Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

It was only when he’d started it going again that he remembered to feel for the rubber pouch that had cost two lives so far, and nearly a third — his own. If he’d lost it down there, he’d had all his trouble for nothing. But instead of falling out, it had slipped down under his waistband and become wedged in the top of one trousers leg, too bulky to go any farther. There wasn’t enough sensation left in his leg to tell him it was there until he’d pried it out with both hands.

“Money,” he murmured, when he’d finally stripped it open and examined it. He turned his head and looked toward that sinister black opening in the ground. “I thought it was that. It almost always is.”

There were seventy-five thousand dollars in it, so well protected they weren’t even damp after three years’ immersion.

He put on his coat and made his way back toward the house. One of the upper story window sashes eased up and a voice whispered cautiously down in the stillness:

“Did you get him, Dan?”

“No, Dan didn’t get him, Mrs. Hunt,” he answered in full speaking tone. “Put on something and come down; I’m taking you in to the sheriff’s office with me. And don’t keep me waiting around down here; I’m chilled to the bone.”

The sheriff awoke with a start when Traynor thrust open his office door and ushered Mrs. Hunt in ahead of him.

“Here’s one,” he said, “and the other one’s at the bottom of the well with the rest of the slimy things where he belongs. Sit down, Mrs. Hunt, while I run through the facts for the benefit of my superior here.

“I’ll begin at the beginning. The State built a spanking fine concrete highway that sliced off a little corner of Eleazar Hunt’s property. He had the good luck — or bad luck, as it now turns out to have been — to collect seventy-five thousand dollars for it. Here it is.” He threw down the waterlogged package. “There’s your motive. First of all, it got him a second wife, almost before he knew it himself. Then, through the wife, it got him a hired man. Then, through the hired man and the wife, it got him — torture to the death.”

He turned to the prisoner, who was sitting nervously shredding her handkerchief. “You want to tell the rest of it, or shall I? I’ve got it on the tip of my tongue, you know — and I’ve got it straight.”

“I’ll tell it,” she said dully. “You seem to know it anyway.”

“How’d you catch on he was hypersensitive to tickling?”

“By accident. I was sitting on the arm of his chair one evening, trying to vamp it out of him — where the money was, you know. I happened to tickle him under the chin, and he jumped a mile. Dan saw it happen and that gave him the idea. He built it up to me for weeks. ‘If he was tied down,’ he said, ‘in one place so he couldn’t get away from it, he couldn’t hold out against it very long, he’d have to tell you. It’d be like torture, but it wouldn’t hurt him.’ It sounded swell, so I gave in.

“But, honest, I didn’t know Dan meant to kill him. He was the one did it. I didn’t! I thought he only meant for us to take the money and lam, and leave El tied up.”

“Never mind that; go ahead.”

“Dan had it all thought out beautiful. He had me go around the village first building it up that I was getting El to laugh and liven up. He even had me buy the joke book at the general store. Then last night about ten thirty when El was sitting by the lamp reading some seed catalogues, I gave the signal and Dan came up behind him with rope and pillows from the bed and insect spray gauntlets. He held him while I put the gauntlets on him — they’re good thick buckram, you know — so no rope burns would show from his struggles, and then he tied his hands to the arms of the chair, over the gauntlets. The pillows we used over his waist and thighs, for the same reason, to deaden the ropes. Then he let the chair back down nearly flat, and he took off El’s shoes and socks, and brought in a handful of chicken feathers from the yard, and squatted down in front of him like an Indian, and started to slowly stroke the soles of his feet back and forth. It was pretty awful to watch and listen to: I hadn’t thought it would be. But that screaming laugh! Tickling doesn’t sound so bad, you know.

“Every time Dan blunted a feather, he’d throw it away and start in using a new one. And he said in his sleepy way: ‘Care to tell us where it is now? No? Wa-al, mebbe you know best.’ I wanted to bring him water once, but Dan wouldn’t let me, said that would only help him hold out longer.

“El was such a stubborn fool. He didn’t once say he didn’t have the money, he only said he’d see us both in hell before he told us where it was. He fainted away, the first time, about twelve. After that he kept getting weaker all the time, couldn’t laugh any more, just heave his ribs.

“Finally he gave in, whispered it was in a tin box plastered into the well, below the water line. He told us there was a rope ladder he’d made himself to get down there, hidden in the attic. Dan lowered himself down, and got it out, brought it up, and counted it. I wanted to leave right way, but he talked me out of it. He said: ‘We’ll only give ourselves away if we do that. We know where it is now. Let’s leave it there a mite longer; he mayn’t live as long as you ‘d expect. ‘I see now what he meant; I still didn’t then. Well, I listened to him; he seemed to have the whole thing lined up so cleverly. He climbed back with it and left it down there. Then we went back to the house. I went upstairs, and I no sooner got there than I heard El start up this whimpering and cooing again, like a little newborn baby. I quickly ran down to try and stop him, but it was too late. Just as I got there, El overstrained himself and suddenly went limp. That little added extra bit more killed him, and Dan Fears had known it would, that’s why he did it!

“I got frightened, but he told me there was nothing to worry about, everything was under control, and they’d never tumble in a million years. We took the ropes and pillows and gauntlets off him, of course, and no marks were left. We raised the chair back to reading position, and dropped the joke book by his hand, and I put on his shoes and socks. The only thing was, after he’d been a dead a little while, his face started to relapse to that sour, scowly look he always had all his life, and that didn’t match the joke book. Well, Dan took care of that too. He waited until just before he was starting to stiffen, and then he arranged the lips and mouth with his hands so it looked like he’d been laughing his head off; and they hardened and stayed that way. Then he sent me out to fetch the doctor.” She hung her head. “It seemed so perfect. I don’t know how it is it fell through.”

“How did you catch on so quick, Al?” the sheriff asked Traynor, while they were waiting for a stenographer to come and take down her confession.

“First of all, the smile. You could see his features had been rearranged after death. Before rigor sets in, there’s a relaxation to the habitual expression. Secondly, the jokes were no good. Fears may have thought a sour puss wouldn’t match them, but it would have matched them lots better than the one they gave him. Thirdly, when I hitched up the cuffs of his trousers, I saw that his socks had been put on wrong, as if in a hurry by someone who wasn’t familiar with things like that — therefore presumably it was a woman. The garter clasps were fastened at the insides of the calves, but the original indentations still showed on the outsides. Fourthly, the bent chicken feathers. I still didn’t quite get it, though, until I learned this afternoon at the general store that he was supersensitive to tickling. That gave me the whole picture, intact. I’d already seen the clay on the trowel, and Fears did his level best to keep me away from the well, so it didn’t take much imagination to figure where the money was hidden. The marks of the ropes may not have shown on his hands, but the gauntlets were scarred by their friction, I could see that plainly even by the light of the torch when I went back to the toolshed tonight.