Black Mask (Vol. 7, No. 5 — April 1950), British Edition

Awakened from sound sleep by the explosive bark of a gun, I looked for Lyria. The covers were thrown back — she was gone! The bedroom door stood wide open. I staggered out of bed, stumbling around in my pajamas. There was an acrid odor in the air; gunpowder. It was just getting daylight. Bits of the windowpane lay on the Persian rug; long, glittering splinters of sharp glass. Our bedroom is on the second floor of the house. The outside wall is of figured stone, easy to climb.

Lyria screamed! It came from somewhere downstairs, her voice muffled, rising thinly up the stair-well. Footfalls, frantic, fearful, came up the stairs and I whirled, ran to the vanity and picked up a bronze candleholder. The mirror tossed out my reflection, lips drawn back, new lines fanning around my blue eyes. I was staring at my own conscience! Yesterday afternoon I had flung the bank-loot in my safe downstairs, telling myself: Just overnight. Tomorrow you can return it. Tomorrow! And this was tomorrow — with my wife’s screams tearing me wide open!

I lunged into the hall.

Lyria ran toward me, stumbling, sobbing — threw herself into my arms. Her negligee was torn, silvery blonde hair whipping almost to her waist.

“What is it?” I choked.

“A man—” she gulped, fighting to get her breath. “I couldn’t see— He’s gone! I heard a noise, got up and went downstairs. He must have been up here! I thought he’d shot you! He came leaping downstairs. He had something over his face — something black — he grabbed me, threw me to one side and ran out the front door—”

With one hand I tried to jerk her arms from around my neck, gripping the candleholder in the other. “He must have put a bullet through the bedroom window. Let go, Lyria!”

“No, Monty! Stay here! Don’t go down—” Strong and supple, she wrestled me into the bedroom. “Let him go. He had a gun! What are you mixed up in? Tell me, Monty. I saw that money in the safe last night when I put my pearls away!”

I stared down into her eyes, breathing heavily. “Better get dressed.”

She pulled away from me. Her cheeks were ashen. “What is it, Monty? What?”

“I don’t know — for sure. But I can guess. Lyria, I’m in trouble up to my neck! He’s after me all right!”

“To kill you?” she whispered.

I looked at her. Until yesterday I would have said I had no enemies — unless I’d inherited some I didn’t know about since my manufacturing business began tottering three years before. This had been a riotous year, in which I’d married Lyria, built this fine house on the outskirts of Jacksonville, Florida, and decided only last week to slow down a bit.

My forty-two years couldn’t stand the strain of dumping my personal funds into the plant with one hand, and hurling luxuries at Lyria with the other. But yesterday—? Yes, I had an enemy — even if I didn’t know what he looked like exactly. Maybe more than one?

I grabbed up my robe, stuck my feet into straw slippers and moved toward the door, gripping the candleholder.

“Wait,” she panted. “I’m coming too.”

“You stay here!”

I slammed the door after me and plunged down the wide stairway to the floor below. Where were the servants? Then I remembered Lyria had taken them all to task yesterday about something or other — fired the lot of them. The front door was open.

My hand shook as I pulled it wider and stepped outside; padded toward the corner of the house, rounding it cautiously. In the gray half-light of dawn, nothing stirred. The grass beneath our bedroom window was spongy, wet with dew. There was lots of glass, almost as if the entire windowpane had fallen. It was impossible to detect footprints. Maybe he came this way; maybe not. I found a baseball bat. What connection that had I don’t know. I threw it back under the honeysuckle bush. A car was passing the line of palms hedging the highway and I realized I looked pretty silly clutching my improvised weapon. It was barely 5:30. I had a tennis match at 7:00; was supposed to fly to my plant in Tampa at 8:00. Our place is well out of Jacksonville, really isolated, and once the sound of that solitary car dwindled up the road, the silence seemed closing in...

As we finished dressing, Lyria kept eyeing me, vigorously brushing that shoulder-length cloud of silver, before the mirror. “We can’t just — just ignore a thing like this!”

“It wouldn’t do any good to call the police.”

“You mean you’re afraid too!”

Color was washing back into her face. Only twenty-six, she is attractive, the sleekness of that figure accentuated by her riotous hair, and eyes like a sleepy kitten’s eyes — sea green — wide and guileless. But those eyes were frightened now; filled with questions. “Someone may be only warning you, Monty — the first time. Is it — stolen money?”

“Funny,” I said thoughtfully. “In a way I’m a thief — simply by an act of omission. Simply because I didn’t drive right back to the bank and return it.”

She lowered the brush, turning slowly.