J. Fletcher - The Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 5, No. 1 — April 1922)

“Never mind what I want. Where have you been all morning?”

Sullenly Joe said, “Around here. Talking with Tom.”

“Talking with Tom,” Cummings repeated. “Well, you come with me.”

Joe stepped out of the cigar store, feeling the shadow of the electric chair had touched him. He would be questioned, and—

“I want to know where Ernest Worth — he’s called Pug — lives in this house,” the detective said, leading the way toward Joe’s home.

Little beads of sweat appeared upon the squat man’s forehead, and his arms stiffened. He stifled the moan that trembled in his throat. He dared not try and escape from the detective.

They climbed the uncarpeted silent stairs and paused before Pug’s door.

“Is this the room?” Cummings asked, and Joe nodded wordlessly. “Well, I knocked on this door this morning,” the officer continued, “and got a grunt and a get-out-of-here for an answer.” He rapped upon the door.

“Mrs. Britt, who runs this house, lives two blocks away,” said Joe. If he could get the detective interested elsewhere, perhaps his captor would no longer detain him.

“She’s out,” was the brief reply. “I went down to see her. Now, where is your room?”

“Downstairs.”

“Let me have your key. This fellow Pug is wanted; he has been mixed up in a bootlegging gang that—”

“I don’t know anything about it.” Joe broke in.

He did not want the door to open; he did not want to see Pug, with that surprised expression on his face, lying dead. A spasm of despair fluttered through Joe, his knees shook slightly. “I–I haven’t-had-anything—”

Again Cummings knocked upon the door...

“Pug growled at me when I was here before,” he said. “This key might not fit—”

In the midst of his fear Joe had a dazzling idea. He had wanted to go to the grocery store in order to complete his alibi. Why not ask Cummings what time it was?

“Pug goes out for breakfast every morning,” he said. “Got a watch? Let’s see what time—”

The detective consulted a cheap nickel watch.

“Ten-thirty-five,” he announced. “Pug was here at ten o’clock.”

Perfect! Joe almost screamed with relief. With these words the detective had completed Joe’s alibi. Cummings had roused Pug at ten o’clock, therefore he was alive at that time. Tom’s dropped timepiece would prove that Joe had been in the cigar store at ten o’clock, and the clerk would say that he had chatted with Joe both before and after that time. When he left the cigar store, Joe had departed with Cummings, consequently his actions during the thirty-five minutes were satisfactorily accounted for. He could not be convicted for killing Pug, for his alibi was perfect. Perfect!

The detective inserted Joe’s key in the door of Pug’s room. Joe fought to control himself; he must appear astonished and appalled, as though he had not anticipated seeing the lifeless body of his friend. There would be a ludicrous expression of surprise on Pug’s face; the bootlegger would be lying on the bed, or on the floor nearby.

The key fitted the lock on Pug’s door. Joe was sure of this fact, for he had entered by the door on his first visit to Pug that morning. He had made his second visit by way of the fire-escape, because Pug had tilted a chair underneath the doorknob to prevent another visit.

The detective pushed the door open, shoving the tilted chair to the floor. Joe was alert, ready to be shocked by what they would find. Again a crawling fear squirmed across his scalp. He closed his eyes, fearing to see that limp, sprawled body.

From a distance, Cummings’s voice sounded. It was a placid, indifferent voice, quiet and composed.

“Well, I guess Pug has gone out to breakfast,” the detective said calmly.

Joe opened his eyes. He saw a disordered room, the overturned chair, the bedclothes disarranged, but no sign of Pug. There were no splotches on the floor, nor any evidence that a man had been hurt or killed. And the body had disappeared!

The detective rummaged in a small closet, and discovered an empty bottle underneath some soiled clothes. He held the dark brown bottle aloft. It was empty.

“No evidence of bootlegging here,” he said. “Let’s get out.”

Joe was stupefied. He stood in horrified bewilderment, looking for some trace of the man he had killed. His mouth seemed hollow, and his eyes were huge and full of biting pains. Again and again he stared at the bed, where he had last seen Pug. Nothing there. Nothing. Joe forced himself across the room, and put his hand in the depression in the bed made by Pug when he had dropped back after being knifed. Nothing. Pug was nowhere in the room. And there were no stains upon the floor, nor any evidence that the bootlegger had been killed.

“Come on,” said Cummings, “I’m going to take a look at your room.”

Joe did not reply, but followed the detective from the room and down the stairs. Terror whimpered in the squat man’s mind, horrible fear coursed through his veins and he stumbled as he descended the uncarpeted steps. Even though his alibi was perfect, a premonition seized him. He recalled Pug’s face with its expression of ludicrous surprise.

The detective stopped and opened Joe’s door. The short, squat man hesitated in the hallway, held motionless by a mysterious dread. Again his frantic mind assured him that his alibi was perfect, that if his actions during the morning were investigated he would not be convicted of murder.

A muffled curse came from Cummings. The word held horror and dismay and astonishment. And an intangible force impelled Joe into his own room where the detective stood.

Cummings was staring at the window in dazed surprise. Joe’s hunted eyes followed the detective’s glance, and — his body snapped into numbness. Pinpricks of biting cold bit into his brain. All his strength vanished from him.

And then the short, squat man began to scream. Shriek after shriek came from Joe’s bulging throat, each rising higher and higher. No words issued from his mouth; the sounds were the fear-filled, desperate, horrified screams of a trapped animal that knows it cannot escape.

For, upon the fire-escape, peering into the room, was Pug! The knife was still imbedded in the bootlegger’s body; it had not been dislodged from the time Joe had forced the stiletto to its mark. Even though Pug had crawled to the window for assistance, had leaned out, and had fallen down the fire-escape to the floor below, the knife had remained implanted in his flesh.

Joe saw the man he had killed; saw Pug looking in through the window. Now, Pug was not ludicrously surprised. Instead, ferocious hate glared from his features, devilish anger- stared from his sightless eyes. And in one cold hand Pug held a torn bit of newspaper which bore the words “I O U 5 Little Joe.”

There was no need to accuse Joe of the crime; no need to seek for incriminating evidence. His screams had reached a pitch that sounded as though his vocal chords were being tom from his throat by the strain. He proclaimed his guilt in horrible noises. He forgot that his alibi was perfect; forgot everything but Pug’s loathsome, leering face. Joe’s wild screams betrayed him, and Cummings knew that he was in the presence of the man who had killed Pug.

Later, of course, Joe was calmed by opiates, and his confession written down. But the confession, and the bit of newspaper found in Pug’s lifeless hand, were only corroborative evidence. The thing that destroyed Joe’s perfect alibi, that broke down his feeling of safety, and that finally sent him to the electric chair was Pug’s face staring through the window from the fire-escape.