Night and Fear

She found him in a place that the men in his division called “The Greek’s,” a lunch-counter just around the corner from the precinct house to which he was attached. He was at the far end of the counter, sitting slumped over a mug of coffee. She sidled up alongside him without his seeing her and sat down next to him.

“I guess you forgot what time our date was for.”

“No,” he said glumly. “No, I didn’t. But what’s the use? I guess you better quit seeing me. I’m just a dick on the Homicide Squad. That’s all I’ll ever be, I guess. And you’re...”

“I’m what?”

“You’re a rich girl, a debutante — that kind of thing. We don’t belong together, Ginny. If I hadn’t stopped your horse from running away with you that day in the park, we would never even have met. And maybe it would have been better for both of us.”

She smiled understandingly, as though this wasn’t the first time she’d heard him talk that way. “What is it this time, Terry?” she asked. “What went wrong?”

“They call him The Rose Killer,” he said moodily. “And he’s got to be stopped. There’s a general demotion coming on if he isn’t — all along the line from top to bottom. We were told that just now. And it was no kidding. That’s all I need vet — to go back into uniform. I’d look great then, going around with a girl like you, wouldn’t I?”

“I’m not complaining,” she said softly. “I’ve got your handcuffs on, and the key was thrown away a long time ago. What are you going to do with your prisoner?”

“Turn her loose.”

“She refuses to be freed.” She waited a moment, finally put her hand on his sleeve. “Then why don’t you get him, Terry, if that would make it easier for the two of us?”

He gave her a look. “Nice work if you can get it,” he said caustically.

“What’s he like?”

“That’s the stumble. He could be anybody. Nobody’s seen him — only the dead — and they don’t talk about it afterward. He just slips out of the shadows, kills, and then slips back again. We’re no further than we were in the beginning.”

She gulped a sip of coffee, as if to warm herself. “How many times?” she asked fearfully.

He held up four fingers. “And he’s not through yet. It’s going to be one of these chain things, if he’s allowed to keep on.”

“Are you sure it was always him? Couldn’t it have been somebody else one of those times?”

He shook his head. “That part of it we’re sure of. There’s the same touch every time. You know what that is, don’t you?”

“You explained it to me once. What is it this time?”

“I shouldn’t be telling you stuff like this. You should be dancing at some party — not listening to things like this.”

“Anything that concerns you concerns me. I want to know.”

“It’s always the same — a rose. A white rosebud. A death rose. He puts it into each one’s hand before he leaves her lying there. We’ve found each one like that.”

“Her?” she breathed.

“It’s always a woman. A young woman of a certain age. Between nineteen and twenty-three. Never any younger, never any older.”

“What is it? What makes him...?”

“I’ve been reading up in a book of abnormal psychology. It was part of the instructions we were given — not that it’s helped much in tracking him down. But it has helped to clear the fog away from the motive. This is just deduction, pure and simple, but here’s what I get out of it. You know what the rose is, don’t you, speaking symbolically? The flower of love. It’s always stood for that. So there’s a shell-shocked love involved. Now the white rose — the bud — has an additional meaning of its own — purity, loyalty, devotion — and especially it stands for a young girl — for youth. So the factor involved here is a doublecross, committed against him by someone young, whom he worshipped, and who betrayed his faith in her.

“Now, the second point is this: It has always happened either during or immediately after a blackout. We all mistakenly thought at first that the great opportunity offered by the darkness and the emptiness of the streets had something to do with it. Now we’ve decided that it hasn’t. At least one of those crimes occurred a full hour after the lights had gone on again and everything had returned to normal. The victim had been seen alive and had been spoken to by numerous people well after the all-clear had sounded. It wasn’t until more than sixty-five minutes later that he struck.”

“Then?”

“I’m frightening you.”

“This is our problem — not yours.”

“Here, have a detective’s cheap brand of cigarette to steady you.”

She took an impatient puff. “Then it isn’t the darkness of the blackout?”

“No, it isn’t the darkness of the blackout itself. Here’s how it stacks up now. The original act of betrayal occurred during a blackout. Now, we haven’t had many of them over here yet, so that probably means London. They were continuous there — night after night — and the tension was terrific. Everyone’s nerves stretched to the breaking point. All that anybody, who already had any latent mental instability, needed was an extra push to go off the deep end altogether. One night some one man in London did, and that’s the same man that’s over here now, doing this.

“Maybe he came home stunned one night, from a bomb-concussion, or with his equilibrium teetering after being dug out from being buried alive. Maybe he came home to someone he adored, someone whom he thought was loyal and true to him, and caught her doublecrossing him — getting ready to run off with someone else, under the impression that he’d never turn up alive again. Maybe he even discovered some plot under way, engineered by her, to kill him if he should come back, and then collect his insurance. The result is the thing — what it did to him. It gave him that final push over into the darkness. It was a shock on top of a shock. One shock too many.

“Whether there was an original crime, at that time, has never come to light. We don’t know. Probably there was, but if so, that’s on the doorstep of Scotland Yard. All that we’re concerned with is that he’s shown up over here. And four times, during our own blackouts, the original crime has repeated itself.”

“But if, in London, he once...”

“The mind remembers. Now every time the sirens wail and the lights go down, he lives that first time over again. The shock occurs again. His sanity overbalances again. He finds her, somewhere, somehow; and he kills her all over again. And then he puts a white rose in her hand. But the body find is that of some innocent girl who was a total stranger to him — who never knew him — who never did him any harm — who only had the misfortune of looking a little like that first one, over in London.”

She hunched her shoulders a little. Her teeth were lightly tapping together, like typewriter keys, but she was careful not to let him notice. “And how does he — is it always the same?”

“Always. Strangulation between the hands, with a thumb into the windpipe to keep them from crying out. They die in swift and sudden silence. And it must have been that way the first time too.”

“Isn’t there anything about him you know? At least, you do know he’s English?”

“No,” he said, “not even that. Hundreds of Americans have been living in London all during the war. Or for that matter, he could be any other nationality. It’s just that it was probably there that it happened.”

He ran his fingers through his hair, dislodging his hat a little.

