ll tell you.”

He went back inside the shop and we hung around there waiting by the corner. This was about half-past four. At half-past six it was all dark, and we were still waiting there. Scanlon kept wanting to give up and go home. “All right, no one’s keeping you here,” I told him. “You go home, I’m staying until that guy shows up, I don’t care if it takes all night. You can’t expect a civillion to show as much forty-tude as a police officer.”

“You’re not a police officer,” he grumbled.

“My father is, so that makes me practic’ly as good as one.” I had him there, so he shut up and stuck around.

The thing was, I had to go home for supper sooner or later, I couldn’t just stay out and keep watch, or I’d get the tar bawled out of me. And I knew he had to, too.

“Look,” I said, “you stay here and keep watching for Sammy’s signal. I’ll beat it back and get my mother to feed me fast. Then I’ll come back here again and relieve you, and you can go back to your house and eat. That way we’ll be sure of not missing him if he shows up.”

“Will they let you out at nights during school?” he asked.

“No, but I’ll slip out without them knowing it. If the man calls for his suit before I get back, follow him wherever he goes, and then come back and meet me here and tell me where it is.”

I ran all the way back to our house and I told Ma I had to eat right away. She said, “What’s your hurry?”

I explained, “Well, we got an awful important exam coming up tomorrow and I gotta study hard tonight.”

She looked at me kind of suspicious and even felt my forehead to see if I was running a temperature. “You’re actually worried about an exam?” she said. “Well, you may as well eat now. Your poor father’s way out at the ends of the earth; he won’t be home until all hours.”

I could hardly wait until I got through but then I always eat fast so she didn’t notice much difference. Then I grabbed up my books for a bluff and said, “I’m going to study upstairs in my room, it’s quieter.”

As soon as I got up there I locked the door and then I opened the window and got down to the ground easy by way of that old tree. I’d done it plenty of times before. I ran all the way back to where Scan was waiting.

“He didn’t come yet,” he said.

“All right, now it’s your turn,” I told him. Parents are an awful handicap when you’re working on a case. I mean, a detective shouldn’t have to run home to meals right in the middle of something important. “Come back as soon as you get through,” I warned him, “if you want to be in on this with me.”

But he didn’t. I found out later he got caught trying to sneak out.

Well, I waited and I waited and I waited, until it was almost ten o’clock. It looked like he wasn’t coming for that suit any more tonight, but as long as there was still a light showing in Sammy’s father’s shop I wasn’t going to give up. Once a cop came strolling by and looked me over, like he wondered what a kid my age was doing standing so still by himself on a corner, and I just about curled up and died, but all he said was, “Whaddye say, son?” and went on his way.

While I was standing there hoping the cop wouldn’t come back, Sammy, the tailor’s kid, suddenly came up to me in the dark when I least expected it. “What’s the metter with you, didn’t you see me culling you with my hend?” he said. “That guy just come in for his sut.”

I saw someone come up the steps out of the shop just then, with a folded suit slung over his arm; he turned and went up the street the other way.

“That’s him. Now gimme the marbles you said.”

I spilled them into his hand with my eyes on the guy’s back. Even from the back he didn’t look like a guy to monkey around with. “Did your old man say anything to him about the eye that popped out of his cuff?” I asked Sammy.

“Did he ask us? So why should we tell him? In my fodder’s business anything that ain’t missed, we don’t know nothing about.”

“Then I guess I’ll just keep that old glass eye.”

“Oi! Mine fodder forget he esk me for it.”

The guy was pretty far down the street by now, so I started after him without waiting to hear any more. I was kind of scared, because now there was a grown-up in it, not just kids any more. I was wishing Scan had come back, so I’d have him along with me. But then I thought maybe it was better he hadn’t. The man might notice two kids following him quicker than he would just one.

He kept on going, until we were clear over in a part of town I’d never been in before. He was hard to keep up with, he walked fast and he had longer legs than me. Sometimes I’d think I’d lost him, but the suit over his arm always helped me pick him up again. I think without it I would have lost him sure.

Some of the streets had only about one light on them every two blocks, and between lights they were as black as the dickens. I didn’t like the kind of people that seemed to live around here either. One time I passed a lady with yellow hair, with a cigarette in her mouth and swinging her purse around like a lasso. Another time I nearly bumped into a funny thin man hugging a doorway and wiping his hand under his nose like he had a cold.

I couldn’t figure out why, if he lived this far away from Sammy’s father’s shop, the man with the suit had to come all this way over just to leave it to be cleaned. There must have been other tailors that were nearer. I guess he did it so he’d be sure the tailor wouldn’t know who he was or where he lived. That looked like he had something to be careful about, didn’t it?

Finally the lights got a little better again, and it was a good thing they did; by that time I was all winded, and my left shoe was starting to develop a bad squeak. I could tell ahead of time he was going to look back, by the way he slowed up a little and his shoulders started to turn around. I ducked down quick behind an ash can standing on the sidewalk. A grown-up couldn’t have hidden behind it, but it hid me all over.

