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

“That I don’t admit.”

“You deny you repainted that room? Why, it’s the identical shade and grade of paint you bought from this paint store!”

“I didn’t say I denied it. What I said was, I don’t admit it.” “What does that mean?”

“Prove I painted there. Prove I didn’t paint somewhere else.”

They knew they couldn’t. So did he.

“Show us where you painted somewhere else, then.”

“No, sir. No, sir. That’s up to you, not up to me. I didn’t say I painted somewhere else. I didn’t say I didn’t pour it down a sewer. I didn’t say I didn’t give it away as a present to a friend of mine. I didn’t say I didn’t leave it standing around some place for a minute and someone stole it from me.”

The two detectives turned their backs on him for a minute. One smote himself on the top of the head and murmured to his companion, “Oh, this man! He’s got a pretzel for a tongue.”

The plastic garment bags and their hideous contents were finally located. Perhaps all the way across the country in some siding or railroad yard in Duluth or Kansas City or Abilene. They didn’t tell him that outright, in so many words, or exactly where, but he could sense it by the subtle turn their questioning took.

They had their corpus delicti now, but they still couldn’t pin it on him. What was holding them up, what was blocking

them, he realized with grim satisfaction, was that they couldn’t unearth a single witness who could place him at or near the freight yard he’d driven to that night — or at any other freight yard anywhere else on any other night. The car itself, after exhaustive tests and examinations, must have turned out pasteurizedly pure, antibiotically bloodless. He’d seen to that. And the garment bags had been her own to begin with.

There was nothing to trace him by.

Even the Samurai sword — which he had had the audacity to send right along with her, encased in a pair of her nylon stockings-was worthless to them. It had belonged to her, and even if it hadn’t, there was no way of checking on such a thing — as there would have been in the case of a firearm. Being a war souvenir, it was nonregisterable.

Finally, there was the total lack of an alibi. Instead of counting against him it seemed to have intensified the deadlock. From the very beginning he had offered none, laid claim to none, therefore gave them none to break down. He’d simply said he’d gone home and stayed there, and admitted from the start he couldn’t prove it. But then they couldn’t prove he’d been out to the bungalow either. Result: each canceled the other out. Stand-off. Stalemate.

As if to show that they had reached a point of desperation they finally had recourse, during several of the periods of interrogation, to stronger measures. Not violence: no blows were struck, nothing was done that might leave a mark on him afterward. Nor were any threats or promises made. It was a sort of tacit coercion, one might say. He understood it, they understood it, he understood they did, and they understood he did.

Unsuspectingly he accepted some punishingly salty food they sent out for and gave to him. Pickled or smoked herring. But not water.

A fire was made in the boiler room and the radiator in one of the basement detention rooms was turned on full blast, even though it was an oppressively hot tum-of-spring-into-summer day. Still no water.

As though this weren’t enough, an electric heater was plugged into an outlet and aimed at his straight-backed chair. He was seated in it and compelled to keep two or three heavy blankets bundled around him. In no time the floor around his feet had darkened with the slow seep of his perspiration. But still no water.

Then a tantalizingly frosted glass pitcher, brimming with crystal-clear water and studded with alluring ice cubes, was brought in and set down on a table just within arm’s reach.

But each time he reached for it he was asked a question. And while waiting for the answer, the nearest detective would, absently, draw the pitcher away — just beyond his reach — as if not being aware of what he was doing, the way a man doodles with a pencil or fiddles with a paperweight while talking to someone. When he asked openly for a drink he was told (for the record): “Help yourself. It’s right there in front of you. That’s what it’s here for.” They were very meticulous about it. Nothing could be proved afterward.

He didn’t get a drink of water. But they didn’t get the answers they wanted either. Another stalemate.

They rang in a couple of ingenious variations after that, once with cigarettes, another time by a refusal of the comfort facilities of the building. With even less result, since neither impulse was as strong as thirst.

“All we need is one drop of blood,” the detective kept warning him. “One drop of blood.”

“You won’t get it out of me.”

“We have identified the remains, to show there was a crime — somewhere. We’ve found traces of blood on articles handled by you — like the dollar bill you gave the storekeeper — to show, presumably, that you were involved in some crime — somewhere. We’ve placed you in the vicinity of the bungalow: metal bits from the overalls and remains of the paint cans and brush handles in the ashes of the fire. Now all we’ve got to do is place the crime itself there. And that will close the circuit.

“One drop of blood will do it. One single drop of blood.”

“It seems a shame that such a modest requirement can’t be met,” was his ironic comment.

And then suddenly, when least expected, he was released.

Whether there was some legal technicality involved and they were afraid of losing him altogether in the long run if they charged him too quickly; whether it was just a temporary expedient so that they could watch him all the closer — anyway, release.

One of the detectives came in, stood looking at him.

“Good morning,” he said finally to the detective, sardonically, to break the optical deadlock.

“I suppose you’d like to get out of here.”

“There are places I’ve liked better.”

The detective jerked his head. “You can go. That’s all for now. Sign a receipt and the property clerk will return your valuables.”

He didn’t stir. “Not if there are any strings attached to it.”

“What do you want, an apology or something?”

“No, I just want to know where I stand. Am I in or am I out — or what.”

“You were never actually under arrest, so what’re you beefing about?”

“Well, if I wasn’t, there sure has been something hampering my freedom. Maybe my shoelaces were tied together.”

“Just hold yourself available in case you’re needed. Don’t leave town.”

He finally walked out behind the detective, throwing an empty cigarette pack on the floor. “Was any of this in the newspapers?”

“I don’t keep a scrapbook. I wouldn’t know,” said the detective.

He picked one up, and it was, had been, and was going to be.

The first thing he did was to phone Allie. She wouldn’t come to the phone — or they wouldn’t let her. She was ill in bed, they said. That much he didn’t disbelieve, or wonder at. There was also a coldness, an iciness: he’d hurt these people badly.

He hung up. He tried again later. And then again. And still again. He wouldn’t give up. His whole happiness was at stake now.

Finally he went back to his own apartment. There was nothing left for him to do. It was already well after midnight by this time. The phone was ringing as he keyed the door open. It sounded as if it had been ringing for some time and was about to die out. He grabbed at it.

“Darling,” Allie said in a pathetically weak voice, “I’m calling you from the phone next to my bed. They don’t know I’m doing it, or they—”