Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

I left the railroad right-of-way at the next intersection, still without seeing anybody, and struck out for downtown. I was free as air, didn’t owe anybody a cent — and in a couple weeks from now there’d be ten grand in the family. I was going back to her, of course. I wasn’t going to stay away for good. But I’d lie low first, wait till she’d collected the insurance money, then we’d powder out of town together, start over again some place else with a ten grand nest-egg.

It was a cruel stunt to try on her, but she’d live through it. A couple weeks grief was better than being broke for the rest of our lives. And if I’d let her in on it ahead of time, she wouldn’t have gone through with it. She was that kind.

I picked a one-arm restaurant and went in there. I took my meal check with me to the back and shut myself up in the washroom. I was about to have an experience that very few men outside of amnesia victims have ever had. I was about to find out who I was and where I hung out.

First I ripped the identification tag out of my own suit and sent it down the drain along with the guy’s stained necktie. Then I started unloading, and sorting out. Item one was a cheap, mangy-looking billfold. Cheap on the outside, not the inside. I counted them. Two grand in twenties, brand new ones, not a wrinkle on them. There was a rubber band around them. Well, I was going to be well-heeled while I lay low, anyway.

Item two was a key with a six-pointed brass star dangling from it. On the star was stamped “Hotel Columbia, 601.” Item three was a bill from the same hotel, made out to George Kelly, paid up a week in advance. Items four and five were a smaller key to a valise or bag, and two train tickets. One was punched and one hadn’t been used yet. One was a week old and the other had been bought that very night. He must have been on his way back with it when he was knocked down crossing the tracks. The used ticket was from Chicago here, and the one intended to be used was from here on to New York.

But “here” happened not to be in a straight line between the two, in fact it was one hell of a detour to take. All that interested me was that he’d only come to town a week ago, and had been about to haul his freight out again tomorrow or the next day. Which meant it wasn’t likely he knew anyone in town very well, so if his face had changed remarkably overnight who would be the wiser — outside of the clerk at his hotel? And a low-tipped hat-brim would take care of that.

The bill was paid up in advance, the room-key was in my pocket and I didn’t have to go near the desk on my way in. I wanted to go over there and take a look around Room 601 with the help of that other little key. Who could tell, there might be some more of those nice crisp twenties stowed away there? As long as the guy was dead anyway, I told myself, this wasn’t robbery. It was just making the most of a good thing.

I put everything back in my pockets and went outside and ordered a cup of coffee at the counter. I needed change for the phone call I was going to make before I went over there. Kelly, strangely enough, hadn’t had any small change on him; only those twenties.

I stripped one off and shoved it at the counterman. I got a dirty look. “That the smallest you got?” he growled. “Hell, you clean the till out all for a fi’ cent cup of coffee!”

“If it’s asking too much of you,” I snarled, “I can drink my coffee any other place.”

But it already had milk in it and couldn’t be put back in the boiler. He almost wore the twenty out testing it for counterfeitness, stretched it to the tearing point, held it up to the light, peered at it. Finally, unable to find anything against it, he jotted down the serial number on a piece of paper and grudgingly handed me nineteen-ninety-five out of the cash register.

I left the coffee standing there and went over to call up the Columbia Hotel from the open pay telephone on the wall. 601, of course, didn’t answer. Still he might be sharing it with someone, a woman for instance, even though the bill had been made out to him alone. I got the clerk on the wire.

“Well, is he alone there? Isn’t there anybody rooming with him I can talk to?” There wasn’t. “Has he had any callers since he’s been staying there?”

“Not that I know of,” said the clerk. “We’ve seen very little of him.” A lone wolf, eh? Perfect, as far as I was concerned.

By the time I got to the Columbia I had a hat, the brim rakishly shading the bridge of my nose. I needn’t have bothered. The clerk was all wrapped up in some girl dangling across his desk and didn’t even look up. The aged colored man who ran the creaking elevator was half blind. It was an eerie, moth-eaten sort of place, but perfect to hole up in for a week or two.

When I got out of the cage I started off in the wrong direction down the hall. “You is this heah way, boss, not that way,” the old darky reminded me.

I snapped my fingers and switched around. “Need a road map in this dump,” I scowled to cover up my mistake. He peered nearsightedly at me, closed the door, and went down. 601 was around a bend of the hall, down at the very end. I knocked first, just to be on the safe side, then let myself in. I locked the door again on the inside and wedged a chair up against the knob. This was my room now; just let anyone try to get in!

He’d traveled light, the late Kelly. Nothing there but some dirty shirts over in the corner and some clean ones in the bureau drawer. Bought right here in town too, the cellophane was still on some and the sales slip lying with them. He must have arrived without a shirt to his back.

But that small key I had belonged to something, and when I went hunting it up I found the closet door locked and the key to it missing. For a minute I thought I’d overlooked it when I was frisking him down by the tracks, but I was sure I hadn’t. The small key was definitely not the one to the closet door. It nearly fell through to the other side when I tried it. I could have called down for a passkey, but I didn’t want anyone up here. Since the key hadn’t been on him, and wasn’t in the door, he must have hidden it somewhere around the room. Meaning he thought a lot of whatever was behind that door and wasn’t taking any chances with it. I started to hunt for the key high and low.

It turned up in about an hour’s time, after I had the big rug rolled up against the wall and the bed stripped down and the mattress gashed all over with a razor blade and the whole place looking like a tornado had hit it. The funny little blur at the bottom of the inverted light-bowl overhead gave it away when I happened to look up. He’d tossed it up there before he went out.

I nearly broke my neck getting it out of the thing, had to balance on the back of a chair and tilt the bowl with my fingertips while it swayed back and forth and specks of plaster fell on my head. It occurred to me, although it was only a guess, that the way he’d intended to go about it was smash the bowl and let it drop out just before he checked out of the hotel. I fitted the key into the closet door and took a gander.

There was only a small Gladstone bag over in the corner with a hotel towel over it. Not another thing, not even a hat or a spare collar. I hauled the bag out into the room and got busy on it with the small key I’d taken from his pocket. A gun winked up at me first of all, when I got it open. Not a crummy relic like the one I’d bought that afternoon, but a brand new, efficient-looking affair, bright as a dollar. When I saw what it was lying on I tossed it aside and dumped the bag upside down on the floor, sat down next to it with a thump.

I only had to break open and count the first neat little green brick of bills, after that I just multiplied it by the rest. Twenty-one times two, very simple. Forty-two thousand dollars, in twenties; unsoiled, crisp as autumn leaves. Counting the two thousand the peculiar Mr. Kelly had been carrying around with him for pin-money, and a few loose ones papering the bottom of the bag — he’d evidently broken open one pack himself — the sum total wasn’t far from forty-five. I’d been painlessly run over and killed by a train to the tune of forty-five thousand dollars!