“And here’s what’s so hopeless about it — what’s so dangerous about him. He’s insane, of course, but there’s only this one phase to his insanity. You probably think of him as some twisted, snarling, hunched-over thing, someone out of a Boris Karloff picture, prowling along glary-eyed, with his hands curved, so that you can spot him coming from a block away. He isn’t — or we would have caught him long ago. He’s probably perfectly normal in appearance and behavior. Maybe even clean-cut and rather likable looking. You could pass him on the street and never know. You could be around him for days at a time and never be any the wiser, never catch on that there was anything the matter with him. I bet many a time he’s brushed elbows with our own fellows, coming and going, and they never gave him a second look. But when the sirens hoot and the corner lamp-posts go out, the scene comes back to him. Then he sees someone vaguely like her in the dimness around him — or right afterward when the lights go on again. And that one defective wire in him is jangled and — pfft! — a short circuit!”

“Don’t the flowers tell you? They don’t grow wild on the city streets. He must get them from somewhere. Isn’t there some way of checking on who buys white roses, just before or during a blackout?”

“We’ve worked on that. No one buys flowers during a blackout. And he doesn’t buy them ahead, because he doesn’t know himself that it’s going to happen to him. We don’t know where he gets them. May as well admit it. He might never buy them the same way twice. Or he may always use the same method of getting them. He may steal them from some bush in some hot-house or conservatory that he knows of. Maybe he steps into a flower shop and buys some other kind of flower, and at the same time steals one of the white death-buds without being detected. Or he may have simply snatched one up from some street peddler, who sells so many of them one at a time all day long that he couldn’t be expected to remember. Or he may have done all these things alternately, one time one, next time another.”

“Terry, if you were the one to get him?”

“It would mean a citation and a promotion.”

“And all the things that stand between us — that you insist stand between us — would disappear?”

“Well, they’d become a lot slimmer.” He flung his cigarette down disgustedly. “But what chance have I? There isn’t one of us who hasn’t tried. We’ve all been working our heads off for weeks. And there isn’t one of us who hasn’t failed.”

“Maybe you’ve all tried in the wrong way. You’ve tried as the police, out to catch a criminal,” she said vaguely.

“What other way is there?”

She didn’t answer that. She was saying to herself: You haven’t tried as one of the girls whom he stalks and kills.

“Terry,” she said, “what were they like? You know — the ones he killed? What was it they all had that was the same. Give me kind of a composite picture of them, can you?”

He took out a little pocket notebook and turned the pages. “I told you about the age. They were all between nineteen and twenty-three. Their average height was pretty much the same, too. They were all tall girls, around five-six or seven.” He glanced at her. “About your height, maybe an inch taller. They were all dark-haired.”

“How did they wear their hair?”

“I haven’t got that down here. The death struggle disarranged it, of course, but I saw photographs of a couple of them. From what I can remember, they wore it sort of curly and loose, down their backs.”

He closed the notebook.

“That’s about as close as you get to a common denominator among them. I suppose each had a superficial resemblance, in the dim light or shadowy darkness where he came upon them, to that long-dead love of his own.”

“Where... where did it happen?”

“One took place a few blocks from a dance hall. He must have followed her away from there. Another worked late at night, in the business office of a taxi-company garage. He must have looked in through the window as he was passing and saw her alone in there. One was a girl from a small town upstate who came here looking for work. She was last seen at an employment agency where she registered to apply for a job. She was sent out to an address, and before she could get there a blackout occurred. She never reached the address. She was found halfway between the agency and her destination, where the blackout — and he — must have overtaken her.

“The last one worked in a department store. We think in that case he must have taken refuge in the store when the alert sounded outside. He evidently saw her there behind the counter and trailed her home at closing time. She was found right outside her own door, with her latchkey in one hand, ready to insert into the lock — and the white rose in the other.

“And that’s how the record stands as of tonight. We’re all waiting for it to happen again. We’re like a bunch of helpless amateurs.”

She didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally he turned and looked at her curiously. “Why are you sitting like that — so quiet? I guess I’ve frightened you by telling you all this.”

“Take me home,” she said absently, staring down at the counter before her.

He got up, threw down a coin, and escorted her toward the entrance.

“I shouldn’t have told you all that stuff. I’ve given you the creeps.”

She didn’t tell him so, but he hadn’t given her the creeps. He’d given her an idea.

The hollow-cheeked, gaunt-eyed Trowbridge butler, whose face bore a startling death-like look, stepped softly up behind Virginia Trowbridge’s chair, halfway through the dinner party. He whispered, “There’s a gentleman asking for you on the phone, Miss Ginny. He says he’s calling from some headquarters or other. I couldn’t quite get the name.”

She jumped up, nearly upsetting the chair in her hurry, and ran out of the room as if her life depended on it.

“This is Tom,” a man’s voice said when she had reached the phone. “I’m keeping my word to you, letting you know ahead...”

“Is there... is there going to be one tonight?” she asked in an excited undertone.

“I’m not supposed to tell you this. It’s a serious matter. But you know, Ginny, I can’t refuse you anything. And you promised me you wouldn’t let it go any further, if I did give you advance warning on each blackout.”

“I swear I won’t tell anyone else, Tom. I give you my word I won’t pass it on to another living soul. This is just for my own information. It’s... well, it’s hard to explain. It’s just a whim of mine.”

“I know I can depend on you to keep it to yourself. Well, the order’s just gone out. There’s going to be a complete city-wide blackout tonight.”

“How much time have I—” She quickly corrected herself. “I mean, how soon is it coming — what time is it set for?”

“It’s going to be at exactly nine thirty.”

She looked around her. “It’s twenty-five to nine now. That means in less than, an hour — in fifty-five minutes...”

She hung up and ran for the stairs. On the bottom step she stopped short. There was a shadow cast on the wall, the shadow of a figure arched in the dining-room doorway.

“Burton, is that you?” she called sharply.

The shadow moved and the butler came around the turn of the hall, holding a small tray in his hands.

“You weren’t listening to my conversation, were you?”

“No, miss. I was waiting for it to end.”

“Put that down a minute and have Edwards bring the car around to the door. Hurry! I have to be out of here in ten minutes!”

He looked at her in gloomy deprecation. “Beg pardon, miss, I believe I overheard Mrs. Trowbridge say she intended using the car herself to take her friends to the opera.”

She was halfway up the stairs by now. “He can come back for Mother and her friends afterward, as soon as he’s taken me where I want to go. And don’t say anything about it to anyone until after I’ve gone. I haven’t time to go back in there and start apologizing.”

She flung the door of her room shut and began to prepare herself. She dressed faster than she ever had before. She had a date with death — in the oncoming pall of the blackout.

