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

Pasternack evidently believed in the old adage, “He who fights and runs away lives to fight, etc.” The game, he seemed to think, was no longer worth the candle. He unlatched the briefcase he had been guarding under his arm, walked back to the desk with it, and prepared to ease his conscience. “Well, folks,” he remarked genially, “on the advice of this gentleman here” (big pally smile for Smitty) “my partner and I are calling off the contest. While we are under no legal obligation to any of you” (business of clearing his throat and hitching up his necktie) “we have decided to do the square thing, just so there won’t be any trouble, and split the prize money among all the remaining entries. Deducting the rental for the armory, the light bill, and the cost of printing tickets and handbills, that would leave—”

“No, you don’t!” said Smitty. “That comes out of your first nine days profits. What’s on hand now gets divvied without any deductions. Do it your way and they’d all be owing you money!” He turned to the doorman. “You been paid, sunburnt?”

“Nossuh! I’se got five dolluhs a night coming at me—”

“Forty-five for you,” said Smitty.

Pasternack suddenly blew up and advanced menacingly upon his partner. “That’s what I get for listening to you, know-it-all! So New York was a sucker town, was it? So there was easy pickings here, was there? Yah!”

“Boys, boys,” remonstrated Smitty, elbowing them apart.

“Throw them a piece of cheese, the rats,” remarked the girl in shorts. There was a scuffling sound in the doorway and Smitty turned in time to see the lamed girl and the washroom matron each trying to get in ahead of the other.

“You don’t leave me in there!”

“Well, I’m not staying in there alone with her. It ain’t my job! I resign!”

The one with the limp got to him first. “Listen, mister, you better go in there yourself,” she panted. “We can’t do anything with her. I think she’s dead.”

“She’s cold as ice and all stiff-like,” corroborated the old woman.

“Oh my God, I’ve killed her!” someone groaned. Number 14 sagged to his knees and went out like a light. Those on either side of him eased him down to the floor by his arms, too weak themselves to support him.

“Hold everything!” barked Smitty. He gripped the pop-eyed doorman by the shoulder. “Scram out front and get a cop. Tell him to put in a call for an ambulance, and then have him report in here to me. And if you try lighting out, you lose your forty-five bucks and get the electric chair.”

“I’se pracktilly back inside again,” sobbed the terrified darky as he fled.

“The rest of you stay right where you are. I’ll hold you responsible, Pasternack, if anybody ducks.”

“As though we could move an inch on these howling dogs,” muttered the girl in shorts.

Smitty pushed the girl with one shoe ahead of him. “You come and show me,” he grunted. He was what might be termed a moral coward at the moment; he was going where he’d never gone before.

“Straight ahead of you,” she scowled, halting outside the door. “Do you need a road-map?”

“C’mon, I’m not going in there alone,” he said, and gave her a shove through the forbidden portal.

She was stretched out on the floor where they’d left her, a bottle of rubbing alcohol that hadn’t worked uncorked beside her. His face was flaming as he squatted down and examined her. She was gone all right. She was as cold as they’d said and getting more rigid by the minute. “Overtaxed her heart most likely,” he growled. “That guy Pasternack ought to be hauled up for this. He’s morally responsible.” The cop, less well-brought-up than Smitty, stuck his head in the door without compunction.

“Stay by the entrance,” Smitty instructed him. “Nobody leaves.” Then, “This was the McGuire kid, wasn’t it?” he asked his feminine companion.

“Can’t prove it by me,” she said sulkily. “Pasternack kept calling her Rose Lamont all through the contest. Why don’tcha ask the guy that was dancing with her? Maybe they got around to swapping names after nine days. Personally,” she said as she moved toward the door, “I don’t know who she was and I don’t give a damn!”

“You’ll make a swell mother for some guy’s children,” commented Smitty following her out. “In there,” he said to the ambulance doctor who had just arrived, “but it’s the morgue now, and not first-aid. Take a look.”

Number 14, when he got back to where they all were, was taking it hard and self-accusing. “I didn’t mean to do it, I didn’t mean to!” he kept moaning.

“Shut up, you sap, you’re making it tough for yourself,” someone hissed.

“Lemme see a list of your entries,” Smitty told Pasternack.

The impresario fished a ledger out of the desk drawer and held it out to him. “All I got out of this enterprise was kicks in the pants! Why didn’t I stick to the sticks where they don’t drop dead from a little dancing? Ask me, why didn’t I?”

“Fourteen,” read Smitty. “Rose Lamont and Gene Monahan. That your real name, guy? Back it up.” 14 jerked off the coat that someone had slipped around his shoulders and turned the inner pocket inside out. The name was inked onto the label. The address checked too. “What about her, was that her real tag?”

“McGuire was her real name,” admitted Monahan, “Toodles

McGuire. She was going to change it anyway, pretty soon, if we’dda won that thousand” — he hung his head — “so it didn’t matter.”

“Why’d you say you did it? Why do you keep saying you didn’t mean to?”

“Because I could feel there was something the matter with her in my arms. I knew she oughtta quit, and I wouldn’t let her. I kept begging her to stick it out a little longer, even when she didn’t answer me. I went crazy, I guess, thinking of that thousand dollars. We needed it to get married on. I kept expecting the others to drop out any minute, there were only two other couples left, and no one was watching us any more. When the rest-periods came, I carried her in my arms to the washroom door, so no one would notice she couldn’t make it herself, and turned her over to the old lady in there. She couldn’t do anything with her either, but I begged her not to let on, and each time the whistle blew I picked her up and started out from there with her—”

“Well, you’ve danced her into her grave,” said Smitty bitterly. “If I was you I’d go out and stick both my feet under the first trolley-car that came along and hold them there until it went by. It might make a man of you!”

He went out and found the ambulance doctor in the act of leaving. “What was it, her heart?”

The A.D. favored him with a peculiar look, starting at the floor and ending at the top of his head. “Why wouldn’t it be? Nobody’s heart keeps going with a seven- or eight-inch metal pencil jammed into it.” He unfolded a handkerchief to reveal a slim coppery cylinder, tapering to needle-like sharpness at the writing end, where the case was pointed over the lead to protect it. It was aluminum — encrusted blood was what gave it its copper sheen. Smitty nearly dropped it in consternation — not because of what it had done but because he had missed seeing it.

“And another thing,” went on the A.D. “You’re new to this sort of thing, aren’t you? Well, just a friendly tip. No offense, but you don’t call an ambulance that long after they’ve gone, our time is too val—”

“I don’t getcha,” said Smitty impatiently. “She needed help; who am I supposed to ring in, potter’s field, and have her buried before she’s quit breathing?”

This time the look he got was withering. “She was past help hours ago.” The doctor scanned his wrist. “It’s five now. She’s been dead since three, easily. I can’t tell you when exactly, but your friend the medical examiner’ll tell you whether I’m right or not. I’ve seen too many of ’em in my time. She’s been gone two hours anyhow.”