If I Die Before I Wake
PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS
If I Die Before I Wake
In writing If I Die Before I Wake, Sherwood King left a legacy of classic suspense writing, much copied and later immortalised in film.
SHERWOOD KING
If I Die Before I Wake
PENGUIN CLASSICS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published 1938
Published in Penguin Classics 2010
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-141-95831-6
To Jacques Dun Lany
Contents
Part One
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
Part Two
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
Part Three
I
II
III
IV
V
Part Four
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
Part Five
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
PART ONE
I
‘Sure,’ I said, ‘I would commit murder. If I had to, of course, or if it was worth my while.’
I said this as though I meant it too. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it at all.
‘The way I figure it,’ I said, ‘a man’s got to die some time. All murder does is hurry it up. What more is there to it?’
You know – talk. What any young fellow might say, just to show he’s not afraid of anything.
There had been a murder out our way. On Long Island. Some society woman had shot her husband. He hadn’t been doing anything, just raiding the icebox for a midnight snack. But (she said) she’d thought he was a burglar … five bullets’ worth. Police were holding her; some insurance angle.
Anyway, that’s what started Grisby talking about murder. I’d been driving him down to the railroad station every other day or so, whenever he’d come out to see my boss, Bannister, the lawyer. They were partners, only Bannister didn’t get down to the office much. He had a twisted leg – something he’d got in the War. It made him walk funny… you could hardly get him outside, except to appear in court, and then only when he had to. But it didn’t matter. He could work just as well at home, provided Grisby kept him in touch and came out often, and he did.
So this time driving down to the station we were talking about murder and Grisby asked me what I thought and I told him.
Afterwards I remembered he’d been building up to it from the very first. Nothing definite. Just letting me know one way and another that he thought I was too good to stay chauffeur to a man like Bannister for long. That he thought I was too smart not to have my eye on the main chance.
And there I was, taking it all in, trying to talk and act up to the role he’d given me and all the time not meaning a word of it, not a word.
It’s like when a slick salesman gets hold of you. You don’t want what he’s selling, maybe, but you take it. You take it because you’d rather do that than let him think you weren’t so smart after all.
Well, he liked it, too, my talking the way I did. He seemed to get a real kick out of it.
‘I thought you were smart, Laurence,’ he said. ‘Now I know it.’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘All that silly sentimental stuff – if you want someone out of the way, why, get him out of the way.’
‘But don’t forget,’ he said, ‘you’re smart only so long as you don’t get caught. That’s the difference between the smart man and the fool. The smart man doesn’t get caught.’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean I really was going to kill anyone,’ I said.
I stepped the car up to sixty to get some breeze and we rolled along without saying anything until we got to the station.
The station was empty as it usually was in the afternoons and there was no sign of the train.
Grisby got out and rested his briefcase on the running board, looking up at me as though he thought I was the goods, all right. I began to feel a little embarrassed.
‘You’ll be late for dinner,’ I said.
He laughed.
‘Dinner’s a joke at my place, and I don’t mind telling you that.’
He took off his panama and his glasses – pince nez, with a black ribbon – and began running a handkerchief over his face. The heat was bad enough for me, but it was worse for him. He weighed all of two hundred pounds – not fat, because he was as tall as I, and powerful, but it was plenty enough in that heat. Still, he was cheerful about it, as he always was, a real glad hander and hail fellow well met.
‘How do you mean, a joke?’ I asked.
‘Wait till you get married, like I’ve been these last fifteen years. And the devil of it is, she won’t give me a divorce.’
‘Oh, I see. Not much you can do in a case like that, is there?’
He laughed again and fitted the glasses back on, looking up the railroad tracks. The train was coming, its whistle blowing.
‘No,’ he said, ‘except maybe catch her raiding the icebox some night.’
I don’t know whether it was the sound of the train whistle moaning over the swamp beside the tracks or something in the way Grisby talked, but all at once a shiver went up and down my spine.
‘Sure,’ I said, ‘if it’s the only way out, why not?’
He picked up his briefcase and looked at me, smiling.
‘By God,’ he said admiringly, ‘I believe you would at that!’
