The Long Night

By Hartley Howard

A Phone call for Bowman at two a.m.... A honeyed, velvet voice of invitation... A trip across town in the small hours...A grim discovery in a swanky apartment...

From these tense beginnings, Hartley Howard-past-master of the suspense story-constructs a tight web of excitement, of sudden death, and of lovely women playing for
high stakes in an onrushing tale that will keep you enthralled until the very last page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Sep 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9781448202867

Hartley Howard

Leo Ognall (1908-1979), who wrote several novels under the pseudonyms Harry Carmichael and Hartley Howard, was born in Montreal and worked as a journalist before starting his fiction career. He wrote over ninety novels before his death in 1979.Harry Carmichael's primary series, written from 1952-1978, The Piper and Quinn series included characters such as John Piper (an insurance assessor) and Quinn, a crime reporter.His other works include: The Glenn Bowman series, 1951-1979; The Philip Scott series, 1964-1967.

Book preview

Chapter I

Lady on the Phone

The Voice on the phone was a honeyed, velvet voice with a faint slur that might’ve been due to the bottle. Any other time of the day, I’d have called it the soft-fingers-stroking-the-short-hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck kind of voice. But not at two a.m. And my bedside clock said it was two a.m.

I tilted the shade of the reading lamp so the light wouldn’t shine in my eyes and I found a more comfortable position for my elbow. By that time I was wide awake. I said. You sure you got the right number?

She made a little, husky sound in her throat that could’ve been a laugh. In the same drawling tone, she said, Sure I’m sure. You’re Glenn Bowman . . . aren’t you?

Yes, I said. But that doesn’t explain why you should call me at two o’clock in the morning to say ‘Hello, darling!’ Should I know you?

That all depends. Would you like to? She was still laughing at me.

Look, I said. If this is a gag, only one of us is enjoying it.

You disappoint me . . . darling. Do you always wake up in an irritable mood?

When I’m wakened from a sound sleep just to listen to a load of double-talk, what do you expect me to be but irritable? Who are you, anyway?

I’m Judith Walker, she said. And she said it as if that explained everything.

I don’t know any Judith Walker, I told her. Do you mind telling me what you want?

She didn’t answer straight off. My clock ticked away ten seconds before she said, I’m sorry you feel like that. I just wanted to talk with you . . . but I can see it was a mistake. Her voice was still cool velvet but it had lost the drawl. I got the idea she was sorry.

Talk about what? I said.

Another ten seconds went by. Then she said, Oh, nothing particular. I couldn’t sleep—that was all. I thought . . . but it doesn’t matter. Good night.

Hold it, I said. I don’t get any of this. Why pick on me to share your insomnia? There are eight million people in New York. Why make it my lucky night?

Because—she sounded farther away from the phone—I saw you somewhere . . . once. And you looked as if you might . . . oh, it was all very silly of me. Please forget it. And good night again.

There’s nothing to forget, I said. I was half asleep and I didn’t understand.

Do you understand better now?

Sure. You stayed up drinking instead of going to bed. And when you got sick of the bottle, you thought you’d like to cry out your troubles on somebody else’s shoulder and you chose mine.

How’d you know I’ve got any troubles?

To-morrow, when you think things over, I said, you’ll realise what a silly question that is. We’ve all got our troubles. Only some of us don’t let them keep us awake nights.

With the careful articulation of the well stewed, she said, Psycho-analysis by remote control . . . what’s wrong with a girl trying to drown her sorrows?

Most times, liquor only irrigates them, I told her. That’s what’s wrong.

She laughed unsteadily. She said, There’s mamma’s clever boy. Wish I’d got to know you before.

Before when?

Before it was too late. In a thick tone overlaid with impatience, she added, And for Pete’s sake, don’t pull any cracks about it never being too late. I know better.

I said, Any dame who hits the bottle the way you’ve been doing doesn’t know anything. What you needed was a couple of phenobarbs.

What I need is another drink. Just one more for the road.

Come morning, I said, and you’ll be singing the booze blues, sister. You’re going to have a head as big as a freight car.

For me—she took plenty of time and she delivered each word like she didn’t want to part with it— there won’t be any to-morrow.

A flurry of rain pattered on my bedroom window and the panes rattled in a sudden gust of wind. The draught that seeped across the bed was cold. I said, What’s that supposed to mean—if it means anything?

