Ira Levin: A Kiss Before Dying

"Of course," he continued after a moment, "I would rather not do it. I would rather hand you over to the police." He looked at his watch. "So I'll give you three minutes. From now. I want something that will convince a jury, a jury that won't be able to take you by surprise and see the guilt written all over you."

"Tell us where the gun is," Gant said; The two of them stood side by side; Leo with his left wrist lifted and his right hand holding back the cuff to expose his watch; Gant with his hands at his sides.

"How did you get Dorothy to write the note?" Gant asked; His own hands were so tight against the partition and the stanchion that they throbbed with a leaden numbness. "You're bluffing," he said. They leaned forward to hear him. "You're trying to scare me into admitting-to something I never did."

Leo shook his head slowly. He looked at the watch. A moment passed. 'Two minutes and thirty seconds," he said.

Bud whirled to the right, catching the stanchion with his left hand and shouting to the men over at the converters. "Help!" he cried, "Help! Help!"- bellowing as loud as he could, waving his right arm furiously, clutching the stanchion. "Help!"

The men far off and below might as well have been painted figures; their attention was centered on a converter pouring copper.

He turned back to Leo and Gant

"You see?" Leo said.

"You'll be killing an innocent man, that's what you'll be doing!"

"Where's the gun?" Gant asked. "There is no gun! I never had a gun!" Leo said, "Two minutes."

They were bluffing! They must be! He looked around desperately; the main shaft of the catwalk, the roof, the crane tracks, the few windows, the... The crane tracks!

Slowly, trying not to make it too obvious, he glanced to the right again. The converter had rolled back. The vat before it was full and smoking, cables trailing slackly up to the cab above. The vat would be lifted; the cab, now over two hundred feet away, would bear the vat forward, approaching along the track that passed behind and above him; and the man in the cab-a dozen feet up? four feet out?-would be able to hear! To see!

If only they could be stalled! If only they could be stalled until the cab was near enough! The vat lifted...

"One minute, thirty seconds," Leo said. Bud's eyes flicked back to the two men. He met their stares for a few seconds, and then risked another glance to the right, cautiously, so that they should not guess his plan. (Yes, a plan! Even now, at this moment, a plan!) The distant vat hung between floor and catwalk, its skein of cables seeming to shudder in the heat-vibrant air. The boxlike cab was motionless under the track-and then it began to come forward, bearing the vat, growing imperceptibly larger. So slowly! Oh God, make it come faster! He turned back to them.

"We aren't bluffing, Bud," Leo said. And after a moment: "One minute."

He looked again; the cab was nearer-a hundred and fifty feet? One thirty? He could distinguish a pale shape behind the black square of its window.

"Thirty seconds."

How could time race by so fast? "Listen," he said frantically, "listen. I want to tell you something-something about Dorrie. She..." He groped for something to say-and then stopped wide-eyed; there had been a flicker of movement in the dimness at the far end of the catwalk. Someone else was up here! Salvation!

"Help!" he cried, his arm semaphoring. "You! Come here! Help}"

The flicker of movement became a figure hurrying along the catwalk, speeding towards them.

Leo and Gant looked over their shoulders in confusion.

Oh dear God, thank you!

Then he saw that it was a woman.

Marion.

Leo cried out, "What are you- Get out of here! For God's sake, Marion, go back down!"

She seemed not to hear him. She came up behind them, her face flushed and large-eyed above their compacted shoulders.

Bud felt her gaze rake his face and then descend to his legs. Legs that were trembling again... If he only had a gun... "Marion," he pleaded, "stop them! They're crazy! They're trying to kill me! Stop them! They'll listen to you! I can explain about that list, I can explain everything! I swear I wasn't lying-"

She kept looking at him. Finally she said, "The way you explained why you didn't tell me about Stoddard?"

"I love you! I swear to God I do! I started out thinking about the money, I admit that, but I love you! You know I wasn't lying about that!"

"How do I know?" she asked.

"I swear it!"

