Night and Fear

He was a wise guy. He’d had one Collins too many, but even without that he still would have been a wise guy. He had too much money, that was the whole trouble with him. No, that wasn’t it either; he had an offensive way of showing he had too much money. Get the difference? Always knew everything. That type. Ready to bet any amount on anything, at the drop of a hat. On whether the next pretty girl to come down the street would be a blonde or a brunette. On which of two given lumps of sugar would attract a fly first.

Money talks, they say. His always drowned out the other fellow’s argument. He’d put up stakes he knew the other fellow couldn’t afford, most of the time. Leaving him a choice of backing down or being taken for a thorough cleaning. His money had a habit of putting the other fellow in the wrong either way; making a liar out of him or showing him up for a welsher. I’m convinced he would have caught cold without a big fat overstuffed wallet for a chest-protector. He was always making round trips in and out of his pocket, with a flourish and a hard slap down and a challenging bellow. And the way he hounded them afterwards until he’d collected what was coming to him, you’d think he really needed the money. He was the one usually on the collecting end too, poetic justice to the contrary. He didn’t have a real gambler’s instincts. Apart from a few side-bets of the type I’ve mentioned above, he almost always picked a sure thing. Not much of a sport, when it came right down to it. The dislike, the spark of animosity his overbearing ways always aroused, was what got his bets taken up for him more often than not. Case of the poor slobs cutting their noses to spite their faces, just because they hated his insides so. He steered clear of professionals, seldom bet on sporting events. If I hadn’t known he’d been born wealthy; was lousy with money — and lousy without it too — I would have suspected him of making a nice living out of this nasty little pastime of his. But there wasn’t even that excuse for it. And vet he put the screws on worse than a loan shark, using a man’s reputation and self-respect among his friends as a bludgeon to make them pay through the nose.

There was a story around town, never substantiated, that he was indirectly to blame for one high-strung young chap putting an end to himself, to forestall discovery of a defalcation that had been the result of his topheavy “obligation” to this Fredericks. I wouldn’t have put it past him.

I’m one of those lucky people that nothing ever happens to; that are always the bystander. I was the bystander that night that this happened, at the 22 Club, too. Fredericks had never tackled me. Maybe he sensed a detached amusement that baffled him. He could have waved that famous wallet in front of my nose till it wore out and it wouldn’t have done him any good. He knew enough not to try it.

I came into the 22 with Trainor, and we saw Fredericks there swilling Collinses. He came over to our table, and there was a minimum of conversation for a while. I wanted to walk out again, but he was between the two of us and I couldn’t get Trainor’s eye.

The radio over the bar was giving dramatized news events, and the highlight of them was the description of the capture of a long-wanted murderer, cornered at last after being hunted high and low for months. The case, which we all remembered well, was finally closed.

The commentator was good, played it up for all it was worth. It got you. You couldn’t hear a sound in the place until he’d finished. Then we all took a deep breath together.

“There, but for the grace of God,” Fredericks remarked drily, “go you or I or any one of us.”

Trainor gave him a look. “Thanks for the compliment, but I don’t class myself as a potential murderer. Nor does Evans here, I’m sure.”

“Everyone is,” Fredericks said loftily. “Every man you see standing around you in this bar is. It’s the commonest impulse there is, we all have it. It’s latent in all of us, every man-jack. All it’s waiting for is a strong enough motive to come to the surface and — bang!” He drained his glass, started to warm up. “Why, I can pick any two men at random, outside on the street, who have nothing against each other, who’ve never even seen each other before; you give them a powerful enough motive, and one’ll turn into a potential murderer, the other his potential victim, right before your eyes!”

He was feeling his drinks, I guess. He wasn’t showing them, but he must have been feeling them, or he’d never have said a thing like that.

I tried to catch Trainor’s eye, via the bar mirror, to pull him out of it. But his dislike was already showing in his face. He was past the extrication stage.

“You’re crazy,” he said, with white showing around his mouth. “Normal people aren’t murderers, and you can’t make them into murderers, I don’t care what motive, what provocation, you give them! Understand me, I’m talking about cold-blooded, premeditated murderers now, like this beauty we were just hearing about. What the law recognizes as intentional premeditated murder. Crimes of passion, committed in the heat of the moment, aren’t on the carpet right now. What it takes to perpetrate a premeditated murder is a diseased mind. That’s what this guy they just caught had; that’s what every murderer always has. That’s why normal people cannot be made into murderers. I don’t care what motive you give them. Your two hypothetical men on the street, who have nothing against each other, don’t even know each other, would knock your theory into a cocked hat!”

I spoke for the first time. “Let’s change the subject,” I suggested mildly. “Murder is nothing to talk about on a lovely evening like this.”

They neither of them paid any attention. There was a current of antagonism flowing between them that wouldn’t let either one back down.

Fredericks fumbled in his inner pocket. I knew what was coming next. I’d seen the gesture often enough before to know it by heart. I tried to hold his arm down, and he shook my hand off.

Out came the well known wallet with the gold clips on each corner; down it whipped on top of the bar. People looked over at us. Fredericks said, “I’ll bet you a thousand dollars right now any two men picked at random on the street outside can be turned into potential murderer and potential victim, by me, right while you’re looking on! I’ll let you do the selecting, and I’ll let you name the time-limit. And I’ll give you any odds you want on it.”

I knew Trainor’s financial position. I gave him the eye across the back of Fredericks’ neck. “Hundred-to-one shot, ten bucks,” I suggested flippantly, trying to keep the thing theoretical.

Maybe Fredericks knew Trainor’s financial position too. “I don’t make ten-dollar bets,” he said nastily. “What are you trying to do, find an easy out for him? People that haven’t the courage to back up their conviction shouldn’t be so quick to air their opinions. I’ll give him two-to-one, his thousand against two of mine. Well, how about it?” he sneered. “Are you in — or have you suddenly decided that maybe you agree with me after all?”

That was no way to put it. Trainor could have refused to have any part in the fantastic proposition, without it necessarily meaning that he retracted his opinions. But Fredericks always managed to put it in that false light. I’d seen it happen time and again. This time I happened to be the only witness, instead of the usual group, but it had the same effect as far as Trainor was concerned. If there’s one thing any man detests it’s seeming to back down.