She thrust her feet into a pair of newly purchased shoes, with almost stilt-like heels. Five-six or seven, he’d said; about an inch taller than you. She took a fastening or two out of her hair and let it tumble down about her shoulders. She ran a comb through it and left it that way. Worn curly and loose, down the back, he’d said, and dark-haired. Her own had been a medium brown, but three visits to a hairdresser inside of three days had darkened it progressively to a brown that was now almost black. In the dark, or in uncertain light, it could not be told from black.

She gave a couple of half turns before the glass, studying herself. Would Death know her, when he saw her? “The mind remembers,” Terry’s voice came back to her again. She shivered slightly, then hastily opened a drawer and ferreted out a small scrap of paper which had lain there in readiness with a name and address penciled on it. She hurried from the room.

She ran down the stairs, flashing past the dining room. The quick hum of conversation made her hasty departure unnoticed. A moment later she was in the car and Edwards, the chauffeur, had taken his place in the driver’s seat.

As they glided into motion she reached over his shoulder and handed him the penciled scrap of paper she’d brought with her.

He looked at it, and touched his cap without saying anything.

It was only later, when they were waiting for a light, that he looked up and sought her eyes questioningly in his rear-sight mirror. “Are you sure you want to go there unescorted, miss? It’s one of the cheapest dance halls in the whole city.”

“I’m not only sure I want to go there,” she answered firmly, “but I want to be inside the place by nine at the latest. Please be sure to get me there in time!”

Her chair at the dinner-table had remained vacant, with her unfinished glass of wine still standing before it.

The butler stepped forward and leaned over confidentially at the older Mrs. Trowbridge’s belated inquiry. “She’s gone out, madam,” he reported, “without saying where.” Then he withdrew from the room.

“Why do you keep that man?” one of the guests asked, glancing curiously after him. “I should think you would find him depressing.”

“He is quite cadaverous, isn’t he?” Mrs. Trowbridge agreed cheerfully. “They’re very hard to obtain now. Besides, we’ve grown rather used to him so that we don’t mind any more. It’s his night off, later on tonight, and he always looks particularly gruesome on his night off.”

She laughed a little and idly fingered one of the tightly furled white rosebuds she had ordered for the dinner-table decorations.

“Are you here with anyone?”

The figure standing alongside her had edged up by imperceptible degrees, pretending to watch the dancers with a sort of evasive vacancy. Every few bars of music he was closer than he had been before, and yet she could never catch him actually moving.

She shook her ahead. Something caught in her throat and prevented her from answering more fully.

“I didn’t figure you were. I’ve been watching you the whole time you were standing here like this.”

She’d been watching him too, but she didn’t say so.

His face was weatherbeaten and shrewd. He was of medium height and stocky build. He wasn’t actually ominous-looking, but neither was he the type to inspire confidence. She didn’t like his hands. Whatever purpose had brought him up here, she was certain it was more than just the sheer love of dancing. He didn’t have the limberness of the typical dancing fanatic, nor the nattiness of dress that so often accompanies that quality.

“I haven’t seen you dance with anybody yet,” he offered.

“I don’t know anyone here.”

He hitched up his head. “How about me, then?”

She could feel a curious, numbing little shock run through her body as her fingers touched the coarse cloth of his sleeve. “Terry would kill me for this, if he knew,” she shivered.

They moved around the glistening floor in silence, very slowly.

“How am I going to know? What way is there?” she kept thinking. “I should have been prepared...”

“Do you come here often?” she asked.

“I never go to the same place twice.”

Why not, she wondered — is he afraid?

They came back to the spot from where they’d started. The music stopped, and his hand dropped from hers. Nothing had happened. She glanced over at the large, circular wall clock above the entrance. Nine more minutes.

Others kept applauding. The music started once more. His hand came up again, this time without asking. Again in stony silence they went through the motions of their strange death dance. Occasionally a green spotlight from above would flicker across their faces, giving them the appearance of ghouls.

Suddenly he spoke. “You know, you kind of remind me of someone I once knew. I’m trying to think who.”

She missed a step, got back in time again. “I do?”

She waited, but he said nothing more.

Again they were coming back toward their starting place. It took about two minutes to go all the way around. In six minutes, now.

“I like the dance halls here better than over in London, don’t you?” she blurted out. She hadn’t known she was going to say it herself. She would have been afraid to, if she had.

This time he lost a step. “How did you know I’d been to London?”

She had to think quickly. “I can tell by your shoes. Only the English make those heavy, thick, hand-sewn brogues.”

He looked down at them, but he didn’t contradict her. It was a shot in the dark, but it must have hit the mark.

Five minutes now. It was an eerie feeling, to be the only one in all that crowd who knew that at a given moment all this brightness would be blotted out.

He’d caught her that time. She was becoming careless, giving herself away. “Why do you keep looking at the clock?” he asked.

“I only — I want to see what time it is, that’s all.”

“Are you expecting anyone?”

Death, she thought, but she didn’t tell him.

It was twenty-six minutes past nine. Four more minutes.

The blaring music stopped and an odd silence hung over the place. This time the applause couldn’t get the musicians to begin again. They wanted to rest. The dancers separated, drifting off the center of the floor toward the sidelines, trailing their inverted reflections along its shiny surface like ghosts.

They stayed together, walking around the floor. They came around to the rear of the bandstand, where there was a lane and a counter where they sold soft drinks. And on the other...

“Look, they sell flowers here, too,” she said, her voice steady.

“Yeah, not a bad idea.”

She couldn’t see the clock from here. The lights were burning brighter — as if they knew that in three more minutes they were going to die, and were having a last fling. All the others were fanning themselves, but her hands felt cold.

“Can I get you some kind of refreshment?”

“I’d rather have a flower. Just one.”

“Sure. What kind would you like?” He turned aside and led her to the counter.

“You pick it out,” she said and hoped he didn’t notice the tremor in her voice.

He put his hand out. Then he stopped and looked at her face several times, and back at the flowers again. “There’s something kind of innocent and young about you, different from most of the girls who come up here. I think this kind would go good on you.”

He was holding a white rosebud in his hand.

Terry’s phrase for it sounded in her mind like a warning bell. The death rose! Her eyes brew bigger and her breath came faster. She tried to hide her excitement — and her fear.

