The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 25 Classic Mysteries

Return No More

Originally published in Manhunt, January 1958.

Connors watched the cheap electric clock on the mantel. It was almost nine o’clock in the morning. He lighted a cigarette. His hands were shaking badly. She would leave at nine o’clock. And he would be alone in the apartment. He hadn’t been alone in over twenty years. He hadn’t been out of her presence since she’d met him at the prison gates yesterday.

She’d kept up a running chatter all the way on the drive into the city. Telling him about the apartment. Her job.

She’d been crying a little. Twenty years is a long time to wait.

They’d had dinner here in the apartment. They’d gone to bed early and he’d clung to her long after she was asleep.

He awoke at six this morning, the habit of twenty years. Early dawn had etched shadows against the window. He’d lain with his heart hammering, because the window was wrong. The window was huge, empty, opening into the vastness of sky and earth and buildings and people. There were no bars over the window.

Shivers had crossed his thin, wiry body as he’d lain for an hour and a half waiting for her to wake. At the first peal of the alarm, he’d grabbed the clock and said, “Myrtle! Myrtle, time to get up.”

She’d turned sleepily, smiled at him, and put her arms around his thin, corded neck. He’d been revolted by her touch, because it was transitory. She couldn’t stay here. By nine o’clock she would be out, gone to her job at the cafe.

Breakfast had nauseated him, but he’d forced himself to eat. She’d wanted him to eat so badly. Her eyes, large and brown, heavy and dewy like the rest of her, had been filled with concern for him.

“You just take it easy today, honey,” she’d said, laying her work-roughed, meaty hand on his. “It’s all over now. Twenty years of waiting. You are home.”

“Yeah,” he’d said. “Home... Myrt, it was good of you to wait. Not many women would have.”

“Well,” she laughed, “maybe nobody else would have me, big and blowsy like I am, with bunions that hurt and all.”

“You’re good, Myrt,” he’d said, a sadness unaccountably welling up in him. “You’re real good.”

“Ah, now, you say that to all the women, I bet.”

“In twenty years you forget what women is like,” he’d said. “You find they’re a kind of habit. Like fags or whiskey. You get so the habit is just a dim memory that don’t mean much.”

“You can learn the habit all over again, honey,” she’d said. “But with me. Exclusive, like they say. Just me.”

She’d pushed him aside when he’d wanted to do the breakfast dishes. “You just loll in the parlor. I’ll have these done in a jiffy.”

Now she was finished. The rattle of dishes in the tiny kitchenette had ceased to sound in the cheap apartment.

He stood puffing on his cigarette, fine beads of sweat breaking on his forehead. His face, like his body, was thin and narrow. Eyes in deep sockets. Eyes that seemed to have once looked into a great nothingness. A sharp nose and thin, twitching lips. Skin as pale as bleached white paper. Nerves very close to the surface all over the thin body and intense sweating face.

She came into the cramped living room, the comfortable, generous size of her making the room seem even smaller and meaner.

She was putting on her coat. He watched her do that, while the nervous tic got worse at the corner of his mouth.

Next her hat. She tucked a wisp of iron gray under the edge of the hat.

“I’m off, honey,” she said, turning to him. “Now you have a good day.”

She kissed him on the lips. Her mouth was heavy, damp, kind, and gentle.

He let her pull from his outstretched arms. When she was at the door, he said, “Myrt...”

“Yeah, honey?”

His mouth was parched. He licked his lips. After a moment, he said, “You have a good day yourself.”

“I’ll do that,” she smiled. “Just knowing that the twenty years is dead and gone will make me have a good day.”

She was opening the door. He didn’t want to see her leave. He turned toward the window.

He heard the door close. The sound of it was a soft blow, shaking him. He remained at the window, looking at the street below. He was seeing nothing out there.

Twenty years.

Dead and gone.

Everything changed.

The silence of the apartment began to squeeze off his breathing. It felt as if a weight were bearing down hard on his chest.

“My God,” he said softly. “My God.”

He grabbed his hat and ran from the empty apartment.

In the hallway, he stopped. He could breathe easier now.

Don’t be so damn silly, Connors. Don’t panic. Control yourself.

He held to the stair rail as he started to walk, down the flight to street level.

In the lower hall a door opened. He jumped, spun about. A young brunette woman was getting milk where it had been left beside her apartment door.

She wore a faded housecoat and her hair was done up in aluminum curlers.

“Hello,” she said.

“H... Hello,” Connors said.

“You’re the Mr. Connors from upstairs, ain’t you?”

“Y-Yes. That’s right.”

“Mrs. Connors is awful glad to have you back. All she could talk about... say, you feel all right, Mr. Connors?”

“Could I... have a glass of water?”

“Why, sure. Come on in.” She turned, raised her voice. “Harry, Mr. Connors from upstairs wants a drink of water.”

A heavy male voice inside the apartment said, “Well, let the damned con get it in his own place.”

The young woman turned, her face red, her eyes not meeting Connors’. “I’m sorry,” she said. “My husband — he’s a kind of grouch early in the morning.

“It’s all right,” Connors said, fumbling, his hat in his hand. He turned and darted from the building. He wasn’t running, but he gave the impression that he was.

On the sidewalk, he stopped short. The sun was bright, hurting his eyes. Traffic, snarled and brawling, was a din in his ears.

Good grief, where had all the cars come from? Look at the size and shape of them. They glittered and gleamed with a ferocity that caused him to stand a moment in horror.

