Корнелл Вулрич - Eyes That Watch You [= The Case of the Talking Eyes]

The house was a pleasant two-story suburban set in its own plot of ground, not close enough to its neighbors to impair privacy and seclusion, but not far enough away to be lonely or isolated. You could catch glimpses of them all around it through the trees and over the tops of the hedges that separated the lawns. You couldn’t command a full view of any of them, and they couldn’t command a full view of the house, either.

It had a back porch and a front one, and it had rambler roses trained around the porch posts both in front and in back.

It was midafternoon and Mrs. Janet Miller was sitting in her chair on the back porch. That was because the back of the house faced west and got the afternoon sun. Mornings she sat on the front porch, afternoons on the back. Life had long ago been reduced to its barest essentials for her. The feel of the warm sun on her, the sight of the blue sky over her, the sound of Vern Miller’s voice in her ears — those were the only things it held any more, those were the only things left to her. She didn’t ask for more, so long as those weren’t taken from her as everything else had been.

She sat there uncomplaining, content, almost — yes, almost happy, in her rubber-tired wheelchair, a blanket tucked snugly about her feet and lap. She could feel the sun on her, she could see the sky out through the porch posts, and as for the sound of his voice, that would come a little later — it was too early for that yet. She had that much more to look forward to, at least.

She was sixty, with a pink-cheeked, unlined face, snow-white hair, trustful pottery-blue eyes. She was completely, hopelessly paralyzed from head to foot, had been for the past ten years.

It seemed long ago, another lifetime ago now, that she had last walked on floors, moved up and down stairs, raised her hands to her hair to brush it, to her face to wash it, to her mouth to feed it, or expressed the thoughts that were still as clear, as undimmed as ever in her mind, by the sound of words issuing from her mouth. All that was gone now, gone and unlamented. She had trained herself, forced herself, steeled herself, not to lament it.

No one would ever know what it had cost her to accomplish that much, no one would ever know the private purgatory she had been through, the Via Dolorosa she had traversed. But she had emerged now, she had won her battle. She held tight to what remained to her. No monster-god ever worshipped by the most benighted savages could be cruel enough to take that pitiful remainder from her. The sun, the sky, Vern’s voice, remained. She had achieved resignation, acceptance, content. So she sat there motionless in the slanting sun, behind the twining rambler-rose tendrils. Something human, something living, that wanted its happiness too.

The doorbell rang around on the other side of the house, and the footsteps of Vera, Vern’s wife, started from the floor above to answer it. But quickly, with a rush, as though she had been waiting for this summons, as though she had seen who it was from one of the upper windows. It must be company then, and not just a tradesman or peddler.

Janet Miller could hear the front door open, then quickly close again, from where she sat. But no gush of feminine salutations followed. Instead a man’s voice said, cautiously muted, but not too muted to carry to the sharp ears whose sensitivity had increased rather than diminished since the loss of other faculties: “You alone?”

And Vera’s voice answered: “Yes. Did anyone see you come in?”

That first, husky, guarded voice hadn’t been the voice, hadn’t been Vern’s. It couldn’t be this early — not for another hour or more yet. Who could it be then? A man — that meant it was a friend of Vern’s, of course. She knew all his friends and tried to place this one, but couldn’t. They never came at this hour. They were all busy downtown, as Vern was himself.

Well, she’d know in a minute. One thing about Vern’s friends, the first thing they all did was come and say hello to her, ask her how she was, usually bring her something, some little trifle or dainty. Vera would bring him out with her to see her, or else wheel her in to where he was. She liked to meet company. That wasn’t one of the three essentials; that was a little pampering she allowed herself.

But instead of coming through the hall that bisected the house, out to where she was, they turned off into the living-room, and she heard the door close after them, and from then on there wasn’t another sound.

She couldn’t understand that. Vera had never closed the door like that when they had company before. It must have been just absentmindedness on her part. She’d done it without thinking. Or else maybe it was some little surprise they were preparing, for herself or for Vern, and they wanted to make sure of keeping it a secret. But Vern’s birthday was long past, and her own didn’t come until February—

She waited patiently but the door stayed closed. It seemed she wasn’t to meet this caller, or be wheeled in to him. She sighed a little, disappointedly.

Then suddenly, without warning, they came through into the back of the house, the kitchen. It had a window looking out on the back porch, just a little to one side of where she was seated. She could even see into a very narrow strip of the room by looking out of the far corners of her eyes. She could move her eyes, of course.

Vera came in there first, the caller after her. She seemed to set something down on the kitchen table, then she started to undo it with a great crackling and rattling of paper. Some sort of parcel, evidently. So they were busied about a surprise, a gift, after all.

She heard Vera say, “Where’d you ever get this idea from?” with a sort of admiring, complimentary ring to her voice.

The man answered: “Reading in the papers about how they were passing them out over in London and Paris, when they were scared war was going to break out. Someone I know was over there at the time and brought some of them back with him. I got hold of these from him.”

“D’yuh think it’ll work?” she asked.

He said: “Well, it’s the best idea of the lot we’ve had so far, isn’t it?”

“That doesn’t say much for some of the others,” Vera answered.

The crackle of unwrapping paper had continued uninterruptedly until now. It stopped at last.

There was a moment’s silence, then she said: “Aren’t they funny-looking things?”

The man said: “They’ll do the trick, though. Never mind how they look.”

The paper crackled one last time, then Vera said: “What’d you bring two for?”

“One for the old lady,” he answered.

Janet Miller experienced a pleasant little glow of anticipation. They had something for her, they were going to give her something, some little present or memento.

“What for?” she heard Vera say impatiently. “Why not both of them at once?”

“Use your head,” the man growled. “That’s the one thing we want to avoid. She’s our immunity; don’t you get it? Sort of like an alibi. As long as nothing happens to her, it’s good for an accident. But if they both go then it looks too much like we wanted the decks cleared. Don’t let’s load the dice against ourselves. One out of three people in a house, we can get away with. But two out of three, and it’ll begin to smell fishy. Don’t forget you’re in the same room with him. She’s up at the other end of the hall. How’s it going to look if he goes and you, right next to him, don’t? And then she goes too, all the way out in another room, with a couple of closed doors in between?”

“All right,” Vera conceded grudgingly. “But if you had to push her around all day and wait on her like I do—”