I counted ten and then I peeked around it. He was on his way again, so I stood up and kept going myself. He must have stopped and looked back like that because he was getting close to where he lived and he wanted to make sure no one was after him. But, just the same, I wasn’t ready for him when he suddenly turned into a doorway and disappeared. I was nearly a block behind him, and I ran like anything to get down there on time, because I couldn’t tell from where I’d been just which one of them it was, there were three or four of them that were alike.

The entrances had inside doors, and whichever one he’d just opened had finished closing already, and I couldn’t sneak in the hall and listen to hear if the stairs were creaking under him or not. There were names under the letter boxes, but I didn’t have any matches and there were no lights outside the doors, so I couldn’t tell what they were.

Another thing, if he went that far out of his way to have a suit cleaned, he wouldn’t give his right name on that little scrap of paper that was pinned to the sleeve.

Suddenly I got a bright idea. If he lived in the back of the house it wouldn’t work, but maybe he had a room in the front. I backed up all the way across to the other side of the street and stood watching to see if any window would light up. Sure enough one did a minute or two later, a dinky one way up on the top floor of the middle house. I knew that must be his because no one else had gone in there just now.

Right while I was standing there he came to the window and looked down, and caught me staring square up at him with my head way back. This was one time I couldn’t move quick enough to get out of sight. He stared down at me hard, without moving. I got the funniest creepy feeling, like I was looking at a snake or something and couldn’t move. Finally I turned my head away as if I hadn’t been doing anything, and stuck my hands in my pockets, and shuffled off whistling, as if I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Then when I got a little further away, I walked faster and faster, until I’d turned the corner out of sight. I didn’t dare look back, but something told me he’d stayed up there at that window the whole time looking at me.

It was pretty late, and this was miles from my own part of town, and I knew I’d better be getting back and put off anything else until tomorrow; At least I’d found out which house he lived in — 305 Decatur St. I could come around tomorrow with Scanny.

I got back into my room from the outside without any trouble, but Ma sure had a hard time getting me up for school the next morning. She had to call me about six times, and I guess she thought studying hard didn’t agree with me.

Scanlon and I got together the minute of three, and we left our books in our school lockers and started out right from there, without bothering to go home first. I told him what I’d found out. Then I said, “We’ll find out this, guy’s name first, and then we’ll find out if there’s anyone living around there who has a glass eye, and who hasn’t been seen lately.”

“Who’ll we ask?” he wanted to know.

“Who do you ask when you want to find out anything? The janitor.”

“But suppose he don’t want to tell us? Some people don’t like to answer questions asked by kids.”

I chopped my hand at his arm and said, “I just thought of a swell way! Wait’ll we get there. I’ll show you.”

When we got there I took him across the street first and showed him the window. “That’s it, up there on the top floor of the middle house.” I swatted his hand down just in time. “Don’t point, you dope. He might be up there watching behind the shade.”

We went over and started looking under the letter boxes in the vestibule for his name. I don’t think we would have found it so easy, it was hard to tell just which name went with which flat, only I happened to notice one that was a lot like the one he left his suit under at the tailor’s: Petersen. “That must be it,” I told Scanny. “He just changed the first part of it.”

“What do we do now?” he said.

I pushed the bell that said Janitor. “Now watch,” I said, “how I get it out of him.”

He was a cranky old codger. “What you boys want?” he barked.

I said, “We been sent over with a message for somebody that lives in this house, but we forgot the name. He’s got a glass eye.”

He growled, “There’s nobody here got a glass eye!”

“Maybe we got the wrong number. Is there anybody around here in the whole neighborhood got a glass eye?”

“Nobody! Now get out of here. I got vurk to do!”

We drifted back to the corner and hung around there feeling kind of disappointed. “It didn’t get us nothing,” I said. “If no one in his house has one, and if no one in the neighborhood has one, where’d he get it from?”

Scanlon was beginning to lose interest. “Aw, this ain’t fun no more,” he said. “Let’s go back and dig up a game of—”

“This isn’t any game,” I told him severely. “I’m doing this to help my old man. You go back if you want to, I’m going to keep at it. He says what every good detective has to have is preservance.”

“What’s ’at, some kind of a jam?” he started to ask, but all of a sudden I saw something and jumped out of sight around the corner.

“Here’s that guy now!” I whispered. “He just came out of the house. Duck!”

We got down in back of a stoop. There were plenty of people all around us, but nobody paid any attention to us, they thought we were just kids playing a game, I guess.

A minute later this Petersen got to the corner and stood there. I peeked up and got a good look at his face. It was just a face, it didn’t look any different from anybody else’s. I’d thought until now maybe a murderer ought to have a special kind of a face, but I’d never asked my old man about that, so I wasn’t sure. Maybe they didn’t, or maybe this guy wasn’t a murderer after all, and I was just wasting a lot of good ball time prowling around after him.

He looked around a lot, like he wanted to make sure nobody was noticing him, and then he finally stepped down off the curb, crossed over, and kept going straight along Decatur Street.