"You swore so many things..." Her fingers appeared curving over the men's shoulders; long, white, pink-nailed fingers; they seemed to be pushing.

"Marion! You wouldn't! Not when we... after we..."

Her fingers pressed forward into the cloth of the shoulders, pushing...

"Marion," he begged futilely.

Suddenly he became aware of a swelling in the smelter's thunder, an added rumble. A wave of heat was spreading up his right side. The cab! He wheeled, catching the stanchion with both hands. There it was!-not twenty feet away, grinding closer on the overhead track with the cables shooting down from its belly. Through the opening in its front end he could see a bent head in a visored gray cap. "You!" he bellowed, his jaw muscles cording. "You in the cab! Help! You!" Heat from the oncoming vat pressed heavily against his chest. "Help! You! In the cab!" The gray cab, coming closer, never lifted. Deaf? Was the stupid bastard deaf? Help!" he roared chokingly again and again, but it was no use.

He turned from the swelling heat, wanting to cry in despair.

Leo said, "The noisiest place in the smelter, up there in those cabs." As he said it, he took a step forward. Gant moved up beside him. Marion followed behind.

"Look," Bud said placatingly, clutching the partition in his left hand again. "Please..." He stared at their faces, masklike except for burning eyes.

They came another step closer.

The catwalk dipped and bucked like a shaken blanket. The baking heat on his right began extending itself across his back. They meant it! They weren't bluffing! They were going to kill him! Moisture trickled all over him.

"All right!" he cried. "All right! She thought she was doing a Spanish translation! I wrote out the note in Spanish! I asked her to translate-" His voice faded and stopped.

What was the matter with them? Their faces... the masklike blankness was gone, warped into-into embarrassment and sick contempt, and they were looking down at...

He looked down. The front of his pants was dark with a spreading stain that ran in a series of island blotches down his right trouser leg. Oh God! The Jap... the Jap he had killed-that wretched, trembling, chattering, pants-wetting caricature of a man-was that him? Was that himself? The answer was in their faces. "No!" he cried. He clapped his hands over his eyes, but their faces were still there. "No! I'm not like him!" he wheeled away from them. His foot slipped on wetness and kicked out from under him. His hands flew from his face and flailed the air. Heat blasted up at him. Faffing, he saw a giant disc of glistening green sliding into space below; gaseous, restless, shimmering- Hardness in his hands! The cables! The weight of his body swung down and around, pulling at his armpits and tearing his hands on protuding steel threads. He hung with his legs swinging against the taut cables and his eyes staring at one of them, seeing the frayed fibers that were stabbing like needles into his hands above. A chaos of sound; a whistle shrieking, a woman screaming, voices above, voices below... He squinted up at his hands-blood was starting to trickle down the inside of his wrists-the ovenlike heat was smothering, dizzying, engulfing him with the noxious stench of copper-voices shouted to him-he saw his hands starting to open-he was letting go because he wanted to, it wasn't the burning suffocation or the needles in his hands, he was letting go because he wanted to, just as he had jumped from the catwalk but instinct had made him grab the cables and now he was overcoming instinct-his left hand opened and fell-he hung by his right, turning slightly in the furnace heat-there was oil on the back of his hand from the stanchion or the chain or something-and they wouldn't have pushed him either-you think anyone can kill?-he had jumped and now he was letting go because he wanted to, that's all, and everything was all right and his knees weren't shaking any more, not that they had been shaking so much anyway, hs knees weren't shaking any more because he was in command again-he hadn't noticed his right hand open but it must have opened because he was dropping into the heat, cables were shooting up, someone was screaming like Dorrie going into the shaft and Ellen when the first bullet wasn't enough-this person was screaming this godawful scream and suddenly it was himself and he couldn't stop! Why was he screaming? Why? Why on earth should he be-• The scream, which had knifed through the sudden stillness of the smelter, ended in a viscous splash. From the other side of the vat a sheet of green leaped up. Arcing, it sheared down to the floor where it splattered upon a million pools and droplets. They hissed softly on the cement and slowly dawned from green to copper.