Curtain for a Jester Read online

Mullins told him.

  Mr. Bertram Dewsnap let himself into the front door of the Novelty Emporium. He left the door unlocked behind him for the rest to follow. The ground floor showroom was large, and shadowy. Halfway down its length, on the mezzanine above it, a single light bulb burned behind the sliding glass window of Mr. Dewsnap’s own office—burned like a small, watchful eye, on duty when other eyes were closed. The light from this bulb created the shadows in the broad area below—shadows of costumes on clothing dummies and on racks; shadows of masks hanging on hooks above showcases. The shadows further distorted the already distorted masks and to some of them seemed to impart a kind of fantastic life. One of them, a Punch with a great, curved nose, seemed to follow with blank eyes Mr. Dewsnap’s progress through the showroom to the narrow stairs which led up to his office. But Mr. Dewsnap paid no attention to this, being habituated to the oddities of the Novelty Emporium.

  Mr. Dewsnap had several things to do and several people to see. Then—and this thought pleased him as he sat down at his desk to wait—things would be wound up. They would be wound up not too soon but not, he was certain, too late, either. The last was what mattered, of course—mattered personally. Things had been getting tighter for some time, and he had known men—even men in the business—who go nervous when things tightened. Sometimes, to put it simply, they stampeded. A stampede is dangerous, being unplanned and beyond control. If you worked things out, and used your head—and your experience—you could slip through the vise jaws just before the pinch came. Mr. Dewsnap had done it often enough before. He had the skill which comes from experience.

  The lack of that experience, Mr. Dewsnap could only assume, was what had been Wilmot’s undoing. Wilmot—although that last trick of his had been ingenious in conception—had been really an amateur, with an amateur’s inclination to go at things in a heavy-handed fashion. If your hands were too heavy, you left no alternative—no safe alternative—to those upon whom you applied pressure. This could be dangerous, as Wilmot had discovered. On the whole, Wilmot was no great loss; his death had, indeed, turned out to have a certain indirect advantage. That had been apparent since the telephone call which had brought Mr. Dewsnap out of his house in Brooklyn.

  Not, of course, that Mr. Dewsnap had planned to remain there much longer in any case. The whole thing was played out, and the Brooklyn house with the rest. That had been probable since Wilmot’s death; it had been certain since Mr. Dewsnap, who could see a good deal through the window of his office, who could see the whole length of the showroom and into the street beyond the glass front doors, had observed Mr. Baker loitering. “Loitering with intent,” as the British put it. The intent had been obvious. It had made Mr. Baker obvious, but Mr. Dewsnap had already been fairly certain about Mr. Baker. Not that Mr. Baker hadn’t done a reasonably professional job. Mr. Dewsnap, talking from experience, would give him that. Mr. Dewsnap now bore Mr. Baker’s competence in mind—and had arranged accordingly.

  By midnight, Mr. Dewsnap decided, he would be out of it. They would all be cut of it. It was too bad about the money, but there was nothing to be done about it, and it was not really important. Within a day or two, there would be more money—plenty more money. It would have been neater to have picked up everything in Mr. Wilmot’s safe—money and whatever else was there—but the opportunity had not arisen.

  Mr. Dewsnap waited at his desk. In due course Mr. Dewsnap heard feet on the wooden stairs to the mezzanine.

  XI

  Thursday, 10:22 P.M. to 11:12 P.M.

  Martha Evitts hesitated at the door. She looked through a glass panel into the shadowy interior of the Emporium. It was impossible that she had misunderstood, had not been told to come tonight, to come at once; had not been told, clearly, that she was needed to help get “things straightened out.”

  She had not wanted to come, had thought of pretending illness, of saying that the shock of her experience that morning was still too great. And she had promised John to stay in the apartment until he came for her. But the word “ought” had come into it; “you ought to come if you possibly can.” The word “ought,” representing an obligation, was a compelling word. And it was true—she supposed it was true—that Mr. Wilmot’s sudden death had left things disorderly in the business of which he had been, so personally, the head. “At sixes and sevens,” she had been told; and told again she was needed.

