For the second time, Hodge had completely ignored me on his freest evening, so when Lieutenant Strom had called me to suggest a movie and a drink, I’d gone willingly.
But I wasn’t awfully happy. At ten, I said I was tired and wanted to go home. I didn’t like the way things were turning out; Lieutenant Strom was acting as if he rather liked me, and I wasn’t particularly anxious to have him. I felt uneasy with him that night, as if I were trying to ward off something.
He took me home right away and said good night without any fuss. I knew I had him to think about.
I picked up a book to read. I didn’t get much meaning out of the words; my mind would slip to Lieutenant Strom and then to Hodge Kistler and his irritating lack of interest in me lately.
I heard Mr. Buffingham come in. Then, after him, Hodge.
Peculiarly, I thought the man with Hodge was Mr. Waller; I knew the footsteps quite well by this time.
I was too keyed up to sleep if I did go to bed; I hated trying to sleep when all I did was listen to that house. I wished I had a private bathtub so I could take a hot bath to make me sleepier. Mrs. Halloran was proving as economical as Mrs. Garr in the matter of hot water. There was sure not to be any; I’d have to turn on the heater if I wanted a bath.
It was nonsense to be so lazy. I finally padded down to the basement as a lesson in moral stiffening, and turned the heater on. It was a rusty old heater; I’d have to wait fully thirty minutes for enough hot water.
I poked around my room those thirty minutes. I got my bed ready, climbed into pajamas and negligee. When I went down to turn the heater off, the hot water still came only a foot and a half down at the top of the tank. I waited around down there five or ten minutes for it to get a little hotter. I was infuriated with the inefficiency of the house; imagine all that trouble for a bath!
I started up the basement stairs, the stairs near whose foot Mrs. Garr had sat so many days, in her curious listening; the stairs where Jerry the policeman had cringed back when a cat’s eyes shone at him from the top; the stairs which my attacker, three weeks ago, had stolen down, perhaps at this very time of night, to lurk below until he knew me home and sleeping.
Old stairs, worn stairs, showing the grain of worn wood through worn gray paint.
A few steps from the top I stopped short. My eyes were on the step next to the top.
It was something about the light. The basement light hung close to the basement ceiling, almost on a level with that step.
In the crack at the back of that step, almost invisible, was the dull gleam of worn metal.
I bent forward to look more closely.
My eyes saw that tiny metallic gleam in the angle between the step and the rise, while my mind saw Mrs. Garr sitting in her rocker below.
Watching.
What?
I didn’t have to find out what that bit of metal was. I knew.
It was part of a hinge.
As if it moved of its own accord, my right hand reached out, took hold of the overhanging edge of the step next to the top.
I lifted.
It was as easy as that.
The step lifted as easily as if it were a box cover. Easily. Not a sound. Not a sigh.
There were cleaning rags in the space beneath. Musty. Soiled.
Newspaper under them.
Clean, smooth newspaper.
I don’t know what I expected to see under that paper; I wasn’t expecting, I wasn’t thinking. I was acting. Bent over, I lifted that paper.
Money.
Thick stacks of money. New bills, as clean as the day they left the mint, unfolded. I began taking the money up; thick stacks of new bills, bound together by strips of glued paper.
That instant, the darkness in the room ahead of me split, and part of it came down on the back of my neck.
Human darkness smashed down on me. I fought wildly. Fought because the minute the hands touched me, I knew that this was it. These were the same hands that had reached for my throat that night Mrs. Garr died. This was the same blackness that had been beside my bed that night my rooms were ransacked. This was the Death I had been hunting and had not found.
I struggled to rise, to get my head back, to glimpse the face; for an instant, I turned my head, but there was only blackness where a face should have been. Again, I fought to get up, but the hand on the back of my neck pressed me down; I fought to scream, but the hand over my mouth only pressed closer. I fought to make a noise, any noise that would awaken the household, awaken Hodge, but I had been forced to my knees, and they seemed soundless on the stairs.
I fought to keep my balance; fought most desperately for that, because it was likely death to fall backward as this Death fought to make me go.
I lost there, too.
A minute, two minutes, perhaps, of struggle.
Then I went hurtling straight downward.
I knew the Death I clutched was falling, too; I was taking it with me, but I was beneath; the night cracked as my head hit the stairs behind me.
I didn’t feel the rest of the fall.
When I came to, it was like a door opening on a dim stage.
There was fighting on the stage, men crashing over