D’you want me to spell it out for you? Now her voice had gone distant again and I could just hear her.

You wouldn’t be that crazy, I said.

What’s crazy about taking a friendly guy’s advice? You told me I ought to have taken a couple of phenobarb . . . good for putting a girl to sleep . . . and I wanna sleep . . . a nice long sleep . . . jus’ go on sleeping . . . and sleeping—— She broke off and I got the idea she was giving her elbow some more exercise. Then she mumbled, Funny . . . isn’t it? Go on drinking long enough and you get sober again . . . I do’ wanna be sober . . . ’n I do’ wanna talk any more, either . . . should never have called you. . . . If you do’ mind I’ll let you go back to bed . . . ’n thanks for everything.

How do you expect me to be able to sleep? I said. Once I’m wakened, I stop awake the rest of the night. And I’ve run right out of phenobarb.

Sorry about that . . . but whadayou expect me to do?

Well, you started this. You can’t walk out on me now. Why don’t we get together and share that bottle you got?

Don’ be silly. You’d be the one who was crazy if you came all the way out here jus’ for the sake of a drink.

Maybe I like being crazy. And maybe I like the sound of your voice. You can’t sleep and I can’t sleep. Any reason why we shouldn’t entertain each other?

But—you don’t know me. She came closer to the phone and I could almost smell her breath.

That’s easily remedied, I said.

She went quiet for a while. The line frizzled and made tiny piping noises in the far distance while I waited. Outside my window, another gust of wind flung the rain against the glass in a brief tattoo. The draught from under the door was giving me goose-pimples.

Then she said, What good would it do?

Let’s find out. You never know what you might like until you try it.

Does that include a screwy dame?

All dames are screwy, I said. If they weren’t, none of them would have any time for guys like me.

You don’t mean that. You’re just trying to talk me into letting you come up here. And I won’t let you. Whadaya think you’ve got that’d make me change my mind?

I’m the guy you called darling, I said. I liked that, The way you said it made me feel good. Maybe you’d say it again when you got to know me better.

That wasn’t me, she said. That was the rye. And you don’t even know what I look like.

I’ll take a chance. A guy oughtn’t to be too choosy at a quarter after two in the morning. I think you’ve got a kind heart.

The phone took some more time out for meditation. When she spoke again, she sounded like she was trying to talk through the cork. She said, In case you’re thinking what I’m thinking, you can forget it. My kind heart won’t get you anywhere.

Supposing you’re a thought-reader, I said. Just supposing . . . what have you got to worry about? You can’t take it with you . . . can you?

Without any hesitation, she said, I see what you meant by ‘entertaining each other.’ And it’s no dice, brother. I’d rather not spend the rest of my time wrestling with a gorilla.

No one’s asking you to. We were just supposing.

O.K. Then why d’you wanna come here?

When we’ve had a little drink and a little chat, I said, and I’m a couple of hours nearer breakfast-time, I’ll leave you to kiss yourself good-bye with phenobarb or any other kind of one-way ticket. It’s no skin off my nose whether you wake up in the morning or not. You sound old enough to know your own mind.

In a small voice, she said, I am old enough. I’m twenty-eight. It was my birthday yesterday. That’s funny too, isn’t it?

Very funny, I said. Many happy returns.

For a long half-minute, she didn’t make a sound. Then I heard her crying.

Any time a dame goes on a tear jag when I’m around, I stand well back so I won’t get my feet wet. They don’t want consoling. All they need is peace and quiet and the loan of a big handkerchief. An uninterrupted bout of the weeps does a woman more good than a blood-transfusion.

So I acted like I wasn’t there while she went on making little whimpering noises as if she’d just celebrated her eighth birthday instead of her twenty-eighth. Only celebrated wasn’t the right word.

And I passed the time wondering what she’d done that gave her such a yen to put herself under glass. Or what somebody else had done to her. And if Judith Walker was her real name or a phony. And why she had called me in the middle of the night. Maybe she hadn’t meant to tell me she was going to take the Dutch cure; maybe it had been forced out of her. People say you only do a thing like that when you don’t talk about it. At least, that’s what they say. Me, I wouldn’t know.

By then she had quietened down to a muffled sobbing and an occasional sniffle. I went on waiting and wondering.