  She had got a picture in her mind, from that. All the others who worked at the Emporium were there, trying to get things straightened out. Mr. Dewsnap, of course, and Mr. Barron. But others of the office staff, too, and the floor workers—the salesmen, the stock clerks, the section heads. She had pictured bustle, with all lights on, with everyone responding to emergency. And it was reasonable that she, as Mr. Wilmot’s secretary—as the person in the office most likely to know what had been in his mind—would be, as much as anyone except Mr. Dewsnap himself, needed to get things organized.

  But now there was no sign of people responding to emergency. So far as she could tell, from outside, looking in, the Emporium was deserted. Only the single night light burned dimly behind the sliding window of Mr. Dewsnap’s mezzanine office. In the showroom there were only shadows.

  After a moment, an obvious explanation occurred to Martha. She was merely the first to arrive. She opened her handbag and searched in it for her key to the front door. She found the little chain of keys—keys of her own; keys which were part of her job, so that she could open the front door and the side door, the “alley door,” of the Emporium, and the door of Mr. Wilmot’s penthouse. She must remember to give that one to somebody; she decided that, when everything was “straightened out,” she would give the other business keys to somebody, too. There would be other jobs.

  But now she still had a job, and she was the first to respond to the summons. That was all. Mr. Dewsnap himself, and probably Mr. Barron, would be in the large office Mr. Wilmot had used behind the mezzanine, where lights would be burning that she could not see from the front door.

  She opened the door and went into the shadows. The light switch for the showroom was on the wall near the stairs to the mezzanine; when she reached it she would see that there was light. She went down the center aisle, and grotesque faces seemed to nod as she passed. It was easy to imagine that hanging costumes—costumes for witches, for the associates of witches and for the master of all witches—swayed toward her, reached out toward her their armless sleeves.

  Martha Evitts had not been there before at night, in the shadows. She told herself that all these were commonplace by light—that they were papier mâché masks and dusty, empty garments. But she hurried toward the light.

  She hurried so that she almost did not see, in time, what lay on the floor, in the center of the aisle, precisely below the window of Mr. Dewsnap’s mezzanine office. It was only a darker shadow, but she stopped in time. It was a costume, thrown down on the tiled floor, crumpled there in a heap. It had to be that—it could not be—

  Knowing what it was, but refusing to know, Martha stood and looked down. And then, from blood spreading—again blood spreading—from the shattered head Martha shrank back. Sickness rose in her, into her throat. And now darkness seemed to swirl around her in a cloud, with herself in a circle of light, but with the circle shrinking.

  She looked away from the body on the floor—from the blood, and not only blood, around the head. She looked up at the mezzanine and saw the sliding window open; looked through it and saw a man at Mr. Dewsnap’s desk. The dim light was on his face.

  It was not Mr. Dewsnap’s face. Mr. Dewsnap’s face was hidden. It was against the tile of the floor, with blood spreading around it.

  The swirl of blackness encroached on the little circle of light. And in the circle now there was only a face—not her own face, not the face crushed on the tile. John Baker’s face. John’s face intent in the dim light as he bent over the desk of a dead man, peered into a drawer of the dead man’s desk.

  John, she thought, and thought she s
aid, but she made no sound. John—John—John—

  The circle of light in which she lived, in which consciousness lived, was very small. It was large as a quarter, as a dime, as the head of—

  She turned from the body, fighting sickness, fighting the darkness. She clutched at a counter and dislodged something, and a snake fell from the counter and seemed to writhe toward the body. Martha did not know of this, did not hear the tiny sound.

  John Baker heard it, and looked out. But as he looked, Martha Evitts—putting her head down against faintness, fighting the blackness—slumped to the floor beside the counter, and so slumped into the dark.

  Baker looked for a moment, went back to his scrutiny of the contents of the desk drawer.

  He did not look up again at the small sounds Martha Evitts made as, still fearing to stand erect, knowing that if she stood the light circle—a little larger now—would shrink again, and to nothingness, she went on her knees, in the shadow of counters, toward the door of the Emporium.

