Deadline at Dawn

Then he stopped, and his face colored up a little. He was ashamed of it now, she could see, of what he’d done. He was crime himself, at least he had been as far as this particular safe was concerned. He was ashamed at the recollection of his own former act, his instincts were against it. That was all to the good; that was the way the boy next door should feel about having done a thing like that.

He hooked forward a three-legged enamelled bath-stool with the curve of his foot and they rested the heavy box on that and opened it up to examine its contents.

The money was right there on top, the money that he’d just restored. They cast that aside, went burrowing through the shoals of papers. Yellow, incredibly old, most of them older than he and she were themselves.

“Here’s a will — d’you think that could have anything to do with it?”

“I hope not — if it does that’s not the kind of thing we could work out in time.”

He went ahead dredging, while she stopped to read snatches here and there. “It’s the will of the father. He was made executor—” She flicked her head toward the outside room. “Isn’t that his name, Stephen?” Then dipping into it a little further, “I don’t think this had anything to do with it. Everything’s left to the wife, Harriet; the children don’t get it until her death. And she’s not the one who’s been murdered, the son has.” She repleated it, flung it aside.

“That’s not the motive we’re working on now, anyway. It’s robbery.”

“You said there was some jewelry in it. Where is it, I don’t see it?” For a moment her hopes were raised.

“That’s in a second compartment, behind this first one. The lid bends back in sections, I’ll show you. It’s not very valuable, anyway. I mean, it is valuable, in a way, but it’s not diamonds or anything like that.”

He laid bare the second compartment. They took up a number of old-fashioned plush boxes, of various shapes, all faded alike now to a dingy gray-tan. A rope of pearls. A necklace of topazes. An old-fashioned brooch of amethysts.

“These pearls must be worth a couple thousand.”

“Everything’s still there that was there the first time,” he told her. “I saw all these things. Nothing’s been taken out, since I—”

Again he stopped, and though he didn’t flush this time, he dropped his eyes for a minute.

She wasn’t pleased; their hopes, in this, were gauged to work in reverse. “Then it wasn’t robbery,” she said soberly. “It’s going to be something harder than that for us to—”

They started putting everything hastily back again. The money went in last of all. He gave it a look of hatred, this time. She knew. She didn’t blame him.

They closed the box up, and he hoisted it and shovelled it back inside the wall-rent. He didn’t bother trying to cover it over with the shower-curtain any more. She knew what he was thinking about that too. With a dead man inside lying in full view, what good was it trying to cover up this lesser trace of another, different guilt in here? No use trying to keep them separate any more. One would simply swamp the other as soon as it was found out.

“Well, that’s out,” he said discouragedly.

They went inside again. He killed the lights behind them, in the place where they’d been.

They stopped and gave one another a helpless look. What was there to do now?

“There are other motives, just as simple,” she said. “Only more personal, maybe, that’s all. Hate, and love— The next thing we’ll have to do is—”

He knew what she meant. He walked resolutely over beside the body, dropped down by it once more.

“You haven’t yet — have you?” she asked.

“No I just lit a match, after I fell over him, and crawled back and touched him on the forehead to see, but that was all.”

She conquered her repulsion, came over beside him, dropped down in turn. As close as he was, every bit. “Well, then we’ll have to empty them out now,” she said. “I’ll help you.”

“You don’t have to reach in. I’ll take the things out. You can look them over as I hand them to you.”

They smiled at one another bleakly, to pretend they didn’t dislike what they were going to have to do.

“I’ll start up here,” he said. “That’s the highest-up pocket on anyone’s suit.”

The breast-pocket. There was nothing in it but a fine linen handkerchief, pleated up into a sort of fan-shape, so that a little of the top edge would show above the pocket-mouth.

She opened it, then said: “Look, the bullet went through this. The way it was folded, it just made one little hole, down near the bottom. Then when you open it up, it makes three separate ones, a sort of design. Like when you cut papers, and make them into lace-patterns.” They didn’t smile about it; it was too gruesome a parody.

“That’s all for in there. Now the one on the left side, on the outside. He’s on it a little, the coat’s caught under him.” He had to raise the figure a little, pull the coat out, give it more slack.

Then when he had—

“It’s empty, there’s nothing in it, not a scrap.” He pulled the black satin lining out after him, left it reversed to show her.

“Now the right-hand one.”