“Let’s follow him, see where he goes,” I said. “I think he saw me last night from the window, and he might remember me, so here’s how we better do it. You follow him, and then I’ll follow you. I’ll stay way back where he can’t see me, and just keep you in sight.”

We tried that for a while, but all of a sudden I saw Scanlon just standing there waiting for me ahead. “What’d you give up for?” I said when I got to him: “Now you lost him.”

“No, I didn’t. He just went in there to get somep’n to eat. You can see him sitting in there.”

He was sitting in a place with a big glass front, and he was facing our way, so we had to get down low under it and just stick the top of our heads up. We waited a long time. Finally I said, “He oughta be through by now,” and I took another look. He was still just sitting there, with that same one cup still in front of him. “He ain’t eating,” I told Scanlon, “he’s just killing time.”

“What do you suppose he’s waiting for?”

“Maybe he’s waiting for it to get dark.” I looked around and it pretty nearly was already. “Maybe he’s going some place that he don’t want to go while it’s still light, so no one can see him.”

Scanlon started to scuff his feet around on the sidewalk like he was getting restless. “I gotta get back soon or I’ll catch it,” he said. “I’m in Dutch already for trying to sneak out last night.”

“Yeah, and then when you do go back,” I told him bitterly, “you’ll get kept, in again like last night. You’re a heck of a guy to have for a partner!”

“No, tonight I can make it,” he promised. “It’s Thursday, and Ma wants to try for a new set of dishes at the movies.”

“All right, get back here fast as you can. And while you’re there, here’s what you do. Call up my house and tell my mother I’m staying for supper at your house. If she asks why, tell her we both got so much studying to do we decided to do it together. That way I won’t have to leave here. This guy can’t sit in there forever, and I want to find out where he goes when he does come out. If I’m not here when you come back, wait for me right here, where it says, Moe’s Coffee Spot’.”

He beat it for home fast and left me there alone. Just as I thought, he wasn’t gone five minutes when the guy inside came out, so I was glad one of us had waited. I flattened myself into a doorway and watched him around the corner of it.

It was good and dark now, like he wanted it to be, I guess, and he started up the street in the same direction he’d been going before — away from that room he lived in. I gave him a half a block start, and then I came out and trailed after him. We were pretty near the edge of town now, and big openings started to show between houses, then pretty soon there were more open places than houses, and finally there weren’t any more houses at all, just lots, and then fields, and further ahead some trees.

The street still kept on, though, and once in a while a car would come whizzing by, coming from the country. He would turn his face the other way each time one did, I noticed, like he didn’t want them to get a look at him.

That was one of the main things that kept me going after him. He hadn’t been acting right ever since I first started following him the night before away from the tailor shop. He was too watchful and careful, and he was always looking around too much, like he was afraid of someone doing just what I was doing. People don’t walk that way, unless they’d done something they shouldn’t. I know, because that was the way I walked after my baseball busted the candy-store window and I wanted to pretend it wasn’t me did it.

I couldn’t stay up on the road out here, because there was no one else on it but him and me and he would have seen me easy. But there were a lot of weeds and things growing alongside of it, and I got off into them and kept going with my back bent even with the tops of them. When they weren’t close together I had to make a quick dive from one clump to the next.

Just before he got to where the trees started in, he kind of slowed down, like he wasn’t going very much further. I looked all around, but I couldn’t see anything, only some kind of old frame house standing way back off the road. It didn’t have any lights and didn’t look like anyone lived in it. Gee, it was a spooky kind of a place if there ever was one, and I sure hoped he wasn’t going anywhere near there.

But it looked like he was, only he didn’t go straight for it. First he looked both ways, up and down the road, and saw there was no one around — or thought there wasn’t. Then he twisted his head and listened, to make sure no car was coming just then. Then he took a quick jump that carried him off the road into the darkness. But I could still see him a little, because I knew where he’d gone in.

Then, when he’d gotten over to where this tumbledown house was, he went all around it first, very carefully, like he wanted to make sure there was no one hiding in it waiting to grab him. Luckily there were plenty of weeds and bushes growing all around, and it was easy to get up closer to him.

When he’d gotten back around to the front again, and decided there was no one in it — which I could have told him right from the start just by the looks of it — he finally got ready to go in. It had a crazy kind of a porch with a shed over it, sagging way down in the middle between the two posts that held it. He went in under that, and I could hardly see him any more, it was so dark. He was just a kind of black blot against the door.

I heard him fiddling around with something that sounded like a lock, and then the door wheezed, and scraped back. There was a white something on the porch and he picked it up and took it in with him.

He left the door open a crack behind him, like he was coming out again soon, so I knew enough not to sneak up on the porch and try to peep in. It would have squeaked under me, anyway. But I moved over a little further in the bushes, where I could get a better line on the door. A weak light came on, not a regular light, but a match that he must have lit there on the other side of the door. But I’ve got good eyes and it was enough to show me what he was doing. He was picking up a couple of letters that the postman must have shoved under the bottom of the door. He looked at them, and then he seemed to get sore. He rolled them up into a ball with one hand and pitched them way back inside the house. He hadn’t even opened them, just looked at the outside.