“You dropped it,” he said. He picked it up and put it back in her hand a second time. Then he added, “Why is your hand shaking like that? You can hardly hold it.”

“The stem is a little wet. I’m doing that to dry it.”

They came back in sight of the clock again. Two minutes.

The music began, and they went out on the floor. She said to herself. “It’ll happen while this one is going on. Before we come all the way around again.”

She’d pinned the flower to her dress. She looked at the clock again, slyly so that he wouldn’t notice. The minute hand was straightening itself out. Darkness was on its way.

For a minute everything hung suspended. Only she knew what was coming. The music crashed and pounded. The circling figures swam around. The lights blazed down.

Then suddenly a different noise crept into the music. A trumpet or a horn was getting too loud and going off-key. First, the music submerged it, but it kept coming to the surface again. Then it climbed above and, in turn, submerged the music. It was like a foghorn now, deep and steady. The music stopped. The long-drawn eerie hoot went on and on, surging through the night outside.

A group of lights went out, leaving a circle of darkness on the floor below where they’d been. Then another circuit went out, leaving still another circle of shadows. The dancers scattered in all directions, not knowing which way to go.

A hollow voice kept trumpeting, “Lights out! Lights out!”

“Come on over against the wall,” he said, “while we can still see how to get there.” He took her by the arm and started to pull her after him.

The last circuit of light overhead died just as they reached the wall, but there were still two solitary bulbs burning, one at each end, over the exits.

She watched his face tensely, while she still could, in the feeble glimmer that was left. She didn’t like the way he looked. His eyes kept opening and closing, as though he were suffering.

He hadn’t let go of her hand. She tried to withdraw it, but he held onto it tightly.

“Stand here by me,” he whispered, “so I won’t lose you. Here, perfectly still against the wall.”

The light at the upper end had gone out now. There was only one left in the entire place, an automatic night-light that they couldn’t disconnect in time. Somebody was climbing a chair to it. She couldn’t see his face any more, just his eyes, shining like little wet pebbles in the dark.

He was shaking. She could feel it through his hand.

“You don’t hear the bombs,” she heard him say in a smothered undertone, as if he’d forgotten where he was.

“What was that?” she caught him up.

That brought him back for a minute. “I’ve been through this before. Not here — some place else — where it was real.”

“And then you went home and killed someone,” she said to herself, unheard.

Suddenly, in the final instant before the last light went out, she saw something. Her free hand went to her throat, in an instinctive protective gesture. Why was he looking at her neck like that?

The last stubborn light went out and the darkness became complete. Almost smothering, it was so dense. The blackout was in full swing.

She was limp against the wall. She might have toppled over if it hadn’t been for his taut grip on her hand.

She was helpless now, caught in the very trap she’d tried to arrange for him. She should have gone to the telephone while she still had the chance. There was a pay booth in the rear. She had seen it while they were dancing, but it was too late now.

She could hear his breathing beside her. He was breathing hard. The siren had stopped now and there was that awful, hushed, waiting silence that was even worse. It was oppressive, like a sense of doom. An occasional foot scraped restlessly, or some girl gave a nervous giggle, but for the most part they could have been alone in a vast empty cave.

He couldn’t do it right here. Or could he? She wondered. Then she thought, “Yes, he could, if he covered my mouth quickly enough.” What was that Terry had said? They died in sudden, swift silence.

She started violently away from the wall and choked back a scream. “What was that? I felt something touch the side of my neck.”

“It was just my hand. I put it up against the wall, to lean against it.”

She shuddered and tried to relax again. Then he spoke again.

“Let’s go downstairs, shall we? I can hardly breathe up here.”

This was it, coming now.

“We’re not supposed to go out while the blackout is on.”

“Just down to the street door. We can stand there till it’s over. We’re right near the stairs. I saw where they were before the lights went out.”

He began to pull her again. If there wasn’t any actual violence in the pull, there was a sort of undulating pressure that she couldn’t hold out against. Her feet couldn’t get a grip on the glossy floor and she tottered unwillingly after him.

They passed a few other couples standing silently against the wall and she wanted to reach out and grasp at them — call out to them to help her.

“I wanted to find out,” she thought ruefully. “Now I’m going to find out!”

There was a swish as he pushed aside a swinging glass door and then they were outside at the head of the stairs. There were a few couples out there, too, sitting on the steps, so it was postponed another minute or two. He picked his way down through them, still holding her hand. “Hold onto the rail,” he whispered, “so you don’t miss a step going down.”

She kept trying to pull back, away from him, but he seemed not to notice or else he purposely disregarded it.

He pushed aside a second glass door, and they were in the open street-doorway now, cut off from all the others inside.

It was deathly still all around them. In the distance a warden’s voice could be heard, shouting a warning to some householder, but it had a far-off sound, blocks away.

She was starting to lose her head. “Wait a minute, I want to go in again. Let me go in again — just for a minute...”

He kept her there by flattening the hinged door against its frame with one hand, so that she couldn’t swing it open.

His voice was treacherously reassuring. “Don’t be frightened. I know it’s scary, but isn’t it better down here in the fresh air? Let’s just walk down a little way, and back. Close up against the building. Nobody’ll see us.”

He urged her forward. She took a step or two after him, off-balance. The doorway slipped behind them, already swallowed up in the dark.

She didn’t see the little alley in time, until it had already opened up beside them. He must have known it was there all along or he couldn’t have recognized it so immediately in the darkness.

Suddenly his lethargy of movement was gone and he was all quick, remorseless action. The careless hand on her shoulder put on pressure, twirled her aside, thrust her headlong into the gap. He came in after her, sealing up her escape, for the alley was so narrow the buildings pressed against her.

The hand that had been on her wrist all along let go at last, clamped itself to her mouth instead, stifling the scream that was just beginning to form. The other hand reached for her neck, around toward the back.

Something snapped back there with a violent wrench, hurting her as it did — and the necklace of gold, which she’d forgotten she was wearing, was ripped away and disappeared into his pocket.

“Gee, I had to work hard for that!” he grunted resentfully, and gave her a violent fling of release that sent her sprawling to the ground.

And that was all. It was over. He gave a quick turn on his heel and darted away, just as the all-clear sounded and the lights began to pepper on again.

She picked herself up dazedly. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. “Just a cheap thief,” she thought wryly. “Only after a necklace, worth maybe twenty-five dollars. All that terror for that!”

