The Blood Stone

Chapter One

The latchkey jammed, and I had to stand there shaking as if I had St. Vitus dance before I could get it to work right. My wrists shook, my arms shook, my shoulders shook, trying to force it around. And above all else, my heart shook with the terror.

I was shaking so, it even made the empty milk-bottle standing outside the door sing out. I’d accidentally touched it with the tip of my shoe, I guess. The day maid had a note for the milkman curled up in the neck of it, in the shape of a little paper funnel.

I took the key out, drew a deep breath, and tried again. This time the door opened like pie. There hadn’t been anything the matter with the key; I’d been holding it upside down, that was all. I sidled in, eased the door silently closed again behind me — and Mrs. James Shaw was home.

The hall clock chimed four times. They say you can only die once, but I died four times, once for each chime-stroke. Not that I wasn’t supposed to be out. I could have even rung the doorbell, and saved myself all that wrestling with the key. But I couldn’t face anyone, not even Jimmy, just then. Even if he’d just said, “Have a good time at the night club with the Perrys?”, even if he’d just looked at me, I would have busted down and tried to crawl into his lapel. I needed to be alone, I needed time to pull myself together.

He’d left the light on for me in the hall. He was still up, working away in the library on his income tax report. He had the door dosed, but I could tell by the light shining out under the sill of it. He always waited until the last minute, like most taxpayers do, and then he had to sit up all night to beat the deadline on it. That was why he’d had to miss the party, send me out with the Perrys alone.

It was just a coincidence, but I could thank my lucky stars he’d had to finish it tonight.

That was just about the only thing in the whole mess there was to be thankful for. That at least there wouldn’t be any trouble between Jimmy and me.

I tiptoed down the hall toward our bedroom, slipped in, closed the door behind me. I gave it the lights and took a couple of deep body-sobs that had been ganged up in me for the past three-quarters of an hour or more.

The glass showed me a golden wreck staggering across the room toward it. All glittery on the outside: gold-sheath dress, diamonds everywhere there was room to hang them, around my neck, around my wrists, swinging from my ears. Not so glittery on the inside: plenty scared.

I sat down in front of the glass, held my head with both hands for a minute.

When I got my second wind, the first thing I did was open my gold evening pouch and take out — what I had in it. The style ran to big evening bags this season, and that was a good thing for me. I’d needed a lot of room tonight. The letters made a bulky packet. And the little gun I’d taken along, just to be on the safe side, that took up room, too. The ten thousand dollars in cash didn’t take up any room, because I hadn’t brought that back with me, I’d swapped that for the letters.

That gives you the whole story. Well, maybe not quite, so in fairness to myself I’d better run over it just once. His name was Carpenter. The letters had been written to him five years ago, three years before I even knew there was a Jimmy Shaw in the world. I should have been safe enough. But he’d made use of a trick to bring them up to date. It was a clever trick. I granted him that.

Here’s what he’d done. At the time I’d originally written them, we’d both been at the same seaside resort hotel, only on different floors. I’d had them delivered to him personally by bellboys and what not, not sent through the mail. In other words he’d received the envelopes sealed and addressed to him in my handwriting, but unstamped and undated by any post office cancellation.

He must have been a careful letter opener, the kind that just makes a neat slit down the side instead of tearing them ragged. He’d pasted over the slits with strips of thin wax paper, put a brand new stamp on each one, added his present street and city address beneath the name, and then sent them back through the mail a second time — to himself. One at a time, over a period of weeks, careful to match the mailing date with the original date inside at the top of the note paper. Get the idea?

Each one had come back to him with this year’s date postmarked on the outside, to match the five-year-old date on the inside. I hadn’t bothered inserting the year, just the day of the week and the month. He’d had the devil’s own luck with those cancellations, too. Not one of them had blurred or smudged; the “1950” stood out clear as a diamond. Then when he’d gotten them back, he’d peeled off the wax paper.

In other words, he’d turned a lot of gushy but harmless mash notes written to him by a young girl into a batch of deadly dangerous, incriminating letters written to him by a respectable and socially prominent young married woman with a wealthy husband. And he’d done it by simply sticking stamps on them. What an investment! At an expenditure of two cents a head, he’d gotten back one thousand dollars on each one. There had been ten that were usable; the others either had been signed with my full family name or had things in them that dated them as from that summer.

You’d think a corny setup like that, which they don’t even use in the movies any more, wouldn’t go over. I should have refused to pay off, gone straight to Jimmy about it. But it’s so easy to be brave until you’re face to face with something like that. He’d had me over a barrel. His technique had been beautifully simple and direct. He’d first called me three or four days ago. He’d said, “Remember me? Well, I need ten thousand dollars.”

I’d hung up.

He’d called right back again before I could even move away from the phone. “You didn’t let me finish what I was saying. I have some letters that you wrote to me. I thought maybe that you’d prefer to have them back than to have them lying around loose.”

I’d hung up again.