“I’ll take you up on that,” he growled. “This is one time I’m going to show you up! It may take you down a little to lose a couple of grand, and it’s certainly worth it! You’ve bet on a sure thing again — but for once you’ve picked the wrong end of it!”

Fredericks was shuffling hundred-dollar bills out of the moire lining of his wallet, as though he was dealing cards. He put his empty Collins glass down on top of them. “This says I haven’t!”

Trainor said cuttingly, “I haven’t that much on me, I don’t usually walk around as though I expected to have to bail myself out of jail. I’ll make out a check, will that be all right? Endorse it to you, if — and when.”

I hadn’t thought they’d go this far. “Say, listen,” I protested, “you don’t want to win that money, Fredericks. If you do, it means a human life’s been taken. Isn’t that the test?”

“We can keep it from going quite that far,” he assured me. “Just so long as the intention to commit murder is unmistakably shown by one or the other of our two hypothetical men. We can interfere at the last minute to prevent it being carried out. But there must be no reasonable doubt, before we do so, that it’s already fairly under way, premeditated by one of the two. Is that satisfactory to you, Trainor?”

“Why shouldn’t it be? There’s absolutely no danger of things going that far — always providing these two have never seen one another before; have no long-standing grievance or bad blood between them. And to keep you from building up any grudge between them, that might fester, corrode and sicken their minds, which would invalidate my argument, I’m going to give you the shortest possible time: one week from tonight. This is Tuesday. Next Tuesday night, at this same time, you and I and Evans will meet here. If one of the two men whom I am about to select — with your approval — has in the meantime made an attempt to take the life of the second one, and there is no possible mistaking it as such, I’ll endorse this check over to you. If not, that two thousand dollars is mine. And I’m sorry, but any move you make, any contact you have with these two, by way of injecting what you call a ‘motive’ between them, must take place in the presence of Evans and myself, or the bet is off.”

“You’ll both be eyewitnesses to the mechanics of the thing,” Fredericks promised. “Nothing will be done behind your back. There won’t be any bad faith in this. We’re all gentlemen, I hope.”

I spoke up sourly. “I got my doubts. You’re both vultures in tuxedos, if you ask me! I keep feeling like I ate welsh rarebit before going to bed, and ought to wake up any minute. And you’re as bad as he is,” I added bluntly to Trainor. “I thought you had more sense. You’re both a pair of bloodthirsty fools. Before you’re through, you’re liable to get two poor devils that never did you any harm in some kind of serious trouble, with all your theories. Why don’t you both put your money away, skip the whole thing?”

They turned deaf ears to me. Trainor waved his check in the air to let it dry, then dropped it on top of the twenty hundred-dollar bills.

Fredericks was smiling, pleased with himself, like a cat that expected to lap up a lot of easy cream. “We’ll let Evans here hold the stakes.”

“I won’t have any part of such a dirty, underhanded bet!” I flared.

“All right, if you won’t, then I’ll call the barman.”

He started to raise his hand. I slapped it down just in time. “What you’re doing’s bad enough as it is so try to keep it to yourselves! Haven’t you got any sense of decency at all? He’ll talk his head off to everyone that comes in the place. Here, give me the money, I’ll hold it for you.” I glanced up at the wall. “Next Tuesday at exactly midnight, one or the other of you gets it.”

I put it away in my own wallet. Then I called the barman, myself. “Bring me a shot of straight whiskey, I’ve got a bad taste in my mouth. And something for these two gents. My suggestion is chloroform!”

We drank in silence. I had the impression Trainor was already feeling ashamed of himself; would have crawled out of it if there was any self-respecting way he could have. At that, his side of the contention was the least offensive of the two. Fredericks had a smug, wise-guy look on his face, that made you want to plant a fist right in the middle of it.

He rang down his glass. “Let’s get going. Pick your street corner,” he said tersely to Trainor.

The latter said, “The busier the corner, the higher the ratio of average men. And the busiest one I know, night or day, is the corner of Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street.”

Fredericks said, “All right, let’s go there. And a very good choice too. But before we start,” he added, “I’ve got to have a single thousand-dollar bill.”

“Money, eh?” I remarked. “So that’s how you’re going to work it.”

“The root of all evil,” he smiled unpleasantly. “The sure-fire motive that never missed vet, since the world began.” He tried to pay for the drinks we’d had.

“Mr. Fredericks’ money’s no good as far as I’m concerned,” I let the barman know, without any of the joviality usually associated with that remark. “It’s the wrong color.” I meant it was bloody.

He took it with good grace. “Very well,” he said. “Then this’ll pay for three Collinses in advance. See that you have ’em ready and waiting for us when we come in next Tuesday at midnight. Let’s see how good your memory is, now.”

He hailed a cab at the door and the three of us got in. “I think I know where to get a grand-note,” he remarked. A stony silence answered him. I couldn’t tell whether Trainor’s conscience was bothering him or he had already developed cold feet because of risking more than he could afford — maybe even more than he actually had. One thing was sure, Fredericks was the kind would prosecute criminally if he won and that check bounced back stamped “Insufficient Funds.” It was no joking matter. I happened to know that Trainor was keeping company with a certain girl, intended to marry her in the fall. His whole future, you might say, was the dotted line of that check.

We stopped off first at a fashionable gambling place. Fredericks told us what it was, I wouldn’t have known otherwise. It looked like any other swank apartment building. Well, for that matter it was, all but one certain apartment, that paid heavily for protection. We waited for him in the cab, as we weren’t known in the place.

The minute he’d gone in, I said to Trainor: “You’re not kidding me any. Can you cover that check, in case you have to endorse it next Tuesday night?”

“I won’t have to endorse it next Tuesday night. I’m winning this little pot.”

“That doesn’t answer my question! Nothing’s sure, and this whole set-up depends on the human equation, the most doubtful quantity there is. Well — have you got a thousand dollars?”

