The night had become very still. Her hearing seemed to reach out till she felt she could have heard a coyote move in its hole miles away. The log fire creaked and shifted. The tall clock in the corner ticked, catching its chain now and then, as its manner was. The wooden walls shrunk and groaned a little. The small home-like sounds only accentuated the enormous silence without. Suddenly in the midst of them a real sound fell upon her ear; very low but different, not like the fragmentary inadvertent murmur of the hut; a small, purposeful, stealthy sound, aware of itself. She listened as she had listened before, without moving. It was not louder than the whittling of a mouse behind the wainscot, hardly louder than the scraping of a mole’s thin hand in the soil. It continued. Then it stopped. It was only her foolish fancy, after all. There it was again. Where did it come from?
The man in the next room?
She took up the lamp and crept down the narrow passage to the door of the back kitchen. His loud, even breathing sounded distinctly through the crannies of the ill-fitting door. Surely it was overloud. She listened to it. She could hear nothing else. Was his breathing a pretense? She opened the door noiselessly, and went in, shading the light with her hand.
She bent over the sleeping man. At the first glance her heart sank, for he had not taken off his boots. But as she looked hard at him her suspicions died within her. He lay on his back, with his coarse, emaciated face toward her, his mouth open, showing his broken teeth. The sleep of utter exhaustion was upon him. She could have killed him as he lay. He was not acting. He was really asleep.
She crept out of the room again, leaving the door ajar, and went back to the kitchen.
Hardly had she sat down when she heard the sound again. It was too faint to reach her except when she was in the kitchen. She knew now where it came from — the door. Someone was picking the lock.
The instant the sleeping man was out of her sight she suspected him again.
Was he really asleep, after all? He had not taken off his boots. When she came back from making his bed she had found him standing by the mantel-shelf. Had he unloaded the pistol in her absence? Would he presently get up, and open the door to his confederates?
Her mind rose clear and cold and unflinching. She took up the pistol, and then laid it down again. She wanted a more noiseless weapon. She got out her husband’s great clasp-knife from the open tool box, took the lamp, and crept back to the man’s bedside. She should be able to kill him. Certainly she should be able to kill him; and then she should have the pistol for the other one.
But he still slept heavily. When she saw him again, again her suspicions fell from her. She knew he was asleep.
She shook him by the shoulder, noiselessly, but with increasing violence, until he opened his eyes with a groan. Then only she remembered that she was shaking his wounded arm. He saw the knife in her hand, and raised his left arm as if to ward off the blow.
“Listen,” she whispered, close to his ear. “Don’t speak. There is a man trying to break into the house. You must get up and help me.”
He stared at her, vaguely at first, but with growing intelligence. The food and sleep had restored him somewhat to himself. He sat up on the couch.
“Take off my boots,” he whispered; “I tried and could not.”
Her last suspicion of him vanished. She cut the laces with her knife, and dragged his boots off. They stuck to his feet, and bits of the woolen socks came off with them. They had evidently not been taken off for weeks. While she did it he whispered, “Why should anyone be wanting to break in? There’s nothing here to take.”
“Yes, there is,” she said. “There’s a lot of money.”
“Good Lord! Where?”
“Under the floor in the kitchen.”
“Are there many of ’em?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, we shall know soon enough,” said the man. He had become alert, keen. “Have you any pistols?”
“Yes, one.”
“Fetch it, but don’t make a sound, mind.”
She stole away, and returned with the pistol. She would have put it into his hand, but he pushed it away.
“It’s no use to me,” he said, “with my arm in a sling. I will see what I can do with my left hand and the knife. Can you shoot?”
“Yes.”
“Can you hit anything?”
“Yes.”
“To be depended on?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s darned lucky. How long will that door hold?”
They were both in the little passage by now, pressed close together, listening to the furtive pick, pick of someone at the lock.
“I don’t think it will hold more than a minute.”
“Now, look here,” he said, “I shall go and stand at the foot of the stair, and knife the second man, if there is a second. The first man I’ll leave to you. There’s a bit of light outside from the snow. He’ll let in enough light to see him by as he opens the door. Don’t wait. Fire at him as he comes in, and don’t stop; go on firing at him till he drops. You’ve got six bullets. Don’t you make any mistake and shoot me. I’ve had enough of that already. Now you look carefully where I’m going to stand, and when I’m there you put out the lamp.”
He spoke to her as a man does to his comrade.
That she could be frightened did not seem to enter his calculations. He moved with catlike stealth to the foot of the tiny staircase and flattened himself against the wall. Then he stretched his left arm once or twice as if to make sure of it, licked the haft of the knife, and nodded at her.
She instantly put out the lamp.
All was dark save for a faint thread of light which outlined the door. Across the thread something moved once — twice. The sound of picking ceased. Then another sound succeeded it, a new one, unlike the last, as if something were being gently prised open, wrenched.
“The bar will hold,” she said to herself, and then remembered for the first time that the rung into which the bar slid had been loose these many days. It was giving now.
It had given!
The door opened silently, and a man came in.
For a moment she saw him clear, with the accomplice snow-light behind him. She did not hesitate. She shot once and again. He fell and struggled violently up, and she shot again. He fell and dragged himself to his knees, and she shot again. Then he sank gently and slowly down as if tired, with his face against the wall, and moved no more.
The man on the stairs rushed out and looked through the open door.
“By George, he was single-handed!” he said.
Then he stooped over the prostrate man and turned him over on his back.
“Dead!” he said, chuckling. “Well done, Missus! — stone dead!”
He was masked.
The dirty left hand tore the mask callously off the gray face.
The woman had drawn near and looked over his shoulder.
“Do you know him?” said the man.
For a moment she did not answer, and the pistol which had done its work so well dropped noisily out of her palsied hand.
“He is a stranger to me,” she said, looking fixedly at her husband’s fading face.
Margery Allingham remembers clearly the circumstances under which “Evidence in Camera” was born. There were {a) the place; (b) the people; (c) the props — and (d) the put-together-er... The original idea sprang into her head in a railway train (a). She was traveling to London in an overcrowded railway carriage — the English train, Miss Allingham reminds us, is a series of little compartments, like the the cartridge wallets on the shoulder belt of what Miss Allingham calls the “War of Independence” uniform. She found herself so wedged in among elbows, handbags, and the more intimate sections of her fellow travelers (b) that she could scarcely move her head. She was sitting on something — to this day she does not know what, although it was certainly alive, at least in the beginning of the trip. At any rate, all Miss Allingham could see was someone’s limp gray vest, which quivered not more than six inches from her nose. Across the vest hung a silver chain from which various small objects (c) depended — four medals, a disc which proclaimed the wearer to be a “Tail Wagger,” a tiny metal tassel — all oscillating hypnotically before Miss Allingham’s eyes as the train (a) rocked toward London.