In the Dark by Rannell Kazer. The watchman's flashlight painted a white circle on
the frosted glass, black lettered door Gregg Chemical Company Manufacturers, ASA, Gregg
President Private. The watchman's hand closed on the knob, rattling the door in
its frame queer but to night the sound had seemed to come from in there,
But it couldn't be. He knew that mister Gregg and Miss Carruthers carried
the only keys to the office, so any intruder would be forced to smash
the lock. Maybe the sound came from the storage room. The watchman clumped
along the rubber matted corridor, flung his weight against the door. He opened
hard, being of ponderous metal fitted into a cork casing. The room was
an air tight, fire proof fault. Really, his shoes gritted on the
concrete floor. As he prowled among the big porcelain vats. The flashlight bore
through the bluish haze to the concrete walls. Acid fumes escaped under the vat
lids, made the haze and seared the man's throat. He hurried out,
coughing and wiping his eyes. It was damned funny every night he heard the
same peculiar noise somewhere in this wing of the building, like a body groaning
and turning in a restless sleep. It was. It scared him. He
didn't mention the mystery to anyone, though. He was an old man and
he didn't want mister Gregg to think he was getting too old for the job.
HASA think I was crazy if I told him about it, he mumbled
Inside the office, Asa Gregg heard the muttered words plainly. He sat very
still in the big leather cushioned chair, hardly breathing, until the scrape of
the watchman's feet had thinned away down the hall. There was no light in
the room to betray him, only the cherry colored tip of his cigar,
which couldn't be visible through the frosted glass door. Anyway. It'd be an
hour before the watchman's rounds brought him past the office again. Asa Gregg had
an hour, if he could screw up his nerves to use it. He
took the freight end of the cigar from his mouth, his hand, which
had wasted to mere skin and bone these past few months, groped through the
darkness, slid opened the polished coolness of the dictaphone hood and snapped the switch.
Machinery faintly whirred. His fingers found the tube, lifted it. Miss
Carruthers, he snapped. Then he hesitated. Surely he could trust Mary Carruthers.
He'd never wondered about her before. She'd been his secretary for a dozen
years. Lately, since he couldn't look after affairs himself as he used to,
she had practically run the business. She was forty, sensible, unbeautiful,
and tight lipped. Hell, he had to trust her. His voice
plunged into the darkness. What I have to say now is intended for missus
Gregg's ears only. She will take the first boat home. Of course,
meet that boat and bring her to the office. Since my wife knows nothing
about a dictaphone, it will be necessary for you to set this recording running
as soon as you have done so, leave her alone in the room.
Make sure she is not interrupted for a half hour, That's all. He
waited a decent interval. The invisible needle peeled its thread into the revolving wax
cylinder. Jeannette muttered Asa Gregg and hesitated again. This wasn't going to be
easy to say. He decided to begin. Matter of fact, as you
probably know, my will and the insurance policies are in the vault at the
First National I believe you will find all my papers in excellent order. If
any questions arise, consult Miss Carruthers. What I have to say to you
now is purely personal. I feel, my dear, that I owe you
an explanation. That is God, it was harder than he had expected,
Jeannette, he started afresh. You remember three years ago when I was in
the hospital. You were in Palm Beach. At the time, I wired
that there had been an accident here at the plant That wasn't strictly so.
The fact is I'd gotten mixed up with a girl. He paused, shivering
in the darkness. A picture of Dot swam before him. The oval face,
framed with gleaming swirls of lemon tinted hair, had poutings, garlet lips,
and eyes whose allure was intensified by a violent make up. The full
length picture of her included a streamlined, full, blossomed, and yet delectably
lithe body, a costly enticing Broadway chorus orchid. As a matter of fact,
that is where he'd found her. I won't make any excuses for myself,
Asa Gregg said harshly. I might point out that you were always in
Florida or Bermuda or France, and that I was a lonely man, but
it wasn't just loneliness, and I didn't seek companionship. I thought I was
making a last bow to romance. I was successful, sixty and silly,
and I did all the damn fool things. I even wrote letters to her,
popsy wopsy letters. The dictaphone couldn't record the grimace that jerked his lips.
