Finally I figured I might be able to open one of the top-floor windows, so I went around to the front again, spit on my hands, and shinnied up one of the porch posts. There were some old vine stalks twisted around them, so it was pie getting up. It was so old the whole thing shook bad, but I didn’t weigh much, so nothing happened.
I started tugging at one of the windows that looked out over it. It was hard to get it started because it hadn’t been opened in so long, but I kept at it, and finally it jarred up. The noise kind of scared me, but I swallowed hard and stuck my legs inside and slid into the room. The place smelled stuffy, and cobwebs tickled my face, but I just brushed them off. Who’s afraid of a few spiders? I used to keep a collection of them when I was a kid of nine, until my mother threw them out.
I couldn’t see much, just the gray where the walls were and the black where the door was. A grown-up would have had matches, but I had to use my hands out in front of me to tell where I was going.
I didn’t bump into anything much, because I guess the upstairs rooms were all empty and there was nothing to bump into. But the floorboards cracked and grunted under me. I had a narrow escape from falling all the way down the stairs and maybe breaking my neck, because they came sooner than I thought they would. After that I went good and easy, tried out each one with my toe first to make sure it was there before I trusted my whole foot down on it. It took a long time getting down that way, but at least I got down in one piece. Then I started for where I thought the front door was. I wanted to get out.
I don’t know what mixed me up, whether there was an extra turn in the stairs that I didn’t notice in the dark, or I got my directions balled up by tripping a couple of times over empty boxes and picking myself up again. Anyway I kept groping in what I thought was a straight line out from the foot of the stairs, until I came up against a closed door. I thought it was the front door to the house, of course. I tried it, and it came right open. That should have told me it wasn’t, because I’d seen him lock it behind him when he left.
The air was even worse on the other side of it than on my side, all damp and earthy like when you’ve been burrowing under the ground, and it was darker than ever in front of me, so I knew I wasn’t looking out on the porch. Instead of backing up I took an extra step through it, just to make sure what it was, and this time I did fall — and, boy, how I fell! Over and over, all the way down a steep flight of brick steps that hurt like anything every time they hit me.
The only thing that saved me was that at the bottom I landed on something soft. Not real soft like a mattress, but kind of soft and at the same time stiff, if you know what I mean. At first I thought it was a bag or bolster of some kind filled with sawdust.
I was just starting to say to myself, “Gee, it’s a good thing that was there!” when I put out my hand, to brace myself for getting up on my feet again, and all of a sudden I turned to ice all over.
My hand had landed right on top of another hand — like it was waiting there to meet it! It wasn’t warm and soft like a hand, it felt more like a stiff leather glove that’s been soaked in water, but I knew what it was all right. It went on up into a shoulder, and that went up into a neck, and that ended in a head.
I gave a yell, and jumped about a foot in the air and landed further over on another part of the floor. Then I started scrambling around on my hands and knees to get out of there fast. I don’t think anyone was ever that scared in their life before.
I couldn’t get at the stairs again without stepping over it at the foot of them, and that kept me there a minute or two longer, until I had time to talk to myself. And I had to talk good and hard, believe me.
“He’s murdered, because when dead people die regular they’re buried, not left to lie at the bottom of cellar steps. So you see, that Petersen did murder someone, just like you been suspecting for two whole days. And instead of being scared to death, you ought to be glad you found him, because now you can help your old man just like you wanted to. Nobody knows about this yet, not even the milkman or the letterman, and he can have it all to himself.”
That braced me up a lot. I wiped the wet off my forehead, and I pulled my belt over to the fourth notch, which was the last one there was on it. Then I got an idea how I could look at him, and make sure he was murdered. I didn’t have any matches, but he was a grown-up, even if he was dead, and he just might have one, in — in his pocket.
I started to crawl straight back toward him, and when I got there, I clenched my teeth together real hard, and reached out one hand for about where his pocket ought to be. It shook so, it was no good by itself, but I steadied it by holding it with the other hand, and got it in. Then I had to go around to the other side of him and try that one. He had three of them in there, those long kind. My hand got caught getting it out, and I nearly went crazy for a minute, but I finally pulled the pocket off it with my other hand, and edged back further away from him.
Then I scraped one of them along the floor. His face was the first thing I saw. It was all wrinkled and dry-like and it had four black holes in it, one more than it should have. The mouth was a big wide hole, and the nostrils of the nose were two small ones, and then there was another under one eyelid, or at least a sort of a hollow place that was just like a hole. He’d worn a glass eye in that socket, and it was the very one I had in my pocket that very minute. I could see now how he’d come to lose it.
He’d been choked to death with an old web belt from behind when he wasn’t looking. It was still around his neck, so tight and twisted you would have had to cut through it to get it off. It made his other eye, which was a real one, stand out all swollen like it was ready to pop out. And I guess that was what really did happen with the fake one. It got loose and dropped out while he was still struggling down on the floor between the murderer’s spread-legs, and jumped into his trouser-cuff without him even seeing it. Then, when it was over, he either didn’t notice it was missing from the dead man’s face, or else thought it had rolled off into a corner and was lying there. Instead it was in the cuff of the suit he’d had cleaned to make sure it wouldn’t have any suspicious dirt or stains on it.
The match was all the way down to my fingertips by now, so I had to blow it out. It had told me all it could. It didn’t tell me who the dead old man was, or why that Petersen fellow had killed him. Or what he was after that made him come back again like that. I crept up the brick cellar steps in the dark, feeling like I could never again be as scared as I had been when I first felt that other hand under mine. I was wrong, wait’ll you hear.
I found my way back to the front door without much trouble. The real front door, this time. Then I remembered the two letters I’d seen him crumple and throw away. They might tell me who the dead man was. I had to light one of the two matches I had left to look for them, but the door had no glass in it, just a crack under it, and Petersen must be all the way back in town by now, so I figured it was safe enough if I didn’t keep it lit too long.
I found them right away, and just held the match long enough to smooth them out and read who they were sent to. The dead old man was Thomas Gregory, and that road out there must still be called Decatur Street even this far out, because they said: 1017 Decatur Street. They were just ads. One wanted to know if he wanted to buy a car, the other one wanted to know if he wanted to buy a set of books.