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

I finished a little before four in the afternoon. Finished on my side of the wall, anyway. I had the tiny hole bored all the way through, the wiring strung through and the soundbox screwed in behind a radiator where it wasn’t noticeable. I swept up all the little specks of plaster in my handkerchief and dropped them out the window. You couldn’t notice anything unless you looked very closely. But I had to get in on the other side, his side of the wall, and hook up the little disk, the “mike,” before it would work. Without that it was dead, no good at all.

The set-up, I had better explain, was not a dictaphone. It didn’t record anything, all it did was amplify the sounds it picked up in his room and bring them through into mine, the way a loudspeaker would. In other words, it was no good as evidence without a witness. But to hell with witnesses and all legal red tape! I was out to pay him back for Eddie and I figured he’d be too clever for me if it came to an open arraignment in a criminal court. I didn’t have anything on him that a smart enough lawyer couldn’t have blown away like a bunch of soap-bubbles, and yet I could have sworn on a stack of Bibles that he was the guy I was looking for.

The next step was to get in there. I examined the outside of my window, which faced the same way as his, but that was no good. Neither of them had a fire-escape or even a ledge to cross over by. It was also pretty late in the afternoon by now and he might be coming in any minute. Much as I hated to waste another night, I figured I would have to put it off until the morning. Of course, I was taking a chance on his noticing any small grains of mortar or plaster that might have fallen to the floor on his side. But that couldn’t be helped. It wasn’t very likely anyway, I consoled myself. It was one of those thousand-to-one shots that life is full of.

I didn’t undress at all that night or go to bed. I kept pacing back and forth on the carpet, stopping every few minutes to listen at the door and at the wall. There wasn’t a sound the whole night through. Nobody came and nobody went. 815 might have been vacant for all the signs of life it gave.

In the morning the same chambermaid as before came to make the room up. I mussed up the bed just before she came in so it looked as if it had been slept in. When she was through she went into 815 and left the door ajar after her. House-regulations, I suppose. It was a two-room suite, remember.

I gave her about five minutes to get through with one of the rooms — either one, it didn’t matter — and then I stole out of my room, closed the door after me, and edged up to the door of 815 until I could look in. If anyone coming along the corridor had seen me I was going to pretend she had forgotten to leave towels in my room and I was looking for her. She was in the living room. It was even easier than I had expected, because she was running a baby vacuum-cleaner across the floor and the buzz it made drowned out my footsteps.

I waited until she had her back to me and then I gave a quick jump in through the door and past her line of vision. The bed in the bedroom was made up, so I knew she was through in there and wouldn’t come back again. I ducked down behind a big stuffed chair and waited. I had the copper disk, the rubber mat it went on, and the tools I needed in the side pocket of my coat.

I began to get cramped squatting down on my heels, but after awhile she got through and went out. I waited another minute or two after that, and then I got up, slipped into the living room and got to work. One good thing, there wasn’t much noise to this part of the job, I had done all the drilling and pecking from my side. If he came in and caught me at it I was going to pretend I was the hotel electrician and had been ordered to put in a new outlet or something. The trouble was I wasn’t dressed for the part, and being a permanent in the hotel he might know the real electrician by sight. It occurred to me, now that it was too late, that I should have had the revolver with me instead of leaving it behind in my own room like a fool.

But I was through in no time at all. All I had to do was get hold of the ends of the wire, draw them the rest of the way through the hole, hook them onto the disk, and screw the disk onto the baseboard of the wall. It was no bigger than a coffee saucer, still it was coppery and bright. But I fixed that by shifting a chair over in front of it. In five minutes I was through. It was still dead, but all it needed now was to be grounded on one of the light fixtures in my own room. I let myself out, went back there, and did it. Now I was all set.

I went out and got some food, and then when I was through eating I did a funny thing. I went into a butcher shop to buy some more. But I knew what I was doing.

“I want a lamb’s tongue,” I told him. “Look in your icebox and bring me out the smallest one you’ve got.”

When he did it was still too big.

“Cut it down,” I said. “Just the tip and not much more.”

He looked at me as though I was crazy, but he went ahead and did it. Then he took a nice clean piece of waxpaper and started wrapping it up.

“No, not that,” I told him. “Find a piece with a lot of blood on it, all smeary, and wrap it in that. Then put a clean piece around the outside of it.”

I took it back with me in my pocket, and when I got up to my room I wrote “Dr. Avalon” in pencil on the outside of it. Then I put it down outside his door, as if a delivery boy had left it there, and went back into my room and waited.

Now I was going to know for sure. If he had nothing on his conscience and came home and found that there, he wouldn’t think anything of it — he’d think it was either a practical joke or that somebody else’s order had been left at his door by mistake. But if he had a guilty conscience this was going to catch him off his guard and make him give himself away; he wouldn’t be able to help it. It wouldn’t have been human not to — even if it was only for a minute or two. And if there was anyone else in on it with him — and I had a hunch there was — the first thing he’d think of would be to turn to them for help and advice in his panic and terror. So I waited, stretched out on my bed, with the revolver in my pocket and my head close to the wall apparatus.

He came in around six. I heard his door open and then close again, and I jumped off the bed and took a peek through my own door. The package was gone, he’d taken it in with him. I went back and listened in. I could hear the paper crackling while he unwrapped it as clearly as if it had been in my own room. Then there was a gasp — the sound a man suffering from asthma makes trying to get his breath back. Then, plop! He had dropped it in his fright. The wiring was working without a hitch; I wasn’t missing a thing.

After that I heard the clink of a glass. He was pouring himself a drink. It clinked again right after that, and then I heard him give sort of a moan. That was a dead giveaway; a man doesn’t take two drinks to keep his courage up just because the butcher has left the wrong order at his door. He’d done that to my brother all right, he and nobody else. More rage and hate went through me than I ever thought I had in me. I could feel my lower jaw quivering as if I was a big dog getting ready to take a bite out of somebody. I had to hang on to the sides of the bed to stay where I was a little longer.

Then I heard his voice for the first time. The wiring played it up louder than it really was, like a projection machine. It sounded all hollow and choked. He was asking for a number at the phone. Regency, four-two-eight-one. I whipped a pencil out and scrawled it on my wall.

“Hello,” he said huskily. “This is Avalon. Can you hear me? I don’t want to talk very loud.” His voice dropped to a mumble, but the wiring didn’t let me down, it came in at ordinary conversational pitch and I could still follow it. “Somebody’s on to us, and we better take a powder out while we still have the chance. I thought I’d let you know, that’s all.” Then he said, “No, no, no, not that at all. If that’s all it was I could get around that with one hand tied behind my back. It’s that other thing. You know, the night three of us went for an airing — and two of us came back. Don’t ask me how I know! I can’t tell you over this phone, there’s someone at the switchboard downstairs. You hang up,” he said, “and stand by. I’ll call you right back. I’ll use the direct wire from the cigar store downstairs, just to be on the safe side.”