He licked his lips and looked up and down the street. Children were playing; people were going in and out of stores; a big, dark woman was arguing in a screeching voice with a pushcart produce peddler.

Connors felt dwarfed by it all. The street reaching endlessly in either direction gave him the sensation that he was being stretched and pulled by the immensity of open space.

So much space.

The size of it built a hard knot in his throat. No order to this space. No gray walls to cut it off at its proper ending point.

He felt a strong urge to move, to flee the feeling that so much space imparted to him.

He dashed into the street.

Brakes squealed.

Horns honked.

A truck came tearing at him like a mountain on the move. The driver leaned out the window. “Ya damn fool, whyn’t ya watch where you’re going!”

Connors gulped and ran.

He reached the farther curb. He sat down and made an effort to get his breathing under control.

A pair of teenage boys, swaggering against the front of a building, watched Connors. They were a blond boy and a dark one. They looked at each other and grinned. The blond boy flipped his cigarette away.

Connors struggled to his feet. He moved toward the center of the sidewalk. A heavy man in work clothes bumped him, gave him a glare. Connors reeled to one side and collided with a slim, young, dark woman who carried a baby in her arms.

“S-Sorry,” he said. He stood in the middle of the sidewalk, people swirling about him. No plan, no pattern to their movements. No order.

His head was spinning.

He was carried forward relentlessly in the tide of humanity. He wanted to claw his way clear, but he was at the corner now; the light was changing and the tide carried him on.

He jostled his way to the safety of a building front. Two young men stepped to either side of him. A blond boy, a dark one. The blond boy was lighting a fresh cigarette.

“Hi, pop,” the dark boy said. He had a lean hard face; there was an animal look in his eyes. The early sun glistened on his duck-tailed hair.

Connors shrank away from them. There was something menacing in their eyes. Something cruel and hard and new that had come into the world since he’d seen it last.

“You the old con from across the street?” the blond boy asked.

Not so old, Connors tried to say. Forty-six. But his hair was gray and thin, his face pale, lined, twitching. Maybe he did look old to them.

“A real honest-to-john con,” the blond boy said. “Real tough.”

“He don’t look so tough to me, Jerry,” the dark boy said.

“How tough are you, pop?”

“I... I’m not so tough.”

“Hear that, Jerry? He ain’t so tough. What’d they can you for, pop? Taking candy from a baby?”

“No,” Connors said.

“Well, what? Come on, give with the details. We’re your pals, see? We wanna hear all about it.”

“Armed robbery,” Connors said in a whisper.

“Yeah? Filling station? Old lady in a grocery store maybe?”

“Armored truck,” Connors said.

“Hear that, Jerry? A real tough armored truck cracker.”

“What do you want with me?” Connors said.

“We just wanna see how tough you are, pop.”

“I told you. I’m not tough. Please let me go.”

“We ain’t stopping you, pop.”

Connors tried to move to one side. He bumped the blond boy.

“Don’t shove me, pop,” the boy said in a low tone. “Don’t shove me. I don’t like it, see? I guess I’m about as tough as any con.”

Connors’ throat worked as he looked at the young, hard animal eagerness of their faces. People eddied all about him, but he felt isolated, alone.

He fought the feeling of weakness in his knees. His eyes scurried in their sockets.

Then he broke and ran.

They followed him for a few steps.

“Let him go, Jerry. I guess we showed ’im. Tougher than any con.”

“Yeah, let’s see what’s doing down the block.”

Connors moved blindly through the immensity of space. He felt helpless against the disordered maelstrom about him. Like a man who has wandered naked from his house.

He reached the entrance of a restaurant. It was the place where Myrt worked.

He looked inside for some sign of her. Finally he saw her clearing a table. He stood with his face pressed against the broad front window, watching her until she went into the kitchen.

He turned away and began slow, unreal movements down the sidewalk.

He felt exhausted when he regained the apartment. He stumbled into the bedroom and fell across the bed. The strong feeling that something was wrong rose in him until it was overpowering.

He jerked around and sat up.

The door was open.

He sprang from the bed and slammed the door. Then he returned to the bed and lay down and pulled the covers over himself.

Myrt came in at two o’clock. She worked a split shift and had each afternoon off from two until five.

He heard her in the small living room. He rose slowly. The bed was wet with the imprint of his sweating body. He stood crouched near the bed, listening to her humming.

The bedroom door opened.

She stopped short, then smiled. “Hello, honey. Taking a nap?”

“I don’t want to talk,” Connors said.

He walked into the kitchenette. Why had she come? The bedroom had been almost dark and silent. Now, as he stood in the kitchenette, the roar of wild disordered sound from outside came crashing over him. His heart began to pound and his teeth chattered.

Myrt had followed him. She stood in the doorway. “You catching cold, honey?”

“Leave me alone,” he said.

“But, baby doll...”

“Leave me alone,” he said in a louder voice.

“Now, honey,” she said. She was coming toward him. Her great, heavy arms reached around him. He felt as if he were suffocating.

He shoved her with all his strength. He saw her twist and fall backward. The back of her head struck the edge of the sink. With her weight, the blow was hard and cruel. She fell down limp and Connors stood over her.

“Myrt?” he said.

There was gray matter and blood spilling out the back of her head.

She was dead.

He was sorry — for a moment.

Then he realized that they’d give him life for this. They’d take him back. Maybe he wouldn’t get the same cell that had protected him for twenty years. But a new one would do.

He went into the living room; he looked out the window. He had to look. At the teeming, seething jungle outside.

He looked.

And looking at it, his relief was so great that tears came to his eyes.