“I can just about raise it if I have to,” he admitted glumly, “by hocking my shirt and borrowing on my salary.”

“I thought so! You ought to have your head examined!” I took the check out of my wallet. “Here, take this back while you’ve still got the chance. I’ll tell him the whole thing’s off.”

“You open your mouth to him, about what I just told you,” he warned in a cold rage, “and I’ll punch your head in. D’you think I’d crawl to him, go begging for leniency? He’d rub it in every time he met me, never let me forget it. I’m going to take that two thousand of his and smear it all over his kisser, to show him what I think of him!”

I saw there was nothing I could do to dissuade him. “That’s sure an expensive way of expressing an opinion,” was all I said to that.

Fredericks came back again with a thousand-dollar bill they’d given him in exchange for ten hundreds.

“Now let’s get the ground-work laid. 42nd Street and Seventh,” he told the driver, “northwest corner.”

He showed it to us in the cab, by the flame of his cigar-lighter. It was new, crisp as lettuce. Notes that big don’t pass from hand to hand much, I guess. “You sure it’s not fake?” I couldn’t help asking. “That’d be a nice ironic twist, bring two people to the verge of murder over a phony bill.”

“It’s as good as though I got it at a bank. Their games may be fixed, but they don’t go in for queer money.”

“How you gonna work it?” Trainor wanted to know coldly.

“I’ll show you. Watch this.” He folded it neatly in half, edge to edge and carefully creased it by running his fingers back and forth over it. He took out a gold cigar-cutter and inserted the blade under the crease. He carefully severed the bill into two equal parts. “It’s valueless this way, isn’t it?” he told us. “There’s your motive right there. Two different people, each one gets half. Neither half’s worth anything without the other. Neither one will give up his half. A deadlock. Whichever one is the more aggressive and daring of the two will do something about it. That spells murder. Maybe both will at once. Tonight we plant the first half, with whoever Trainor here selects. You follow him, Evans, and get his name and address and all about him for the record. Tomorrow night, same time and place, we plant the second half. Then we make known to each party the identity of the other, who is all that is standing between him and a neat little windfall. Then you’ll see Nature take its course. And you say,” he sneered at Trainor, “that you can’t make a murderer out of any chance passerby on a street corner! Well, watch, between now and next Tuesday night — and learn something!”

“It’s a filthy scheme,” I said hotly. “Treating human beings like flies stuck on a pin! You’re going to start something that you won’t be able to stop in time, mark my words! There’ll be blood on both your heads.”

Our driver coasted down past the Rialto Theater entrance, looked around questioningly.

“How long are you allowed to park here?” Fredericks asked him.

“I ain’t allowed to park here at all. I can park around on the 42nd Street side with you, though, just past the corner, if I don’t stay too long.”

“That’ll be all right. We’d better stay in the cab,” he said to us in an undertone. “If we stand out on the sidewalk in full sight, it mayn’t work. Pick someone coming from that direction, 8th Avenue, so we can see them before they get here.”

We braked to a stop alongside the curb. That particular stretch of sidewalk is plenty bright, any time of the night. In addition, there was a street light just far enough ahead to give us a sort of preview of anyone who passed under it coming our way. We all three had good eyes. It was anything but deserted even at this hour, but the passersby were spaced now, not coming along in droves.

Trainor sat peering intently ahead through the partly-opened cab door. “I suppose,” Fredericks observed drily, “you’ll make every effort to pick someone who looks prosperous enough not to need a thousand dollars badly enough to kill for it.”

“Not at all,” snapped Trainor. “I’m not loading the dice. I’m here to pick an average man. And the average man on the street hasn’t very much money — not these days. But neither does he kill for what he hasn’t got.”

“You’ll find out,” was the purring answer.

There was a long wait, while people drifted by, by ones and twos and threes, but mostly by ones. I kept thinking, contemptuously and yet a little admiringly too, “Every cent he’s got in the world, risked on the imponderable reactions of some chance passerby out there. It must be great to have that much confidence in your fellow-men.”

“See any that look average enough yet? You’re hard to please,” mocked Fredericks softly.

Trainor said, “If I’m any good at reading faces, the last few that have gone by would cheerfully cut anyone’s throat for a toothpick, let alone a thousand bucks. I wouldn’t call these flashy Broadway lizards an average type of man, would you?” Then he said suddenly, “Here’s someone now — quick! This fellow walking along near the outer edge of the sidewalk.”

I just had time for a quick, comprehensive glimpse of the candidate, through the windshield, as he passed under the street light. Trainor was a good picker. The guy was so average he would have been invisible in a crowd. Clothes, face, gait, everything were commonplace. You couldn’t feature him killing anyone, or doing anything but just breathing all his life long. Fredericks shied the half-bill out of the cab window.

He came abreast a minute later, missed seeing it, went on his way. That was in character too, the type nothing ever happened to, even when it was thrust right at his feet.

Fredericks snapped his fingers, swore, stepped out and picked it up again. The three of us laughed a little, nervously. We were all under a strain.

Another wait. “All right, this one, then,” Trainor said abruptly. “He looks decent and harmless enough.” Again one of those colorless “supers” of the New York mob-scene.

Fredericks flipped his wrist again, and the bait fell out. Again it missed fire. The pedestrian looked down, saw it, went a step beyond, turned, came back and picked it up. He stood looking at it, turning it over from side to side, while we held our breaths, hidden in the cab, close enough to have reached out and touched him. I could see a skeptical frown on his face. Finally he deliberately threw it away again, brushed his hands, and went on his way.

“Suspicious,” Fredericks catalogued him drily. “Thinks it’s too good to be true, there must be a catch to it. Queer money, or an advertising scheme. Typical New Yorker for you.”

He retrieved it a second time. This human-interest byplay, though, had managed to dull my objections to the scheme, made me overlook its dark implications for awhile. When people acted so naturally, so comically even, as these passersby, there didn’t seem to be much risk of getting them to kill one another, as Fredericks insisted. It was like watching frisky half-grown jungle cats at play with one another inside a zoo, and forgetting they have claws.