The lights were coming on more and more fully every minute. The windows of the dance hall overhead flared up suddenly in a rosy-orange glow, some of it spilling down the walls into the narrow alley where he’d flung her, lighting up its recesses by reflection.

As she turned to look behind her, to see if she had dropped anything to the ground, she stifled a scream and flattened against the wall.

Directly behind her, so close that if she moved another step or two she would have trodden on it, lay a hunched form. A dead girl, dark hair streaming over her face. One outstretched hand extended limply along the ground, as if in search of help. In its nerveless grasp was a white rosebud...

He was sitting there brooding into his empty cup again. Her hand came to rest gently on his coat sleeve, to show him she was there. She didn’t say anything about a date this time. He had no time for dates now. She had none either.

“Last night again,” he said tersely. “I told you how it would be.”

“Any luck so far?”

“Not a sign. He might just as well float through the air, for all the trace he leaves.”

“He must have bought the flower upstairs in the dance hall. He must have been up there earlier and has been saving it since.”

He shook his head. “Only one white rose was sold up there all night and to a man who had a different girl with him; we had the concessionaire look at the—” She saw him stop and gaze at her. “How did you know that? I didn’t tell you they sold flowers up there.”

“I... I must have read about it, somewhere.”

“You couldn’t have. It hasn’t been in any of the papers. We’ve kept as much of it out of the papers as we could. Just let them print a bald statement that an unidentified body was found.”

“I... I just imagined that they’d sell them in a place like that.”

“I’m glad you don’t go near places like that. I’m glad it couldn’t happen to you,” he said fervently.

He didn’t know how close it had come to happening to her.

A white armband, seeming to float detachedly through the darkness like some sort of ghostly apparition, without any visible arm to support it, came to a halt in front of the doorway. A pocket-light winked on and threw a cartwheel of light against the doorway. The figure of a girl was revealed, pressed against one side of the wall. About five-feet six or seven, black hair cascading down her back, a cheap little coat belted around her. She put her hand to her face to ward off the light.

The air raid warden grunted, “That’s not a very good place, but stay where you are until you hear the all-clear. It’s due in another minute.”

The light clicked off and the detached armband floated away on the darkness.

In two or three minutes the light had winked on again, this time far down the street. Pointed at somebody else, in another doorway. This time the cartwheel was no bigger than a poker chip, from where the girl peered out around the edge of her own sheltering-place. Who or what it fell on could not be seen. Then it snuffed out, and receded still farther into the night-blind distance.

The short blasts of the all-clear began to sound in the distance, coming nearer all the time as they were relayed from one siren to the next.

Ginny Trowbridge’s foot made a soft little tick as it descended from the doorstep and she resumed her interrupted way along the street. A scanty light returned to the desolate scene, but somehow only made it more desolate. A car that had been parked two or three blocks away meshed gears and whined off into the distance, the sound carrying clearly in the new stillness that had followed the all-clear. A row of widely-separated street lights went on in unison and struggled in vain against the darkness. Hooded as they were, they only shone downward in a straight line, each one making a little pale puddle beneath itself.

Her shoes struck a clean-cut, brisk little tap along the echoing street. It was the only sound in the silence around her. It was as though she was the only thing moving in the whole spellbound city.

She passed the doorway where the warden’s torch had given its second flicker of investigation. Its occupant, if there had been one, must already have left. It was an impenetrable mass of obscurity now. Yet she had a curious sense of someone’s eyes being on her as she walked past it. She tried to shake it off but the dim feeling persisted.

She even turned her head to look back. At that very minute the glow from the nearest street light glanced over her, revealing her as in a snapshot. Then the tap of her footfalls went on into the darkness on the other side.

Suddenly it was no longer alone in the brooding stillness. Another tread had joined in, was subtly underscoring it, somewhere behind her. It was impossible to tell just when the accompaniment had set in. At the first moment of awareness it was already there, in full progress, blending in with the sharper rhythm of her own steps.

It was a quiet tread, unhurried and deliberate. At first it held no alarm for her. Somebody had left a second doorway, that was all. It might be that one she had passed just now, or it might be some other one.

It was easily recognizable as a man’s tread. But it wasn’t conspicuous. In fact, it was sometimes hard to catch at all. Then each time she thought it had died out, it would come back again.

It would diverge soon, go off in a direction of its own, she told herself. No two people were ever likely to maintain the same course for more than two or three blocks.

The two or three blocks passed and still it came on.

She put it to a test. She crossed over to the other side of the street. It would stay over on the first side now. It didn’t. It crossed over after her. She could tell by the change in resonance when it stepped down and stepped up again on this side.

It was following her.

She came to a corner and turned down the side street. That would tell. That would be the final test.

It dwindled for a minute, then it rang out clear again. It had come around the corner after her.

It wasn’t hurrying. It didn’t seem to want to overtake her so much as to keep pace with her. It was patient. It was biding its time.

She quickened her steps. It quickened in turn. Then, though her impulse was to run, she forced herself to slacken, to come almost to a halt. The tempo of steps behind her slowed up. It did whatever she did. It was stalking her. She was its quarry.

She could have escaped. Not on foot, perhaps. But there was the subway into which it would probably not follow her. There were taxis. But she didn’t want to escape. She wasn’t trying to save her own skin. If she had wanted to, she wouldn’t have been out alone on the streets.

She purposely tried to maneuver it into revealing itself, this anonymous tread that had no body. The dim-out regulations, even now that the lights were on again, didn’t give her many opportunities. But she tried to use the few that existed. Store windows, which would have suited her purpose best of all, were all rigidly dark now that it was late. There remained only the street lights and an occasional building entrance. It skirted both types alike with satanic dexterity — sidled around the dark outside of the lights whenever she hoped to see it pass directly under them. The most she could ever see was an anonymous black outline gliding by just beyond the range of the light.

He — if it were he — was smart. While she was still alive, she wouldn’t see him. Only when she was about to die would she see him. Then it would be too late. Terry had said, “Only the dead see him, and they can’t tell about it afterward.”

She had the courage to keep moving slowly ahead of him, but not enough courage to stand still, waiting for him to come up to her. She had to keep on walking — hoping that he would try soon.

He might be uncertain yet that she was the fever-image he took her to be. That might be the reason for the long delay in striking. She tried to egg him on, to convince him. When she came to a place where there was slightly better light, she stopped and held herself under it, almost posing, turning this way and that as if uncertain of her direction. Even from a distance her height, her black hair and all the other details must have stood out conspicuously.

