I blew the match out and stuck them up under the lining of my cap. I wanted to take them home and show them to my father, so he’d believe me when I told him I’d found someone murdered way out here. Otherwise he was liable to think I was just making it up.
I found out I couldn’t get the door open after all, even from the inside. He’d locked it with Gregory’s key and taken that with him. I found another door at the back, but that turned out to be even worse, it had a padlock on it. This Gregory must have been scared of people, or else kind of a crazy hermit, to live all locked up like that, with the windows nailed down and everything. I’d have to go all the way upstairs, climb out, catwalk over that dangerously wobbly porch, and skin down to the ground again.
I’d gotten back about as far as where the stairs started up, and I’d just put my foot on the bottom one, when I heard a scrunch outside. Then someone stepped on the porch! There was a slithering sound by the door, and a minute later a little whistle went tweet! I nearly jumped out of my skin. I don’t know which of the three scared me most, I think it was that whispering sound under the door. The only reason I stayed where I was and didn’t make a break up the stairs was, I could hear steps going away again outside.
I tiptoed to one of the front windows and rubbed a clean spot in the dust and squinted through it. I could see a man walking away from the house back toward the road again. He climbed on a bicycle and rode off. It was only a special delivery mailman.
I waited until he’d rode from sight, then I groped my way back toward the door, and I could see something white sticking through under it, even in the dark. I got down and pinched it between my thumb and finger, but it wouldn’t come through, it seemed to have gotten caught. He hadn’t shoved it all the way in, and first I thought maybe it was too thick or had gotten snagged on a splinter.
I opened my fingers for a minute to get a tighter grip, and right while I was looking at it, it started getting smaller and smaller, like it was slipping out the other way. I couldn’t understand what was making it do that, there was no tilt to the sill. When there was only about an inch of it left, I grabbed at it quick and gave it a tug that brought all of it in again.
Then all of a sudden I let go of it, and stayed there like I was, without moving and with my heart starting to pound like anything. Without hearing a sound, something had told me all at once that there was someone out there on the other side of that door! I was afraid to touch the letter now, but the damage had already been done. That jerk I’d given it was enough to tell him there was someone in here.
Plenty scared, I picked my way back to the window again, as carefully as if I was walking on eggs, to try and see if I could get a side-look at the porch through it. Just as I got to it, one of those things like you see in the movies happened, only this time it wasn’t funny. My face came right up against somebody else’s. He was trying to look in, while I was trying to look out. Our two faces were right smack up against each other, with just a thin sheet of glass between.
We both jumped together, and he straightened up. He’d been bending down low to look in. Mine stayed down low where it was, and he could tell I was a kid. It was Petersen, I could recognize him even in the faint light out there by the shape of his hat and his pitcher-ears. He must have been waiting around near-by, and had seen the mailman’s bike.
We both whisked from the window fast. He jumped for the door and started to stab a key at it. I jumped for the stairs and the only way out there was. Before I could get to them, I went headfirst over an empty packing case. Then I was on them and flashing up them. Just as I cleared the last one, I heard the door swing in below. I might be able to beat him out of the house through the window upstairs, but I didn’t give much for my chances of beating him down the road in a straight run. My only hope was to be able to get into those weeds out there ahead of him and then lose myself, and I didn’t know how I was going to do it with him right behind me.
I got to the upstairs window just as he got to the bottom step of the stairs. I didn’t wait to look, but I think he’d stopped to strike a light so that he could make better time. I straddled the windowsill in a big hurry, tearing my pants on a nail as I did so. A minute later something much worse happened. Just as I got one foot down on the wooden shed over the porch, and was bringing the other one through the window after me, the two ends went up higher, the middle sank lower, and then the whole business slid to the ground between the two posts that had held it up. Luckily I was still holding onto the window frame with both arms. I pulled myself back just in time and got my leg up on the sill again.
If there’d been a clear space underneath, I would have chanced it and jumped from where I was, although it was a pretty high jump for a kid my size, but the way those jagged ends of splintered wood were sticking up all over, I knew one of them would stab through me sure as anything if I tried it. He’d run back to the door for a minute — I guess at first he thought the whole house was coming down on him — and when he saw that it was just the porch shed, he stuck his head out and around and looked up at me where I was, stranded up there on the window frame.
All he said was, “All right, kid, I’ve got you now,” but he said it in such a calm, quiet way that it scared you more than if he’d cursed.
He went in and started up the stairs again. I ran all around the three sides of the room, looking for a way out, and on the third side I finally found a narrow brick fireplace. I jumped in through that and tried to climb up on the inside. I fell back again to the bottom just as he came into the room. He headed straight over to the fireplace and bent down, and his arm reached in for me and swept back and forth. It missed me the first time, but the second time it got me. There was nothing I could hang onto in there to keep from being pulled out. I came out kicking, and he straightened up and held me by the throat, out where I couldn’t reach him with my feet.
He let me swing at his arm with both my fists until I got tired, and then he said in that same quiet, deadly way, “What’re you doing around here, son?” Then he shook me a couple of times to bring it out faster.
“Just playin’,” I said.
“Don’t you think it’s a funny place and a funny time of night for a kid your age to be playing?”
What was the use of answering that?
He said, “I’ve seen you before, son. I saw you standing on the street looking up at my window last night. You seem to be crossing my path a lot lately. What’s the idea?” He shook me till my teeth darn near came out, then he asked me a second time, real slow: “What’s the idear?” His actions were red-hot, his voice was ice-cold.
“Nothin’,” I drooled. My head lolled all around on my shoulders, dizzy from the shaking.
“I think there is. Who’s your father?”
“Frank Case.”
“Who’s Frank Case?”
I knew my only chance was not to tell him, I knew if I told him then he’d never let me get out of here alive. But I couldn’t help telling him, it made me glad to tell him, proud to tell him; I didn’t want any mercy from him. “The best damn dick in town!” I spit out at him.
“That’s your finish,” he said. “So you’re a cop’s son. Well, a cop’s son is just a future cop. Squash them while they’re little. Did your father teach you how to go out bravely, kid?”
Gee, I hated him! My own voice got nearly as husky as if it was changing already, and it wasn’t yet. “My father don’t have to teach me that. Just being his kid shows it to me.”