She saved them, of course, and by and by she put a
price on them. Ten thousand dollars. Dot claimed that one of those filthy
tabloids had offered her that much for them. And what was a poor working
girl to do, she lied, I knew that. I told her to
bring the letters to the office after business hours and I'd take care of her.
I took care of her, all right. I shot her, Jeanette.
He mopped his face with a handkerchief that was already damp. Not on
account of the money, you understand, It was the thing, she said,
after she had tucked the bills into her purse vile things about the way
she had earned it ten times over by enduring my beastly kisses. I really
loved that girl, and I'd thought she'd cared for me a little. It
was her hate that maddened me, and I got a gun out of my
desk. Drower Aesa Gregg reached through the darkness for the switch. He fumbled
for the bottle, which stood on the desk. His hands trembled, spilling
some of the liquor onto his lap. He drank from the bottle. This
part of the story he'd skip. It was too horrible even to think about.
He didn't want to remember how the blood pooled inside dots fur coat,
and how he'd managed to carry the body out of the office without leaking any
of her blood onto the floor. He tried to forget the musky sweetness of
the perfume on the dead girl mingled with the other evil blood smell. Especially,
he didn't want to remember the frightful time he'd had stripping the gold rings
from her fingers and the one gold tooth in her head. The horror of
it coiled in the blackness about him. His own teeth rattled against the bottle
when he gulped the second drink. He snapped the switch savagely, but when
he spoke, his voice cringed into the tube. I carried her into the
storage room. I got the lid off one of the acid tanks. The
VAT contained an acid powerful enough to destroy anything except gold. In fact,
the vat itself had to be lined with gold leaf. I knew that in
twenty four hours there wouldn't be a recognizable body left, and in a week
there wouldn't be anything at all. No matter what the police suspected, they
couldn't prove a murder charge without a corpus DELECTI I had committed the perfect crime,
except for one thing. I didn't realize there'd be a splash when she
went into the vat. Gregg laughed, not pleasantly. His wife might think
it had been a sob when she heard this record. Now you understand why
I went to the hospital, he jerked. Possibly you'd call that poetic justice.
Oh God, hiss broke again. He thumbed off the switch and mopped
his face with the damp linen. The rest How could he explain the rest
of it? He spent a long minute arranging his thoughts. You haven't any
idea, he resumed, No one has any idea of how I've been punished
for the thing I did. I don't mean the sheer physical agony, but
the fear that I'd talked coming out of the ether at the hospital, the
fear that she'd been traced to my office. I'd simply hidden her rings away,
expecting to drop them into the river, or that she might have confided
in her lover, yes she had one, or suppose A whopping big order
came through and the tank was emptied the very next day, and I couldn't
ask any questions. I didn't even know what was in the papers. However,
that part of it was gradually cleared up. I quizzed Miss Carruthers and
learned that an unidentified female body had been fished out of the East River a
few days after Dot disappeared. That's how the police solved the crime. I
got rid of her rings. I ordered the vat left alone. The other
thing began about six months ago. A spasm contorted his face, his fingers
ached their grip into the dictaphone tube. Jeanette, you remember how I began
to object to the radio, how I'd shout at you to turn it off
in the middle of the program. You thought I was ill and worried about
business. You were wrong. The thing that got me was hearing her voice.
He gripped the cold cigar. Shoot it. It's very strange that you
didn't notice it. No matter what station we dialed to, always the same
voice came stealing into the room. But perhaps you did notice. You said
once or twice that all those blue singers sound alike, and she was a
blue singer. It was she all right somewhere out there in the ether,
reminding me. The next thing was well. At first, when I noticed
it in the office, I thought Miss Carruthers had suddenly taken up with young
ideas. You see, I kept smelling perfume, and he smelled it.
