Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense (17 page)

Shirley Taggert collected herself enough to join in the conversation. “He got out of that room somehow, and then came and jumped later,” she said. “That's how it must have been.”

But McLove shook his head. “I hate to throw cold water on logical explanations, but that's how it
couldn't
have been. Remember, the windows in this building can't be opened. No other window has been broken, and the one on this floor is still covered by cardboard.”

“The roof!” Knox suggested.

“No. There still aren't any footprints on the roof. We checked.”

“Didn't anybody see him falling?”

“Apparently not till just before he hit.”

“The thing's impossible,” Knox said.

“No.”

They were all looking at McLove. “Then what happened?” Greene asked.

“I don't know what happened, except for one thing. Billy Calm didn't hang in space for four hours. He didn't fall off the roof, or out of any other window, which means he could only have fallen from the window in the directors' room.”

“But the cardboard …”

“Somebody replaced it afterwards. And that means …”

“It means Billy was murdered,” Knox breathed. “It means he didn't commit suicide.”

McLove nodded. “He was murdered, and by somebody on this floor. Probably by somebody in this room.” He glanced around.

N
IGHT SETTLED
cautiously over the city, with a scarlet sunset to the west that clung inordinately long to its reign over the skies. The police had returned, and the questioning went on, concurrently with long distance calls to Pittsburgh and five other cities where Jupiter had mills. There was confusion, somehow more so with the coming of darkness to the outer world. Secretaries and workers from the other floors gradually drifted home, but on twenty-one life went on.

“All right,” Knox breathed finally, as it was nearing eight o'clock. “We'll call a director's meeting for Monday morning, to elect a new president. That should give the market time to settle down and let us know just how bad things really are. At the same time we'll issue a statement about the proposed merger. I gather we're in agreement that it's a dead issue for the time being.”

Sam Hamilton nodded, and Jason Greene reluctantly shrugged his assent. Shirley Taggert looked up from her pad. “What about old Israel Black? With Mr. Calm dead, he'll be back in the picture.”

Jason Greene shrugged. “Let him come. We can keep him in line. I never thought the old guy was so bad anyway, not really.”

It went on like this, the talk, the bickering, the occasional flare of temper, until nearly midnight. Finally, McLove felt he could excuse himself and head for home. In the outer office, Margaret was straightening her desk, and he was surprised to realize that she was still around. He hadn't seen her in the past few hours.

“I thought you went home,” he said.

“They might have needed me.”

“They'll be going all night at this rate. How about a drink?”

“I should get home.”

“All right. Let me take you, then. The subways aren't safe at this hour.”

She turned her face up to smile at him. “Thanks, McLove. I can use someone like you tonight.”

They went down together in the elevator and out into a night turned decidedly coolish. He skipped the subway and hailed a cab. Settled on the red leather seat, he asked, “Do you want to tell me about it, Margaret?”

He couldn't see her face in the dark, but after a moment she asked, “Tell you what?”

“What really happened. I've got part of it doped out already, so you might as well tell me the whole thing.”

“I don't know what you mean, McLove. Really,” she protested.

“All right,” he said, and was silent for twenty blocks. Then, as they stopped for a traffic light, he added, “This is murder, you know. This isn't a kid's game or a simple love affair.”

“There are some things you can't talk over with anyone. I'm sorry. Here's my place. You can drop me at the corner.”

He got out with her and paid the cab driver. “I think I'd like to come up,” he said quietly.

“I'm sorry, McLove. I'm awfully tired.”

“Want me to wait for him down here?”

She sighed and led the way inside, keeping silent until they were in the little three-room apartment he'd visited only once before. Then she shrugged off her raincoat and asked, “How much do you know?”

“I know he'll come here tonight, of all nights.”

“What was it? What told you?”

“A lot of things. The elevator, for one.”

She sat down. “What about the elevator?”

“Right after Billy Calm's supposed arrival, and suicide, I ran to his private elevator. It wasn't on twenty-one. It had to come up from below. He never rode any other elevator. When I finally remembered it, I realized he hadn't come up on that one, or it would still have been there.”

Margaret sat frozen in the chair, her head cocked a little to one side as if listening. “What does it matter to you? You told me just this noon that none of them meant anything to you.”

“They didn't, they don't. But I guess you do, Margaret. I can see what he's doing to you, and I've got to stop it before you get in too deep.”

“I'm in about as deep as I can ever be, right now.”

“Maybe not.”

“You said you believed me. You told them all that I couldn't have been acting when I screamed out his name.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, thinking that he'd heard something in the hallway. Then he said, “I did believe you. But then after the elevator bit, I realized that you never called Calm by his first name. It was always Mr. Calm, not Billy, and it would have been the same even in a moment of panic. Because he was still the president of the company. The elevator and the name—I put them together, and I knew it wasn't Billy Calm who had walked into that directors' room.”

There was a noise at the door, the sound of a familiar key turning in the lock. “No,” she whispered, almost to herself. “No, no, no …”

“And that should be our murderer now,” McLove said, leaping to his feet.

“Billy!” she screamed. “Billy run! It's a trap!”

But McLove was already to the door, yanking it open, staring into the startled, frightened face of W. T. Knox.

