"At least then we would know how to proceed. We'd know if there were one or two in there."
Mr. Warren went to the window and opened it. He looked out at the ledge. It seemed wide enough. He looked at the next window. It was about eight feet away. Then he looked down. It was too dark to see the courtyard. The dark was a mighty, bottomless shaft.
"Maybe you shouldn't," Mr. Burke said nervously. "You've certainly shown a lot of courage already."
Mr. Warren turned around and looked at him. A young man, but nervous and looking up to him. The home office could learn a lot from him.
"It's the only way," he said. "That man next door is too cocksure. We've got to see that he gets what he deserves. Why, you didn't hear that poor woman crying like I did."
Mr. Burke nodded dutifully.
"You stand by the door," Mr. Warren ordered, "and keep an ear cocked. I'll get out there and have a look."
"Will you be able to tell, in the dark?"
"I'll be able to tell," Mr. Warren said. "I've got extremely good night vision."
"And a lot of courage," Mr. Burke said.
That was the last word. Now lions couldn't keep Mr. Warren from leaping right out onto the ledge.
He pushed the window up as high as it would go and then, holding onto the window jamb, put one foot up on the sill, then the other, and in a shaky crouch stepped out onto the ledge. The night immediately surrounded him with a swarm of dark winds that whistled and swept and darted past him. He pressed his back against the cold brick wall and spread his arms for balance and began to edge along, keeping his head against the wall, his jaw jutting up as though trying to stay out of water.
Each small step was like an eternity. A terrific vanity excited him. He couldn't wait to get back into the room — not because he was afraid, but because he wanted to look back upon his achievement and talk of it to Mr. Burke. The window, a few feet away, loomed like a wondrous prize. Suddenly he didn't even care if there were two people in there or not, whether a dead woman lay there or not. He breathed the wild dark winds and it exhilarated him.
And a moment later it made no difference who was in that room, because he didn't get to the window. From behind he heard Burke hissing. Slowly, carefully, he turned his head and saw his ally's face poking out the window, turned toward him, one hand up to his throat pinching shut his bathrobe, the other gesturing excitedly to him to return.
So he started back, moving the same way, except that his head was turned in the other direction now.
As he neared the little platform of light under his window, Burke looked up at him and said, "I think I've found what you're looking for."
At his window now, shakily trying to ascertain his footing, Mr. Warren had a quick glimpse in. He saw, lying across his bed, the body of a woman looking quite disheveled and dead. And it was only that quick glimpse that he had of the room's interior, because he immediately saw Burke's hands, palms upturned, rushing up at him from out of Burke's diabolically gleeful face, the hands landing with an astonishing thrust in his mid-section, and then the window and the light were performing a sharp loop, rushing from his vision into a swarm of plunging, depthless blackness…
"He said he'd heard noises from Mr. Malcolm's room," the desk clerk told the detective.
"Actually," Mr. Malcolm said, drawing his light blue bathrobe more tightly around himself, "the noises were coming from his room, but I didn't want to make an issue of it. I believe in minding my own business."
"I see," the detective said.
"He must have slipped the girl in without anyone knowing," the desk clerk said. "He probably figured he'd complain about a woman being next door, just to cover himself."
"I heard them in there all night," Mr. Malcolm said. "Then I dozed off. They started fighting again; then she screamed; then, a few minutes later, I heard him hit the courtyard." He looked toward the window where the curtains were fluttering. He almost laughed, remembering the look on Mr. Warren's face, the utter astonishment.
The detective looked at the sheet-covered body on the bed.
"The stories they tell about traveling salesmen," he said. "I guess they're true."
Man With a Hobby
by ROBERT BLOCH
If you don't mind, I should like to suggest that this not be the last story you read before turning out the lights. Dreams, you know.
It must have been around ten o'clock when I got out of the hotel. The night was warm and I needed a drink.
There was no sense trying the hotel cocktail lounge because the place was a madhouse. The Bowling Convention had taken that over, too.
Walking down Euclid Avenue I got the impression that Cleveland was full of bowlers. And most of them seemed to be looking for a drink. Every tavern I passed was jammed with shirt-sleeved men, wearing their badges. Not that they needed extra identification; many of them carried the standard bowling-bag holding a ball.
When Washington Irving wrote about Rip Van Winkle and the dwarfs, he understood bowlers all right. Well, there were no dwarfs in this convention — just man-sized drinkers. And any sound of thunder from the distant mountain peaks would have been drowned out by the shouting and the laughter.
I wanted no part of it. So I turned off Euclid and kept wandering along, looking for a quiet spot. My own bowling-bag was getting heavy. Actually, I'd meant to take it right over to the depot and check it in a locker until train-time, but I needed that drink first.
Finally I found a place. It was dim, it was dingy, but it was also deserted. The bartender was all alone down at the far end of the bar, listening to the tail-end of a double-header on the radio.
I sat down close to the door and put the bag on the stool next to me. I signalled him for a beer. "Bring me a bottle," I said. "Then I won't have to interrupt you."
I was only trying to be polite but I could have spared myself the trouble. Before he had a chance to get back to follow the game, another customer came in.
"Double Scotch, never mind the wash."
I looked up.
The bowlers had taken over the city, all right. This one was a heavily-built man of about forty, with wrinkles extending well up toward the top of his bald head. He wore a coat, but carried the inevitable bowling-bag; black, bulging, and very similar to mine. As I stared at him, he set it down very carefully on the adjoining bar-stool and reached for his drink.
He threw back his head and gulped. I could see the pasty white skin ripple along his neck. Then he held out the empty glass. "Do it again," he told the bartender. "And turn down the radio, will you, Mac?" He pulled out a handful of bills.
For a moment the bartender's expression hovered midway between a scowl and a smile. Then he caught sight of the bills fluttering down on the bar and the smile won out. He shrugged and turned away, fiddling with the volume-control, reducing the announcer's voice to a distant drone. I knew what he was thinking: If it was beer I'd tell him to go take a jump, but this guy's buying Scotch.
The second Scotch went down almost as fast as the volume of the radio.
"Fill her up," said the heavy-set man.
The bartender came back, poured again, took his money, rang it up, then drifted away to the other end of the bar. He crouched over the radio, straining to catch the voice of the announcer.
I watched the third Scotch disappear. The stranger's neck was red now. Six ounces of Scotch in two minutes will do wonders for the complexion. It will loosen the tongue, too.
"Ball game," the stranger muttered. "I can't understand how anyone can listen to that stuff." He wiped his forehead and blinked at me. "Sometimes a guy gets the idea there's nothing in the world but baseball fans. Bunch of crazy fools yelling their heads off over nothing, all summer long. Then come fall and it's the football games. Same thing, only worse. And right after that's finished, it's basketball. Honest to God, what do they see in it?"