He’d called back late that same night, after midnight. Luckily, I answered, and not Jimmy. “I’m giving you one more chance. One of them’s in the mail already, enclosed in an envelope addressed to your husband. He’ll get one every morning, until they’re all used up. And the price for the rest’ll go up a thousand, each time I send one out. I’m sending the first one to your house and tipping you off ahead of time, so you’ll still have a chance to sidetrack it before he sees it. After that, they’ll go to his club, where you can’t get your hands on them. Think it over. Call me tomorrow at eleven, and let me know what you’ve decided.” And he gave me his number.

I sneaked the letter off the mail tray before Jimmy saw it. I read it over. It should have been written on asbestos. “All night I lie awake and dream of you... I’d follow you to the ends of the earth...”

I saw what he’d done. How could I prove I’d written them in 1945 and not 1950? My handwriting hadn’t changed. Note paper doesn’t show any particular age, especially the deckled gray kind I’d used then and was still using now, with just a crest instead of a monogram. The tables turned. I could hardly wait for eleven to come. I hung around the phone all morning.

When he answered, all I said, breathlessly, was, “That’ll be all right. Just tell me where and when.”

Tonight had been when, and the flat I’d just come from had been where. And ten thousand dollars out of my own private checking account had been how much.

At least I’d gotten them all back and it was over. Or is blackmail ever over with? Is it a game that you can ever beat?

There was a fireplace in our bedroom, and I burned the letters in there, one by one; contents and envelopes and spiked cancellations. When the last of them was gone in smoke, I felt a lot better. For about three and a half minutes.

I started to strip off the sparkle, and I opened the little embossed leather case I kept it all in. It was divided into compartments for each variety. The bracelets went into one, the rings into another, and so on. I came to the one for the earrings last. I took the right one off first and pitched it in. Then I reached for the left, and just got air and the bare lobe of my ear. No left earring.

For a minute I sat there without moving, and my face got white and my heart got chilly. Then I jumped up, and shook out my dress, and looked all around on the floor. I was just stalling. I knew where I must have dropped it, but I didn’t want to let on to myself.

I knew it hadn’t been at the club with the Perrys, and I knew it hadn’t been in the first taxi, going over to the Other Place. I’d given a sort of shudder just before he opened the door for me, and happened to touch both earrings with my hands. And I knew it hadn’t been in the second taxi, from there home, either.

There was only one time I’d moved violently or agitatedly all evening long, and that was over there, when he’d tried to chuck me under the chin after he’d counted over the money, and I’d reared my head back. It must have been right then that it had come off. The catch had been defective anyway; I’d had no business wearing it.

I had to have it back. Jimmy was taking them down with him tomorrow, to have them repaired. I could tell him I’d lost one of them, but that would uncover my movements. And there was an even more important reason why I had to get it back. If I left it with him, the whole thing would start over again as soon as he’d run through the ten thousand I’d just given him. He’d simply use it to bleed me some more. It was an easily recognizable piece of jewelry, made specially for me.

I went over to the door and listened first, to make sure Jimmy was still safely in the library. Not a sound, so it looked as if he was. Then I picked up the extension phone we had in the bedroom and dialed the number of Carpenter’s place that he’d given me last night, along with his final ultimatum.

Suppose he denied having found it? Suppose he was far-seeing enough to already figure on it coming in handy as a future pledge? I couldn’t add anything to the ten thousand, not until next month. My account was down to bedrock. He had to give it back to me!

I kept signaling, and he didn’t answer. I knew he must be there. I’d just come from there myself. He might light out the first thing in the morning, but there was no need for him to leave at this ungodly hour of the night. If I was going to sic the police on him, I would have done it before the transaction was concluded, not after. Even if he was asleep, it surely ought to wake him up, the way it was buzzing away at his end.

I hung up, tried it over. No more luck than the first time. It was the right number. I’d used it to notify him of my capitulation. I shook the thing, I squeezed it, I prayed to it. I had to give up finally. I couldn’t just sit there listening to it all night. I was good and scared now.

I had to have that earring, even if it meant going all the way back there in person, at this hour. And there was no place under the sun or the moon I wouldn’t have rather returned to than there: a cage of wild lions, a pit of rattle-snakes, a leprosarium.

I took the gun with me once more. I didn’t think Carpenter could really be cowed by such a midget, but it made me feel a little less defenseless. I unlocked the door and sidled down the hall. If I could only get out without bumping into Jimmy, then when I came back the second time, he could think it was the first time. That I’d stayed late with the Perrys at the club or something.

The light was gone from under the library door! He must have finished and gone out for a walk to clear his head, after battling with those taxblanks all night. That was all to the good, provided I didn’t run into him outside just as I was leaving. The milk bottle with its paper funnel was still on lonesome duty.

I made it. I was dying to ask the night liftman, when he brought me down, “Did Mr. Shaw go out just a little while ago?” I forced myself not to. It sounded too underhanded.

I gave the cabdriver the address, and slumped back on the seat with a sigh of relief.