Now. It was like a miasma in the dark. It isn't anything that
Carruthers wears, he grated. It comes from, yes, the storage room.
I realized that about a month ago, just after you sailed. One
night, I stayed late at the office and I went in there. It
seemed to be strongest around the vat, her vat, and I lifted the
lid. The sweet, sticky, musty smell hit me. Like a blow
in the face. And that isn't all terror stalked in this room. Asa
Gregg, crouched in his chair, felt the weight of fear on him like
a submarine pressure. His cigar pitched on his knees dropped to the floor.
You wouldn't believe this, Jeanette. He hammered the words like nails into the
darkness in front of him. You will say that it's impossible. I know
that it is impossible, and it is physiologically absurd. It contradicts the laws
of natural science. But I saw something on the bottom of that vat.
He groped for the bottle. His wife would hear a low gurgle and then
a coughing gasp. The vat was nearly full of this transparent, oily acid.
He went on. What I saw was a lot of sediment on the
golden floor, and there shouldn't have been any sediment. The stuff utterly dissolves
animal tissue, bone, even the common ores keeps them in suspension. It
didn't look like sediment either. It looked like a heap of mold, grave
mold. I replaced the lid. I spent a week convincing myself that it
was all impossible that I couldn't have seen anything of the sort. Then I
went to the vet again. Silence hung in the darkness while he sucked air
into his lungs, and the words burst separate, yammering shrieks. I looked
night after night, for hours at a time. I watched the change.
Did you ever see a body decomposed? Of course not neither have I.
But you must know in a general way what the process is. Well,
this has been the exact opposite. First I stared at the heap of grave
mold as it shaped itself into bones, a skeleton. I watched the coming
of hair, a yellow tangle of it, sprouting from the bare round skull,
until, oh God, the flesh began to make itself before my eyes.
I couldn't bear anymore. I stayed away, didn't come to the office
for five days. The tube slipped from his sweating, slick fingers, Panting,
Asa Gregg fumbled in the dark until he found it. Exhaustion, not
self control, flattened his voice to a dead monotone. I tried to think
of a way out, if I could fish the corpse out of the tank,
but I couldn't smuggle it out of the plant alone. You know that,
and so do I. Besides, what would be the use If the
acid can't kill her, nothing can. That's why I can't have the lid
cemented on. It wouldn't do any good either. Until three days ago,
she hadn't the least color, looking as white as a ghost in the vat,
a naked ghost. Because there's been no resurrection for her clothing. I've
watched her limbs grow rosy, her lips are scarlet, her eyes are bright.
They opened yesterday, and her breasts were rising and falling, almost imperceptibly.
But that was last night, and tonight, I swear it. Her
lips moved, she muttered my name. She turned, she'd been lying on
her side over onto her back. The record would be badly blurred. His
hand shook violently, bobbling the tube against his lips. Greg braced his elbow
against the desk. She isn't dead, he choked. She's only asleep,
not very soundly asleep. She's waking up. The invisible needle quivered as it
traced several noises. There was his tortured breathing and the clawing of his fingernails,
rattling over the desk. The drawer clicked as it opened. A loud
click was the cocking of the revolver. Soon, she's going to get out
of that vat, bleeded Jeannette. Forgive me, God, forgive me,
for I will not, I cannot. I dare not stay here and see
her. Then the sound of the shot brought the watchman stumbling along the corridor.
He crashed against the office door. It banged open in a shower of
falling frosted glass. The watchman's flashlight severed the darkness and printed its white circle
on the face of Asa Gregg. He had fallen back into the chair,
a blackish gout of blood running from the hole in his temple. He stared
sightlessly into the light with his eyes that were two gnarls of shrunken brown flesh,
like nuts in a pine board. Asa Gregg was blind, had been
since that night. Three years passed when the acid splashed. The end of
In the Dark by Ronald Caser