At last she said, Why didn’t you hang up on me?

Because you haven’t given me your address yet. I hunched deeper into my pyramid of bedclothes and asked myself what the hell it had to do with me if some wacky female wanted to put an end to her misery. This town’s full of dames who are sick of their lives for one reason or another. Most times it’s for just that one reason.

She said, There’s no future in it for you.

I said, There’s no future in an overdose of phenobarb, either. Let’s face our no future together for an hour or two. Then I’ll leave you to your date with the icebox. What d’you say?

Her hesitation didn’t last long. In a tone that had no feeling, she said, I think it would be very easy to hate you. . . .

So I’ve often been told, I said. Give me your address and I’ll make it easier still . . . if you aren’t scared.

Why should I be scared? . . . My apartment’s at 621 Gifford Street off Third Avenue . . . but I don’t believe you’ll come.

Don’t bet on it, Judith. Why else should I want your address?

To give to the police soon’s I ring off . . . and don’t say you haven’t already thought of it.

Sure I have. But I gave up the idea of calling copper when you told me your age.

Why?

The crew of a prowl car would spoil the kind of birthday party I’ve got in mind, I said.

She retired into herself again for a while. Then she said doubtfully, I wish I could believe you.

You can. At this hour of the morning, I’m not a very good liar.

Don’t you want to know why I—I need your help?

It’ll keep. I’m not asking questions. If you want to tell me, I’ll listen. If not, I’m a democrat and you’re free, white and twenty-eight. What do you say we leave it at that for now?

Almost meekly, she said, All right. My head aches too much to let me argue. I guess it’s from having too much on my mind. . . . You can’t understand . . . there’s a limit to what a girl can take. . . .

Can’t your doctor do anything for you?

This isn’t anything a doctor can cure.

You can’t say that until you’ve let him run the tape over you.

If you knew the way I’m being persecuted, you wouldn’t talk like that. I was hoping when I wrote—— She stopped abruptly. And she didn’t say any more.

When I’d waited long enough, I said, I’m no good at this sort of thing before breakfast. Maybe you’d better keep the rest until later . . . if that’s all right with you?

In a tone that was little more than a husky whisper, she said, I’ve been drinking such a lot . . . all night . . . since I realised what he might do. And there isn’t much time before he . . . Her voice receded until it was nothing but a faint thread of sound through her tears. She seemed to have gone very far away.

I said, Don’t worry about it now. Just relax. Soon’s I’ve got some clothes on, I’ll pick up a cab and be right with you.

From a long way off, she said, Yes . . . please. . . . But hurry . . . hurry. . . .

She didn’t say any more after that. And she didn’t hang up. The phone rattled like she’d dropped the receiver and I heard small noises in the distant background. Then I heard nothing at all.

A rain squall buffeted the window again as I got out of bed and put on the ceiling light. With the draught from under the door soaking into my bones, I began to dress.

Chapter II

Ascent to Oblivion

There was no moon in Gifford Street and there was no sky, either. There was only the rain and the blustering wind and the threshing of tyres on the glistening pavement.

The jockey said, That’ll be a dollar twenty, mister . . . lousy night, ain’t it? He was a thick-lipped guy with lizard eyes and big red ears that looked like they’d suffered from chilblains.

I paid him off and I got out. If I could’ve thought of anything to say that would’ve been an improvement on his description of the weather, I’d have said it. But I couldn’t. So all I said was, ’Night . . . as he slammed the cab door and I sprinted across the sidewalk.

Not that it would’ve made any difference what I said. The way things turned out, I could’ve discussed isobars and barometric pressure variations with him without altering the future course of events two hoots. The only mistake I made was in not getting him to wait for me. That was the kind of mistake a guy makes when he opens the wrong door and falls down the elevator shaft.

The entrance to number 621 was a recessed doorway three stone steps up from the sidewalk. Inside the doorway there was a black rubber mat inlaid with white numerals. No one had walked on the mat since it had begun to rain heavily like it was raining now.

On the right-hand wall a frosted globe shone down on a string of names and apartment numbers. Miss Judith Walker was on the fifth floor.

In the lobby all the lights except one were out. That one was a dim bulb over the foot of the stairs. Somewhere beyond the bend in the stairs another nightlight burned.

