I started to strip off the sparkle, and I opened the little embossed leather case I kept it all in. It was divided into compartments for each variety. The bracelets went into one, the rings into another, and so on. I came to the one for the earrings last. I took the right one off first and pitched it in. Then I reached for the left, and just got air and the bare lobe of my ear. No left earring.
For a minute I sat there without moving, and my face got white and my heart got chilly. Then I jumped up, and shook out my dress, and looked all around on the floor. I was just stalling. I knew where I must have dropped it, but I didn’t want to let on to myself.
I knew it hadn’t been at the club with the Perrys, and I knew it hadn’t been in the first taxi, going over to the Other Place. I’d given a sort of shudder just before he opened the door for me, and happened to touch both earrings with my hands. And I knew it hadn’t been in the second taxi, from there home, either.
There was only one time I’d moved violently or agitatedly all evening long, and that was over there, when he’d tried to chuck me under the chin after he’d counted over the money, and I’d reared my head back. It must have been right then that it had come off. The catch had been defective anyway; I’d had no business wearing it.
I had to have it back. Jimmy was taking them down with him tomorrow, to have them repaired. I could tell him I’d lost one of them, but that would uncover my movements. And there was an even more important reason why I had to get it back. If I left it with him, the whole thing would start over again as soon as he’d run through the ten thousand I’d just given him. He’d simply use it to bleed me some more. It was an easily recognizable piece of jewelry, made specially for me.
I went over to the door and listened first, to make sure Jimmy was still safely in the library. Not a sound, so it looked as if he was. Then I picked up the extension phone we had in the bedroom and dialed the number of Carpenter’s place that he’d given me last night, along with his final ultimatum.
Suppose he denied having found it? Suppose he was far-seeing enough to already figure on it coming in handy as a future pledge? I couldn’t add anything to the ten thousand, not until next month. My account was down to bedrock. He had to give it back to me!
I kept signaling, and he didn’t answer. I knew he must be there. I’d just come from there myself. He might light out the first thing in the morning, but there was no need for him to leave at this ungodly hour of the night. If I was going to sic the police on him, I would have done it before the transaction was concluded, not after. Even if he was asleep, it surely ought to wake him up, the way it was buzzing away at his end.
I hung up, tried it over. No more luck than the first time. It was the right number. I’d used it to notify him of my capitulation. I shook the thing, I squeezed it, I prayed to it. I had to give up finally. I couldn’t just sit there listening to it all night. I was good and scared now.
I had to have that earring, even if it meant going all the way back there in person, at this hour. And there was no place under the sun or the moon I wouldn’t have rather returned to than there: a cage of wild lions, a pit of rattle-snakes, a leprosarium.
I took the gun with me once more. I didn’t think Carpenter could really be cowed by such a midget, but it made me feel a little less defenseless. I unlocked the door and sidled down the hall. If I could only get out without bumping into Jimmy, then when I came back the second time, he could think it was the first time. That I’d stayed late with the Perrys at the club or something.
The light was gone from under the library door! He must have finished and gone out for a walk to clear his head, after battling with those taxblanks all night. That was all to the good, provided I didn’t run into him outside just as I was leaving. The milk bottle with its paper funnel was still on lonesome duty.
I made it. I was dying to ask the night liftman, when he brought me down, “Did Mr. Shaw go out just a little while ago?” I forced myself not to. It sounded too underhanded.
I gave the cabdriver the address, and slumped back on the seat with a sigh of relief.
Chapter Two
Payoff in Blood
When I got out in front of the sinister looking place I told the driver to wait for me. I looked up the front of it, and I saw just the one lighted window — his. He was up there, and he was still awake. Maybe he’d stepped out for just a minute at the time I’d rung.
I said to the driver, “Have you got a watch on you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, I want you to do something for me. Time me. If I haven’t come out in ten minutes, step over and ring the bell. The one that says ‘Carpenter’ on it.” I smiled insincerely. “Just to remind me. I don’t want to stay too long, and I have a bad habit of losing track of the time.”
“Yes ma’am. Ten minutes.”
I went in. The entrance door was supposed to work on a spring lock, but somebody had forgotten to close it, so I passed right through without waiting and started the long climb that I’d already made once before. The place was a walkup. I wanted to give him as little advance notice of what had brought me back as possible; my best chance of recovering the ornament without any further strings being attached to it was to catch him off guard, before his crooked mind had been able to go to work on this new situation.
I knocked quietly, when I finally got up to the top. It was the only flat on that floor; an extra story must have been added when the building had been converted to multiple tenancy.
He didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. I’d expected that. Live dangerously, and a knock on the door can make you freeze. I could visualize him standing at bay somewhere in there, holding his breath.
I knocked again. I inclined my head to the seam, said in a guarded voice: “Let me in. It’s me again.” I couldn’t bring myself to use his name. As far as I was concerned he didn’t deserve one, only a number. I had sense enough not to use my own.
He still didn’t stir. I wrangled the knob in growing impatience, and the door fell inertly back before me.
I ventured in after it, expecting to find him sighting a gun at me. That was the usual trick they pulled, wasn’t it? He wasn’t in the main room, he must be in the little darkened bed-alcove. Had lain down in there and forgotten to put the light out in here.
I didn’t go in there. There was just a slim chance — a very slim one — that he hadn’t found the earring himself yet, that it was still lying around out here unnoticed, and that I might be able to pick it up on my own hook and slip out again without having to accost him. I doubted it very much; it would have been too good to be true. But I started to look just the same.
First I looked all over the sofa where I’d sat riffling through the letters. Then I got down on all fours, gold dress and all, and started to explore the floor, around and under and alongside it. It was a decrepit, topheavy thing and threw a big shadow behind it from the ceiling light.
My groping hand crept around the corner of it, and nestled into somebody else’s, in a macabre gesture of a handclasp. I whipped it back with a bleat of abysmal terror and sprang away, and at the same time I heard a sharp intake of breath.
I stepped around and looked down, and he was lying there. The position of the bulky sofa had hid him from me until now. Did I say just now he deserved a number? He’d gotten one. And it was up.
One arm was flung out along the floor — the one that I’d just touched. He was lying on his back, and his jacket had fallen open. You could see where he’d been shot; it showed on the white of his shirt. It must have gone into his heart; the hole in the fabric and the bloodied encrustation that surrounded it were around that region. The gun he hadn’t had time to use had fallen uselessly over to one side.