Francis Nevins - Night and Fear

The detective picked it up, began to read.

“I, Yugiri-san. Mist of the Evening, most unworthy of wives, go now to keep my honored husband’s house in the sky, having unwittingly twice failed to carry out my honored husband’s wish—”

The girl had stayed downstairs. “Don’t tell her, will you?” Hollinger said when the detective had finished translating the death-scroll for his benefit. “She doesn’t have to know. Let her go on thinking the woman was the one tried to get rid of her, through jealousy. Don’t tell her the man she came out to marry hired a murderer to get her out of his way, because he didn’t have guts enough to tell her to her face. It’s tough enough as it is.”

The detective sucked in his breath politely. “This was — fffs — great crime, to make it seem another had done it.”

“It was — fffs — great pain-in-the-neck while it lasted,” the sailor agreed.

It was getting light in Tokyo when they left the police station, walking slowly side by side. They had their shoes at last, and that was almost the best thing of all.

“I guess,” she said ruefully, linking her arm in his, “I pretty well messed-up your shore-leave for you.”

“Naw,” he assured her, “you made it. Absolutely! That reminds me, keep the night of November third open, will you?”

“November third? But that’s six months away!”

“I know, but that’s when we get into Frisco Bay.”

“I will,” she said. “I’ll keep November third for you. There isn’t any night that I wouldn’t keep for you — ever.”

“Well, I’ll borrow a minute from one night now.” Hollinger said. He took her in his arms.

“Death in the Yoshiwara” ( Argosy, January 29, 1938) is the only Woolrich pulp story set in Japan and a gem of pure whizbang action writing that will remind older readers of a Republic Pictures cliffhanger serial, while its protagonist will no doubt strike younger generations as a prototype of Indiana Jones. The climax of course comes straight of Madama Butterfly and demonstrates yet again how profoundly Woolrich was influenced by seeing Puccini’s opera in Mexico City when he was a boy.

Jenny hadn’t come home by the time we were through our meal. I couldn’t wait because I had to get back to the precinct-house. As I left the table, I growled. “Wonder where she is?”

My sister said, “Oh, she’s probably having a soda with her girl friends. She only went out a minute or two before you got back.” Her school books were there on the radiator, so I didn’t have to be told that.

I looked at the books fondly on my way past. “Duncan’s Elements of Trigonometry” was the title of the top one. I shook my head and snorted. Now, what earthly good was it filling a pretty eighteen-year-old girl’s head with junk like that? In one ear, out the other. Bad enough to ladle it out to boys... There was a tiny light-blue handkerchief, so thin you could see through it, caught between the pages. I pulled it out, held it between my thumb and forefinger, and chuckled. Now, that was more like it. That was what a girl should be interested in, not trigo-what-ever-it-was. There was a little colored design of a kitten stitched on one corner, and there was an intermingled odor of honeysuckle and chocolate. She probably took candy to school, wrapped in it, I thought as I laid it back again between the pages of the book. I walked on into my bedroom.

I buttoned up my collar, put on my vest, fixed the rope that I call a tie, and slipped into my coat. I opened the bureau-drawer and felt blindly for my gun. Then I had to open the drawer wider and look, because I couldn’t find it. I didn’t always carry it around with me, being a captain, since it pulled my suit out of shape.

I disarranged all the shirts my sister had neatly piled up in the drawer, and still I couldn’t find it. “What’d you do with my gun?” I called in to her. “I can’t find it.”

“It’s wherever you put it last,” she answered. “Don’t ask me where that is. You ought to know by now I wouldn’t put a hand on it for love nor money.”

That was true, for she was afraid of guns. She used to even ask me to pick it up and move it, when she wanted to clean out the drawer.

“Did you take it with you this morning?” she asked. “Maybe you left it down at the precinct-house.”

“No,” I said short-temperedly, “what do you think I do, go around cannoned-up like an armored-truckman? I simply wanted to turn it over to one of the guys in the lab, have it cleaned and oiled. It’s getting a little rusty.”

“Well, I’m sure I don’t know what I’d want with it. Or Jenny either, for that matter. And we’re the only other two people living in the house with you.”

“There you go,” I said. Her bringing Jenny into it was pure whimsy, as far as I was concerned. “I didn’t say anything about yon wanting it. Can’t a man ask a question in his own house? I can’t find it, that’s all.”

I was getting sick of this.

“Well, look in the right place and you will!” And that was all the help I could get out of her.

The front door opened and the kid came in just then. I was in the hall closet by that time, and by the time I could shift around to look, she’d gone by me.

I heard my sister say, “I kept your supper warm, dear. What are you walking like that for?”

“Oh, my heel came off just now, crossing the trolley tracks. I’ll have to go around to the shoemaker right after supper.”

“Tsk tsk, you could have been run over.”

I came back into the room and put on my hat. “Well, I’ll have to go without it,” I said. “Look for it for me, will you, Maggie? I want to turn it over to Kelcey.”

But she didn’t have any time for me now that the kid was back. She was too busy putting food on the table.

The kid was in my room, but that was understandable, since the mirror in there was the handiest and you know how kids are with mirrors. I happened to glance past the door and she was gazing at herself in it as though for the first time.

She must have heard me for she whirled and said: “I thought you’d gone already! I didn’t see you! Where were you?”

“Why, you brushed right by me,” I said, laughing. “Where are your eyes?”

She came toward me and first I thought she was going to fall, but I guess it was her shoe. I said, “Got a kiss for your old man?” There was no answer.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

She shook her head quickly.

“Nothing,” she said.

My sister called her just then to come in and sit down, and she left me like she couldn’t get away fast enough. Just hungry, I guess.

The bureau-drawer was still open so, just for luck, I went over and took another look. And there was the gun, between two of my shirts.

I scratched my head and said to myself, “Well, I’m a great one!” You wouldn’t think you could miss anything that size and weight, in such a small drawer.

I hadn’t quite finished slinging it away as I came though the doorway, and they both got a glimpse of it. The kid must have been hungry and tired all right for her face was white and drawn.

My sister couldn’t let a chance like that go by. “Oh,” she said, nodding severely, “so you did find it! What did I tell you?” She continued to prattle on about my carelessness.

In the middle of it, without either of one of us seeing her go, the kid suddenly wasn’t there at the table any more. But we heard the bedroom door close and then there was a sound of something heavy dropping on the bed.

I just looked blank. I hadn’t been yelling or anything. In fact, I hadn’t said a word. But my sister took it out on me anyway. “Oh, anyone but a man would understand,” she said, and looked wise. What about, I don’t know. She picked up the kid’s dinner-plate and carried it toward the room, calling, “Jenny dear, finish your supper for Aunt Margaret.” Then to me over her shoulder: “Go on to your job!”