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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/76644-0.txt b/76644-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bdfccbd --- /dev/null +++ b/76644-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,687 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76644 *** + + + + + + Clicking Red Heels + + By PAUL ERNST + + _Nobody knew that Gruin had killed his + sweetheart, but her little red heels tapped + a march of death wherever he went, driving + him to a desperate resolve._ + + [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from + Weird Tales June 1937. + Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that + the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] + + +There are two kinds of fear. There is fear of the known--terror of +death or disease or accident, or of social consequences of wrong +actions. This is bad enough, but it is a little thing compared to fear +of the unknown. _That_ is the horror that freezes your brain and stops +your breath in your throat; _that_ is the terror that wrings sweat +in icy drops from your clammy skin. Somewhere near you a black force +lurks, some shadow from a hell incomprehensible to mortal mind, some +_thing_ from another world which looms over you and threatens you with +a menace all the more awful for being unguessable. It is then that you +go mad and babble in your frightful torment of danger--and cannot even +say what that danger is.... + +Eldon Gruin was in the grip of the first fear. He was to know the +second, too; but at the time he knew only the first, and thought that +bad enough. His fear was of the consequences of a wrong act, and it was +embodied in a girl. + +The name of Gruin's fear was Maria José, whose father cut and stitched +leather in the repair of shoes in a dingy basement shop on Eighth +Avenue in New York. Her father was a gargoyle of a man, alone in the +world save for his Maria. But Maria--ah, she was a throw-back to some +Castilian ancestress who supplied inspiration for the fiery men who +made Spain unconquerable. + +Maria had great black eyes with ridiculously long lashes, and a +perfect, dainty oval of a face, and red, red lips, and a body that +sculptors in old Greece would have loved, and tiny feet on which--as +a sort of symbol of her mercurial temperament and gayety--were always +red-heeled shoes. They danced, those red-heeled small shoes, in a sort +of gay, mad rhythm of their own as Maria clicked down the street in +them. They had danced into hearts and out again, with an unsatisfying +trill of laughter before they carried their shapely, tempestuous young +owner into Gruin's life. + +It was all inconsequential, a thing no sane person should have built +hopes on, Gruin often reflected irritably. + +He was thirty-one, fairly wealthy, single, and out for fun. He had +met her at a night club where--till the fat proprietor had tried to +mix intimacy with managership--Maria had danced for a little while +professionally, in twinkling white satin pumps with red heels. + +Gruin had made her a few promises, perhaps. A man does when he is +captivated. And Maria had begun to cling. At first it had been +exhilarating. Men looked after her when she clicked up the sidewalk on +those ridiculous, pathetic, appropriate little red heels to meet him. +Gruin, who was not bad-looking, knew that he and Maria made a striking +pair together. + +Nice to have a girl like that live only for your whims. Intoxicating +to have such beauty almost abjectly at your command. Exhilarating to +the ego to know that you can turn on such a love-stream. Natural to +forget that it might be difficult to turn that love-stream off again. + +It wasn't long before Gruin had found that he was driving a force that +could not be controlled much longer. And then it was annoying. No, more +than that--it was rather terrifying! + +So he sat in the Lance Club lounge the afternoon of the evening which +was to be the turning-point in his not very useful young life, and +condemned Maria José. + +Any girl with any sense would have known that the affair must be +transient. She was a garlic-eating cobbler's daughter. He was heir to +a modest fortune and owned an old name. Had she seriously thought he +meant to--marry her? She couldn't have! Yet she was certainly acting +like it now. + +Gruin shifted in the leather club chair and sipped some of his +cocktail. And he felt faint perspiration steal out on the palms of his +hands as he reviewed Maria's recent conduct. + +When she clicked up on her red heels to meet him now, it was more often +than not to burst into tears because she hadn't seen him last night +or the night before--she demanded all of his time. When he talked of +taking a trip, she stared deep into his eyes, tearful no longer, and +advised him not to. There had been a newspaper rumor of his engagement +to a debutante in New York, and---- + + * * * * * + +Gruin sipped his cocktail again. Rather, he gulped it for strength. He +had at first thought it cute and picturesque of Maria that she carried +a little knife in her garter just above her beautiful right knee. He +didn't think it was at all cute now. So Gruin sat in the lounge of the +sleek, quiet club and knew what had to be done. + +He had started something with Maria that would never die while she +lived. If he tried to slide out of her life, she would raise a scandal +that would ruin him with his righteous grandfather, from whom all +monetary blessings flowed. If he tried to leave town, she would follow. +If he tried to get it over quickly and finally by marrying some girl of +his own class---- + +The knife at her knee was small, but it was slim and sharp, and it