His match burned out, but he lit another, only this time way back inside some place where I couldn’t see him. Then that one went out too, and a minute later the door widened a little and he edged out again as quietly as he’d gone in. He put something down where he’d taken that white thing up from. Then he closed the door real careful after him, looked all around to make sure no one was in sight, and came down off the porch.

I was pretty far out in front of the door, further than I had been when he went in. But I had a big bush to cover me, and I tucked my head down between my knees and made a ball out of myself, to make myself as small as I could, and that was about the sixteenth time he’d missed seeing me. But I forgot about my hand, it was sticking out flat against the ground next to me, to help me balance myself.

He came by so close his pants leg almost brushed my cheek. Just then a car came by along the road, and he stepped quickly back so he wouldn’t be seen. His whole heel came down on two of my fingers.

All I could remember was that if I yelled I would be a goner. I don’t know how I kept from it. It felt like a butcher’s cleaver had chopped them off. My eyes got all full of water, mixed with stars. He stayed on it maybe half a minute, but it seemed like an hour. Luckily the car was going fast, and he moved forward again. I managed to hold out without moving until he got out to the road, where there wasn’t so much danger of him hearing me.

Then I rolled over on my face, buried it with both arms, and bawled good and hard, but without making any noise. By the time I got that out of my system, it didn’t hurt so much any more. I guess they weren’t busted, just skinned.

Then I sat up and thought things over, meanwhile blowing on my fingers to cool them. He’d gone back along the road toward the built-up part of town. I didn’t know whether to keep on following him or not. If he was only going back where he came from, there didn’t seem to be any sense to it, I knew where that was already. I knew he didn’t live here in this house, people don’t live in two places at once.

What did he want out here then? What had he come here for? He’d acted kind of sore, the way he looked over those letters and then balled them up and fired them down. Like they weren’t what he wanted, like he’d had the trouble of coming all the way out here for nothing. He must be waiting for a letter, a letter that hadn’t come yet. I decided to stick around and find out more about this house if I could.

Well I waited until I couldn’t hear him walking along the road any more, then I got up and sneaked up on the porch myself. That thing he had put down outside the door was only an empty milk bottle, like people leave for the milkman to take away with him when he brings the new milk. So that white thing he had picked up at first must have been the same bottle, but with the milk still in it. He must have just taken it in and emptied it out.

What did he want to do a thing like that for? He hadn’t been in there long enough to drink it. He just threw it out, and then brought the empty bottle outside again. That showed two things. If the milkman left milk here, then there was supposed to be somebody living here. But if this guy emptied the bottle out, that showed there wasn’t anyone living here any more, but he didn’t want the milkman or the mailman or anyone else to find out about it yet.

My heart started to pick up speed, and I got all gooseflesh and I whispered to myself: “Maybe he murdered the guy that lives here, and nobody’s found out about it yet! I bet that’s what it is! I bet this is where that eye came from!” The only catch was, why did he keep coming back here afterwards, if he did? The only thing I could figure out was he must want some letter that he knew was going to show up here, but it hadn’t come yet, and he kept coming back at nights to find out if it had been delivered. And maybe the whole time there was someone dead inside there...

I kept saying to myself, “I’m going in there and see if there is. I can get in there easy, even if the door is locked.” But for a long time I didn’t move. Well, if you got to know the truth, I was good and scared.

Finally I said to myself like this: “It’s only a house. What can a house do to you? Just shadows and emptiness can’t hurt you. And even if there is somebody lying dead in there, dead people can’t move any more. You’re not a kid any more, you’re twelve years and five months old, and besides your old man needs help. If you go in there you might find out something that’ll help him.” So I changed my belt over to the third slot, and whenever I do that I mean business.

I tried the door first, but like I’d thought, it was locked, so I couldn’t get in that way. Then I walked slowly all around the outside of the house trying all the windows one after the other. They were up higher than my head, but the clap-boards stuck out in lots of places and it was easy to get a toe-hold on them and hoist myself up. That wouldn’t work either. They were all latched or nailed down tight on the inside. I would have been willing to heave a rock and bust one of the panes so I could stick my arm in, but that wouldn’t have been any good either, because they had cross-pieces in them that made little squares out of the pane, and they weren’t big enough to squeeze through.

Finally I figured I might be able to open one of the top-floor windows, so I went around to the front again, spit on my hands, and shinnied up one of the porch posts. There were some old vine stalks twisted around them, so it was pie getting up. It was so old the whole thing shook bad, but I didn’t weigh much, so nothing happened.

I started tugging at one of the windows that looked out over it. It was hard to get it started because it hadn’t been opened in so long, but I kept at it, and finally it jarred up. The noise kind of scared me, but I swallowed hard and stuck my legs inside and slid into the room. The place smelled stuffy, and cobwebs tickled my face, but I just brushed them off. Who’s afraid of a few spiders? I used to keep a collection of them when I was a kid of nine, until my mother threw them out.

I couldn’t see much, just the gray where the walls were and the black where the door was. A grown-up would have had matches, but I had to use my hands out in front of me to tell where I was going.

