A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

He looked at me as though I was crazy, but he went ahead and did it. Then he took a nice clean piece of waxpaper and started wrapping it up.

“No, not that,” I told him. “Find a piece with a lot of blood on it, all smeary, and wrap it in that. Then put a clean piece around the outside of it.”

I took it back with me in my pocket, and when I got up to my room I wrote “Dr. Avalon” in pencil on the outside of it. Then I put it down outside his door, as if a delivery boy had left it there, and went back into my room and waited.

Now I was going to know for sure. If he had nothing on his conscience and came home and found that there, he wouldn’t think anything of it — he’d think it was either a practical joke or that somebody else’s order had been left at his door by mistake. But if he had a guilty conscience this was going to catch him off his guard and make him give himself away; he wouldn’t be able to help it. It wouldn’t have been human not to — even if it was only for a minute or two. And if there was anyone else in on it with him — and I had a hunch there was — the first thing he’d think of would be to turn to them for help and advice in his panic and terror. So I waited, stretched out on my bed, with the revolver in my pocket and my head close to the wall apparatus.

He came in around six. I heard his door open and then close again, and I jumped off the bed and took a peek through my own door. The package was gone, he’d taken it in with him. I went back and listened in. I could hear the paper crackling while he unwrapped it as clearly as if it had been in my own room. Then there was a gasp — the sound a man suffering from asthma makes trying to get his breath back. Then, plop! He had dropped it in his fright. The wiring was working without a hitch; I wasn’t missing a thing.

After that I heard the clink of a glass. He was pouring himself a drink. It clinked again right after that, and then I heard him give sort of a moan. That was a dead giveaway; a man doesn’t take two drinks to keep his courage up just because the butcher has left the wrong order at his door. He’d done that to my brother all right, he and nobody else. More rage and hate went through me than I ever thought I had in me. I could feel my lower jaw quivering as if I was a big dog getting ready to take a bite out of somebody. I had to hang on to the sides of the bed to stay where I was a little longer.

Then I heard his voice for the first time. The wiring played it up louder than it really was, like a projection machine. It sounded all hollow and choked. He was asking for a number at the phone. Regency, four-two-eight-one. I whipped a pencil out and scrawled it on my wall.

“Hello,” he said huskily. “This is Avalon. Can you hear me? I don’t want to talk very loud.” His voice dropped to a mumble, but the wiring didn’t let me down, it came in at ordinary conversational pitch and I could still follow it. “Somebody’s on to us, and we better take a powder out while we still have the chance. I thought I’d let you know, that’s all.” Then he said, “No, no, no, not that at all. If that’s all it was I could get around that with one hand tied behind my back. It’s that other thing. You know, the night three of us went for an airing — and two of us came back. Don’t ask me how I know! I can’t tell you over this phone, there’s someone at the switchboard downstairs. You hang up,” he said, “and stand by. I’ll call you right back. I’ll use the direct wire from the cigar store downstairs, just to be on the safe side.”

He hung up and I heard him come out and go down the hallway past my door. He sounded in a hurry.

I didn’t waste any time. I grabbed my own phone and got Headquarters. “Put Kane on quick, or that other guy working with him. Never mind, you’ll do, whoever you are! It’s on the Mason case and it’s only good for five minutes, it’s got to be worked fast. Trace Regency four-two-eight-one and get whoever you find at the other end; he’s on the line right now getting a call. Get him first and then look up the cases afterwards if you have to. It opened May fifteenth. Never mind who I am or where I am; I’m too busy, got no time to tell you now.” I hung up, opened the door, and went out into the hall.

I was going to wait for him outside his own door and corner him when he came back, but when I looked I saw that he’d forgotten to close it in his hurry. It stood open on a crack. So I pushed it open and went in, hoping I might find something in the way of evidence to lay my hands on before he had a chance to do away with it. I closed the door after me, so that he wouldn’t notice anything from the other end of the hall and be able to turn back in time.