Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 104, No. 4, August 22, 1936

There was another danger-point while it dropped over my head and blinded me; I held my breath, but I was still alive when it settled further down around my figure.

He was still holding the book in his hand, open at the page where those names were. Then, in the mirror, I saw him take a pencil out of his inner pocket. It was red-barreled, so something told me the lead must be red too. He poised it, drew a swift line across something on that open page, and then he looked at me heavy-lidded, and put it away.

That had been my death-sentence, just then. Mine had been the only name of the seven without a line through it. This meant, tonight! Tonight, not another day to live! My knees dipped a little, but I caught the edge of the bureau with the heel of my hand and stayed upright against it — a white face, all eyes, staring into a mirror.

He purred, “Gee, Betty, you’ve got the loveliest little neck — so soft and white!” and his eyes hardly seemed to be open any more as he took a step toward me.

I was afraid to turn and afraid not to. I got the upper drawer open in front of me, dipped into it and out again, and as I swiftly pivoted to get his hot breath in my face, I was fumbling at my nails, prodding them with a long steel file. Using it the wrong way, point turned toward him. My bent hand came up until it was at face-level.

He blinked and grimaced and went back a little, while the file slowly swept its arc at him, like the needle of a compass. I said: “I’m starved, Frank, aren’t you? Let me go in and see what I can get for you, outside of that steak.” And I backed out into the dining room, smiling, doing my nails—

I put something on the table, I don’t know what, and we sat down opposite each other. We neither of us knew what we were eating, he wanted to kill, and I wanted to go on living. I could already feel myself beginning to crack up here and there, especially around the face, where I was having to smile so much.

I wondered, “Does it hurt much when you’re strangled to death?” Ritchie must have been the means of causing that to be done to many men — no, they used a chair in our state. I kept grinding pineapple-cubes with my teeth, and they wouldn’t go down at all.

I had put the file down in front of me. He snatched at it suddenly, when I least expected it, with a napkin covering his hand, and threw it over into a corner. “A thing like that doesn’t belong at the table!” he shouted at me. “It’s disgusting!” Then he did the same with my knife and fork, and his own. “We only need spoons!” he growled.

I thought, “Here it comes. This is it now!” There was a radio in the room, in back of where I was sitting. I groped for it with one hand, without getting out of my chair, and heard the dial snap.

A voice from the outside world broke the lethal silence.

I held up my finger commandingly. “Shh!” I said, “I want to get this!” It worked once, I knew it wouldn’t work a second time. The peremptoriness of my voice, the unexpectedness of it, buffaloed him for a minute. Thumping jazz swirled around us; I had it too loud, that must have irritated him, cut its efficacy short.

“Turn it off!” he barked suddenly.

“What for?” I asked innocently.

Then it came. The last link with self-control, the last inhibition, snapped. “Because I’m going to kill you!”

“I haven’t done anything to you—!” I moaned. But he was already on his feet, coming around the table toward me. He shot his cuffs back!

There was only this left now: the table had to stay between us as long as it could. My chair went over and I slipped around to his side. It was he, when he got around there, who kicked his own chair out of the way. Then he dragged the cloth off the table, sent everything crashing to the floor, and tried to turn it over and sweep it aside, but God was good to me, it was fastened immovably to the floor. I daren’t leave the table, to get over in the corner to where he’d thrown the file and knives; he would have overtaken me instantly. My life was hanging on the four corners of that table, I was defter getting around them than he.

Suddenly he himself left the table. He went over to the door, switched the key from outside in, locked it, and put it in his pocket. Then he did that to the other door, leading in to a bathroom. The kitchen door was a swinging-door, but there was no outlet from there. “I’ll get you now!” he promised grimly.

He didn’t say anything more after that. I was nearly at the exhaustion-point already, ready to drop, stood there panting, waiting to see which side of the table he’d come around this time. He didn’t come around either side. He gave a sudden jump up on top of it with both feet, and before I had half started away, leaped down on the other side, right on top of me. He had me. My legs tried to scamper abortively, my body stayed there in his grasp.

I didn’t struggle. I said, “All right, kill me, Frank. But I’m so thirsty from all this chasing. Just let me have a drink of water first, and then you can kill me.”