Trainor went on scrutinizing everyone that came along singly, eliminating couples and trios. “Here’s some—” he started to say, then checked himself. “No, he’s had a drink, that doesn’t make for normalcy.”

After that, there was a complete cessation of motion on the street for a minute or two, as sometimes happens on even the busiest thoroughfares. As though activity were being fed to it on a belt, and there had been a temporary break in it.

Then a figure came into sight. His isolation gave Trainor a good chance to size him up without distraction. I had a feeling he was going to finger him, even before he did. I think I would have myself. A quick snapshot of him, under the light-rays, showed a fellow of medium height, stocky build, high Celtic cheekbones, dressed in a tidy but not expensive gray suit.

“This is the ticket,” Trainor said decisively.

Fredericks skimmed the bait out and a ghost of a breeze carried it a little further away from the cab than before.

He picked it up, scratched the back of his neck. Then he looked all around him, as though wondering how it could have gotten there. He glanced once at the cab, searchingly, but we were flattened back out of sight in the dark interior of it. He evidently took it for an empty one standing waiting for fares, didn’t look a second time.

It took him a good four, five minutes to decide the second half of the bill wasn’t lying around anywhere. What made him desist, chiefly, was an unwelcome offer of help from a second passerby.

“Lose something, bud?”

“Mind ya business!” was the retort.

Fredericks breathed in the direction of my ear: “Trainor’s average man is pugnacious. You mean he won’t kill for the other half of that?”

“That’s just Manhattan manners, not a bad sign at all, shows he’s completely average,” Trainor contradicted.

Our man moved away with what he’d found, receding toward the 7th Avenue corner. Watching through the back window of the cab, we saw him stop at the curb, glance back at where he’d found the unlikely token, as though he still couldn’t get over it. Then he crossed to the Times Building “island,” skirted that, and crossed Broadway.

“There’s one half of our murder team,” Fredericks said. “Whether he turns out to be the murderer or the victim, depends on how aggressive the party of the second part is. All right, Evans, go after him, keep him in sight. Find out his name, where he lives, all about him — only don’t accost him yourself, of course. It may make him leery.”

I opened the cab door, stepped out, and started briskly out after our unsuspecting guinea pig. “Fine thing to turn into,” I thought. “A private detective!”

It was easy to keep him in sight, because of the sparsity of other pedestrians. In the day time he’d have been swallowed up in a minute in this teeming part of town. He kept going straight east along 42nd and made for the 6th Avenue El. When I saw him start up the stairs to the platform I had to close in on him, as a train might have come along and separated us before I could get there.

I passed through the turnstile right behind him, and when the train came in, got in the same car he did. He sat on one of the side seats, giving me the opportunity of keeping him in sight from behind without his being aware of it. At one point, I could tell by the downward tilt of his head that he had taken the severed bill out again and was studying it under the car lights. He evidently couldn’t quite make up his mind whether it was genuine or not. He looked around to see if anyone had been watching, put it away again.

“He’s got a guilt-complex about it, for one thing,” I decided. “That’s not so good from Trainor’s point of view. If he feels guilty about it, he’s liable to kill for it, too, before he’s through.”

He straightened and walked out at the 99th Street station, in the heart of the teeming, jostled Upper West Side district. I left by the opposite end of the car, to avoid being too noticeable about it. I gave him a headstart by pretending to stop and tie a shoe lace, so I wouldn’t be treading on his heels.

He plunged from the stair-shed straight into his favorite bar. So he wasn’t going to any bank to verify its genuineness. He was going to put it up to that Solomon of the lowly, the saloon-keeper. I suppose a professional sleuth would have carefully stayed outside, to attract as little attention to himself as possible. I was no professional, however, and I had no great hankering to hang around on a street corner in that strange neighborhood waiting for him to come out again. I barged right in after him.

It seemed the right move to have made. It was within an hour of closing time, and the two of us were the only customers. It was an empty barn of a place with swell acoustics; you couldn’t whisper if you tried. I was just in time to hear the barman boom out sociably: “Lo, there, Casey, where’ve you been keeping yourself?” So that gave me his name.

I had a beer and regretted it even at six inches away from my nose. I became very interested in the slot machine, to give myself something to do, but timed the noise so it wouldn’t interfere with their husky undertones.

“Where’d you find it, bejazes?” The barman was holding it up to the light, shutting one eye at it. I got that in the machine mirror.

Then after he had been told, and the inevitable question put to him, “I nivver saw them that big before, but it looks rail to me.”

“But waddya suppose it’s cut in two like that for? ’Tis no tear, it’s a clane-cut edge.”

Casey’s bosom friend in the white apron was doing some mental double-crossing. I could read it on his face in the mirror. Or maybe he just thought it would look nice framed on his wall. “I’ll stand ye a drink for it!” he offered with sudden fake heartiness.

I started to get uneasy. I hadn’t bargained on the thing passing from hand-to-hand all over town. And if a saloon-keeper took over, that was piling the odds against Trainor too high for my liking. They aren’t the most unmurderous breed in the world. I made up my mind, “If Casey parts with it, I spill the beans to the two of them right here and now!”

But Casey wasn’t parting with it that easy. The barkeep’s argument that it was unredeemable, no good, not worth a cent as it was, fell on deaf ears. The ante rose to fifty cents, then a dollar, finally a two-dollar bottle of rye. Casey finally stalked out with the parting shot, “I’ll kape it. Who can tell, I might come acrosth the other part of it yet.”

“Ouch!” I said to myself. “You’re going to, before the week’s out. Then what?”

On an impulse, I stayed behind instead of following him. The cagier way to find out everything about him was to remain behind, at this fountainhead of gossip, instead of tracking him home through the deserted streets.

The barman drifted over, brought the subject up himself. I was the only one left in the place to talk to. “That fellow that was just in here, found half a thousand-dollar bill on 42nd Street just now.”

I showed proper astonishment. “Yeah? Who is he?”

“Name of John Casey. He comes in here all the time. Lives right around the corner, the brownstone house, second from corner of 99th. He’s an electrician’s helper.” Not all at once like that, of course. I spaced my questions, making them those of a man obligingly keeping up his end of a conversation in which he has no real interest.