I didn’t bump into anything much, because I guess the upstairs rooms were all empty and there was nothing to bump into. But the floorboards cracked and grunted under me. I had a narrow escape from falling all the way down the stairs and maybe breaking my neck, because they came sooner than I thought they would. After that I went good and easy, tried out each one with my toe first to make sure it was there before I trusted my whole foot down on it. It took a long time getting down that way, but at least I got down in one piece. Then I started for where I thought the front door was. I wanted to get out.

I don’t know what mixed me up, whether there was an extra turn in the stairs that I didn’t notice in the dark, or I got my directions balled up by tripping a couple of times over empty boxes and picking myself up again. Anyway I kept groping in what I thought was a straight line out from the foot of the stairs, until I came up against a closed door. I thought it was the front door to the house, of course. I tried it, and it came right open. That should have told me it wasn’t, because I’d seen him lock it behind him when he left.

The air was even worse on the other side of it than on my side, all damp and earthy like when you’ve been burrowing under the ground, and it was darker than ever in front of me, so I knew I wasn’t looking out on the porch. Instead of backing up I took an extra step through it, just to make sure what it was, and this time I did fall — and, boy, how I fell! Over and over, all the way down a steep flight of brick steps that hurt like anything every time they hit me.

The only thing that saved me was that at the bottom I landed on something soft. Not real soft like a mattress, but kind of soft and at the same time stiff, if you know what I mean. At first I thought it was a bag or bolster of some kind filled with sawdust.

I was just starting to say to myself, “Gee, it’s a good thing that was there!” when I put out my hand, to brace myself for getting up on my feet again, and all of a sudden I turned to ice all over.

My hand had landed right on top of another hand — like it was waiting there to meet it! It wasn’t warm and soft like a hand, it felt more like a stiff leather glove that’s been soaked in water, but I knew what it was all right. It went on up into a shoulder, and that went up into a neck, and that ended in a head.

I gave a yell, and jumped about a foot in the air and landed further over on another part of the floor. Then I started scrambling around on my hands and knees to get out of there fast. I don’t think anyone was ever that scared in their life before.

I couldn’t get at the stairs again without stepping over it at the foot of them, and that kept me there a minute or two longer, until I had time to talk to myself. And I had to talk good and hard, believe me.

“He’s murdered, because when dead people die regular they’re buried, not left to lie at the bottom of cellar steps. So you see, that Petersen did murder someone, just like you been suspecting for two whole days. And instead of being scared to death, you ought to be glad you found him, because now you can help your old man just like you wanted to. Nobody knows about this yet, not even the milkman or the letterman, and he can have it all to himself.”

That braced me up a lot. I wiped the wet off my forehead, and I pulled my belt over to the fourth notch, which was the last one there was on it. Then I got an idea how I could look at him, and make sure he was murdered. I didn’t have any matches, but he was a grown-up, even if he was dead, and he just might have one, in — in his pocket.

I started to crawl straight back toward him, and when I got there, I clenched my teeth together real hard, and reached out one hand for about where his pocket ought to be. It shook so, it was no good by itself, but I steadied it by holding it with the other hand, and got it in. Then I had to go around to the other side of him and try that one. He had three of them in there, those long kind. My hand got caught getting it out, and I nearly went crazy for a minute, but I finally pulled the pocket off it with my other hand, and edged back further away from him.

Then I scraped one of them along the floor. His face was the first thing I saw. It was all wrinkled and dry-like and it had four black holes in it, one more than it should have. The mouth was a big wide hole, and the nostrils of the nose were two small ones, and then there was another under one eyelid, or at least a sort of a hollow place that was just like a hole. He’d worn a glass eye in that socket, and it was the very one I had in my pocket that very minute. I could see now how he’d come to lose it.

He’d been choked to death with an old web belt from behind when he wasn’t looking. It was still around his neck, so tight and twisted you would have had to cut through it to get it off. It made his other eye, which was a real one, stand out all swollen like it was ready to pop out. And I guess that was what really did happen with the fake one. It got loose and dropped out while he was still struggling down on the floor between the murderer’s spread-legs, and jumped into his trouser-cuff without him even seeing it. Then, when it was over, he either didn’t notice it was missing from the dead man’s face, or else thought it had rolled off into a corner and was lying there. Instead it was in the cuff of the suit he’d had cleaned to make sure it wouldn’t have any suspicious dirt or stains on it.

The match was all the way down to my fingertips by now, so I had to blow it out. It had told me all it could. It didn’t tell me who the dead old man was, or why that Petersen fellow had killed him. Or what he was after that made him come back again like that. I crept up the brick cellar steps in the dark, feeling like I could never again be as scared as I had been when I first felt that other hand under mine. I was wrong, wait’ll you hear.

I found my way back to the front door without much trouble. The real front door, this time. Then I remembered the two letters I’d seen him crumple and throw away. They might tell me who the dead man was. I had to light one of the two matches I had left to look for them, but the door had no glass in it, just a crack under it, and Petersen must be all the way back in town by now, so I figured it was safe enough if I didn’t keep it lit too long.

