Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1938)

(Continued from page 80) count, I saw no reason why I should squander money on a taxicab, so I took a streetcar, and started early enough so I'd be there in plenty of time. It was a warm night and I sat in the open section, watching traffic stream by, with the half-listless preoccupation of a city dweller who is forced to spend a portion of each day grinding and jolting back and forth to work. I noticed headlights behind me, which seemed to remain uniformly placed. The streetcar slowed. The automobile slowed. From behind came the raucous blast of horns impatiently demanding that the car move on ahead. I heard a sound of bumper crashing bumper, and the automobile, struck from behind, shot ahead a few feet so that it was almost under my window. The driver immediately slammed in the gear and stepped on the throttle. As the car shot past, I had a glimpse of a blonde woman seated next to the driver, but it wasn't until the car had whizzed across the intersection that recognition dawned on me. It was Miss Blair, the blonde applicant for the position which I had landed. It isn't often the paths of people cross casually in a large city. I found myself wondering if perhaps she was telling her boy friend about the unappreciative employer who had picked a secretary without even giving a typing test and .... The streetcar lurched ahead. Over at the curb the automobile was parked. Miss Blair was sitting with her head turned so that all I could see was the tip of one shoulder and the rim of her hat. Somehow, her pose seemed strangely rigid. The streetcar swayed on past. I had a three-block walk from the place where I left the car, and took it rather briskly. Two of the blocks slipped past uneventfully. I was halfway across the last intersection when an automobile, running rapidly, and without warning, screamed into a turn. For an agonized split second I saw the twin headlights swooping down on me, the vague outline of the big car. I screamed, tried to jump back and escape. It was hopeless. The car was coming directly toward me, sliding in a tirescreaming skid. Then, miraculously, I got back out of the way. The glare of the headlights was abruptly eliminated. My light-dazzled eyes saw only the vague shape of a car hurtling past. Fear gripped me as I started to run. I remembered what the detective had said. Mr. Foley's secretary had been run down, deliberately. Surely this, too, had been deliberate. My mouth was dry with shock and apprehension as I sprinted down the sidewalk, counting house numbers. I picked my house, and cut across a wellkept lawn toward the porch, my pulse hammering in my throat. IT was a big, Spanish-type house. Save for a light in the hallway, it was dark. I dashed up the porch, rang the bell, hammered on the door, and all but screamed. I looked back, over my shoulder. A car, without lights, was crawling along the curb. In a panic, I tried the door. It opened. I ran across the threshold and banged the door shut behind me. There were lights down at the end of the hallway. I hardly knew what to do. The menace of the street was behind me; ahead was a strange house. The documents which I carried in my brief case were vital to the people in the house. I raised my voice and called, "Hello, is anyone home?" No answer. I didn't want to stand there in the hallway where anyone could look through the diamond-shaped pane of glass in the door and see me. On the other hand, I didn't exactly feel that I should make myself at home in a strange house, but, in the long run, my sense of loyalty to my job, the desire to safeguard the papers which I held in my brief case, outweighed the polite conventions, and I ran down the hall to a living room. It was a perfectly huge room. Heavy, black drapes over the windows kept any light from filtering through to the outside. There was a massive table in the center of the room, and the chairs were so deep and heavy that one lost temporarily the feeling of insignificance which would had otherwise been the case. I was having trouble getting my breath. My heart was pounding as though it would tear my chest to pieces. And the silence of that huge house settled down on me like some ominous pall. Then I became conscious of a peculiar thump . . . thump . . . thump ... At first I thought it was my heart, then the sound grew louder and I knew it was coming from somewhere in the house. It was a sinister sound, frantic and desperate, like the beating of clenched hands against the lid of a coffin. Thump . . . thump . . . thump. I could almost feel the jar along the timbers ... it was somewhere above me, probably a room on the second floor. I felt goose-pimples of cold terror, then I shook off the feeling and decided to investigate. Slowly, I walked back down the corridor to the staircase a climbed to the second floor. For a ir ment, I lost the ominous sound wh had guided me up the stairs. Thei heard it again, thump . . . thump . thump. I tiptoed down an upstairs corridor the general direction of the sound, was coming from a bedroom. Openi the door, I stood on the threshold, 1 tening. The noise was coming from; closet. I CROSSED to the closet door, th turned the knob . . . jumped back a screamed at the thing which fell out human bundle, wound around w cloth strips that had evidently be torn from a sheet. There was a gag the mouth, above which wide ey stared at me, eloquent in helplessne The man made gurgling noises frc behind the gag. I remember sayii "Just a minute," and splitting a finge nail on the knot, conscious all the tii of his eyes. No man should ever ha eyes like that — not that they were at & effeminate, but they were so expressi they seemed to be mirrors, reflecting 1 moods. When I first saw them th were registering helplessness. Then, I untied the gag, there was gratituc and then a faint twinkle of humor . Those eyes seemed strangely familia somehow I had the impression that ]' seen them before, registering love. It's hard to tell much about a m;l when the entire lower half of his fa is covered, and when his cheeks a pulled back out of shape by a cloj which has been tied around the back his head . . . and 1*11 say that cloth w tied. I sacrificed my first fingerm early in the game, and I broke anoth before the rag came out. SHOES ROBERTS, JOHNSON & RAND SHOE CO. • ST. LOUIS, MO. Division of International Shoe Co. 82 PHOTOPL/M