IV
A room in a boarding house can be horribly still. On the night when Colby came home and saw the trap letter returned, his room was quiet with a deadly, isolated silence in which innumerable small noises from outside came with the sharpness of scratches on a window pane. He heard the squeaking of a car’s brakes blocks away; voices in the street outside; the creak of bed springs somewhere in the house, as someone, reading in bed, shifted his position.
The lamp shed a dismal glow about the room. Its shade was cracked, and an irregular blotch of light was smeared against the figured wall paper. Colby sat on the edge of his bed, twitching a little, while he stared at the letter that had been returned. His brain was exhausted.
Some one walked past the house with measured, sedate footfalls—the walk of a man who is not in a hurry. Colby’s mouth twitched. Of course the house was watched now. He had no chance—none at all!
Heavily, drearily, his worn-out brain essayed one last review. He had foreseen everything, he had taken care of everything, with one exception; but no living man could have foreseen that Nesbit knew the man he had chosen as a victim. Nobody could have known that! Colby repeated it passionately, as a vindication, as an excuse—although there was no one requiring excuses.
The tinny roaring which was unmistakably Nesbit’s car, was not even a surprise when it came. Colby heard it blocks away. He heard it come nearer and stop with squawking brakes before his door. The roaring rumble of its engine ceased. Nesbit’s footsteps sounded crisp and crackling on the cinder walk, and heavy and solid on the porch. He heard Nesbit’s ring.
Minutes later there came a rap on the door, and the landlady’s voice.
“Mr. Colby! Mr. Nesbit’s downstairs to see you,” she said.
Colby’s voice was a croak.
“Tell him to come up,” he replied feebly.
Apathy possessed him. He stared at the little white envelope on the dresser. His eyeballs burned from sleeplessness. His muscles twitched occasionally, without warning. His throat felt dry. He seemed to be moving feverishly amid a myriad thoughts without the possibility of sleep, while his brain was desiccated, dried up, mummified from the lack of rest.
The landlady turned the knob and released the door. Nesbit came in, mumbling embarrassed thanks. The woman drew the door shut behind her.
One last flicker of spirit made Colby stand up. In the shadow of the lamp shade, perhaps, his pallor did not show. He waited as if for the volley from a firing squad.
“Howdy, Mistuh Colby?” said Nesbit awkwardly. “Maybe ye remember a couple o’ weeks ago we were talkin’ about huntin’.”
Colby nodded. The movement was ghastly, the acquiescence of one who looked like a dead man.
“I—uh—I was thinkin’ of takin’ a day off tomorrow,” said Nesbit, “an’ I thought maybe ye’d like to go huntin’—”
Colby’s weary, wakeful brain told him pitilessly what Nesbit really meant.
“Maybe,” said Nesbit heavily, “ye could locate Mistuh Grahame. That’d be right nice.”
Colby’s face had been ghastly before. It became corpselike now. He moved stiffly to a chair and sat down. His muscles twitched uncontrollably as his knees gave way.
Nesbit moved embarrassedly, unlovely and ill at ease. He moved his hands awkwardly.
“Mighty nice place ye got heah, Mistuh Colby. It’s just to my taste. I—uh—I got a copy o’ that picture, too. It’s mighty pretty, ain’t it?”
Colby’s sleepless, smarting eyeballs turned to follow Nesbit’s gaze. They stared at the benevolent St. Bernard dog and the coy, impossible child in the pink starched dress.
Colby’s voice was dull and expressionless when he spoke.
“You don’t have to play with me, Nesbit. How much do you know?”
Nesbit was suddenly still.
“How much do you know?” repeated Colby apathetically. “I didn’t think you knew the money was behind that picture, but I’ve known for a long time you knew the rest. How did you find out?”
Nesbit mumbled inarticulately, staring at Colby.
“You don’t have to take me out hunting tomorrow,” continued Colby in a flat, dull voice. “I’ll show you where I buried Grahame after I shot him. You can count the money I got from him. It’s all there.”
It may be that Nesbit started, or perhaps he did not; but he looked steadily at Colby now, and embarrassment had dropped from him.
Colby managed a mirthless grin. He was sick at heart. He didn’t know how much evidence Nesbit had, but it was enough; and he was tired—so hopelessly tired!
His voice was flat and lifeless. The small insistent noises of the world outside intruded into his speech at first; but his tone rose when he spoke of the letter. He had already told everything else, even where and how he had hidden Grahame’s body.
“That damned letter told me you knew everything,” he said in a dreary pride. “You thought it would break me down, or maybe make me go to look at Grahame’s body; but it didn’t. If you hadn’t guessed where the money was I’d have bluffed you at that.”
His muscles relaxed suddenly. Without any warning whatever, Colby, who had just put his head in a noose, found it possible to sleep for the first time in nearly two weeks. He slept heavily, slumped in his chair, twitching a little from his fretted nerves.
Nesbit stared at him and whistled softly. It was the sort of whistle with which a man expresses blank amazement. Also, perhaps, it was Nesbit’s way of showing that he was disturbed. It is upsetting to go to a man’s room for the sole purpose of inviting him to hunt with you, and have him confess a cold-blooded murder.
“All mixed up,” muttered Nesbit. “All fussed up over a killin’!”
Colby had been hopelessly wrong from the beginning. Nesbit’s acquaintance with Grahame had been limited to half an hour’s desultory talk in a smoking car, a year or more ago. The envelope that Colby had taken for a trap actually contained no more than the words:
Pete said you left this address in case of a telegram. Limpy’s hanging around and says he wants to see you. When are you coming back?
Jim.
It was evidently a letter from a gentleman in Grahame’s own line of business, but the matter to which it referred would never receive Grahame’s personal attention. Nesbit, of course, had never seen it before.
The detective’s reference to the picture of the benevolent dog and the pink starched dress had been merely an expression of his whole-hearted admiration for that particular work of art. Colby had been entirely, utterly wrong all through. Even the money for which he had killed Grahame—
Nesbit checked the bills with a list of scribbled numbers in his notebook. He nodded. Thousand-dollar bills are much used in wholesale bootleg circles. That is the only place, in fact, in which stolen thousand-dollar notes are accepted with the minimum of discount. Colby’s tale was proven in its entirety by the numbers on the bills, because all banks and most police departments have their lists of stolen currency.
“What d’ye know about that?” asked Nesbit heavily. “What d’ye know about that? Everything in the world breakin’ his way, an’ he blows the works because he lost his nerve!”
Nesbit was wrong—Colby had not lost his nerve; he had been trapped. Nesbit’s reputation was the trap that caught him.
As you see, this story is instructive.
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the August 1929 issue of Munsey’s Magazine.