I found them right away, and just held the match long enough to smooth them out and read who they were sent to. The dead old man was Thomas Gregory, and that road out there must still be called Decatur Street even this far out, because they said: 1017 Decatur Street. They were just ads. One wanted to know if he wanted to buy a car, the other one wanted to know if he wanted to buy a set of books.

I blew the match out and stuck them up under the lining of my cap. I wanted to take them home and show them to my father, so he’d believe me when I told him I’d found someone murdered way out here. Otherwise he was liable to think I was just making it up.

I found out I couldn’t get the door open after all, even from the inside. He’d locked it with Gregory’s key and taken that with him. I found another door at the back, but that turned out to be even worse, it had a padlock on it. This Gregory must have been scared of people, or else kind of a crazy hermit, to live all locked up like that, with the windows nailed down and everything. I’d have to go all the way upstairs, climb out, catwalk over that dangerously wobbly porch, and skin down to the ground again.

I’d gotten back about as far as where the stairs started up, and I’d just put my foot on the bottom one, when I heard a scrunch outside. Then someone stepped on the porch! There was a slithering sound by the door, and a minute later a little whistle went tweet! I nearly jumped out of my skin. I don’t know which of the three scared me most, I think it was that whispering sound under the door. The only reason I stayed where I was and didn’t make a break up the stairs was, I could hear steps going away again outside.

I tiptoed to one of the front windows and rubbed a clean spot in the dust and squinted through it. I could see a man walking away from the house back toward the road again. He climbed on a bicycle and rode off. It was only a special delivery mailman.

I waited until he’d rode from sight, then I groped my way back toward the door, and I could see something white sticking through under it, even in the dark. I got down and pinched it between my thumb and finger, but it wouldn’t come through, it seemed to have gotten caught. He hadn’t shoved it all the way in, and first I thought maybe it was too thick or had gotten snagged on a splinter.

I opened my fingers for a minute to get a tighter grip, and right while I was looking at it, it started getting smaller and smaller, like it was slipping out the other way. I couldn’t understand what was making it do that, there was no tilt to the sill. When there was only about an inch of it left, I grabbed at it quick and gave it a tug that brought all of it in again.

Then all of a sudden I let go of it, and stayed there like I was, without moving and with my heart starting to pound like anything. Without hearing a sound, something had told me all at once that there was someone out there on the other side of that door! I was afraid to touch the letter now, but the damage had already been done. That jerk I’d given it was enough to tell him there was someone in here.

Plenty scared, I picked my way back to the window again, as carefully as if I was walking on eggs, to try and see if I could get a side-look at the porch through it. Just as I got to it, one of those things like you see in the movies happened, only this time it wasn’t funny. My face came right up against somebody else’s. He was trying to look in, while I was trying to look out. Our two faces were right smack up against each other, with just a thin sheet of glass between.

We both jumped together, and he straightened up. He’d been bending down low to look in. Mine stayed down low where it was, and he could tell I was a kid. It was Petersen, I could recognize him even in the faint light out there by the shape of his hat and his pitcher-ears. He must have been waiting around near-by, and had seen the mailman’s bike.

We both whisked from the window fast. He jumped for the door and started to stab a key at it. I jumped for the stairs and the only way out there was. Before I could get to them, I went headfirst over an empty packing case. Then I was on them and flashing up them. Just as I cleared the last one, I heard the door swing in below. I might be able to beat him out of the house through the window upstairs, but I didn’t give much for my chances of beating him down the road in a straight run. My only hope was to be able to get into those weeds out there ahead of him and then lose myself, and I didn’t know how I was going to do it with him right behind me.

I got to the upstairs window just as he got to the bottom step of the stairs. I didn’t wait to look, but I think he’d stopped to strike a light so that he could make better time. I straddled the windowsill in a big hurry, tearing my pants on a nail as I did so. A minute later something much worse happened. Just as I got one foot down on the wooden shed over the porch, and was bringing the other one through the window after me, the two ends went up higher, the middle sank lower, and then the whole business slid to the ground between the two posts that had held it up. Luckily I was still holding onto the window frame with both arms. I pulled myself back just in time and got my leg up on the sill again.

If there’d been a clear space underneath, I would have chanced it and jumped from where I was, although it was a pretty high jump for a kid my size, but the way those jagged ends of splintered wood were sticking up all over, I knew one of them would stab through me sure as anything if I tried it. He’d run back to the door for a minute — I guess at first he thought the whole house was coming down on him — and when he saw that it was just the porch shed, he stuck his head out and around and looked up at me where I was, stranded up there on the window frame.

All he said was, “All right, kid, I’ve got you now,” but he said it in such a calm, quiet way that it scared you more than if he’d cursed.

He went in and started up the stairs again. I ran all around the three sides of the room, looking for a way out, and on the third side I finally found a narrow brick fireplace. I jumped in through that and tried to climb up on the inside. I fell back again to the bottom just as he came into the room. He headed straight over to the fireplace and bent down, and his arm reached in for me and swept back and forth. It missed me the first time, but the second time it got me. There was nothing I could hang onto in there to keep from being pulled out. I came out kicking, and he straightened up and held me by the throat, out where I couldn’t reach him with my feet.

