Death Of Another Salesman
by DONALD HONIG
In addition to what they're selling, salesmen, as you know, must sell themselves. Their smile must be turned on wide. And the shine on their shoes must be impressively blinding. Such perfect individuals, naturally, make perfect victims.
There was no view from his tenth-floor hotel window, only the blank wall of the building next door. He didn't mind though. He had decided not to check into the best hotel, as the other salesmen always did (and as he had always done before, before he had begun to lose his accounts and feel the insecurity of lukewarm handshakes), nor did he ask for the best room in this one. He knew he was going to have to improve his work and create a better impression on the home office and he felt that cutting expenses would be one way.
He had been sitting reading all evening. Then he had dozed off, he didn't know for how long. It was quite late when his sleep was broken by sounds coming from an adjoining room. At first he thought it was a fragment from a vanishing dream, but then realized he was awake. He sat up with the stunned, puzzled fascination of one abruptly awakened, his eyes squinting, trying to become accustomed both to wakefulness and to the alien noises.
He heard voices, a man's and a woman's. They were conducting a harsh, bitter argument behind the thin wall. They brought him fully and alertly awake. He came forward in his chair, then pushed to his feet. He stole to the wall and tilted his head, his eyes wide-staring.
"You can't pull this on me," the man's voice said.
The woman's voice retorted, her words indistinguishable, but their quality was unmistakably coarse.
Then the man's again: "You will, will you? Well, maybe you won't!"
The woman's shrill and its words clear this time: "You can't stop me. All I have to do is walk out that door. Then try and explain it."
"And I'm telling you right now that you'd better not try!" the man's voice snarled.
"Well, let's see you try and — " The woman's voice, her threat, was broken off abruptly. There was a sharp cry of surprise and something fell to the floor. A sound of scuffling followed. It sounded as though the woman were trying to scream, but each effort was stifled.
With cold fascination, and with fear too now, the salesman listened, his ear flat against the muffling wall, entranced by the struggle. It sounded now like people were crawling on the floor, a soft prowling punctuated by abortive cries and frequent thuds. And then the sounds stopped. It became utterly silent. He remained at the wall, hungering for another sound, but none came. An eerie, unanswering stillness filled the other room. It came through the wall and gripped him.
He waited for a long while. Then, quietly, he drew away from the wall, feeling the uneasy guilt now of an interloper along with his fear. Backing away, he stared at the wall as though trying to see through it, expecting the scene on the other side to materialize for his benefit. The stark blank wall offered him nothing more than a melancholy emptiness.
He sat down, on the edge of the chair this time, his fingers pinching his underlip, great nervous concern in his face. There was an almost overwhelming desire to mind his own business, the natural human impulse to turn from and ignore trouble. But underlying it was a persistent concern for the woman, a quiet, unappeasable nagging. Had the man merely silenced her with a blow or had he actually murdered her — as it had sounded (and as his aroused imagination kept insisting)?
After five minutes of intense pondering indecision, he got up and went to the wall again and leaned his head hopefully to it — hoping to hear the soft laughter of lovers reunited. But the silence remained. It almost made him angry. Why didn't they start talking to each other again? They were probably sitting there in silent brooding, glaring at each other, with no consideration whatever for his predicament.
The silence was unsatisfactory. He decided he could not ignore what had happened. How would it be for him to wake up in the morning and hear that the woman had been murdered and the murderer had escaped into the night? Already he felt guilt massing. Perhaps something could still be done, if not to save the woman's life at least to apprehend her murderer while the crime was still warm on his hands.
Quietly he sat down and put on his shoes. Stealthily, as though he himself were committing something reprehensible, he opened his door and stepped out into the hall. It was empty. He realized the lateness of the hour. Everyone else was probably asleep, hence he had been the only one to hear the disturbance. He stood and wrung his hands for a moment, gripped by a maddening indecision. Then resolution became assertive and he strode to the self-service elevator and pressed the button. As he waited, he stared at the door of the room in which the conflict had taken place. Even the door itself seemed to suggest something desperate, some silent, uncanny, urgent message.
The elevator arrived with a grunt, the door sliding aside. The little box-like room awaited his entrance. Quickly he stepped inside, pressed the first-floor button and watched the door slide across. He stood nervous and perspiring as — with a slow, funereal sinking, like a coffin being lowered — the elevator descended, the passing floors clicking off in solemn cadence.
The door slid open upon a drowsy, empty lobby, the lobby typical of a second-class hotel, hopelessly dreary in the long night hours. The clerk was behind the desk reading a newspaper. As the salesman walked toward the desk he was wondering what he ought to say, and how, whether or not to be serious about it or to perhaps treat it light-heartedly. He did not want to be an alarmist. Perhaps a disturbance from that room was not an unusual thing and the clerk would laugh and acknowledge it. Perhaps that was why no one else had come down to report it. He began to feel foolish. He would have kept going and have contrived a purchase at the cigarette machine had the clerk not looked up and put down his paper.
"Yes, Mr. Warren?" the clerk asked.
Mr. Warren stopped at the desk, looking down at the clerk. The clerk stood up, smiling a thin, competent, professional smile.
"It seems," Mr. Warren said, "it seems there was a rather heated argument in the room adjoining mine."
"Really?"
Encouraged, Mr. Warren went on. "Yes. A man and woman were arguing… about something. It was rather a bitter argument. The man struck her… I believe. It sounded like a terrible struggle. And then it stopped. On what note I don't know. But I heard nothing further. I felt that I ought to… report it, just to be safe."
The clerk was looking at the register.
"Which room?" his bent head asked.
"The one to my right."
"Let's see. You're 1 °C. That would be 10 E."
"Yes," Mr. Warren said, hugely gratified by the clerk's interest. "10 E is the one."
"Well, there's a Mr. Malcolm registered there. Alone."
"Alone?"
The clerk looked up at Mr. Warren with pale, unsympathetic eyes. "Yes," he said.
"But that's impossible. I mean… I heard…"
"Perhaps you heard someone's radio playing," the clerk said.
"No, it was not a radio," Mr. Warren said with indignation. "I had been dozing and I heard quite distinctly…"
"Dozing?" the clerk said suggestively.
"I was not dreaming. I was fully awake when I heard it."
"I see," the clerk said. He turned over his wrist and glanced at his watch. "Well, it's quite late. I would hate to call anyone now, unless you insisted."
He had put it squarely up to Mr. Warren, clamped the responsibility upon his shoulders. It was a challenge. He could insist or he could back down and walk back across the lobby with the clerk staring condescendingly at him. He felt his resolution being drained, depleted. It made him angry. He leaned both hands on the desk.