  I’ve got to get away, her mind said. I’ve got to get away. He mustn’t see me, mustn’t see me, mustn’t see me. He’ll hurt me if he finds me. John will hurt me. John. John …

  She could not stop the meaningless words. They rattled in her mind.

  She was near the door, but still in shadow, when the turmoil began to recede a little, when the darkness no longer seemed to sweep in spirals so closely around her.

  She saw, then, that that way was blocked. Inside the door, his back to her, a man was standing. He wore a long coat. He, too, seemed just to have come out of the shadows, but of that she could not be sure. He stood only a moment, silhouetted against the light which came from the street through the glass panels. There was nothing threatening about him as he stood there. But he was a threat.

  She had to get away—far away, away alone. She had to reach, first of all, a quiet place, where the rattling in her mind might stop. She fled the horror behind her—the crushed head on the floor, the blood around it, the grayness mingled with the blood. She fled danger. But she could not—not now, not while her mind was ungovernable—flee to safety, because, with safety found, she would have to tell what she had seen—all she had seen. And that would mean that John—

  Somebody else would find out; somebody else would tell. But not she—not she. She would save that—that little thing, that pitiably little thing. She wouldn’t have been the one.

  Still crouching, she went between counters, to another aisle. Still crouching, still in the shadows, she went down that aisle toward the rear of the store. Beyond the mezzanine, where darkness would be almost complete, she would stand up again. There she would cross the store, find the alley exit. She would go very slowly, very carefully, and she would reach the door, and she would go out into the night, and then she would be alone.…

  The man who had been by the door drew back, first into the shadows, then, very cautiously, behind a rack of costumes. From there, peering between a gaudy scarlet cape and a black sheath painted with a skeleton’s bones—both very limp without occupants—he watched another man try the door, find it unlocked, open it slowly. The first man moved further into the costume racks, and waited.

  The second man came into the showroom and stopped, and looked around. He stood irresolutely for a moment, and then started up the central aisle.

  Now was the time, the man behind the costume racks decided, and began to move. As he moved the skeleton moved, too, swaying in the shadows, its bones white against black. The man paused to check its revealing motion, and then stepped back again. It was too late, now. Somebody else was outside the door—no, two people were outside the door.

  The man behind the skeleton swore soundlessly. These two wouldn’t have come alone, or be alone long if they had. He began to move, very cautiously, behind the racks, toward the rear of the store.…

  “You saw him,” Pamela North said. “He just opened the door and walked in. Mr. Baker.”

  She didn’t, Jerry said, know it was Mr. Baker. It was just a man, admittedly of about the right size, although in dim light it was difficult to tell about size. Furthermore, if Mr. Baker, he worked at the Emporium, which made it different. For them to go into an obviously closed store, even if someone had neglected to lock the door, would be—

  But by that time, Pam North had opened the door, and was going through it. Inside, however, she paused, she looked around.

  “Spooky,” she said. “Full of—things.” She looked around, she shrank back a little against Jerry. “Look!” she said, and the word was whispered. “That—thing—it’s moving.” She shrank more closely. “It’s a skeleton,” she said, and pointed.

  Jerry could just make it out. It was not, so far as he could see, moving. He said so; he told her to look again. She did.

  “Well,” Pam said, “I thought it was. This is an awful place.”

  “This,” Gerald North said, “is a perfectly ordinary store where they happen to sell costumes, and masks, and—”

  “Snakes and spiders,” Pam said. “I know. It doesn’t help particularly.”

  “Then,” Jerry said, “let’s get out of it. We haven’t any business here. If you still think that Miss Evitts is in some sort of danger, we can—”

  “Jerry,” Pam said. “We just stand here! And we don’t know what he’s doing to Martha. We—”

  She started up the central aisle, through the shadows. Jerry went after her.

  It did not take them long.

  Pam came on it first, and too closely on it. She stopped with the toes of shoes in blood, and as she shrank back, made a small, sick, wordless sound, her shoes left dabs of blood on tiles.

