were trying to scream, but each effort was stifled.
With cold fascination, and with fear too now, the salesman listened, his ear flat against the muffling wall, entranced by the struggle. It sounded now like people were crawling on the floor, a soft prowling punctuated by abortive cries and frequent thuds. And then the sounds stopped. It became utterly silent. He remained at the wall, hungering for another sound, but none came. An eerie, unanswering stillness filled the other room. It came through the wall and gripped him.
He waited for a long while. Then, quietly, he drew away from the wall, feeling the uneasy guilt now of an interloper along with his fear. Backing away, he stared at the wall as though trying to see through it, expecting the scene on the other side to materialize for his benefit. The stark blank wall offered him nothing more than a melancholy emptiness.
He sat down, on the edge of the chair this time, his fingers pinching his underlip, great nervous concern in his face. There was an almost overwhelming desire to mind his own business, the natural human impulse to turn from and ignore trouble. But underlying it was a persistent concern for the woman, a quiet, unappeasable nagging. Had the man merely silenced her with a blow or had he actually murdered her — as it had sounded (and as his aroused imagination kept insisting)?
After five minutes of intense pondering indecision, he got up and went to the wall again and leaned his head hopefully to it — hoping to hear the soft laughter of lovers reunited. But the silence remained. It almost made him angry. Why didn't they start talking to each other again? They were probably sitting there in silent brooding, glaring at each other, with no consideration whatever for his predicament.
The silence was unsatisfactory. He decided he could not ignore what had happened. How would it be for him to wake up in the morning and hear that the woman had been murdered and the murderer had escaped into the night? Already he felt guilt massing. Perhaps something could still be done, if not to save the woman's life at least to apprehend her murderer while the crime was still warm on his hands.
Quietly he sat down and put on his shoes. Stealthily, as though he himself were committing something reprehensible, he opened his door and stepped out into the hall. It was empty. He realized the lateness of the hour. Everyone else was probably asleep, hence he had been the only one to hear the disturbance. He stood and wrung his hands for a moment, gripped by a maddening indecision. Then resolution became assertive and he strode to the self-service elevator and pressed the button. As he waited, he stared at the door of the room in which the conflict had taken place. Even the door itself seemed to suggest something desperate, some silent, uncanny, urgent message.
The elevator arrived with a grunt, the door sliding aside. The little box-like room awaited his entrance. Quickly he stepped inside, pressed the first-floor button and watched the door slide across. He stood nervous and perspiring as — with a slow, funereal sinking, like a coffin being lowered — the elevator descended, the passing floors clicking off in solemn cadence.
The door slid open upon a drowsy, empty lobby, the lobby typical of a second-class hotel, hopelessly dreary in the long night hours. The clerk was behind the desk reading a newspaper. As the salesman walked toward the desk he was wondering what he ought to say, and how, whether or not to be serious about it or to perhaps treat it light-heartedly. He did not want to be an alarmist. Perhaps a disturbance from that room was not an unusual thing and the clerk would laugh and acknowledge it. Perhaps that was why no one else had come down to report it. He began to feel foolish. He would have kept going and have contrived a purchase at the cigarette machine had the clerk not looked up and put down his paper.
'Yes, Mr. Warren?' the clerk asked.
Mr. Warren stopped at the desk, looking down at the clerk. The clerk stood up, smiling a thin, competent, professional smile.
'It seems,' Mr. Warren said, 'it seems there was a rather heated argument in the room adjoining mine.'
'Really?'
Encouraged, Mr. Warren went on. 'Yes. A man and woman were arguing… about something. It was rather a bitter argument. The man struck her… I believe. It sounded like a terrible struggle. And then it stopped. On what note I don't know. But I heard nothing further. I felt that I ought to… report it, just to be safe.'
The clerk was looking at the register.
'Which room?' his bent head asked.
'The one to my right.'
'Let's see. You're 1 °C. That would be 10 E.'
'Yes,' Mr. Warren said, hugely gratified by the clerk's interest. '10 E is the one.'
'Well, there's a Mr. Malcolm registered there. Alone.'
'Alone?'
The clerk looked up at Mr. Warren with pale, unsympathetic eyes. 'Yes,' he said.
'But that's impossible. I mean… I heard…'
'Perhaps you heard someone's radio playing,' the clerk said.
'No, it was not a radio,' Mr. Warren said with indignation. 'I had been dozing and I heard quite distinctly…'
'Dozing?' the clerk said suggestively.
'I was not dreaming. I was fully awake when I heard it.'
'I see,' the clerk said. He turned over his wrist and glanced at his watch. 'Well, it's quite late. I would hate to call anyone now, unless you insisted.'
He had put it squarely up to Mr. Warren, clamped the responsibility upon his shoulders. It was a challenge. He could insist or he could back down and walk back across the lobby with the clerk staring condescendingly at him. He felt his resolution being drained, depleted. It made him angry. He leaned both hands on the desk.
'Yes,' he said, his voice suddenly firm. 'I think we ought to check into it.'
Without a further word the clerk lifted the house phone and dialed a number. There was a rather long wait before the ringing — Mr. Warren could hear it — was broken. A man's voice, terse, annoyed, answered.
'Mr. Malcolm?' the clerk asked. 'This is the desk. Sorry to disturb you at this hour. Your neighbor, Mr. Warren, has come downstairs to report a disturbance in your room. Has there been any trouble?'
Mr. Warren could not distinguish the exact words, but there was an indignant disclaiming in the man's voice. The clerk nodded, eyeing Mr. Warren with cool, superior satisfaction. Mr. Warren flushed.
'I see. Thank you, Mr. Malcolm. So sorry to have bothered you.' The clerk put the phone down and stared at Mr. Warren. 'He's been asleep since ten o'clock,' the clerk said, a gratuitous innuendo in both his manner and voice.
'That's impossible,' Mr. Warren said. 'I…' He was going to describe how intently he had been listening, but felt that such an admission would be embarrassing. 'All right,' he said quietly. 'Perhaps I was mistaken. Sorry to have troubled you. Good night.' He turned and walked away, feeling the clerk's eyes on his back as he moved to the self-service elevator.
He went back to his room and sat down again. Could he have been mistaken. They had been telling him at the office that he was getting old, slowing down. They had wanted to take him off his route and give it to a younger man. Despite a decrease in his volume of sales, he had insisted he was as good a man as he ever was. But he was getting old, tiring easily. He knew that as you got older, your senses began playing tricks on you. Had he been hearing things? The idea made him dizzy, gave him a headache. But then he told himself, sternly, to stop that kind of thinking. It was ridiculous. He was only fifty-seven. Was that so old?
That whole mode of thinking angered him. He could have been ninety-nine, he told himself, and doddering and senile, but still he had heard those voices and the sound of that scuffle and there was no sense in trying to deny it to himself. Mr. Malcolm had lied. And if he had lied then he had a damn good reason for lying.
He would call the police. Mr. Warren decided that, closing his fist. The police would not be as easily put off as the clerk. They would not take Mr. Malcolm's word, but would go up to the room and have a look for themselves. Buoyed by this new idea he went to the phone. But then he hesitated. The phone suddenly turned lethal. Yes, if he insisted, the police would come. They would knock on Mr. Malcolm's door and search the room, on the complaint of Mr. Warren. And what if they found nothing? Then it would not pass so easily. Mr. Malcolm could raise a considerable protest if he chose, and probably would. People in hotels, Mr. Warren knew from wide experience, were unusually touchy. Irritation bubbled close to the surface. The hotel could be sued and the police
