The Cinema Murder

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

They walked down Broadway and turned into their own street. They entered the tenement building together and stepped into the lift. She held out her hand a little abruptly.

"Good night!"

"Good night!" he answered. "You get out first, don't you? I'll polish that stuff up to-night, the first part of it, so that you can get on with the typing."

Some half-developed fear which had been troubling her during the walk home, seemed to have passed. Her face cleared.

"Don't think I am ungrateful," she begged, as the lift stopped. "I haven't had a good time like this for many months. Thank you, Mr. Ware, and good night!"

She stepped through the iron gates on to her own floor, and Philip swung up to his rooms. Somehow, he entered almost light-heartedly. The roar of the city below was no longer provocative. He felt as though he had stretched out a hand towards it, as though he were in the way of becoming one of its children.

CHAPTER III

A few nights later Philip awoke suddenly to find himself in a cold sweat, face to face with all the horrors of an excited imagination. Once more he felt his hand greedy for the soft flesh of the man he hated, tearing its way through the stiff collar, felt the demoniacal strength shooting down his arm, the fever at his finger tips. He saw the terrified face of his victim, a strong man but impotent in his grasp; heard the splash of the turgid waters; saw himself, his lust for vengeance unsatisfied, peering downwards through the dim and murky gloom. It was not only a physical nightmare which seized him. His brain, too, was his accuser. He saw with a hideous clarity that even the excuse of motive was denied him. It was a sense of personal loss which had driven him out on to that canal path, a murderer at heart. It was something of which he had been robbed, an acute and burning desire for vengeance, personal, entirely egotistical. It was not the wrong to the woman which he resented, had there been any wrong. It was the agony of his own personal misery. He rose from his bed and stamped up and down his little chamber in a fear which was almost hysterical. He threw wide open the windows, heedless of a driving snowstorm. The subdued murmur of the city, with its paling lights, brought him no relief. He longed frantically for some one who knew the truth, for Elizabeth before any one, with her soft, cool touch, her gentle, protective sympathy. He was a fool to think he could live alone like this, with such a burden to bear! Perhaps it would not be for long. The risks were many. At any moment he might hear the lift stop, steps across the corridor, the ring at his bell, the plainly-clad, businesslike man outside, with his formal questions, his grim civility. He fumbled about in his little dressing-case until he came to a small box containing several white pills. He gripped them in his hand and looked around, listening. No, it was fancy! There was still no sound in the building. When at last he went back to bed, however, the little box was tightly clenched in his hands.

In the morning he went through his usual programme. He arose soon after eight, lighted his little spirit lamp, made his coffee, cut some bread and butter, and breakfasted. Then he lit a cigarette and sat down at his desk. His imagination, however, seemed to have burnt itself out in the night. Ideas and phrases were denied to him. He was thankful, about eleven o'clock, to hear a ring at the bell and find Martha Grimes outside with a little parcel under her arm. She was wearing the same shabby black dress and her fingers were stained with copying ink. Her almost too luxuriant hair was ill-arranged and untidy. Even her eyes seemed to have lost their lustre.

"I've finished," she announced, handing him the parcel. "Better look and see whether it's all right. I can't do it up properly till I've had the whole."