He let me swing at his arm with both my fists until I got tired, and then he said in that same quiet, deadly way, “What’re you doing around here, son?” Then he shook me a couple of times to bring it out faster.

“Just playin’,” I said.

“Don’t you think it’s a funny place and a funny time of night for a kid your age to be playing?”

What was the use of answering that?

He said, “I’ve seen you before, son. I saw you standing on the street looking up at my window last night. You seem to be crossing my path a lot lately. What’s the idea?” He shook me till my teeth darn near came out, then he asked me a second time, real slow: “What’s the idear?” His actions were red-hot, his voice was ice-cold.

“Nothin’,” I drooled. My head lolled all around on my shoulders, dizzy from the shaking.

“I think there is. Who’s your father?”

“Frank Case.”

“Who’s Frank Case?”

I knew my only chance was not to tell him, I knew if I told him then he’d never let me get out of here alive. But I couldn’t help telling him, it made me glad to tell him, proud to tell him; I didn’t want any mercy from him. “The best damn dick in town!” I spit out at him.

“That’s your finish,” he said. “So you’re a cop’s son. Well, a cop’s son is just a future cop. Squash them while they’re little. Did your father teach you how to go out bravely, kid?”

Gee, I hated him! My own voice got nearly as husky as if it was changing already, and it wasn’t yet. “My father don’t have to teach me that. Just being his kid shows it to me.”

He laughed. “Been down to the cellar yet, son?”

I didn’t answer.

“Well, we’re going down there now.”

I hated him so, I didn’t even remember to be scared much any more. You’re only scared when there’s a chance of not getting hurt, anyway. When there’s no chance of not getting hurt, what’s the use of being scared? “And I’m not coming up again any more, am I?” I said defiantly while he felt his way down the stairs with me.

“No, you’re not coming up again any more. Glad you know it.”

I said, “You can kill me like you did him, but I’m not afraid of you. My pop and every cop in the city’ll get even on you, you dirty murderer, you. You stink!”

We’d gotten down to the first floor by now. It was better than the basement, anyway. I twisted my head around and got my teeth into his arm, just below the elbow. I kept it up until they darn near came together, through his sleeve and skin and muscle. I couldn’t even feel him hitting me, but I know he was, because all of a sudden I landed flat up against the wall all the way across the room, and my ears hummed like when you go through a tunnel.

I heard him say, “You copper-whelp! If you want it that quick, here it is!” The white of his shirt showed for a minute, like he’d pushed back his coat to take out something. Then a long tube of fire jumped at me, and there was a sound like thunder in the room, and some plaster off the wall got into my ear.

I’d never heard a gun go off before. It makes you kind of excited. It did me, anyway. I knew the wall was pale in back of me and that was bad because I was outlined against it. I dropped down flat on the floor, and started to shunt off sideways over it, keeping my face turned toward him. I knew another of those tubes of light was coming any second, this time pointed right, pointed low.

He heard the slithering sound my body was making across the floor. He must have thought I was hit but still able to move. He said, “You’re hard to finish, ain’t you, kid? Why ain’t you whimpering? Don’t it hurt you?” I just kept swimming sideways on the floor. I heard him say:

“Two shots don’t make any more noise than one. I’ll make sure this time.” He took a step forward and one knee dipped a little. I saw his arm come out and point down at me.

I couldn’t help shutting my eyes tight for a minute there on the floor. Then I remembered I was a detective’s son and I opened them again right away. Not for any murderer was I going to close my eyes. I just stayed still. You can’t get out of the way of a shot, anyway.

The tube of light came again, and the thunder, and a lot of splinters jumped up right in front of my face. One of them even caught in my lip and hurt like a needle. I couldn’t keep quiet even if I wanted to; the way I hated him made me say, real quiet, like I was a grown-up talking to another grown-up, not a kid who knew he was going to die in another minute:

“Gee, you’re lousy, mister, for a murderer!”

That was all there was time for. All of a sudden there was a sound like someone ploughing through that mass of wreckage outside the door, and the door swung in and hit back against the wall; he hadn’t even locked it behind him in his hurry to get his hands on me. For a minute there was complete silence — me flat on the floor, him in the shadows, an outline holding its breath at the door, waiting for the first sound.

Then a low voice that I knew by heart whispered, “Don’t shoot, fellows, he may have my kid in there with him.”

You could make him out against the lighter sky outside, but he had to have light to see by, or I knew Petersen would get him sure. He was just holding his fire because he didn’t want to give away where he was. I had one match left in my pocket from the dead man. But a match goes out if you try to throw it through the air. I got it out of my pocket, and I put its tip to the floor and held it there, ready. Then I drew* my legs up under me, reared up on them, and ticked the match off as I straightened. I held it way out across the room toward Petersen, with my arm stretched as far as it could reach, as it flamed, and it showed him up in smoky orange from head to foot. “Straight ahead of you, Pop!” I yelled. “Straight ahead of you where I’m holding this out to!”

