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

“Let it lie there,” Killare instructed. “Looks more natural.”

“Now what do you do with your shirt?” he prodded, like a headmaster in some boy’s prep school trying to teach personal neatness. Only in this case the penalty wasn’t a demerit; it was death.

“I put on a fresh one every morning, so I just throw the used one across a chair.”

“Just throw it across a chair, then. And your necktie?”

“I change according to the shirt. So I just spread it out on the dresser, until I’m ready to take out another.”

“Spread it out on the dresser, then. Now get into your pajamas.” Dade turned a little to one side, self-conscious about stripping in front of a stranger.

“Now go over to the desk there. Sit down and put on the desk light...

“Now take out a sheet of notepaper, an envelope, and a pen...

“What’s your wife’s first name?”

Dade shuddered uncontrollably; you could only see it from the back, the way he was sitting.

“Patricia,” he whispered, as though he were all out of breath.

“Turn around. I can’t hear you on account of the water.”

Dade turned and said it again. He looked as if the thought of her was making him feel ready to cry.

“What do you call her around the house?”

“Pat.”

“Then write this: ‘Dear Pat—’ ”

Dade wrote, Killare back of his shoulder reading as he wrote. “ ‘It’s no use, I can’t go on—’ How long you been married?”

“Fifteen years.” He said it with what sounded like a sob, but with the water pounding in the bathroom you couldn’t tell; it might have been a wet-hiccough sound.

“ ‘—after fifteen years. To have you tell me you’re in love with someone else and want to leave me is more than I can take.’ ”

Dade flashed him a white look over one shoulder, then turned back again, as the gun suggested with an almost imperceptible lift.

“ ‘I’m going to let you have your freedom, Pat, but not the way you think. This way.’ ”

Killare arched his back to scan what had been written.

“Make your handwriting shake a little more,” he criticized. “It looks too steady.”

“I don’t know how, on purpose,” Dade said with a haggard face.

“Try it. This ought to help you do it.” Killare twisted the bore of the gun, like an awl, flush against the nape of Dade’s cringing neck. The next specimen of handwriting came out spidery and agitated.

“ ‘I love you, Goodbye.’...

“Now sign your first name...

“Now fold it over and put it in the envelope...

“Now seal the flap...

“Now write on the outside: ‘Kindly deliver to my wife.’...

“What’s that on your finger, a wedding ring? Take it off and put it on the envelope.”

Dade had a hard time with it. “It hasn’t been off in fifteen years,” he said wistfully.

“Spit on it,” Killare ordered.

It came off with a jerk.

“Now have you got a snapshot of her in your wallet? Go over and get it.”

Dade tried to show it to him on the way back, as if hoping it would soften him. Killare didn’t look at it.

“Put that on top of the note too...

“All right, that’ll do it. Now come over here and sit down on the edge of the bed. No, don’t turn the covers down, you’re not going to get into it.”

Dade was unmanageably crying by now. His eyes were bright, and a shiny puddle had gathered in each comer without spilling over. The sight of the ring and the snapshot had probably hit him in his weakest spot.

“Die like a man,” Killare said scathingly. “Not like a sniffling schoolboy. It only takes a minute to die. What’s so big about it?

“Now swing your legs up onto the bed. That’s it. Take off the top one of those two pillows, and hand it over to me.”

Killare took it from him and shoved it under his own arm, temporarily.

“Now lie back on the other one. Put your head back on it and look straight up. No, don’t do that!” he warned suddenly.

Dade’s control began to shred. “I can’t take any more,” he moaned. “You do it too slow. Hurry, if you’re going to, only hurry. I can’t hold out any more.”

A scream of hysteria was trying to form and escape from him, far too late and far too useless. His mouth rounded into a noiseless O. He put one hand over it, fingers spread out like spokes. Then he put the other hand over that, fingers also spread. It looked as if he was kissing some kind of a squirming baby octopus. Or munching it.

“Look straight up,” was the next to last thing Killare said to him. “See that spot on the ceiling? That one there? Keep watching it.”

He let his whole body fall forward on top of him, using the pillow as a buffer between them, obliterating Dade’s face under it. Pressing it down hard at both sides. Then quickly releasing one side, but only to force the gun under the pillow, and fire into the middle of Dade’s face.

Dade’s legs quirked up, in motor-reflex response, fell back again, and that was all. He never made another move.

When Killare took the pillow off, which he did at once, he could tell Dade was dead. But so newly so, so just-now so, that the last breath was just coming out of his widened mouth, with no more behind to follow it. And his eyes were just dimming closed, to spring open again and stay that way forever.

The hole had gone right between the eyes. It was a beautiful shot, considering that it had been fired blind.

He pulled Dade’s head up a little, using the collar ends of his pajama jacket as a halter to raise it by, in order not to have to touch the head itself, which he was squeamish about doing, and inserted the second pillow underneath again.

He did things to the gun the importance of which he was personally contemptuous of and which he felt to be greatly overrated; but for the sake of prudence he decided he might just as well be doubly sure: namely, he cleaned off both sides by scouring the gun diligently up and down one trouser leg, then held it thereafter with a scrap of tinfoil extracted from a package of cigarettes.

He tried to hook Dade’s index finger around the trigger guard and let the gun hang that way. One of Dade’s arms was dangling loose over the side of the bed. But the finger was not yet rigid as in rigor mortis, yet not resilient as in life; it was simply inert, and the gun kept sliding off and falling down.

He finally lifted the whole arm up over the body, and attached the gun there, and the body itself held it in place.

There was very little else to be done. He noticed a slab-shaped pint bottle of whiskey, nearly full and probably left over from the night before; he poured a little into a tumbler and stood it beside the bed close to Dade’s head. Then he poured the rest up and down the bed and body, in flicking, criss-cross diagonals, giving Dade a last fling, so to speak. Or a requiem.

Then he let the bottle fall down empty, wherever it happened to fall — but not until he had made certain that none of his own fingerprints were on the glass or the bottle.

Then he went in and with a handkerchief wrapped round his hand, turned off the two apoplectic bath-taps. The stopper hadn’t been set, so there was no danger of an overflow, but the continuing uproar might have finally attracted attention outside in the hall and brought about an investigation.

Then he went out and closed the door firmly after him.

And it was all over, just as easy as that.

All done with.

Finished.

He drew a vast sigh of unutterable, boundless release. He’d never felt so good before, never in his whole life. They told you that people were frightened after doing a thing like this, scared sick, that they sweated, panicked, didn’t know which way to turn. Well, either they didn’t know what they were talking about, or these were a different kind of people — weak, unsure; or perhaps they hadn’t hated hard enough, as much as he had.