“He’ll take me up on it yet,” he wound up. “As soon as he finds out it’s no good, he’ll be glad to take me up on it.” But there was a glint in his piggy eyes, as though if Casey didn’t, he’d do something about it himself.

I went out of there telling myself, “Brother, if you’re this steamed up about half a bill, what you won’t do when you find out who has the other half!” Trainor’s thousand was as good as gone. There was certainly going to be a murder somewhere within this triangle before the week was out. And no matter who committed it, the barman or Casey or tomorrow night’s unknown finder, Fredericks would be the actual murderer. And Trainor and I the accessories.

If I’d been dealing with a square guy, I might have persuaded him to drop it, after what I told him next day. There would have still been plenty time enough. But I found out how skunkish he was when I put it up to him. Trainor of course was present.

“The bet isn’t with you,” he told me. “If Trainor wants to call it off — because he can’t possibly win — I’ll play ball with him. All he has to do is refund me the thousand dollars, the amount of the bill I sacrificed. Are you ready to do that, Trainor?”

Trainor just looked at me and I looked at him, and the three of us went back to 42nd Street and 7th Avenue. Somebody’s death warrant had been signed. Just barely possibly that avaricious crooked barman’s. More likely Casey’s. Most likely still, somebody we hadn’t even set eyes on so far, walking unsuspectingly along the midnight streets at this very moment to his doom. It gave me the creeps. I hated Fredericks — and I almost hated Trainor too. Too stubborn to back down. Playing the gods of the machine. Thinking they’d be able to stop it in time.

We were in a cab again, almost over the same spot as the night before. It happened quicker this time. For one thing, it was drizzling lightly and there were far fewer people passing. There were no trials and errors like the night before. Trainor hided his time, made his choice carefully. He had to be careful whom he pitted against Casey, for his own sake, and he knew it. He’d gone a little wrong on Casey. His answer to the man that had asked him if he’d lost anything, and what had occurred in the barroom, showed Casey had a well-developed streak of stubbornness in him, that might easily turn into pugnacity. Trainor had to be careful whom he matched against him now.

Presently a reedy-looking individual, coat collar turned up against the rain, came shambling along. Probably the weather and the turned-up collar and his soggy hat-brim made him look more dejected than he was. A single glance, as they come walking down a street, is no way to judge character, anyway. But his face was wan, and whatever his inner disposition, he looked frail enough to be harmless.

“Drop it,” signalled Trainor under his breath. The second half-bill fell on the gleaming sidewalk.

I couldn’t help feeling I was looking at a dead man, as he came on toward us, so unaware. Almost wanted to veil out to him in frantic warning, “Don’t pick anything up from the sidewalk, whatever you do, or you’re a goner!”

He saw it and he stopped in his tracks. He brought it up to face-level. His mouth dropped open. We were so close we could even hear what he muttered. “Holy smoke!” he ejaculated hoarsely, and pushed his water-waved hat to the back of his head.

He stood there a long time, looking stunned. He went on uncertainly after awhile, and the mist started to veil his figure.

“Hurry up, before you lose him,” Fredericks said, and unlatched the door for me.

“Why do I have to do all the dirty work in this?” I grunted, stepping out.

“Because you have no stake in it. Not to put too fine a point on it, Trainor doesn’t altogether trust me, and I’m not sure I altogether trust him. We both trust you implicitly. You’re the contact-man in this.”

“Malarkey!” I growled, and belted up my waterproof. The taxi went one way, I went the other way after my quarry.

This time instead of beer I had to sit drinking vile coffee in a cheap cafeteria, while he took the bill out from time to time and studied it surreptitiously below table-level, across the room from me.

“Planning what you’d like to get with it, if it was only whole,” I thought pityingly. “Little knowing what you’re likely to get, because of it.”

I could see him day-dreaming there under the lights. I could almost see the girl and the bungalow and the frigidaire — or maybe it was a radio — in his eyes.

“Damn Trainor!” I seethed. “Damn Fredericks!” Why didn’t they drop a whole bill with no murder-strings attached, and make someone happy! One thing was sure, if there was going to be any killing in this, it wouldn’t be through him. You could read goodness in his face. Trainor had shown good judgment in his choice this time.

I followed him home through the rain at two that morning, and if his thoughts hadn’t been so preoccupied with what he’d found, I’m sure he would have caught on easily enough. The jaunty cut of the waterproof, and the rustling noise it made, were too damn easy to identify. But he was walking on air. A troop of elephants could have followed him and he wouldn’t have known it.

He went to a little hole-in-the-wall flat in the Chelsea part of town, and me twenty yards behind him. And then I was in for a bad jolt! He had his own key, so I couldn’t get his name from the mailboxes in the grubby little foyer. To avoid having to come around the next day and ask questions of the janitor, I deliberately went up the inner stairs after him (the street-door was unlocked) to ascertain what his flat number was in that way, if I could. I heard a door on the third floor close after him, and when I got up to the landing it was 25, since that was the only one had voices coming from inside it. You could hear everything out there where I was.

I heard a kiss, and a sweetly solicitous voice asked: “Tired, dear?” Then he told her about what he’d found, and they stood there just the other side of the door, planning what they could have done with it if it had only been intact.

“Maybe,” she suggested wistfully, “if you take it around to the bank, they’d give you something on it in partial redemption, a hundred or even fifty. Even that would be a Godsend!”

Then an infant started whimpering somewhere in the back of the flat, and I crept downstairs again all choked up. Married, and with a young baby! It was inhuman to torture people like that. And to place them in danger of being murdered was bestial.

25, the mailbox said, was rented by Noble Dreyer.

I jotted the name and address down. I said, as I girded my waterproof up and went out into the wet again, “Well, Dreyer, you don’t know it, but I’m your guardian angel from now on.”

I met Fredericks and Trainor by appointment at the former’s club, at cocktail time next afternoon. I had very little to say, only “The guy’s name is Noble Dreyer.” And I gave them the address. I didn’t mention the wife, I didn’t mention the kid, I didn’t mention the guardian angel.

