Francis Nevins - Night and Fear

Tommy the Twitch came to the door with an orange dressing gown on his quaking form and an ugly look on his face.

“So ya got here at last, did ya?” he growled through the cigarette that vibrated with his breath. “It’s about time, ya mangy squirt!” He ushered the ashen-faced Eddie in by jerking his head backwards. He closed the door, swung venomously at Eddie with one fist, and then went on toward the door that led to the Boss’ sleeping quarters.

Eddie dodged the blow by rearing back, then stood there palpitating, his face white with fear.

“Ya... ya haven’t told him yet, have ya, Tommy?” he quavered. “Ya said ya wouldn’t — honest, I couldn’t help it. I didn’t mean to muff it like that!”

Tommy put a palsied hand to the Boss’ doorknob. “Have you got it?” he said.

Eddie nodded, incoherent with fright, raised his own hand to his inner pocket.

“Just wait’ll you hear what he says when I tell him,” promised Tommy balefully. “I wouldn’t give two cents for your life! Just wait’ll you hear—” The tortures of anticipation he was purposely inflicting on the cringing figure standing there behind him seemed to add to his enjoyment.

“Wait, Tommy, don’t! Gimme a break!” Eddie gasped in a strangled voice. All his original terror of the Boss and what the Boss could do to him had come back in full force long before he had even entered the place. He was nearly insane with fright.

Tommy turned the knob, pushed the door open, and stepped into the dark room. He reached out to one side, snapped on the light, and then partly closed the door after him. A moment later the Boss’ voice boomed out angrily:

“What the hell is this? What’s the idea!” Then Tommy, saying something in an undertone, telling him about it. Then the Boss again, “Well where is he? Did he come back with it? Wait a minute—” and the sound of bed-springs creaking.

With that the tension that had gripped Eddie suddenly snapped. His terror became fluid instead of static, released him from the spot he was standing on. He whipped the carefully guarded cigarette out of his pocket, flung it wildly out before him, turned and fled as if pursued by devils, nearly stumbling all over himself in his hurry to get out of the place. The cigarette described an arc, fell athwart the handful left in the tin box that Tommy had been smoking all night long. When Tommy came back, followed by the Boss, the room was empty.

The Boss slammed the door angrily.

“Lammed, did he?” Tommy said. “I mighta figured he’d do that, the minute I turned my back. Probably didn’t even have it with him! If I had my pants on I’d go out after him—!” He pounded on the butt he was smoking, took a fresh one from the box, lit it.

The Boss was pacing angrily back and forth; he appeared less put out about The Errand Boy’s disappearance than about the miscarriage of his plans.

“A great night’s work!” he seethed. He turned, went back into the bedroom, came out again. “Haven’t even got a corona left in the house, I was in such a hurry to pass ’em all out at the club and set myself an alibi!” He reached down to the tin and took one of the cigarettes, lit it with a fuming swoop of the arm.

“Yeah,” agreed Tommy, puffing away morbidly. “Tonight was all alibi and no job!”

“I’ll get him yet,” swore the Boss. “I’ll think up another way, but I’ll get him. And this time I’ll get The Errand Boy too — he knows too much now!”

“Aw, these fancy ways are none of ’em ever any good,” scowled Tommy the Twitch. “Why don’cha just send a bullet troo—” He stopped speaking abruptly.

An instant before the Boss had been sitting there on a level with his eyes, now he lay face down on the floor. The thing had happened as swiftly, as silently, as a “break” in a jerky motion picture film. An inch or two away the cigarette the Boss had been puffing on just now was still lazily sending up smoke at one end; at the other, a grain or two of whitish substance had spilled from it in falling, showed up against the carpet.

“Cigarette” ( Detective Fiction Weekly, January 11, 1936) is one of the earliest crime stories Woolrich wrote after the first thirteen collected in Darkness at Dawn and one of my favorites among those that have never been collected before now. With its bizarre murder method, its race against time and death as Eddie pounds headlong through the night trying to find and stop Adams before he lights up, its tension stretched drum-tight as the frantic protagonist chases the poisoned cigarette from one tobacco addict to another, this is one of those gems that only Woolrich (who was a compulsive smoker all his life) could have written.

Merrill stirred uncomfortably at the prolonged osculation taking place on the screen. “Break!” he muttered unromantically. “Come up for air!” He fanned himself mockingly with his hat. He took out his watch. “Two solid minutes they been at it,” he remarked.

“Sh, Bill!” His fair companion favored him also with a stab of the eyes and a sharp dig of the elbow. “Let somebody else enjoy it, even if you can’t! You don’t have to look at it if it hurts that bad. Close your eyes till it’s over.”

He promptly carried out the suggestion, effacing the two gigantic heads still pressed tightly together on the silver screen. “I don’t hafta come here to sleep. I can sleep at home, free of charge,” he mumbled rebelliously.

“It’s a double feature,” she reminded him tartly. “Maybe the second one’ll be better.”

He sighed sightlessly. “It couldn’t be worse.” He gave a cavernous yawn, genuine this time and not pretended. He sank a little lower in his seat, eyes still closed. His features relaxed. Soon a burbling sound like coffee in a percolator came from him. His head slipped sideways by notches, until it came to rest on the girl’s slim shoulder. Somebody in the row behind them snickered.

Her attitude, now that he was no longer a witness to it, was entirely different from what might have been expected. A smile dimpled her pretty cheeks. She sloped her shoulder to make him more comfortable, reached around and gave the other side of his head a little pat. “Poor kid,” she said to herself, “dead for sleep!”

Betty Weaver was a good sport; you have to be when you’re an ace detective’s best girl.

The nip of a hefty heel coming down on one of his pet toes jolted Merrill awake with a grunt. There was a man trying to worm his way past him to the vacant seat on the other side of Betty. The usher with the torch standing helpfully by hadn’t been much help showing him where to step and where not to. Merrill jerked his foot back and screwed up his face.

“I’m sorry,” said the man softly, and edged through with his back to them. Merrill doubled his leg up in front of him and held onto his throbbing toe with both hands.

He put it back on the floor again, and leaned out across Betty to give the man a dirty look. The latter’s eyes weren’t used to the dark yet; he didn’t seem to notice it, but sat squinting straight ahead at the screen. He’d kept his coat on, with the collar up in back, although the way the place was jammed, it was pretty stuffy.

Merrill sat back again, his indignation evaporating as long as there had been no answering look for it to feed on. The five-minute kiss had finally faded out and they were showing trailers now. He shifted his attention to the program, determined to get his forty-cents-worth of show even if it was next week’s.

A lion showed up, burped at the audience, and the newsreel came on. Merrill liked newsreels. Betty evidently didn’t. She took out her mirror and began to inspect her face by the fairly strong gleam coming from the screen. It was a snow scene, skiers on a mountain, flashing down runways that were steep and dazzling white.