She’d gone in with him, the last time. It was more frightening going in alone. Suppose someone was lurking in it? Not the police or anyone legitimate like that, but someone whose presence couldn’t be guessed at from out here, someone who wouldn’t want the lights on or their intrusion made known any more than he and she did. Someone you wouldn’t know about until it was too late.
She went ahead. What else was there to do? Backing out wouldn’t have solved anything.
She put the key to the door. The dead man’s key it was, too. She remembered how his hand had shaken when he did it, the time before. He ought to see hers now, he’d know what some real shaking was. Her forearm was practically bouncing around in its elbow-socket. And what a racket! To her own ears, at any rate, it sounded like tin cans jangling. She might as well have rung the doorbell and be done with it, the way she was telegraphing her arrival.
Aw, what was the difference, there was no one in there anyway.
You hope, she amended in a minor key.
It opened.
Silence.
She knew her way a little better now, from being in the time before. You just went straight, and then you hit the stairs. She closed the door behind her first of all, and then she started out. She had that slightly precarious feeling, as of being on a tight-rope, that moving ahead in complete darkness always gives, even when the sense of direction is fairly sure.
That smell of leather and of woodwork again.
How still it was. How could a house be this still? It was almost as if it were overdoing it, for treacherous purposes of its own.
She thought, Let’s see if my valise is still where I left it, against the wall. That ought to be sort of a clue as to whether anyone’s been in here or not.
She knew which side she’d left it on, but naturally not just how far in away from the door. She turned and cut over to it. She found the wall, and felt down it with her palms. She got all the way to the bottom, to the baseboard, without anything impeding her.
Nope, not here. A little further on yet.
She moved out away from the wall a trifle, and went on again. She took about four more paces forward and closed in again and tried it there. This must be it, about here. It couldn’t be any further in than this. She must be nearly all the way to the foot of the stairs by now.
Her hands came out again, palms front, to find the wall and pat themselves down it to about the level where the valise should—
The wall had changed.
It wasn’t cool and smooth plaster any more, it wasn’t flat. Her hand went into something yielding. Yielding up to a point only; that gave a little but then held finally of its own inner bulk. Something rough, and yet soft. Fuzzy, bristly. Nap. Nap of a coat. A coat, with a body behind it. A coat with somebody in it.
There was somebody standing there, flat against the wall. Pressed back against it, trying to escape discovery. And she’d stopped right in front of it, of him, and like someone in a ghastly game of blindman’s buff — only this game was for keeps — had exploringly palmed her hands against him.
She could hear the sharp inhalation of breath coming from it, that wasn’t her own, at moment of contact. Her own had stopped entirely.
There was someone right there in front of her, someone alive, but standing deathly still, pinned there by her discovery of him.
The darkness eddied violently all around her; it loomed up to a crest, like an obliterating wave about to break and dash all over her. It was like being in the surf; a bad surf of terror of the senses. She started to go over backwards, drowned into senselessness in the middle of it. A little moaning cry drifted from her, something not intended to be uttered at all.
“Quinn, help me—”
An arm lashed out about the curve of her waist; her awareness was too blurred for a minute to tell whether it was in succor or in seizure. It held her afloat, up out of insensibility.
Quinn’s voice said, “Bricky! Hold it, Bricky!”
She went forward again, her head toppled inertly against his shoulder. She leaned there against him and couldn’t talk for a minute.
“My God,” he said, “I didn’t know it was you. I’ve been standing here paralyzed, afraid to—”
She could still only pant, even after a moment or two. “If that doesn’t kill me, nothing ever will.”
He led her away from the wall in the darkness, both arms about her in a sort of barrel-staff hold. “Come over here and sit down on the stairs a minute, they’re right over here—”
“No, I’m all right now. Let’s go up, so we can put on a little light, get rid of this blame darkness. That’s what did it, mostly.”
They went up the stairs. It was all right now that she had him with her, she wasn’t frightened any more.
“Funny we should both come back here like this, almost together. No luck either, hunh?” she surmised.
“Washed up. I came back to get a second start.”
“That’s what I was out for too.”
They didn’t ask each other about their experiences. They hadn’t paid off, so there was no profit in repeating them. There was no time, either; that was the main thing.
When the lights went on, they scarcely glanced at the form on the floor, either one of them. They had gotten so far past that point now. Just a glimpse out of the corners of their eyes, of something black with a white shirtfront, was enough, so long as it showed them it was still there. She thought, How quickly you get used to the presence of death in a room. That’s why those people who sit up with them all night never turn a hair. She’d never been able to understand their ability to do that until now.
It was the first one she’d ever seen, and yet all the awe had already worn off. She already found herself moving about the room and unconcernedly deviating a little from that particular place each time, no more. As one would to avoid treading on a sleeping dog or cat.
They were at a loss. They’d hit rock-bottom. They were blocked. They could read the knowledge in one another’s eyes as they looked at one another, but they tried to keep from saying it, from admitting it aloud. His evasion took the form of moving restlessly about, as though he were accomplishing something, when they both knew he wasn’t. He went to the bedroom-entrance, put on the light in there, stood looking about, as though desperately trying to discern something that was not there to be discerned. Then he came out again, went to the bathroom-entry, lighted that up, did the same thing there.
It was no use. It was hopeless, and they both knew it. They’d squeezed the last drop of muted testimony out of this place that there was to be had from it. They’d squeezed it dry.
Her sense of frustration took a more passive form. She stood still. It revealed itself only in the fingers of her hand, resting on the back of one of the chairs; those kept rippling like the fingers of a typist upon an unseen typewriter.
Suddenly something happened to the silence. It was gone, and they hadn’t done it.
“What’s that?”
Fright was like an icy gush of water flooding over them, as from some burst pipe or water-main; like a numbing tide rapidly welling up over them from below, in some confined place from which there was no escape. They were like two small things — two mice — trapped in an inundated cellar, and carried around and around, still alive but helplessly swirling, on the surface of the whirlpool before they finally went under.
Fright was the muted pealing of a bell. A tiny, softened t-t-t-ting, t-t-t-ting, over and over. Somewhere unseen around them, hidden, but pertinent to them, having to do with them, having to do with this place they were in.
After the first needle-like shock, they were motionless, only their eyes tracing it in frightened flight, now to this side, now to that, each time too late. It was like a wasp, buzzing elusively around their heads, while they held still, trying to identify it, trying to orient it, to isolate it. It was everywhere, it was nowhere. T-t-t-ting, t-t-t-tling, soft, velvety, but unending.