Fredericks said, with about as much emotion as an oyster, “Good. Now all that remains is to inform the two parties of one another’s existence and whereabouts, and the test is under way.”

We followed him into the club’s writing room, and he sat down and addressed two envelopes, one to Casey, 99th Street, the other to Dreyer, 24th Street. Then he put them aside and wrote two identical notes, on club stationery.

The come-on, of course, was that last sentence. It was an invitation to murder if there ever was one. But Trainor made no objection. “The average, decent, normal man,” he said, “will not be incited to murder even by getting information like this. He’ll envy maybe, or even try to strike a bargain with his co-holder, but he won’t kill.”

Was Trainor right?

Fredericks left the notes unsigned, of course. He blotted, folded each one over. I was holding the two addressed envelopes in my hand. “I’ll seal them for you,” I said quietly and took them from him before he could object. I put each one in an envelope, moistened and closed the flap and sent the steward for stamps. “Mail these for Mr. Fredericks,” I said.

Then I took a good long drink, and I felt better than I’d felt yet since the devilish bet had been made.

“That’s that,” Fredericks said, gleefully rubbing his hands. “Now, of course, we must be ready with some sort of preventive measure, or at least some form of supervision, to keep them from going whole hog. Although I don’t suppose you two’ll give me credit for it, I don’t want either of them to lose their lives — if I can help it.”

The way he said that burned me, as though he were talking about some form of insect life. “Oh no-o, of course not,” I drawled, “it’s all just in the spirit of good clean fun, that’s understood. And now, what precaution do you propose taking? Sending them each a bullet-proof vest? Or maybe just a rabbit’s foot will do.”

I smiled tightly.

He’d never had much sense of humor. If he had, he’d have been in hysterics his whole life — at himself. “The idea will take a while to ferment,” he said seriously. “Premeditated murder always does. Probably nothing much will happen for a day or two, while they digest the thought that the other half-bill is theirs for the taking. Suppose Trainor and I keep an eye on this Dreyer, and you sort of stay close to our friend Casey. That way we can keep one another posted, the minute an overt move gets under way. Just give them rope enough to leave no doubt of their intentions, but be prepared to step in between as a buffer before the act is actually carried out. It shouldn’t be necessary to drag the police in at any time. The mere knowledge that three outsiders have read their minds and know what’s going on, should be enough to scotch the inclination once and for all. Nobody commits murder before an audience.

Trainor said: “I want one thing understood. I want positive evidence of murderous intent on the part of either one of them before I’ll consent to your claiming the money. I won’t have you jumping to the conclusion that just because Casey, let’s say, set out to look up Dreyer, he’s going to take his life. If he goes there provided ahead of time with a weapon, that’s another matter; you’ve won the bet. If he doesn’t, you haven’t proved anything. There’s nothing more normal than for him to seek out the other man, try to strike a bargain or come to some agreement with him, or even just talk the thing over with him out of curiosity. I want proof of a murderous intention, and, my friend, many a prosecutor has found out that’s the hardest thing there is to get!”

He could have saved his breath. I could have told both of them I didn’t think there was much chance of Casey or Dreyer approaching one another at all within the next few days. But I didn’t. They might have asked me why I was so sure, and I was in no position to answer. Ethically; I wasn’t troubled in the slightest. In reality the bet would end in a stalemate. In appearance, it would be decided in Trainor’s favor. That was all to the good. He could use that two thousand better than Fredericks, who was a louse anyway.

This was Thursday evening. They wouldn’t get the notes Fredericks had sent them until Friday morning so there was no reason to start keeping an eye on them until Friday evening. Since they both worked daytimes, Dreyer as manager of a chain grocery branch-store, it was only after working hours that they needed to be kept under observation. I may have felt privately that there was no reason for it even then, but I went through with it for form’s sake. We established, as points of contact by which to get in touch with one another in case of necessity, the saloon Casey frequented and an all-night drugstore on the corner below Dreyer’s flat. They were to call me or I was to call them, if anything got under way at either end that required quick action.

The wear and tear was pretty bad at my end, because of the quantities of rancid beer I had to keep drinking to “pay my rent.” The place was fairly well-filled up to about midnight, then the customers thinned until there finally remained only Casey and myself. He had been in there from eight on. I was obsessed with the slot machine again.

It was the barkeep who brought up the subject, after maneuvering his barcloth around for awhile. “Still got that thousand-dollar scrap ye found?” he asked, sleepy-lidded.

“Yeah, but not on me, don’t worry,” was the shrewd answer.

“What’d you do, put it in the bank?” asked the barman, scornfully.

“I tried to turn it in there, but they wouldn’t take it,” Casey admitted.

“What’d I tell ye! Why don’t you listen to reason? I’ll give you two bottles of rye for it, you pick the brand.”

“If it’s no good, what do you want it so bad for?” Casey asked, not unreasonably.

The white-aproned one tripped slightly over the answer. “I want it for a curayosity. Sure, what else would I be wanting it for?”

“Well, I’m hanging onto it, now more than ever! Take a look at this. This was in my mailbox when I left the house this morning.” I recognized the note Fredericks had sent him, in the mirror.

The barman bent over the counter, laboriously read it through with lip motions. “Hunh,” he said, “this must be meant for someone else. It’s got your own name down. What would they be telling you found it for? You know that already.”

“It got in the wrong envelope,” Casey said angrily, like a man who’s been cheated. “They must have sent one to somebody else, and I got his by mistake, worse luck! Anyway, it shows there’s another half to the bill, somebody picked it up just like I did, so I’m keeping mine.”

The barkeeper scratched his chin. He was doing lots and lots of mental double-crossing, I could see that in the mirror. “I’d be careful, Casey,” he said with friendly concern. “Have you got it in a good place? Somebody might try to take it away from you.”

“Let ’em try!” said Casey belligerently. “I’ve got it stuck away good, no fear. They’ll not get their hands on it in a hurry!”

The barman swatted a fly with his cloth. “I wouldn’t carry it around with me or anything like that, if I was you,” he advised by way of finding out.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got it hidden in my room, where no one’ll find it.”

