At night now he slept with the valise in bed beside him, one of his arms bent over it in a protecting embrace that was not unlike a bridegroom’s, waking now and then with the fear that someone was tugging at it. And every night it was a different hotel. He changed his lodgings each day, afraid of the curiosity his habit of always carrying the valise might arouse it he stayed too long in any one hotel.
Such intelligence as he was ordinarily in possession of was by this time completely submerged beneath the panic in which he lived. He went aimlessly about the city, a shabby man with the look of a harried rabbit in his furtive eyes, destinationless, without purpose, filled with forebodings that were now powerless except to deepen the torpor in his head.
A senseless routine filled his days. At eight or eight-thirty in the morning he would leave the hotel where he had slept, eat his breakfast at a nearby lunch-room, and then walk — down Second to Yessler Way, to Fourth, to Pike — or perhaps as far as Stewart — to Second, to Yessler Way, to Fourth... Sometimes he would desert his beat to sit for an hour or more on one of the green iron benches around the totem in Pioneer Square, staring vacantly at the street, his valise either at his side or beneath his feet. Presently, goaded by an obscure disquietude, he would get up abruptly and go back to his promenade along Yessler Way to Fourth, to Pike, to Second, to Yessler Way, to... When he thought of food he ate meagerly at the nearest restaurant, but often he forgot to cat all day.
His nights were more vivid; with darkness his brain shook off some of its numbness and became sensitive to pain. Lying in the dark, always in a strange room, he would be filled with wild fears whose anarchic chaos amounted to delirium. Only in his dreams did he see things clearly. His brief and widely spaced naps brought him distinct, sharply etched pictures in which invariably he was robbed of his money, usually to the accompaniment of physical violence in its most unlovely forms.
The end was inevitable. In a larger city Joe Shupe might have gone on until his mentality had wasted away entirely and he collapsed. But Seattle is not large enough to smother the identities of its inhabitants: strangers’ faces become familiar: one becomes accustomed to meeting the man in the brown derby somewhere in the vicinity of the post office, and the red-haired girl with the grapes on her hat somewhere along Pine Street between noon and one o’clock; and looks for the slim youth with the remarkable mustache, expecting to pass him on the street at least twice during the course of the day. And so it was that two Prohibition enforcement officers came to recognize Joe Shupe and his battered valise and his air of dazed fear.
They didn’t take him very seriously at first, until, quite by accident, they grew aware of his custom of changing his address each night. Then one day, when they had nothing special on hand and when the memory of reprimands they had received from their superiors for not frequently enough “showing results” was fresh, they met Joe on the street. For two hours they shadowed him — up Fourth to Pike, to Second, to Yessler Way... On the third round-trip, confusion and chagrin sent the officers to accost Joe.
“I ain’t done nothing!” Joe told them, hugging the valise to his body with both arms. “You leave me be!”
One of the officers said something that Joe did not understand — he was beyond comprehending anything by now — but tears came from his red-rimmed eyes and ran down the hollows of his cheeks.
“You leave me be!” he repeated.
Then, still clasping the valise to his bosom, he turned and ran down the street. The officers easily overtook him.
Joe Shupe’s story of how he had come into possession of the stolen quarter-million was received by everyone — police, press and public — with a great deal of merriment. But, now that the responsibility for the money’s safety rested with the Seattle police, he slept soundly that night, as well as those that followed; and when he appeared in the courtroom in Spokane two weeks later, to plead futilely that he was not one of the men who held up the Fourth National Bank’s automobile, he was his normal self again, both physically and mentally.
The Dimple
Saucy Stories, October 15,1923; (aka: In the Morgue, 1962)
Walter Dowe took the last sheet of the manuscript from his typewriter, with a satisfied sigh, and leaned back in his chair, turning his face to the ceiling to ease the stiffened muscles of his neck. Then he looked at the clock: three-fifteen. He yawned, got to his feet, switched off the lights, and went down the hall to his bedroom.
In the doorway of the bedroom, he halted abruptly. The moonlight came through the wide windows to illuminate an empty bed. He turned on the lights, and looked around the room. None of the things his wife had worn that night were there. She had not undressed, then; perhaps she had heard the rattle of his typewriter and had decided to wait downstairs until he had finished. She never interrupted him when he was at work, and he was usually too engrossed by his labors to hear her footsteps when she passed his study door.
He went to the head of the stairs and called:
“Althea!”
No answer.
He went downstairs, into all the rooms, turning on the lights; he returned to the second story and did the same. His wife was not in the house. He was perplexed, and a little helpless. Then he remembered that she had gone to the theater with the Schuylers. His hands trembled as he picked up the telephone.
The Schuylers’ maid answered his call... There had been a fire at the Majestic theater; neither Mr. nor Mrs. Schuyler had come home. Mr. Schuylers father had gone out to look for them, but had not returned yet. The maid understood that the fire had been pretty bad... Lots of folks hurt...
Dowe was waiting on the sidewalk when the taxicab for which he had telephoned arrived. Fifteen minutes later he was struggling to get through the fire lines, which were still drawn about the theater. A perspiring, red-faced policeman thrust him back.
“You’ll find nothing here! The building’s been cleared. Everybody’s been taken to the hospitals.”
Dowe found his cab again and was driven to the City Hospital. He forced his way through the clamoring group on the grey stone steps. A policeman blocked the door. Presently a pasty-faced man, in solid white, spoke over the policeman’s shoulder:
“There’s no use waiting. We’re too busy treating them now to either take their names, or let anybody in to see them. We’ll try to have a list in the late morning edition; but we can’t let anybody in until later in the day.”
Dowe turned away. Then he thought: Murray Bornis, of course! He went back to the cab and gave the driver Bornis’ address.
Bornis came to the door of his apartment in pajamas. Dowe clung to him.
“Althea went to the Majestic tonight, and hasn’t come home. They wouldn’t let me in at the hospital. Told me to wait; and I can’t! You’re a police commissioner; you can get me in!”
While Bornis dressed, Dowe paced the floor, talking, babbling. Then he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror, and stood suddenly still. The sight of his distorted face and wild eyes shocked him back into sanity. He was on the verge of hysterics. He must take hold of himself. He must not collapse before he found Althea. Deliberately, he made himself sit down; made himself stop visualizing Altheas soft, white body charred and crushed. He must think about something else: Bornis, for instance... But that brought him back to his wife in the end. She had never liked Bornis. His frank sensuality, and his unsavory reputation for numerous affairs with numerous women, had offended her strict conception of morality. To be sure, she had always given him all the courtesy due her husband’s friend; but it was generally a frigid giving. And Bornis, understanding her attitude, and perhaps a little contemptuous of her narrow views, had been as coolly polite as she. And now she was lying somewhere, moaning in agony, perhaps already cold...