Midnight - Octavus Roy Cohen

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      Then he began taking note of the houses. There was No. 916. He looked ahead. These were houses of the poorer type, the homes of laborers situated on the outer edge of the suburb of East End. Funny—the handsomely dressed woman—such a poor neighborhood—

      He came to a halt before a dilapidated bungalow which squatted darkly in the night. Stiff with cold, he reached his hand back to the door on the right of the car, and with difficulty opened it. Then he spoke:

      "Here y'are, miss—No. 981!"

      There was no answer. Spike repeated:

      "Here y'are, miss."

      Still no answer. Spike clambered stiffly from the car, circled to the curb, and stuck his head in the door.

      "Here, miss—"

      Spike stepped back. Then he again put his head inside the cab.

      "Well, I'll be—"

      The thing was impossible, and yet it was true. Spike gazed at the seat.

       The woman had disappeared!

      The thing was absurd; impossible. He had seen her get into the cab at the Union Station. There, in the front of the car, was her suit-case; but she had gone—disappeared completely, vanished without leaving a sign.

      Momentarily forgetful of the cold, Spike found a match and lighted it. Holding it cupped in his hands, he peered within the cab. Then he recoiled with a cry of horror.

      For, huddled on the floor, he discerned the body of a man!

       Table of Contents

      THE SUIT-CASE IS OPENED

      The barren trees which lined the broad deserted thoroughfare jutted starkly into the night, waving their menacing, ice-crusted arms. The December gale, sweeping westward, shrieked through the glistening branches. It shrieked warning and horror, howled and sighed, sighed and howled.

      Spike Walters felt suddenly ill. He forgot the cold, and was conscious of a fear which acted like a temporary anesthesia. For a few seconds he stood staring, until the match which he held burned out and scorched the flesh of his fingers. His jaw dropped, his eyes widened. He opened his lips and tried to speak, but closed them again without having uttered a sound save a choking gasp. He tried again, feeling an urge for speech—something, anything, to make him believe that he was here, alive—that the horror within the cab was real. This time he uttered an "Oh, my God!"

      The words seemed to vitalize him. He fumbled for another match, found it, and lighted it within the cab. It seemed to have the radiance of an incandescent.

      Spike had hoped that his first impression would prove to be a mere figment of his imagination; but now there was no doubting. There, sprawled in an ugly, inhuman heap on the floor, head resting against the cushioned seat of the cab, was the figure of a man. There was no doubt that he was dead. Even Spike, young, optimistic, and unversed in the ways of death as he was, knew that he was alone with a corpse.

      And as he gazed, a strange courage came to him. He found himself emboldened to investigate. He was shivering while he did so, shivering with fear and with the terrific cold of the night. He could not quite bring himself to touch the body, but he did not need to move it to see that murder had been done.

      The clothes told him instantly that the man was of high social station. They were obviously expensive clothes, probably tailor-made. The big coat, open at the top, was flung back. Beneath, Spike discerned a gray tweed—and on the breast of the gray tweed was a splotch, a dark, ugly thing which appeared black and was not black. Spike shuddered. He had never liked the sight of blood.

      The match spluttered and went out. Spike looked around. He felt hopelessly alone. Not a pedestrian; not a light. The houses, set well back from the street, were dark, forbiddingly dark.

      He saw a street-car rattle past, bound on the final run of the night for the car-sheds at East End. Then he was alone again—alone and frightened.

      He felt the necessity for action. He must do something—something, but what? What was there to do?

      A great fear gripped him. He was with the body. The body was in his cab.

       He would be arrested for the murder of the man!

      Of course he knew he didn't do it. The woman had committed the murder.

      Spike swore. He had almost forgotten the woman. Where was she? How had she managed to leave the taxicab? When had the man, who now lay sprawled in the cab, entered it?

      He had driven straight from the Union Station to the address given by the woman—straight down East End Avenue, turning neither to right nor left. The utter impossibilty of the situation robbed it of some of its stark horror. And yet—

      Spike knew that he must do something. He tried to think connectedly, and found it a difficult task. Near him loomed the shadow which was No. 981 East End Avenue—the address given by the woman when she entered the cab. He might go in there and report the circumstances. Some one there would know who she was, and—but he hesitated.

      Perhaps this thing had been prearranged. Perhaps they would get him—for what he didn't know. When a man—a young man—comes face to face with murder for the first time, making its acquaintance on a freezing December midnight and in a lonely spot, he is not to be blamed if his mental equilibrium is destroyed.

      Wild plans chased each other through his brain. He might dump the body by the roadside and run back to town. That was absurd on the face of it, for he would be convicting himself when the body was found. It would be traced to him in some way—he knew that. He was already determined to keep away from No. 981 East End Avenue. There was something sinister in the unfriendly shadow of the rambling house. He might call the police.

      That was it—he would call the police. But how? Go into a house near by, wake the residents, telephone headquarters that a murder had been done? Alarm the neighborhood, and identify himself with the crime? Spike was afraid, frankly and boyishly afraid—afraid of the present, and more afraid of the future.

      And yet he knew that he must get in touch with the police, else the police would eventually get in touch with him. He thought then of taking the body in to headquarters; but he feared that his cab might be stopped en route to the city and the body discovered. They would never believe, then, that he had been bound for headquarters.

      Almost before he knew that he had arrived at a decision, Spike had groped his way across the icy street and pressed the bell-button on the front door of the least unprepossessing house on the block.

      For a long time there was no answer. Finally a light shone in the hall, and the skinny figure of a man, shivering violently despite the blanket-robe which enfolded him, appeared in the hallway. He flashed on the porch light from inside and peered through the glass door. Apparently reassured, he cracked the door slightly.

      "Yes. What do you want?"

      At sound of a human voice, Spike instantly felt easier. The fact that he could converse, that he had shed his terrible loneliness, steadied him as nothing else could have done. He was surprised at his own calmness, at the fact that there was scarcely a quaver in the voice with which he answered the man.

      "I'm Spike Walters," he said with surprising quietness. "I'm a driver for the Yellow and White Taxicab Company. My cab is No. 92,381. I have a man in my cab who has been badly injured. I want to telephone to the city."

      The little householder opened the door wider, and Spike entered. Cold as the house was, from the standpoint of the man within, its hold-over warmth was a godsend to Spike's thoroughly chilled body.

      The little man designated a telephone on the wall, then started nervously as central answered and Spike barked a single command into the transmitter:

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