Dan Marlowe - Doorway to Death

He picked up the glass from the card table, crossed the room to her side, and pressed it into her reluctant hand. She stared down at it fascinatedly, and Ronald Frederick-wiped impatiently with the back of his hand at the perspiration trickling from his brow. His voice was like a sword. “I will lock you in the other room, Frau Muller, and I will give you five minutes to make up your mind. When I open the door if you give me the capsule, I give you my word that you will never know the moment of departure. If I open the door and you still deny knowledge of its whereabouts, I will beat it out of you with the butt of this gun.”

He paused to examine her rigid features. “There is a third possibility, of course. You really might not know. I believe that you do know, but there is that possibility. I've given you the poisoned wine because no one should die without hope. If you honestly don't know, then drink the wine, because it will afford you a better exit than I will, for I cannot permit myself to believe that you do not know.” He motioned to the bathroom. “Inside please.”

She stumbled at her first step and then recovered herself. She turned at the threshold to look at Johnny, the wine glass in her hand; her voice was unsteady but clear. “Goodbye, my friend. I have a certain familiarity with losing causes.”

The door closed behind her, and Ronald Frederick removed the pass key from the pocket of his jacket and locked the door. The little man breathed as though he had just run a race, and his collar clung damply to his neck. His glasses had fogged, and he removed them and thrust them in his breast pocket. With his toe he edged a wing chair into position a little off center in the room and to the right of the body on the floor. “Sit there, Johnny.” He set up a straight-legged bedroom chair confronting the wing chair, but eight feet away and with its back to the room's entrance. He sat down and visibly tried to relax while still keeping a careful eye on Johnny as he sat down on the chair opposite.

Johnny tried not to sink too far into the wing chair's depths while at the same time endeavoring not to give the impression of maintaining his position on the front edge. A dozen times he measured with his eyes the distance between the two chairs before he spoke. “What was all that jazz, Freddie? You didn't poison that wine.”

“Of course I didn't. It's enough that she thinks that I did.” The voice was weary, the face drawn. “I couldn't use force on her, as you very well know. Time and noise alone would prevent. This way is easier. Before she spoke to you just now there were two possibilities, the reverse of what I outlined for her out here. If she doesn't know, the wine will remain untouched. The final thing to die in the human spirit is hope, and if she doesn't know she would endure anything I could do to her, hoping with her last breath to convince me. But if she does know, she knows also that she can't hold out indefinitely against the violence I promised her.” He smiled at Johnny. “If she tells me, she dies easily, something for which all of us might wish. If she doesn't tell me, she dies unpleasantly. With the wine in her hand, she will feel that she has only to drink it to escape the torture and have the last laugh on me.”

Ronald Frederick ran a hand tiredly over his features, groped for the glasses in his pocket, flipped them open, and slipped them on his nose. “As I said, those were the original possibilities before she spoke to you just now. By her farewell she has indicated her choice. She knows where the capsule is, and she will drink the wine to cheat me from finding it. It will take a tremendous effort of will for her to do this; she will postpone it until she hears my key in the lock again. And then when she discovers that it has all been for nothing, that she has escaped nothing, she will be like wet cardboard. There will be no strength, no will, no resistance. No violence will be needed; the truth will pour out of her.”

Johnny spoke after a thoughtful moment. “Freddie, you're really a first class bastard. You make it a pleasure for me to figure what I'll do to you when I take you.”

The no longer dapper little man smiled, and looked musingly at the other chair. “As a matter of fact, Johnny-”

“As a matter of fact, Freddie, you figure I've just about served my time on this trip?”

“Exactly. When I open that door you will be a dangerous unnecessary hazard to the expedition. I think that now is the time.”

The revolver in his lap began a slow, steady ascent, and Johnny tensed in his chair. “You forgot this thing over here, Freddie-” He gestured widely with his left arm, and in the same instant launched himself forward with every ounce of spring in his body in a long, rolling block. The revolver, which had veered fractionally along with the little man's glance at the outflung left arm, snapped back and popped viciously, and Johnny felt a tearing hot wind in his left shoulder as the weight of his hips and shoulders caught the legs of Ronald Frederick's chair and flung it back against the door. Wood splintered noisily, and Johnny heard the manager's choked scream as he went flying. “Damn you-!”

Johnny was still scrambling to get his knees under him on the floor when he saw the little man roll over and come up with the gun still miraculously in his hand, two buttons gone and a shoulder torn out of the immaculate jacket, a bruise or smudge of carpet dust high on one temple, and a muscle twitching uncontrollably in a cheek.

“Now-!” The voice was a triumphant croak, and the eyes were wild as the gun swung over to again pick up the target, and Johnny wrenched a chair leg loose from the debris with which he had become entangled and drew back his arm to throw it.

A knock at the door paralyzed all movement in the room. Johnny stared at the insane face opposite, eighteen inches from the floor as the knock came again, louder. “Open up in there.”

“Who is it?” Ronald Frederick called.

“Dameron. You going to open the door, or do I have to blow the lock?” Lieutenant Dameron's bull voice resounded through the wooden panels, and Ronald Frederick rose slowly to his feet with Johnny matching every move and inched around to the side of the door that would afford him concealment when it opened inward. He gestured to Johnny with the revolver.

“Open the door for the fool.”

Johnny had to step over the body on the floor to reach the door, and the doorknob was still turning in his hand after he unlocked it, when Lieutenant Dameron's impatient rush knocked the door away from him and brushed Johnny off balance against the wall as the lieutenant charged into the room. Behind him the slender figure of Detective Rogers stood poised on the threshold, alert and watchful, and then his eyes dropped to the body of the blond man on the floor just inside the door, and he froze.

Ronald Frederick caught the freeswinging door in his left hand before it hit the wall, and his revolver was dead center on the detective. “You. What's-you-name.” The voice was high and cracked. “Inside. Quick.”

Lieutenant Dameron turned in surprise, the beet-red features tightening as Detective Rogers reluctantly complied, and the manager reversed the flight of the door, which banged shut.

“Frederick?” Lieutenant Dameron asked doubtfully, and then stood very still as the revolver swung around and lined up on his belt buckle. “By God, I didn't recognize you. Put up that gun now-”

“Shut up!” Shrill overtones crackled in the already high-pitched voice, and the lieutenant shrugged and glanced at Johnny.

“I thought we'd find you here. What's the matter with your arm?”

Johnny glanced down at the blood-soaked left sleeve of his uniform and the red tricklings that ran down his wrist into his palm. “Pigeon kicked it.”