Petersen’s gun started around toward me fast and angry, to put me and my match both out at once, but there’s only one thing that can beat a bullet, and that’s another bullet. The doorway thundered, and my pop’s bullet hit him so hard in the side of the head that he kicked over sideways like a drunk trying to dance, and went nudging his shoulder all the way down the wall to the floor, still smoky orange from my match to the last.

I stood there holding it, like the Statue of Liberty, until they had a chance to get over to him and make sure he wouldn’t still shoot from where he was lying.

But one of them came straight to me, without bothering about him, and I knew which one it was all right, dark or no dark. He said, “Frankie, are you all right? Are you all right, son?”

I said, “Sure, I’m all right, Pop.”

And the funny part of it was, I still was while I was saying it; I was sure I could’ve gone on all night yet. But all of a sudden when I felt his hands reaching out for me, I felt like I was only twelve years old again and would have to wait a long time yet before I could be a regular detective, and I flopped up against him all loose and went to sleep standing up or something...

When I woke up I was in a car with him and a couple of the others, riding back downtown again. I started to talk the minute my eyes were open, to make sure he hadn’t missed any of it, because I wanted to get him re — you know that word.

I said, “Pop, he killed an old guy named Thomas Gregory, he’s down—”

“Yeah, we found him, Frankie.”

“And, Pop, there’s a letter under the front door, which is why he killed him.”

“We found that too, Frankie.” He took it out of his pocket and showed it to me. It wasn’t anything, just an old scrap of pale blue paper.

“It’s a certified check for twelve thousand dollars, in payment for a claim he had against a construction company as a result of an industrial accident.”

My father explained, almost like I was a grown-up instead of a kid, “He was hit in the eye by a steel particle, while he was walking past one of their buildings under construction. He had to have that eye taken out. That was five years ago. The suit dragged on ever since, while he turned sour and led a hand-to-mouth existence in that shack out there. They fought him to the last ditch, but the higher court made them pay damages in the end.

“The day the decision was handed down, some of the papers ran little squibs about it, space-fillers down at the bottom of the page like they do. One of these evidently caught Petersen’s eye, and he mistakenly thought that meant the check had already come in and the old man had cashed it. He went out there, got himself admitted or forced his way in, probably tortured Gregory first, and when he couldn’t get anything out of him, ended up by killing him.

“He was too quick about it. The check didn’t come in until tonight, as you saw. He had to keep coming back, watching for it. Once the old man was gone and the check still uncashed, the only thing he could do was take a desperate chance on forging his name to it, and present it for payment, backed up by some credentials taken from Gregory. Probably with a black patch over one eye for good measure.

“He wasn’t very bright or he would have known that he didn’t have a chance in a thousand of getting away with anything like that. Banks don’t honor checks for that amount, when the payee isn’t known to them, without doing a little quiet investigating first. But he wanted something out of his murder. He’d killed the old man for nothing... But how in the blazes did you—”

So then I took out the glass eye and showed it to him, and told him how I traced it back. I saw them give each other looks and shake their heads sort of surprised over it, and one of them said, “Not bad! Not bad at all!”

“Not bad?” snapped my father.

“How’d you know where I was?”

“In the first place,” he said, “your mother caught right on that Scanny was lying when he said you were studying over at his house, because in your excitement you kids overlooked the fact that tomorrow’s Thanksgiving and there’s no school to study for. She sent me over there, I broke Scanny down, and he showed me where this room was you’d followed this man to earlier in the day.

“I broke in, looked it over, and found a couple of those newspaper items about this old man Gregory that he’d taken the trouble to mark off and clip out. I didn’t like the looks of that to begin with, and your friend Scanny had already mentioned something about a glass eye. Luckily they gave the recluse’s address — which was what had put Petersen onto him, too — and when eleven-thirty came and no sign of you, I rustled up a car and chased out there fast.”

We stopped off at Headquarters first, so he could make out his report, and he had me meet some guy with white hair who was his boss, I guess. He clapped my shoulder right where it hurt most from all those falls I’d had, but I didn’t let him see that. I saw my father wasn’t going to say anything himself, so I piped up: “The whole case is my father’s and nobody else’s! Now is he going to get re-instituted?”

I saw them wink at each other, and then the man with white hair laughed and said, “I think I can promise that.” Then he looked at me and added, “You think a lot of your father, don’t you?”

I stood up straight as anything and stuck my chin out and said, “He’s the best damn dick in town!”

Afterword to “Through a Dead Man’s Eye”

In “Through a Dead Man’s Eye” (Black Mask, December 1939) Woolrich reworked some of the elements from “If I Should Die Before I Wake” (1937), his first thriller with a boy as narrator and protagonist, and produced a tale just as vivid and suspenseful but more naturalistic and circumstantial, without the earlier story’s fairy-tale overtones. The climax with 12-year-old Frankie being stalked by the man who takes long walks deep into the forest is an orgy of breathless terror that no one but Woolrich could have written so effectively.