Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 26, No. 4. Whole No. 143, October 1955

In the car everyone began to laugh about it. It wasn’t really funny, his mother said, because he could have been killed. Charlie laughed too, sitting in the back seat looking at Jill’s light blonde hair. When she waved goodbye to them in front of the Excelsior apartment house, Charlie watched her walk up the path until she was out of sight. Then he sat forward, resting his chin on the back of the seat where his parents sat, and he kept thinking about her...

It was near midnight. He had waited for the house to be still, for the door to his parents room to close. Quickly and quietly he went down the hall, down the steps to the lobby, and out into the street. The late night air was colder now and he wished he had brought his topcoat, instead of wearing just his suit. His only suit — blue serge with a good press.

The streets were empty and the stores along Fort Washington Avenue were dark. When he came to Cabrini Boulevard, he did not turn down the back road. He walked directly to the entrance of the Excelsior. A man with a skinny dog on a leash held the door open for Charlie, and inside he took the elevator to the fourth floor.

When she answered the door, he said, “Hello, Jill.”

She stood in a white terry-cloth robe, her long hair pulled behind her ears and held with a red ribbon. Her eyes were wide, her lips half parted, and she looked at him with disbelief.

“Aren’t you going to ask me in?” he said.

She blocked the entrance. “Charlie Wright, go home. Now!”

“Jill,” he said, “Listen, Jill—”

“Charlie, what on earth? Don’t you realize that I was trying to be a good sport tonight? I was trying to help you, Charlie, don’t you realize that?”

“Why?” he said. “Why were you helping me?” He made his lips grin playfully, but he was less sure now.

“You poor kid. Please, Charlie, go home! Don’t you see — I was trying to help you because I knew you had a crush on me. All those post cards, and the ridiculous way you acted in my classes last year — and your compositions. Charlie, please! Don’t make me do anything mean.”

He didn’t know what to do. He felt foolish standing before her in his best suit with his new shirt and striped tie, and the gold tie-clip his father had given him for his birthday. He said, “Crush?” and his voice did not sound like his own.

“Charlie, leave right now. I mean it.” Her eyes were round and as he looked at her intently, he suddenly became aware of something terrible. She was afraid of him. She was genuinely afraid of his presence there.

He said, “Look, I won’t hurt you. I only want to — I want, I—” He began to stutter. He felt confused. He wanted to make it all right, to make whatever he was doing all right. She wasn’t in love with him. He wanted to make that all right too, and it was. It was, because he didn’t love her either any more. In those slow seconds he experienced a horrible awakening. All he wanted to do was go home, to get some sleep, to wake up and find the gang tomorrow. Play ball. Go up to the drug store. Things like that. He wasn’t Charlie Wright standing before the door of his English teacher’s apartment. That was crazy.

“Go on, now!” She raised her voice and the sound startled him. Now that he knew, he did not want anything more to happen to spoil it. He reached out without being conscious of what he was doing — only to stop the frantic words she was saying to him, to stop them and tell her he was sorry, that he was a fool, and was going.

He clamped his hand across her mouth. Instantly, she screamed. She screamed the way he had when they had shot at him on the fire escape.

He said, “Listen... I—” But it was too late. The man from the next apartment was running toward Charlie. Charlie stood still. Miss Jill Lattimore was crying, and the man had Charlie by the shoulder.

“Miss Lattimore,” he tried to say again, but she was sobbing her words hysterically now. She was telling the man that Charlie was a foolish kid with a crush on her, that she couldn’t control him, that this time he had gone too far... Charlie knew that in a matter of minutes the police would be on their way, the phone would ring out in the darkness of his parents’ bedroom, and now he was on his own — really on his own.

The Six China Figures by Agatha Christie