The death-tread had stopped when she did, waiting for her to go on. He was watching. Her skin crept, remembering those others. She glanced up at the street sign for a touch of security. Then she went on again. Certainly he would strike now that he had seen her under the light and had noticed how much she looked like that first one.

She saw that she’d been right. Almost at once the tread was faster. It was closing in now. Closing in for the kill. Her heart started to pound. It was hard to make her feet maintain their former pace, to keep from running. She pressed her fingers through the soft leather of her handbag to feel the reassuring shape of the small gun. That had a steadying effect.

He was trying to catch up quietly now. His feet were a whisper on the pavement. He was coming closer every minute.

She’d better get the gun out, or at least have it ready.

About twenty yards now. Maybe even less. There was a dark stretch immediately behind her that she’d just passed through. If she turned now, close as he was, she still wouldn’t be able to recognize him. There was another light coming, up ahead. If he only waited until she could reach that.

Without any warning there was a slurring sound directly beside her and the white top of a police patrol car swam up to the curb.

One of the men in it called out, “Are you in trouble, miss? You seem to be walking kind of funny.”

There was no sound of retreat from back there. The footsteps had simply melted away into nothingness, vanishing from the face of the earth as if they had never existed. He was gone already beyond recall. It was no good telling them, they’d never get him. And even if they got someone, they could only hold him as a suspicious character. They could never prove what he’d been about to do. You can’t convict on intention alone.

“Why don’t you mind your own business?” she flared. “If I wanted police protection, I would have called for it!”

There was a shocked pause. Then the car glided on without another word from its occupants.

After a while she turned and started back along the way she had just come.

She wasn’t in any danger now, she knew. She wouldn’t meet him again even if she walked the rest of the night looking for him. He was too smart.

She came back to the preceding light — the one before which it had so nearly happened. She stopped short. There was something under her foot. She moved back a step and looked down. A white flower lay where it had been dropped a moment before.

This time it was she who had the doleful face when she walked into the Greek’s. She slumped down beside him without saying hello. She held her head pillowed against her hand as she handed him the newspaper she’d been carrying tucked under her arm. It was folded carefully.

“What’s the matter? More about the Rose Killer?” he asked.

“Not this time. Read the gossip column.”

The third item down said: “What daughter of a socially prominent family is that way about a detective and waits for him outside the station house in her limousine every might, private chauffeur and all? Mama says no, not until he gets his man.”

She laughed bitterly. “When did I ever wait for you outside the station house with a limousine or without it?”

“This is just around the corner. I suppose that’s what he means.” He smiled bleakly.

“They held a big family war-council over me just now. Feathered headdresses and everything. I was asked to give my word I wouldn’t see you any more. I refused, of course. So I’m to be exiled. Our summer place out on Long Island, all by myself, with just an old-lady caretaker who lives out there.”

“Maybe they’re right. Why don’t you listen to them?” he suggested.

“Are you on their side too?” she asked scornfully.

“No, I’m on ours,” he said quietly. “When are you leaving?”

“Right away. Edwards is driving me out in the car. I just slipped out to let you know.” She handed him a slip of paper. “This is where I’ll be, in. case you want to reach me. Here’s the address and the phone number. Don’t lose it. But I’ll be in again. They can’t stop me. There are trains and buses. I’ll meet you here in the Greek’s every time it’s your night off, just as we’ve been doing right along. Look for me.”

“That’s a date,” he said. “I’ll be waiting.”

“I’ve got to get back now, before they miss me and get my scalp.” The last thing she said was, “We’ll get the Rose Killer, Terry, and you’ll have your promotion. Then I’m marrying you whether they like it or not, and they can whistle.”

He thought that “we” was just a slip of the tongue. She’d meant to say “you,” of course.

He sat there looking after her. She was a great girl, he thought.

She kept watching him through the glass while she dialed the numbers with one finger. Sitting at the little table, his back was to her. He couldn’t watch her phoning.

This time she was sure of it. This time there would be no mistake as in the first time, and no slip-up as in the second. While the slots of the dial whirred around, she recapitulated the results of a whole evening of research.

He was English, and freely admitted it. That was nothing in itself. But he’d incautiously given her the date of his arrival, and that was something. May fifteenth last. The first of the white rose killings had taken place on the seventh of June. She had the exact date from Terry. In other words, those killings had begun exactly three weeks after the time of his arrival. But there was something even more incriminating than that. From Tom she’d obtained a calendar of past blackouts, giving the dates on which they’d occurred throughout the year. The one on the seventh of June, which was the one coinciding with the first murder, was also the first one to have occurred following his arrival. His arrival and the murders and the blackouts were all in perfect synchronization.

Terry might call all this circumstantial, but there was more to it than that. She’d been followed the other night by the actual Rose Killer. She was positive of that.

She’d tested him just now on their way to this place. It hadn’t been easy to manage, but she’d accomplished it. She’d pretended to stop and look into a shop window. Then she had sent him down to the corner ahead of her, on the excuse of looking to see whether a bus was coming or not. Then she beckoned him to come back, as if she wanted to point out something in the window to him. He’d rejoined her at an easy strolling gait, about the same as the other night. She’d strained her ears.

Just as no two people have the same fingerprints, no two people have exactly the same footfall. She had a good ear for music and she knew her ears weren’t playing her false. The pace, the weight of the body, the bulk of shoe, were all the same.

It was incredible that she should have met him a second time like this. She’d had a stroke of luck. She’d met him at a flower show, an annual exhibit. Seen him hovering around the white roses there. Others just admired them and passed on. But even when he’d finally moved along to other displays, he still kept looking over at them.

She’d questioned the supervisor in charge of that particular display. That same man had been in every day since the show had first opened. These white roses seemed to exert an irresistible attraction to him. They innocently supposed he was some amateur fancier who specialized in them. She didn’t.

Now he was with her — waiting at the table for her. There wasn’t any blackout scheduled for tonight, or Tom would have let her know. But this time she wouldn’t wait for him to make the first move. Terry could break him down. They had ways. If it took weeks or months, they’d keep at it once they got their hands on him. And that was her job right now, to put him into those hands.

Some stupid desk-sergeant got on.

“Get Terry for me, hurry! I haven’t very much time. Please!”