  Jerry crouched by the body, peered at it, and thought that what he did was senseless. The smallish man in the gray suit—but the suit was no longer entirely gray—was as beyond help as—as Humpty Dumpty, Jerry thought, as Humpty Dumpty fallen from the wall, as—Damn this place, Jerry thought, and stood up.

  “Never saw him before,” he said. “From what Bill told us, a man named Dewsnap. Managed the place for Wilmot—Pam!”

  Pam did not appear to be listening. She was looking up at the mezzanine, at an empty office dimly lighted by a single bulb in the ceiling, at an open sliding window. She did not appear to hear Jerry, but she had heard.

  “Mr. Dewsnap,” she said. “Yes. Somebody dropped him, Jerry. Dropped him—upside down!”

  Jerry looked up, looked down again at what was broken on the floor. He nodded slowly. It seemed very likely that somebody had dropped Mr. Dewsnap; had held him head down out of the mezzanine window, had dropped him head-first to the tile floor a dozen feet below.

  “There’s a telephone up there,” Pam said. “I’ll—”

  “Wait,” Jerry said.

  “Not here,” Pam said. “Not with—” She broke off. “There must be stairs,” she said. “There’d have to be, wouldn’t there? You stay. I’ll—”

  She was gone, then. She went around the body, close to a counter on her right, her head averted. Her body seemed queerly rigid in the shadows.

  Jerry hesitated. She was right. It was no place to stay. He was himself fighting nausea; he could watch Pam in the office above; he could—By that time it was decided for him. Pam had disappeared around the end of the counter.

  But she couldn’t wander alone in the darkness, Jerry thought, and moved, and at the same time heard a sound which seemed to come from behind the counter along which Pam had walked. He moved quickly to the counter, and leaned over it. He saw a darker shadow there, but not in time. There was a great noise, but it was inside the skull of Gerald North. Gerald North staggered back from the counter, reeled halfway across the aisle, grabbed the counter on the other side just as blackness engulfed him. He tried to fight it off, tried to stand up, and lost the fight.…

  Pam found the stairs. She went up them, came to a door and opened it and was in the office. She could have looked down from the open window, and she would have seen more than she expected. But she had seen enough.
She kept her back to the window; she faced a closed door in the wall opposite the window. She reached for the telephone on the desk, and the door by which she had entered opened.

  “Jerry,” Pam said, “I’m so glad you—” And then she cried, loudly, “Jerry! Jerry!” because it was not Jerry at the door, coming into the office.

  Mr. Punch came through the door; Punch with a great hooked nose; Punch red-faced and leering. But it was not the dwarfed, round Punch. The head of Punch was atop a tall figure in a black robe, a robe on which stars were scattered. The figure raised an arm and pointed at her.

  “Don’t use that,” the towering Punch said, in a strange, muffled voice—a slurred voice; an unrecognizable voice. “Jush—”

  Punch advanced and Pam cried, once more, “Jerry!” and then jumped for the door in the wall opposite the window.

  “I’m not—” Punch said in the same muffled, jumbled voice, and took another step. But Pam had reached the door, thrown herself against it as she turned the knob, and was in a corridor beyond. The door remained open behind her, and there was faint light from the office bulb. Then the light was almost blotted out by a moving shadow, and on the wall ahead, and to her left, there was momentarily the wavering outline of Punch’s great, misshapen nose, grown in the shadow infinitely monstrous.

  Pam North ran down a corridor between doors. Ahead was only darkness. She ran in shadow; she held out a hand on either side to ward away the walls. It seemed that the corridor would never end, and that the shadow pursued.

  The corridor ended. Just before she hurtled down a steep flight of wooden stairs, Pam caught herself by the railings on either side. For a moment she hung over the steps, her weight wrenching at her handholds. But then she regained her balance. She went down the stairs, dropped down them, sustained by the railings.

  Far beyond her, tall windows let in a little light. There was enough light to see that she was in another spreading, shadowy room, with counters like the room in the front of the building, again with racks along the walls and things dangling from them, like men and women hanging.