A deep booming masculine voice responded.
"Yes? Who is it?"
"Peter Chambers. I want to talk with Miss Troy."
"She's not here," boomed the voice.
"That's a lie. I know she's in there."
"She doesn't want to talk to you."
"Who are you?"
"None of your business," boomed the voice. "Go away."
"Sorry. I'm not going, mister."
The deep voice took on a rasp of irritation. "Look, I've got a gun in my hand. If you don't get away, I'm going to shoot right through the door."
Parker pulled me aside and called through the door: "Open up! Police!"
"I don't care who you say you are," boomed the voice. "I'm warning you for the last time. Either you people get away or I shoot."
"And I'm warning you," called Parker. "Either you open the door or we shoot. I'm going to count to three. Unless you open up, we're going to shoot our way in. One!"
No answer.
"Two!"
Deep booming derisive laughter.
"Three!"
No sound.
Parker motioned to the policemen carrying the carbine and he ranged up. Parker raised his right hand, index finger pointed upward.
"Open up! Last call!"
No sound.
Parker pointed the finger at the policeman and nodded. A stream of bullets ripped through the door. There was a piercing scream, a thud, and silence. Parker made a sign to two of the detectives, burly men. They knew what to do. They hurled themselves at the door, shoulder to shoulder, in unison, time and again. The door creaked, creaked, gave, and then burst from its fastenings.
Sylvia Troy lay on the floor dead of the bullets from the carbine. There was no one else in the apartment. The door had been locked and bolted. The windows were closed and bolted from the inside. Inspection was quick, expert, and unequivocal, but, aside from the corpse of Sylvia Troy — and now, ourselves — there was no one else in the apartment.
Detective-Lieutenant Louis Parker came to me, his eyes belligerent but bewildered, his face angrily glistening beneath a veil of perspiration. His men, tall, thick-armed, strong-muscled, powerful, gathered like silent children, in a group about him. "What the hell?" said the Detective-Lieutenant, the words issuing in a curious hoarse whisper. "What do you think, Pete?"
I had to swallow before I could speak, but I clung to my premise. "I do not believe in ghosts," I said.
Perhaps I do not believe in ghosts because I refuse to believe in ghosts and my mind rejects the possibility and seeks other explanation. In the Troy affair such explanation, for me, involved death-wish, hallucination, guilt complex, retribution, self-punishment, and dual personality.
There are those who disagree with my conclusions.
You may be one of them.
Where Is Thy Sting?
BY JAMES HOLDING
Phobia has become an accepted term in this day of parlor-psychiatry. Yet, defined as an irrational fear, is it acceptable as a cause of death? On a death certificate, for example, would "Apiphobia" be acceptable to the coroner?
To say I was flabbergasted when I found out about Doris and that bachelor writer across the hall is putting it mildly.
Doris and I had been married four and a half years then, and I still couldn't believe my luck. She was medium tall, with high color in her face and jet black hair that had a shine to it, and a lovely soft mouth that smiled easily and often. Her eyes were electric blue, and with that black hair of hers, they really looked terrific. And her figure was for happy dreams… other guys' dreams. I had the girl herself. My wife, Doris.
So you can understand I was quite upset when I learned about her and Wilkins. If you really love your wife, as I do, and trust her, as I did, and she's just about the living end in beauty of face and figure, and you're sure she thinks the sun rises and sets on you, it's a definite kick in the teeth when you suddenly discover that while you're out of town covering your sales territory two weeks out of each month, your wife is playing house with the detective-story writer whose apartment is across the hall from yours. Especially, when he's a nothing-type guy like Wilkins was — tall, skinny, no visible means of support except a battered typewriter, and even beginning to lose his hair, for God's sake!
I'm no Adonis, understand, but on the worst day I ever lived, I'm a better man than Wilkins was. Believe me. That's why I was so burned when I found out that Doris whiled away her time during my absence with this Wilkins clown.
I made excuses for Doris, of course. I still loved her, despite her expeditions to the other side of the hall where the grass looked greener. A girl as beautiful as Doris, I told myself, as full of life and crazy for fun, naturally becomes a target for the wolfishness of every predatory male within a six-mile radius. And she's understandably lonesome while I'm away. Poor Doris.
I could make allowances for her. But not for that rejection-slip Casanova across the hall. No, sir. Him I was going to fix, and fix right.
But not in hot blood, Jim, I warned myself. Wait until you're calmer. Wait till you can cream him without any chance of being tagged for the job. Otherwise, what will it get you? Nothing but an overcharge of electricity from the state. I'd be dead, and Wilkins would be dead, and Doris would be left all by her lonesome.
So I didn't let on to Doris that I knew a thing about her and Wilkins. I behaved just as usual, and so did she, the clever little actress. And when I ran across Wilkins at the mailboxes in the apartment house lobby, or in the elevator, or dumping trash into the communal incinerator at the end of our third floor corridor, I nodded and smiled in neighborly fashion and he doubtless thought me a very pleasant fellow, as well as a blind fool.
That was all right with me; I just kept my own counsel and watched Wilkins at every opportunity. I was confident that if I had patience enough, and was smart enough, I'd find the proper way to fix his wagon and still appear as innocent of fixing anything as the average garage mechanic.
This went on for several months. And sure enough, early in August, when the weather was pure hot hell outdoors and I was coming home from the public golf course one Saturday after a morning round, I found the handle I was looking for.
I pulled up to park before our apartment house, and when I'd got my car nuzzled into the curb the way I wanted it, I looked through the windshield and there was Wilkins, getting out of his secondhand jalopy three cars ahead of me, with a big paper sack of groceries in his arms.
He nudged his car door shut with an elbow and started up the drive to the apartment entrance, carrying the bag. As he approached the bed of zinnias and snapdragons that bordered the drive on his left, he suddenly shied like a startled horse and stopped in his tracks. After a momentary hesitation, he began to make a wide circle to his right around the bed of flowers to get to the apartment entrance, clutching the groceries tightly and looking with terrified eyes toward the flowers. And just then, a bee that had been prowling around the flowerbed left his work and buzzed toward Wilkins to investigate him. I could see the bee's wings winking in the sunlight. And that's when Wilkins really flipped.
He'd been watching that bee all along, I guess. And when he saw it coming over to say hello to him as he went by, he came all apart at the seams in one shattering instant. You'd have thought all the fiends in creation were after him, instead of a harmless little honeybee. He yelled something in a strangled voice, dropped his paper sack of groceries on the concrete drive with a grand splash of breaking milk-bottles, and took to his heels like an hysterical woman frightened by a mad dog.
He swung his arms around him desperately in shooing motions as he ran; he rolled his eyes over his shoulder at the bee to gauge its flight; he fled up the drive in a galvanic tangle of arms and lanky legs and didn't pause until he shot through the apartment entrance and slammed the door shut behind him.