He seemed to take forever. Finally he spoke up again. “He’s not here right now. Off duty tonight. If this is police business, you better tell me what it is and I can get you someone else.”

It was Terry she wanted to have the promotion. She had to get him. The Greek’s! Of course — she should have remembered that sooner. It was Tuesday and he would be there, waiting for her. Her finger started toward the dial once more.

He’d got up and was coming over. No, he was going toward the door. He was walking out on her.

She came out fast and caught up with him just as he reached the entrance.

“Do you always go into a telephone booth when you want to powder your nose?”

She thought he hadn’t been watching! His back had been toward her the whole time. Maybe he’d used a cigarette case as a mirror.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you now. I have an appointment,” he said.

Something had made him uneasy. She’d overplayed her hand in some way. Maybe by asking him one question too many. Or maybe that acoustic test out on the sidewalk before.

She had to string along with him at any cost, until she had a chance to put in another call to “Terry at the Greek’s.” No matter how she worked it, she mustn’t lose sight of him until then.

“Well, wait, let me come along with you just as far as—”

He felt her sudden start as they came out onto the sidewalk. “What’s the matter?” he asked, turning to look at her.

It was the car. She would have known it anywhere. It had just driven up. Complete to the monogram on the door. For a minute she had a vision of her mother and the other members of the family stepping out and confronting her in all their majesty. But there was only Edwards in it.

“Hurry up, let’s get away from here fast!” She began to tug at her suspect’s sleeve. “There’s someone who knows me in that car.”

They took a few quick steps together away from the entrance, trying to escape into the darkness. The hunter and hunted were both in the same boat now. Edwards had already seen her. His hail came after her. “Miss Trowbridge!”

The car-door slapped open, there was a throb of overtaking footsteps behind them, and she found herself separated from her companion and at bay against the wall.

“I’m sorry, miss, but I must speak to you a minute.” Edwards touched his cap to her respectfully, but he was still blocking her way.

She tried to thrust him aside. “That man! Where’d that man I was just with go?”

He’d vanished as completely as if he’d been whisked out of sight on a wire. Gone again, just when she thought she had him. Well, now she knew what he looked like, but all that painstaking work had been a waste.

She whirled on Edwards in a fury. “What do you want? What do you mean by doing such a thing?”

“You’d better come with me at once, miss. I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Your mother’s been taken seriously ill.”

“Where is she, here in town?”

“No, miss, she’s out at the country place. I drove her out myself shortly before dinner. She wanted to pay you a surprise visit. I imagine the shock of not finding you there had a great deal to do with it.”

“Is she quite bad?”

“She had the doctor with her when I left. I imagine it will help some as soon as she sees you.”

She didn’t wait to hear any more; she stepped into the car in a hurry. “You’d better drive fast, Edwards.”

“I’ll do my best, miss.”

There were only two or three dim lights to be seen behind the windows when they finally turned in the driveway. One of them was in the room habitually occupied by her mother whenever she stayed at the country place.

She jumped out of the car, ran up the steps, and used her own key on the door without waiting to be admitted. “Thank you, Edwards. I’ll leave the door open for you while you’re putting the car away. I’ll go right up and see how she is!”

She ran up the inside staircase, stopping before her mother’s door. She knocked firmly. “Mother. Mother, are you all right? Is the doctor in there with you?”

There was no answer.

She grasped the knob and opened the door.

The room was empty. The bed was undisturbed. It was just as it had been left on her mother’s last visit. She stood there stunned.

Then the implication slowly percolated through her. She knew what it was. She turned — terrified — to look toward the stairs. The front door. She could still keep him out, if she got down to it before he....

She ran back to the head of the stairs, then stopped with a sickening jolt. He was standing inside the door and it was already closed. He’d just finished locking it and drawing the bolt.

He reached into his pocket and she saw him take out a knife. He opened the blade with quick thumb-pressure. She didn’t understand in time, thinking it was meant to be a weapon of attack. He squatted down on his heels, close up against the wall, and sawed away at something just over the baseboard. Two ends of wire sprang out. The telephone. He’d cut it. Then he calmly put the knife away again.

He looked up and saw her standing there, frozen. He was very natural about everything. His whole attitude was calm and rational. No frenzied mania, no popping eyes, no foaming mouth. You wouldn’t have known what was on his mind.

“So you’ve been trying to get the Rose Killer,” he said. “I could have told you that you’d never get him. Because I’m the Rose Killer myself. Driving you and your whole family around day after day. Sitting there right in front of you the whole time.”

She saw him unfastening a cuff link, to give his arm a better swing. In that cold, trivial action there was more undiluted horror than in ten berserk rages.

The real thing at last, but what good did it do her to know that now? Right under the same roof with her the whole time, while she went out night after night hunting for him all over town! But, as Terry had said, you could be around him for weeks at a time and never guess.

“But he said you were mad — that you didn’t know any better! You know I’m not that girl in England. Look at me. You know I’m Ginny Trowbridge.”

“I’m not mad. Not this time.” He started coming up the stairs.

She fled back along the upper hall. “Mrs. Crosby!” she shrieked at the top of her lungs.

“I don’t think she’ll hear you” she heard him say. The way he said it sounded twice as quiet after the shattering way she’d just screamed. She got to the caretaker’s room, Hung the door wide, jabbed at the light switch. “Mrs. Crosby, help me!”

Mrs. Crosby didn’t move. She’d gone to bed, and the bed wasn’t disturbed much. You could hardly tell. Only, the pillow was over her face instead of under it. There was a hollow in it, punched by someone’s knee that had pressed down hard.

She didn’t scream this time. She smothered it in her hands.

He was coming up slowly. He was so sure of her that he was taking his time.

She fled from room to room, looking for something, anything, with which to defend herself. There wasn’t even a gun in the place. The one she owned had been left behind her in the city. She found a hammer in a linen closet at the back of the hall. It wasn’t a large one, but it was the only thing there was. She might be able to stun him long enough to get the door-key out of his pocket or to break one of the lower-floor windows and get out that way.

She went back into her own room and got into position behind the door, leaving it half ajar. She knew she was only going to have a chance for one blow. It had to count. She gripped the hammer with both hands and held it poised.

She could hear him coming up slowly, a step at a time, with the deliberation of a machine. She nearly went a little mad herself, waiting for him to get to her room.

He stopped just outside the door. She went up on her toes. He started to push the door slowly inward. It swung around and left his head exposed, sidewise to her, making a perfect target. She swung with all her strength.