“Have ye, now?” The barman scratched his sandpapery jaw some more. “Have another, Casey,” he offered amiably. “This is on the house.” I made a point of carefully watching his hands as he drew the suds, but he didn’t try anything, just filled the glass, knocked its head off, set it up. Then he sort of drifted to the back, by easy stages. There was a telephone on the wall, just outside the washroom door. I watched him fiddling around with it, dusting off the dial slots. Who ever heard of anyone dusting off a telephone at that hour of the morning? He looked around to see if either of us was looking. Casey was squatting down playing with the tavern cat. I’d just put my fiftieth coin into the spiked machine.

A bell jingled back there, and then the barman fiddled around some more with the dial slots. You couldn’t hear what he said, through his funneled hand. Then he came back again up the bar by easy stages. Nice pleasant tarantula, he was.

Three beers later a couple of hard-looking customers came in. “Now, isn’t that a coincidence!” I jeered to myself. The barman didn’t make any further attempts to detain Casey after that. The latter had been saying for the past ten minutes or more that he was full as a pig and had to work tomorrow. He floundered out, and the two hard-looking customers went after him as promptly as a tail following a kite. I seemed to feel like leaving, myself, right around then. Who could object? That was my privilege.

There was beer coming out of Casey’s ears, so he wouldn’t have known it if a regiment had been at his heels. For my part, however, I overlooked the fact that the other two had only just about wet their whistles, and had all their faculties about them. Not that they glanced back or seemed to be aware of me or anything like that.

They turned in after Casey, at the dismal-looking 99th Street tenement entrance, and I did likewise. There was a spark of green gas flickering in a bowl at the back of the ground floor hall, and a cautious creaking coming from somewhere above on the stairs. I put my foot on the bottom step, and suddenly a shadow detached itself from the wall. The side of my face exploded into atoms, and it felt like the whole roof had fallen down on top of me. I grabbed at a leg, going down, folded it over my chest, and brought him down after me. A lot of noisy kicking, threshing and grunting went on all over the dirty hallway. It served its purpose. Even on 99th Street sounds of combat don’t belong inside houses. Doors began to open here and there on the floors above.

Somebody came down off the stairs in a hurry, jumped over the two of us, and made for the street, with a grunted admonition, “Beat it, Patsy, the whole house is awake!” Patsy tore himself from my embrace, stood up, kicked out viciously in the direction of my head just on general principle, then scampered out. Upstairs on one of the landings Casey was howling belligerently: “Come back and fight like a man, ye dirty snaik-thief, whoever ye are!”

It sounded like he still had his thousand-dollar bill which was all that really interested me. I picked myself up, then slipped away to avoid meeting the riot squad. So much for Friday night.

Saturday, at cocktail time, Fredericks was already acting a little less sure of himself. Even slightly worried, you might say. I told them what had happened, with just a slight distortion of the facts. I let them think I’d watched Casey put the two thugs to rout from across the street, instead of actually entering the building and taking a hand in it myself, so to speak.

Fredericks said, “That’s all right, but what I can’t understand is why neither Casey nor Dreyer have made a move toward one another. They’ve had nearly forty-eight hours now to think it over. We know that they both got the notes I sent. Dreyer’s a spineless jellyfish, he’ll dream and plan with his wife, but he won’t do anything about it. And she’s one of these goody-goodies herself — which is your luck, Trainor. I’ve really been counting on this Casey fellow, but he seems to be more inclined to passive resistance than aggression. Maybe,” he said hopefully, “he’s got the idea already, and it’s taking time to cook. If he doesn’t do something about it before Tuesday night, I’m out two grand!”

“Attaboy, Shylock!” I couldn’t help remarking.

Saturday night was a big night at the tavern. I took a chance and went back, even after what had happened the night before in Casey’s hallway. I felt pretty sure the two footpads wouldn’t show their faces there, and they didn’t. I stayed fairly close to the door, however, to reduce the risk of being ganged up on.

Casey however, did show up as though too dense to connect the attempt on him with his friend the bartender. Or maybe not so dense as he let on to be. When the crowd thinned out and he had the latter’s undivided attention, he related what had happened.

The barkeep was all innocent surprise. “And ye think ’twas that they were after, the thing ye found?”

“Think? I know damn well it was! I don’t mind telling you I’ve got myself a gun, and the next party that tries to break in my room like that is going to be a sorry man!” And he turned around and went out again, without saying good-night.

I didn’t linger myself. I didn’t want to be handed any mickey Finns for my timely interference the night before.

We compared notes again Sunday. Fredericks was biting his nails to the quick, figuratively speaking, at the lack of initiative the two parties were showing. “Only forty-eight hours left!” he mourned.

“I’m not even sure Casey actually did get a gun,” I said, rubbing it in. “I think he just said it for a bluff, to scare the bartender off. He must know he engineered Friday night’s visit. He saw the two fellows there in the place before he left. And whether he has or not, he’s keeping it for defensive purposes only, I could tell by the way he spoke.”

“Which is no consolation to you, is it Fredericks?” Trainor jeered. It didn’t, to judge by the disgusted look on his face, seem to be.

Sunday night Casey took no chances. He brought a bottle up to his room with him and stayed in close to his mutilated treasure, keeping an eye on it. I could see a dim light burning in his window from where I watched, pacing back and forth between corners on the opposite side of the street. I didn’t knock off until 4 A.M., when the lights went out in the Lucky Shamrock and I saw the bartender come out, lock up, and go home. He was alone, and he steered clear of Casey’s Hat, so I figured the latter’s gun-talk had had a salutary effect. Everything was peaceful and under control; Sunday seemed to be everyone’s night of rest, the way it should be. The lull before the storm, maybe. I went home grumbling to myself about not being cut out for a night-watchman.

Monday night was the last full night left. If anything was going to happen, it was then or never. That being the case, I was on the job early. Casey’s electrical repair shop closed up at about 10:30. He stopped off for something to eat, and then went straight up to his room again — without any bottle this time. Probably still had some left in last night’s. I girded myself up for a long vigil.

