I looked at it. It was a small picture, not interesting at all. A guy in doublet and hose, with lace at his sleeve ends, and one of those round puffy velvet hats with a feather, leaning far out of a window and apparently calling out to somebody downstairs. Downstairs not being in the picture. It was a color reproduction of something that had never been needed in the first place.
I looked around the room. There were other pictures, a couple of rather nice water colors, some engravings— very old-fashioned this year, engravings, or are they? Half a dozen in all. Well, perhaps the guy liked the picture, so what? A man leaning out of a high window. A long time ago.
I looked at Vannier. He wouldn’t help me at all. A man leaning out of a high window, a long time ago.
The touch of the idea at first was so light that I almost missed it and passed on. A touch of a feather, hardly that. The touch of a snowflake. A high window, a man leaning out—a long time ago.
It snapped in place. It was so hot it sizzled. Out of a high window a long time ago—eight years ago—a man leaning—too far—a man falling—to his death. A man named Horace Bright.
“Mr. Vannier,” I said with a little touch of admiration, “you played that rather neatly.”
I turned the picture over. On the back dates and amounts of money were written. Dates over almost eight years, amounts mostly of $500, a few $750’s, two for $1000. There was a running total in small figures. It was $11,100. Mr. Vannier had not received the latest payment. He had been dead when it arrived. It was not a lot of money, spread over eight years. Mr. Vannier’s customer had bargained hard.
The cardboard back was fastened into the frame with steel victrola needles. Two of them had fallen out. I worked the cardboard loose and tore it a little getting it loose. There was a white envelope between the back and the picture. Sealed, blank. I tore it open. It contained two square photographs and a negative. The photos were just the same. They showed a man leaning far out of a window with his mouth open yelling. His hands were on the brick edges of the window frame. There was a woman’s face behind his shoulder.
He was a thinnish dark-haired man. His face was not very clear, nor the face of the woman behind him. He was leaning out of a window and yelling or calling out.
There I was holding the photograph and looking at it. And so far as I could see it didn’t mean a thing. I knew it had to. I just didn’t know why. But I kept on looking at it. And in a little while something was wrong. It was a very small thing, but it was vital. The position of the man’s hands, lined against the corner of the wall where it was cut out to make the window frame. The hands were not holding anything, they were not touching anything. It was the inside of his wrists that lined against the angle of the bricks. The hands were in air.
The man was not leaning. He was falling.
I put the stuff back in the envelope and folded the cardboard back and stuffed that into my pocket also. I hid frame, glass and picture in the linen closet under towels.
All this had taken too long. A car stopped outside the house. Feet came up the walk.
I dodged behind the curtains in the archway.
30
The front door opened and then quietly closed.
There was a silence, hanging in the air like a man’s breath in frosty air, and then a thick scream, ending in a wail of despair.
Then a man’s voice, tight with fury, saying: “Not bad, not good. Try again.”
The woman’s voice said: “My God, it’s Louis! He’s dead!”
The man’s voice said: “I may be wrong, but I still think it stinks.”
“My God! He’s dead, Alex. Do something—for God’s sake—do something!”
“Yeah,” the hard tight voice of Alex Morny said. “I ought to. I ought to make you look just like him. With blood and everything. I ought to make you just as dead, just as cold, just as rotten. No, I don’t have to do that. You’re that already. Just as rotten. Eight months married and cheating on me with a piece of merchandise like that. My God! What did I ever think of to put in with a chippy like you?”
He was almost yelling at the end of it.
The woman made another wailing noise.
“Quit stalling,” Morny said bitterly. “What do you think I brought you over here for? You’re not kidding anybody. You’ve been watched for weeks. You were here last night. I’ve been here already today. I’ve seen what there is to see. Your lipstick on cigarettes, your glass that you drank out of. I can see you now, sitting on the arm of his chair, rubbing his greasy hair, and then feeding him a slug while he was still purring. Why?”
“Oh, Alex—darling—don’t say such awful things.”
“Early Lillian Gish,” Morny said. “Very early Lillian Gish. Skip the agony, toots. I have to know how to handle this. What the hell you think I’m here for? I don’t give one little flash in hell about you any more. Not any more, toots, not any more, my precious darling angel blond man-killer. But I do care about myself and my reputation and my business. For instance, did you wipe the gun off?”
Silence. Then the sound of a blow. The woman wailed. She was hurt, terribly hurt. Hurt in the depths of her soul. She made it rather good.
“Look, angel,” Morny snarled. “Don’t feed me the ham. I’ve been in pictures. I’m a connoisseur of ham. Skip it. You’re going to tell me how this was done if I have to drag you around the room by your hair. Now—did you wipe off the gun?”
Suddenly she laughed. An unnatural laugh, but clear and with a nice tinkle to it. Then she stopped laughing, Just as suddenly.
Her voice said: “Yes.”
“And the glass you were using?”