Two oval eyes of light glowed in the blank face of the elevator doors and made twin splashes of gold on the floor of the lobby. In every corner the shadows took the shape of people and things that weren’t there. Three a.m. is no time for an imaginative guy to be calling on a would-be suicide.

Everything was nice and quiet—the way you’d expect it to be at three o’clock in the morning. Far off in the distance the motor of a car was a pulsing murmur that merged into the beating of the blood in my ears. The hiss of the rain lay all around like an overtone to the silence. The noise of my shoes on the tiled floor was too loud.

At the foot of the stairs, I hesitated. I wondered if it might not be more discreet to walk up when visiting a dame in the small hours of the yawning. If I were seen going into her apartment, folks who didn’t know me might think things. Those who did know me wouldn’t need to think—they’d know for sure.

But five lots of stairs is a lot of stairs. I went into the elevator and closed the doors very, very gently. Then I pushed the button that said: Fifth Floor.

Somewhere far above, a sweet motor whined faintly and my stomach settled lower. I went up with little more sound than if I’d been riding a magic carpet. All I could hear was the noise of the rain on the motor-house roof ’way up on the eighteenth floor.

It wasn’t a long ride but it gave me that much extra time to think: to think about Judith Walker and what she was maybe thinking. She might not have allowed for the trouble I’d had finding a cab. And she’d told me to hurry. It was going to be just too bad if she’d come to the conclusion I was standing her up.

Any damn’ fool knows what I should’ve done after she’d gone off the phone. I should’ve stopped where I was in my snug little bed and called John Law. They are the guys who get paid for restraining broads with the bugs from taking a run-out powder.

But all her talk could’ve been just talk. She’d said she’d been hitting the bottle. I’ve known sober dames say the screwiest things. Any time one of them meets herself on the way back from a long shikker, I’d be prepared for her to threaten most anything.

So I might’ve whistled up a pair of flatfeet . . . and chances were they’d have roused number 621 Gifford Street just to find Miss Judith Walker sleeping off a drunk . . . and she’d have said I was crazy with the heat . . . if she even remembered speaking with me.

Which would’ve left me looking and feeling like a prize shmoe. And we’re all entitled to a bit of vanity. Especially when I wasn’t exactly popular in one or two places and there were a few characters who’d have liked to see me fall flat on my face so they could give me the big laugh.

On the other hand, I might’ve said, Phooey! and crawled back under the bedclothes and given the whole business a miss. Yeh . . . I might’ve done. But I’ve got to to go on living with myself. Sometimes it’s hard enough as is it. And, stranger or no stranger, if Judith had been on the level I wouldn’t have been able to sleep nights from then on.

Inside my head, I kept asking myself ". . . Why me?" And a little voice began to join in and tell me I was a sucker for a dame . . . any dame . . . day or night . . . drunk or sober. . . . I suddenly realised that I could’ve used a drink at that. As the elevator slid to a smooth stop, I was hoping Judith wouldn’t have forgotten the traveller in the night.

The carpet on the hallway was soft and close-woven. I left the elevator doors open, took a peek both ways to see how the numbers ran, and went left. Miss Judith Walker’s apartment was the fourth door. Like all the others, nothing stirred behind it.

Below her name-plate there was a tiny ivorine button with a raised metal surround in gilt. I touched it lightly, once. Inside the apartment, a bell chimed two musical notes. The echoing sound hung in the air for a long time. It hadn’t died away completely when I pushed the button again.

Maybe I waited a minute after that before I came to the conclusion that playing musical boxes wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Miss Walker wasn’t receiving callers. Or she slept very soundly. . . . That was a train of thought I didn’t want to pursue.

Or she had gone out. Asking myself why she should’ve gone out and where wasn’t likely to produce results, either. A dame who can call a strange guy at two in the morning and discuss suicide can do anything.

But she’d told me to hurry. And I could still hear her saying ". . . There’s a limit. . ." in a plaintive voice that had stayed in my mind ever since.

About then, I discovered something that was quite a help. Whether she was at home or abroad, she’d left me an invitation to go on in. The door wasn’t locked.

I took my hand off the knob and pushed gently with one finger. Somewhere farther along the hallway a guy made sleepy noises and bedsprings creaked. I could hear a clock ticking where no clock had ticked before . .