S
OMETIMES IT ENDS
with a flourish, and sometimes only with the dull thud of a collapsing dream. For Knox, the whole thing had been only an extension of some sixteen hours in his life span. The fantastic plot, which had been set in motion by his attempt at suicide that morning at the Jupiter Steel building, came to an end when he succeeded in leaping to his death from the bathroom window of Margaret's apartment, while they sat waiting for the police to come.

The following morning, with only two hours' sleep behind him, McLove found himself facing Greene and Hamilton and Shirley Taggert once more, telling them the story of how it had been. There was an empty chair in the office, too, and he wondered vaguely whether it had been meant for Knox or Margaret.

“He was just a poor guy at the end of his rope,” McLove told them. “He was deeply involved in an affair with Margaret Mason, and he'd sunk all his money into a desperate gamble that the merger wouldn't go through. He sold a lot of Jupiter stock short, figuring that when the merger talks collapsed, the price would fall sharply. Only Billy Calm called from his plane yesterday morning and said the merger was on. Knox thought about it for an hour or so and did some figuring. When he realized he'd be wiped out, he went into the directors' room to commit suicide.”

“Why?” Shirley Taggert interrupted. “Why couldn't he jump out his own window?”

“Because there's a setback two stories down on his side. He couldn't have cleared it. He wanted a smooth drop to the sidewalk. Billy Calm could hardly have taken a running jump through the window. It was far off the floor even for a tall man, and Billy was short. And remember the slivers of glass at the bottom of the pane? When I remembered them, and remembered the height of the bottom sill from the floor, I knew that no one—especially a short man—could have gone through that window without knocking them out. No, Knox passed Margaret's desk, muttered some sort of farewell, and entered the room just as I came out of Calm's office. He smashed the window with a chair so he wouldn't have to try a dive through the thick glass, head first. And then he got ready to jump.”

“Why didn't he?”

“Because he heard Margaret shout his name from the outer office. And with the shouted word
Billy
, a sudden plan came to him in that split second. He recrossed the small office quickly, and stood behind the door as we entered, knowing that I would think it was Billy Calm who had jumped. As soon as we were in the room, he simply stepped out and stood there. I thought he had arrived with the rest of you, and you, of course, thought he had entered the room with Margaret and me. I never gave it a second thought, because I was looking for Calm. But Margaret fainted when she saw he was still alive.”

“But she said it was Billy Calm who entered the office,” Greene protested.

“Not until later. She was starting to deny it, in fact, when she saw Knox and fainted. Remember, he carried her into the next room, and he was alone with her when she came to. He told her his money would be safe if only people thought Calm dead for a few hours. So she went along with her lover; I needn't remind you he was a handsome fellow, even though he was married. She went along with what we all thought happened, not realizing it would lead to murder.”

Sam Hamilton lit a cigar. “The stock did go down.”

“But not enough. And Knox knew Calm's arrival would reactivate the merger and ruin everything. I don't think he planned to kill Calm in the beginning, but as the morning wore on, it became the only way out. He waited in the private elevator when he knew Billy was due to arrive, slugged him, carried his small body to that window while we were all out to lunch, and threw him out, replacing the cardboard afterwards.”

“And the stock went down some more,” Hamilton said.

“That's right.”

“She called him Billy,” Shirley reminded them.

“It was his name. We all called him W. T., but he signed his memo to me
William T. Knox
. I suppose the two of them thought it was a great joke, her calling him Billy when they were together.”

“Where is she now?” someone asked.

“The police are still questioning her. I'm going down there now, to be with her. She's been through a lot.” He thought probably this would be his final day at Jupiter Steel. Somehow
he
was tired of these faces and their questions.

But as he got to his feet, Sam Hamilton asked, “Why wasn't Billy here for the meeting at ten? Where was he for those missing hours? And how did Knox know when he would really arrive?”

“Knox knew because Billy phoned him, as he had earlier in the morning.”

“Phoned him? From where?”

McLove turned to stare out the window, at the clear blue of the morning sky. “From his private plane. Billy Calm was circling the city for nearly three hours. He couldn't land because of the fog.”

The bank was
a small, modernistic building, a branch of a big city bank many miles away. It was built on a recently landscaped field on the outskirts of a sleepy village, facing a turn-off connecting the highway with a new bridge.

Sheriff Banes was much like the village: old, squat, and shabby. Now, as he rushed into the bank, panting, the thin teller raced over to him and screamed, “Uncle Hank, we were robbed! Robbed!” Her face was pale with hysteria, eyes big with fright.

“A h-holdup?” The sheriff's shoulders sagged and his eyes seemed bewildered with shock. He shook himself, patted the teller's trembling shoulder with one hand, loosened the gun in his holster with his other hand. “Emma, you take it easy. Tell me what happened.”

“Oh, Uncle, a—” Emma began to cry.

“Emma, call me Sheriff Banes, this is official business. It's important you get a grip on yourself, tell me exactly what happened.” Walking the weeping teller to a chair, he turned to the only other man in the bank, the manager. “Okay, Tom, what happened? Make it fast, the first minutes after a crime are the most important.”