Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 5, May 1957

He moved across the living room to the bamboo screen they’d set up for Shirly, so she’d have some sort of privacy. Privacy. Wow, that was a laugh!

He came around the edge of the screen.

She was asleep. Lying face up on the studio couch, the moonlight very dim here. The sheet was pulled up just across her breasts. Her thick hair was fanned out around her head on the pillow, and the lush outline of her body showed in shadow under the sheet.

He did not call to her, did not make a sound.

Slowly, gently, he lifted the sheet. With the same intricate care he had used in leaving his wife’s bed, he now slid under the sheet and slowly moved toward the girl. He arranged the sheet over him, and gently eased toward her, whispering her name, “Shirly — baby, baby — here I am, baby.”

He put his arms around her, kissing her mouth, and that was when he felt the wetness, when he thought that she must be perspiring heavily.

The living room lights suddenly blazed with a crazy brilliance.

The bamboo screen crashed to the floor.

He leaped up, kneeling on the bed, the sheet falling away. It was then he saw the blood. He was covered with it.

“Well, Nick?”

Grace stood there in her shorty nightgown, smiling gently at him. Then she didn’t smile. She just stood there.

“She’s dead!” he shouted. He sprang from the bed in a kind of blind, savage horror, covered with blood from chest to knee. The girl lay in a bath of blood. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak now.

“Were you checking again to see if my sister was sleeping okay — eh, Nicky?”

Grace had never called him Nicky.

Grace was pointing to the front screen door. The main door was open. The screen door was slashed, screen curling to the floor.

“You’d better call the police,” she said. Her voice was very quiet. “A prowler apparently broke in and murdered my sister. It’s a terrible thing, isn’t it? Why, look,” she said, pointing to the floor, “there’s the knife he must’ve used.”

A bloody carving knife lay on the rug.

“All right,” Grace said. “Maybe it’s better if I call. You’d better take a quick shower. They might think things, huh?”

“You,” he said. “You did it!”

She sighed. “Of course, darling. I love you. I knew what was going on with that little tramp. It was just a matter of time. I spoke to Shirl, but she refused to leave. Said she’d take you with her.” She moved toward the phone. “Hurry up,” she said. “Take your shower, Nicky.”

Bet I Don’t Die by Arnold English

Know what it’s like waiting for the chair — the electric chair?

* * *

Joslin paced the small cell. He stopped briefly to run his palm along the bars. The motion distracted him, sometimes.

Grimly he asked, “Want to make that bet, Stuart?”

From the next cell, Stuart asked softly, “Why?”

“To have something to think about.” Joslin looked down at his shoes without laces and back at the loathsome sink and bedpan as well as the narrow cot. “I’m trying it anyhow, you know.”

“It can’t be done,” Stuart said.

“Make it a bet.”

Somebody further down the cell block asked, “Two nights left, huh, Joss?”

“Two it is,” Joslin said.

“Who knows?” Stuart said. “The governor might wait till the last minute before coming through with a reprieve.”

Joslin kicked at the stone floor and watched dust rise. “That’s what Smitty was saying till they pushed him west.”

He looked down to his left, in the direction toward which Smitty had gone, toward a small door.

“We sat here,” he added, “and watched the lights flicker.”

From further down, Will Arbenz said, “What you’ve been talkin’ about is crazy. Nobody’d let you. It’s against all the rules to let you.”

Somebody laughed. The sound was taken up by the others. They laughed heavily, as they did whether an event was funny or only mildly amusing.

It was evening. In the other wings of the prison, the men would be finishing dinner and planning ahead. Maybe Joslin’s name figured in some of the hushed conversations.

Will Arbenz said huskily, “The chances of a last-minute reprieve are pretty small. If you had a chance, you’d know it. We all have to get used to what’s going to happen.”

Arbenz was due to go in three months. His gravelly voice and exact knowledge of procedure made Joslin’s nerve-ends crawl.

“We can make it a worthwhile bet, Stu,” Joslin said, a little nervously. “If I lose, you get my things.”

Stuart grunted. “For two weeks,” he said dismally.

“Look what you’d be getting.” Joslin grinned, tapped the wall between them for emphasis. “My address book, for instance. It’s full of girl’s names.”

“I can sure use it!” Stuart gave that particularly hearty death-cell laugh. “What else?”

“Red tie and blue suit. We’re about the same size.”

A guard passed on his way to light a cigarette for one of the prisoners. Joslin watched the guard, counted two hundred footsteps from the cell to the station down at the other end.

“Any money in this deal?” Stuart grunted. “Not that I need it, but my missus can use it.”