Every once in a while after that he’d drop a hint or say something that would draw me out, always making me feel swelled up with my own importance, and all of a sudden it was too late for me to back down, and he had me.
II
It got to be then that the hardest thing I had to do was drive Grisby to the station.
Worst thing about it was that there wasn’t anything definite. Something was coming up, something he was counting on me for. But that’s all I knew. And I wouldn’t ask him; I didn’t want anything to do with it. I wasn’t any angel, I’d been a sailor on tramps and knocked around a lot, but I wasn’t that tough.
The thing to do, I figured, was bluff it out. Then, if it came right down to it, I’d blow. This job was all I’d been able to get ashore in over a year, and Bannister had been plenty good to me, but I wasn’t getting mixed up in any murder – not me.
I cut out all the bragging and talked as little as possible. There was a strained feeling between us, but if he noticed it he never said anything. We’d talk about the weather or who was going to win the World Series – things like that.
Then, as though we’d both been thinking about it all the time but just hadn’t been saying anything, he said, ‘Well, Laurence, I’ve got it all figured out, and it’s a beauty.’
‘Swell,’ I said. I was glad I had the wheel to handle and the road to watch.
‘What do you say to five thousand dollars? Could you use it?’
‘Could I!’
‘I thought so… well, it’s all settled, then. You’ll have your money within a week.’
‘Now I know you’re kidding. Who’s going to give me all that money, and for what?’
‘Why, I’m going to give it to you. Right out of my own pocket.’
‘I’ll bet!’
It was funny, but all at once the strain between us was gone, and I swung the car in beside the station and cut the switch without feeling I needed to be holding the wheel any more. There was even a smile on my lips.
I said: ‘Who is it you want murdered – your wife?’
He looked at me as though he didn’t get it. Then he shook his head and laughed.
‘You’re a tough one, all right,’ he said. He sank back. ‘Have a cigarette?’
I took one out of a silver case he had. My hand didn’t shake, if that’s what he wanted to see.
‘Well?’ I asked. I put it right up to him. ‘Who?’
We lighted up. Then he blew out smoke, saying:
‘No, Laurence, the one you’re going to kill is – me.’
‘You!’
We looked at each other, his hard eyes bright with real amusement.
I said: ‘You’re not serious—’
‘Certainly I am. I told you I’d figured it all out. It’s got to be me. You know, they talk about the perfect crime. There’s some defect in all of them. Ours will be the perfect crime, perfectly executed. And the first essential is that I be killed, the second that you be in a position to prove you killed me.’
‘I can just see myself doing that!’
He laughed.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘you’ll be anxious enough to prove it when the time comes. You just leave everything to me and do as I say and within a week you’ll have your five thousand and everything will be fine.’
‘Oh, then that was just a gag about me killing you? But that’s what I said—’
‘Sure it’s what you said. And you know what I said, too – that I was serious. I am. You’re going to fire a bullet into me and throw my body in the Sound. We’ll have witnesses—’
‘What the hell,’ I said.
‘That’s just what the police will say, just what we want them to say, “what the hell!”’
‘But I don’t get it. What good is that going to do us, letting them know I killed you?’
‘I thought you were smart.’
‘Sure, but—’
‘You’re going to kill me, and yet you aren’t. Now does it begin to make sense?’
‘It’s too deep for me.’
‘Perfect!’
His yellow green eyes were telling me things, but I wasn’t getting them. I was looking at the knot of his tie. It was a black one with yellow specks.
‘Listen!’ he said. ‘They’ve got to produce a body, haven’t they?’
I wasn’t sure I liked all this. I kept looking at the tie. The yellow specks were tiny daggers.
‘They’ve got to produce a body, and they can do all the shouting they want, but they can’t do a single, blessed thing unless they can find the body. Isn’t that right?’
‘Yes, I guess it is.’
‘And the body, Laurence, will be on a ship bound for the South Seas, where I’ve always wanted to go anyway. Now is it clear to you?’
I began to see a light.
‘You want to cut loose from your wife, you mean, and you’re taking this way of doing it?’
‘Partly that – sure, say we put it that way. It will certainly do the trick, won’t it?’
‘But are you sure they can’t do anything?’
‘I’m a criminal lawyer, I ought to be sure, oughtn’t I?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘But what?’
