The Best of Robert Bloch Read Free Page A

out—the hard way."
    "What's up?" asked Johnny Odcutt.
    "I'll turn out the lights for one minute. Sir Guy can stand here with his gun. If anyone in this room is the Ripper he can either run for it or take the opportunity to—well, eradicate his pursuer. Fair enough?"
    It was even sillier than it sounds, but it caught the popular fancy. Sir Guy's protests went unheard in the ensuing babble. And before I could stride over and put in my two cents' worth, Lester Baston had reached the light switch.
    "Don't anybody move," he announced, with fake solemnity. "For one minute we will remain in darkness—perhaps at the mercy of a killer. At the end of that time, I'll turn up the lights again and look for bodies. Choose your partners, ladies and gentlemen."
    The lights went out.
    Somebody giggled.
    I heard footsteps in the darkness. Mutterings.
    A hand brushed my face.
    The watch on my wrist ticked violently. But even louder, rising above it, I heard another thumping. The beating of my heart.
    Absurd. Standing in the dark with a group of tipsy fools. And yet there was real terror lurking here, rustling through the velvet blackness.
    Jack the Ripper prowled in darkness like this. And Jack the Ripper had a knife. Jack the Ripper had a madman's brain and a madman's purpose.
    But Jack the Ripper was dead, dead and dust these many years—by every human law.
    Only there are no human laws when you feel yourself in the darkness, when the darkness hides and protects and the outer mask slips off your face and you feel something welling up within you, a brooding shapeless purpose that is brother to the blackness.
    Sir Guy Hollis shrieked.
    There was a grisly thud.
    Baston put the lights on.
    Everybody screamed.
    Sir Guy Hollis lay sprawled on the floor in the center of the room. The gun was still clutched in his hand.
    I glanced at the faces, marveling at the variety of expressions human beings can assume when confronting horror.
    All the faces were present in the circle. Nobody had fled. And yet Sir Guy Hollis lay there.
    LaVerne Gonnister was wailing and hiding her face.
    "All right."
    Sir Guy rolled over and jumped to his feet. He was smiling.
    "Just an experiment, eh? If Jack the Ripper were among those present, and thought I had been murdered, he would have betrayed himself in some way when the lights went on and he saw me lying there.
    "I am convinced of your individual and collective innocence. Just a gentle spoof, my friends."
    Hollis stared at the goggling Baston and the rest of them crowding in behind him.
    "Shall we leave, John?" he called to me. "It's getting late, I think."
    Turning, he headed for the closet. I followed him. Nobody said a word.
    It was a pretty dull party after that.
     
     
    3
    I met Sir Guy the following evening as we agreed, on the corner of 29th and South Halsted.
    After what had happened the night before, I was prepared for almost anything. But Sir Guy seemed matter-of-fact enough as he stood huddled against a grimy doorway and waited for me to appear.
    "Boo!" I said, jumping out suddenly. He smiled. Only the betraying gesture of his left hand indicated that he'd instinctively reached for his gun when I startled him.
    "All ready for our wild-goose chase?" I asked.
    "Yes." He nodded. "I'm glad that you agreed to meet me without asking questions," he told me. "It shows you trust my judgment." He took my arm and edged me along the street slowly.
    "It's foggy tonight, John," said Sir Guy Hollis. "Like London."
    I nodded.
    "Cold, too, for November."
    I nodded again and half-shivered my agreement.
    "Curious," mused Sir Guy. "London fog and November. The place and the time of the Ripper murders."
    I grinned through darkness. "Let me remind you, Sir Guy, that this isn't London, but Chicago. And it isn't November, 1888. It's over fifty years later."
    Sir Guy returned my grin, but without mirth. "I'm not so sure, at that," he murmured. "Look about you. Those tangled alleys and twisted streets. They're like the East End.