She could feel the sudden loss of weight as she swept it forward. She knew what had happened even before she heard it bounce off the wall behind her. The hammer-head had flown off. Just the stick part fell harmlessly across his skull, not heavy enough to do anything but sting him a little.

He swung around and wrenched it from her hands. She scuttled back along the wall, like a mouse looking for a hole. He caught up with her on the other side of the room, over by the window. The chase stopped.

Her flailing hand went down into something soft. Earth — around a potted plant standing on the inside window-ledge. It went over with a shattering crash, but not before she’d got a handful of it. She waited until his eyes were so close to her face she couldn’t miss. She didn’t.

He was blinded for a minute, pawing helplessly at his eyes. She ducked under his arm, streaked across to the door and out. She knew she’d never get downstairs in time, so she went up instead, heading for the roof. He was quicker than she’d thought he’d be. He tore out after her, nearly at her heels. There was a lightweight rattan settee just short of the roof staircase. She threw that over, blocking him. He went sprawling over it. She got up to the top, opened the trap door, and climbed out into the open.

The roof was gabled and covered with treacherous slates. She skidded down them as far as a squat brick chimney. She got below it and held on with both arms. She couldn’t go any lower than that. It sloped down to a leaded rain-gutter and then dropped off into space.

She heard him coming after her. He must have seen her arms looped around the chimney. Some of the slates detached themselves at his unseen approach and went slithering past where she crouched.

Suddenly a hand touched her arm. It was ice-cold — like the fingers of death. She screamed and tore her arms away — or tried to. One swung out free, but he’d caught the other by the wrist. Braced on the other side of the chimney, he held her in an iron grip. She dangled there, legs threshing helplessly against the slates.

A light suddenly slashed up at them from below, blinding her. It was the adjustable spotlight of a car. She heard a voice cry out hoarsely, “Good heavens, look at the two of them!” There were figures moving around down there on the lawn, but they were too late. They might as well not have come.

Terry’s voice reached her from far away, as in a dream. Crooning in reassurance, and yet half wild with smothered terror. “Ginny girl, edge over, edge over, pull more of his arm out!”

She braced herself against the unstable slates, then hitched violently away from the chimney, almost leaning flat against the roof. His hand came around the corner of the chimney, still welded to hers. His wrist came, then a little of his forearm. But he was strong. She couldn’t pull him any farther.

Something went bang! and chips of brick flew off. Something went bang! again, and the hand jarred open. She was prone against the roof. She just skidded a little farther down and stayed there, hanging on by a hair’s-breath.

Something came tumbling down around the other side of the chimney and over into the night, clawing at nothing as it went.

The light went out, in order not to blind her and make her lose her precarious hold. She was all by herself now. She knew that all she had to do was just hang on a little while longer. Then Terry climbed out against the night-sky over her, with a rope around him. He came scaling down to where she was and his reassuring arms went around her.

In the car, on the way back to the city, they talked about it.

“They’ll give you your promotion now,” she said.

“I’m not sure that you shouldn’t have it instead.”

“How did you get out there when you did?”

“Nothing very brilliant. It was my night off and you’d promised to meet me at the Greek’s. You never break your word. If you couldn’t come I knew you would have called me there or sent some message. That brought on a hunch that something was wrong. It was just a hunch, but I couldn’t fight it down. So finally I gave in to it. Then when I couldn’t reach the place by telephone, I remembered that you’d said this caretaker was out here at all times, and that did the rest.”

“There’s only one thing I don’t understand. That man I was with earlier tonight... He seemed to fit the specifications so perfectly.”

He laughed. “I heard about that. He told us about it afterwards. You were a little wide of the mark that time. Know who that was? A Scotland Yard man, sent over here to work on the case. He’s been in for several conferences with us.”

“But he followed me the other night! The tread was the same!”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. He might have had some idea of using you as live bait. The cat following the cheese in hopes of seeing the rat go for it.”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t very good as your deputy — confusing detectives with criminals.”

“You got him, didn’t you? And neither Scotland Yard nor Center Street did. Pretty good for one little girl on her own.”

“There’s just one thing more. There was no blackout tonight. Why did he go for me like that? I thought it was only during...”

“He must have recognized the man he saw you with as a Yard operative. Maybe he’d already seen him during some previous investigation over there. When he saw the two of you together like that, he was afraid you were beginning to suspect him, thought you might be on the point of divulging his identity and whereabouts, if you hadn’t already. That was enough to bring on the so-called shock without the aid of any blackout. Only it was a very sane, level-headed ‘shock’ in this case. He knew what he was doing. Well, the fall to the ground did what the hangman’s rope was waiting to do, and a lot more cheaply — broke his neck.”

She pressed her face against his coat. “I’m glad it’s over.”

“Sure. It’s all over and done with now. In a little while you’ll forget all about it.”

“All but one thing. I’ll never be able to look at a white rose again as long as I live.”

Afterword to “The Death Rose”

In “The Death Rose” (Baffling Detective Stories, March 1943) Woolrich recycled the storyline of his classic “Dime a Dance” (1938): a young woman stakes herself out as bait to trap a psychotic serial killer of women. This time she’s a wealthy debutante rather than a taxi dancer, the tale takes place during Manhattan’s World War II practice blackouts rather than in peacetime and the narration is in third rather than first person. As so often in Woolrich the suspense depends on wild coincidence — how likely is it that every man Ginny meets would match the killer’s psychological profile so closely? — but while his emotional roller-coaster is spinning, flaws like this are all but unnoticeable. The radio version of the story, broadcast on the CBS series Suspense (July 6, 1943) and starring Maureen O’Hara as Ginny, captured the noir mood so miraculously well that I’m half convinced Woolrich wrote the script himself.

“He won’t hurt me,” she answers understandingly without taking her eyes from mine. “We used to be in love.”

Used to? Then that’s why I’m dying. Because I still am. And you aren’t anymore.

She bends and kisses me, on the forehead, between the eyes. Like a sort of last rite.

And in that last moment, as I’m straining upward to find her lips, as the light is leaving my eyes, the whole night passes before my mind, the way they say your past life does when you’re drowning: the waiter, the night maid, the taxi argument, the call girl, Johnny — it all meshes into start-to-finish continuity. Just like in a story. An organized, step-by-step, timetabled story.

This story.