At eleven a messenger boy showed up and went in the building. It struck me as odd for a moment that anyone living in a dump like that should be on the receiving-end of a telegram, but I didn’t think twice about it. The lad came out again, and almost immediately the gaslight went out behind Casey’s window. A moment later he showed up at the street door himself, bound for somewhere. The message had unmistakably been for him just now. I saw him stop under a streetlight and read it over a second time, as though it puzzled him. Then he went on his way.

I had no choice but to tail him, and after the number of times he’d seen me in the Shamrock, it was no easy matter. I had to stay completely out of sight and yet not lose him. Luckily he didn’t ride to his destination, but went on foot. He walked a vast distance down Broadway to a certain well-lighted corner, then abruptly stopped there and went no further, as though expecting to meet someone.

I shrank back behind a protruding showcase just in time and watched him narrowly along the edge of it without sticking my nose too far out. He took the telegram out, read it for the third time, looked up at the nearest street sign as though to verify the location and nodded to himself. Fifteen, twenty minutes went by. He began to get more and more impatient, turning his head this way and that, shifting his feet. I could see him getting sorer by the minute. Finally he blew up altogether, balled the message up, slung it viciously away from him, stuck his hands in his pockets, and started back the way he’d come.

“Good work, boy,” I commended, “I’ve been dying to get a look at that myself!” I turned around and studied necktie patterns in the case until he’d gone by, then went over, picked it up, and smoothed it out.

“A stall!” I thought. “And the fool fell for it — went out and left the bill unguarded in his room! I bet it’s gone by now!”

That tricky barman must have engineered it, of course. But after all, what did I care whether he’d lost it or not? If the stunt had worked, at least it had worked without the aid of murder, so Trainor’s money was safe, and Dreyer was safe too — those were the only two angles I was interested in.

A belated suspicion of what was up must have dawned on Casey himself on his way back. He walked so fast that I never quite caught up with him after he left that corner. But I knew where he was headed, so it didn’t trouble me.

The light was shining silverly in his room when I turned down 99th Street again. For just one moment more the street clung to its slumbering serenity, then it came to life right before my eyes. The thing itself must have been over already, must have happened just before I turned the corner. Whole rows of windows lighted up suddenly in Casey’s building, heads were stuck out. A patrol car was already shrieking up the nearest avenue. It rocketed around the corner, dove at the building entrance as though it were going to crash its way through into the hallway. Just before it got there a figure came tearing out, saw it, swerved, and bolted up the other way. Some woman or other helpfully brayed down from one of the open windows, “Stop that man! Stop him! He just shot somebody!”

The figure threw something from it as it ran, and there was a metallic impact from an ashcan. A cop took a jump off the prowl car running-board, fired warningly into the air, yelled something. The second shot wasn’t into the air. The figure went on scampering, leaned over too far, finally slumped down flat and rolled over on its back. It was Casey.

An ambulance showed up with wailing siren and screeched to a stop. Casey was shoved into it with a busted kneecap. But the other figure that was carried out to it under a sheet didn’t have a move left in it. I tried to edge it, tilt the sheet, and get a look, and I was nearly knocked down for my pains.

“He’s dead — wanner make something of it?” I was told.

I backed out.

Well, if he was, that was all that mattered. I’d done my best, but Trainor’s thousand had gone up the flue and he was behind the eight ball now. At least nothing had happened to that poor cuss with the wife and baby.

“How’d it happen?” I asked one of the neighbors, standing next to me.

“He came home and caught somebody in his room. I passed two suspicious-looking characters on the stairs meself when I came home earlier. The other one must’ve got away over the roof.”

I’d figured that that slimy bartender had been at the bottom of it all along. This proved it. It must have been the same two hoods as the first time.

I was the first one to get to 22 the next night. I had the check and Fredericks’ cash with me, to turn over to him. I got there about ten to twelve, and wondered how Trainor was going to take it. He came in alone about five minutes later. I could tell by his face he didn’t know yet, thought he was coming into two thousand bucks. I decided not to tell him until Fredericks had showed up; spare him the ax until the last minute.

“Well,” he said, “Mr. Wise Guy is going to be twice as sick at having to eat crow.”

The barman had a good memory. He parked the three Collinses ordered the week before in a row on the bar before us.

“Whaddye mean, twice as sick?” I asked.

“Oh, he got a cramp or something last night, went home to bed about eleven and left me holding down the sidewalk there in front of Dreyer’s.”

The minute-hand of the clock hit twelve. I said, “I’m going to call his club, find out what’s holding him up.”

Trainor said maliciously, “Ask him if he’s afraid to face the music.”

I was at the phone a long time. When I came back he could read on my face that I had bad news for him. I took out the check and the twenty hundreds and laid them on the bar. “Well,” I said, “it looks like he won the bet after all. He did cause someone to be murdered by someone else, like he said he could.”

His mouth just dropped open, and his face went kind of white and sick.

I picked up his check and started to tear it up into small pieces. “But there doesn’t seem to be anyone to collect it for him. That was him that was shot dead in Casey’s room on 99th Street last night. They couldn’t identify him until late this afternoon. He went there to double-cross us. Maybe to make sure Casey learned who had the other half, or maybe even to take it away from him because he wasn’t getting results, give it to someone else. It must have been already missing, the bartender’s two side-kicks got there first and swiped it, and Casey shot him down in cold blood believing he took it.”

Trainor picked up the third Collins and spilled it slowly out on the floor. Then he turned the glass upside-down on the bar with a knell-like sound. He said, without any bitterness now, “They always said he’d only bet on a sure thing. Well he lived up to his name, all right!”

Afterword to “You Bet Your Life”

“You Bet Your Life” (Detective Fiction Weekly, September 25,1937) is one of Woolrich’s most off-trail stories. The bizarre wager between the ruthless cynic Fredericks and the idealist Trainor harks back to the bet between the Lord and Satan in the book of Job, although what happens next as the three godlike principals invisibly spy on the two mortals and wait to see which will first set out to kill the other has no counterpart in the biblical tale. The point of this cockeyed philosophic parable, as usual in Woolrich, is that the most powerful god of all is Chance.