‘Well, they might keep me in jail until the body turned up – and it never would. Not if you’d be cruising around down in the South Seas.’
He snorted.
‘Suppose they did put you in jail for a while, or even in the psychopathic ward, if they thought you were nuts, what of it? Let ’em. Any dumb lawyer could get you out, if they didn’t even have a body – and they won’t have. I’ll see to that. Besides, what’s a little while in jail compared to five thousand waiting for you when you get out?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Don’t be a sap with all your “yes, buts.” You get five thousand dollars for saying you killed me and proving it. And you’re absolutely safe. You haven’t a thing to worry about.’
‘But supposing they find you? You’ve got insurance, haven’t you? The insurance people will want to be certain you’re dead. They may check the steamship companies. It might not be as easy as it looks.’
‘You just leave everything to me. I’ll be dead, all right. They won’t pay the insurance without a death certificate, but it doesn’t matter, either. My wife’s got money in her own name – enough to keep her the rest of her life. So don’t let the insurance part of it worry you. How about it, is it a deal?’
I took a deep draw on my cigarette.
‘I’ll think it over,’ I said.
His eyebrows shot up.
‘You mean you want to think over whether you could use that five thousand?’
‘Oh, I could use that, all right.’
‘You just don’t know how you’d spend it – that’s what’s worrying you? You want to think it over?’
‘I don’t want to rush into anything, that’s all.’
He slapped me on the knee.
‘Perfect!’ he said. ‘That’s just the way I’d hoped you’d be. It’s what I mean about your being smart. Why, I wouldn’t even put it past you if you’d already decided. Now what do you think about that?’
‘I don’t know. What do you think?’
‘There you go again, answering a question with a question. That’s another sure sign. But about thinking it over – of course you should. Why, do you know what I do when a client asks me a question or wants my advice? I might even have the answer on the tip of my tongue – but do I give it? Oh, no. I wait for the ball to bounce. I walk up and down the room. I look out the window. If there’s a pretty girl down on the street, I take just that much longer to reach a decision. Then when I give it, it carries some weight. It’s worth more. But I don’t need to tell you all these things. You know all the angles already.’
Sure I felt good – who wouldn’t?
‘Tell you the truth,’ Grisby went on, ‘if you hadn’t said you’d think it over, you might never have heard another thing about it. I distrust a man who is too quick to reach decisions. You go right ahead and think it over. Take your time.�
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He looked at his watch as though he were going to time me from that minute.
‘The train isn’t due for three and a half minutes,’ he said. ‘Tell me: you’ve been down in the South Seas, haven’t you?’
‘Sure – just about every other place, too. Why?’
‘I’m just wondering where’s the best place to go. How about Tahiti? Is it really all they say it is?’
‘You go down there and you’ll never want to leave. It’s got everything.’
‘You’ve certainly been around, haven’t you? A man of the world, eh?’
‘I don’t know about that. I went on tramp steamers, first as an ordinary seaman and then as an A.B. But I’ll tell you one thing – you sure learn a lot more that way than going around as a passenger on one of those ritzy liners. When you’re on a tramp steamer, you go to all sorts of out-of-the-way places where the liners never stop, and you’re treated like a king. I used to dress up at a port and go ashore to the best hotel and never go back to the ship until it was ready to sail. They’d dock me two days’ pay for every day I stayed ashore, but what the hell – you might never get there again, so what of it? I’d get invited to all the best places, just because I was young and an American, and because most of the people from the States were bored to death living away from their friends. They’d want me to stay and load me down with gifts when I left – the girls particularly. You know, daughters of army officers and men down from the States on business.’
‘How come you didn’t marry any of them?’
‘Oh, I could have, all right.’
‘Some of them with money, too, I’ll bet.’
‘That’s right. I just didn’t want to get my money that way.’
‘Well, it’s just as easy to fall in love with a girl with money as one without – a lot easier, I’d say.’
‘Maybe so. I just wasn’t interested.’
‘I should think they wouldn’t have let you go, a good-looking fellow like you, and smart, too. But I suppose you weren’t ready to settle down – you wanted to see the whole world first, eh?’
‘I guess so.’
‘No family waiting for their wandering boy to come home?’