had +been flashed more than once before his white face. + +Living, Maria, the cobbler's daughter, was a constant menace to Eldon +Gruin. So Maria must die. + +Gruin shivered a little in the big leather chair in the luxurious +lounge. Murder is a large order, even when you're as sure you can get +away with it as Gruin was. In addition, there was a dim realization +in the back of his mind that the Josés, father and daughter, were +not quite as other people were. There was something a little--well, +mystic--in their vital black eyes. + +The one time when Gruin had consented indifferently to meet Maria's +father they had come upon him in the back room of his solitary +sweatshop, talking. Talking--with no one else in the room. Talking to +her mother, his dead wife, Maria had explained seriously, afterward. +And in the man's deep-set eyes had been a flame that killed laughter on +Gruin's lips. Something in the spirit and soul of the Josés, father and +daughter, that set them a little apart from others--something mystic +and unknown.... + +"Hell," said Gruin, finishing his cocktail and grimacing contemptuously +at himself. + +He was a fool. He was imagining things. Maria was just a girl--a woman +whose ardent infatuation had grown to the point where it threatened a +fortune he was to inherit, and his whole future life and good name. He +could imagine his grandfather's disinheritance speech if he presented +the mercurial cobbler's daughter in the gaudy red heels as his wife! + +"It's my life or hers," Gruin told himself, to stifle the gray fear of +murder--even so easy and fool-proof a murder as he had in mind. + +And with the gray fear lulled by what he chose to call the inevitable, +he had dinner at the club and then went to meet Maria.... + +He met her at Eighth Avenue and Thirty-Fourth Street at a little +after half-past eight. She clicked over the sidewalk in her red heels +to the curb, glowing and beautiful in a squirrel coat which he had +indiscreetly called an "engagement" present when he offered it--because +otherwise she would not have accepted it. + +"Eldon! My darling! You are late. I have waited and waited." + +"I said, eight-thirty," Gruin mumbled. + +"I did not want to wait that long. I could not. I have been here since +before eight.... Sweetheart, you haven't said you love me...." + +Gruin opened the door of his roadster and she got in. + +"Eldon, this waiting and waiting--I cannot understand it. When are we +going to--to stand before Father Mollé, so I will be with you always?" + +"Very soon," Gruin said, sliding into gear. "You will not have to wait +for me ever again." + +Up Riverside Drive they went, across the Hudson and up the Palisades, +to a place where they had parked often at night during the spring and +summer and fall--a place that had given Gruin courage to do murder by +simplifying it. + +There was a spot where you drove off the crowded highway, down half a +block of unfinished dirt road with a low wooden rail at the end. The +rail barred the street-end from a hundred-foot drop down the cliffside +to piles of crushed rock that were to be a new dock soon. And the rail +was very flimsy and a little rotten. And there was a great tree that +grew at the cliff's edge and flung one branch straight over the road so +low that a car's top almost scraped it. + + * * * * * + +Another car was parked in the road-end when Gruin got there with Maria, +in spite of the December cold. Gruin had to wait for this car to leave. +He put his arm around Maria, meanwhile gazing upward to be sure that he +had stopped the roadster directly under the low branch of the big tree. + +"It is cold," said Maria, shivering in spite of her fur. "Would we not +be warmer with the top up?" + +"The air tastes good," said Gruin hastily. It would ruin his plan if +the roadster's top were put up. He had to have a clear space above him. + +The other car left. He and Maria were alone in the open roadster under +the December stars. + +"Are you sick?" said Maria, gazing at him in the dashlight. + +"No, no. Not at all," said Gruin, whose teeth showed a tendency to +chatter. + +Maria looked deep into his eyes. Something mystic and inexorable in her +black ones.... + +"Eldon, you are acting very strangely. It is not that you are thinking +of breaking your promise?" + +"Of course not," Gruin said hastily. + +Maria's eyes still searched his, aflame with infatuation, and with +tempestuous resolve. The light from the roadster's dash showed on +little red heels, on a length of silk stocking that even now could make +Gruin's pulses jerk a trifle, on soft white flesh with a twisted garter +under it--on a slim little dagger! Then slowly her skirt went down +again. + +"I think we'd better leave," Gruin said, a trifle thickly. God! this +was the kind of thing you read about in the funny papers. You didn't +dream, at first, that it would force you to murder.... + +"We'll go," he said hoarsely. + +He started the car, and shifted to first gear with the clutch pressed +down. He raced the motor, pulling out the hand throttle on the dash so +that the engine speed would maintain itself. + +"Why are you making the engine go so fast?" said Maria. + +"The motor's cold--have to warm it up...." + +With the words, Gruin stood up suddenly, as nearly erect as the wheel +would let him. His fingers hooked over the overhanging tree branch--and +his foot left the clutch. + +[Illustration: "His fingers hooked over the branch and his foot left +the clutch."] + +The scream of tires spinning from sudden power of a roaring, +full-throttled motor mingled with Maria José's shriek. The roadster +leaped toward the wooden rail at the edge of the cliff, with Gruin +hanging over the road behind. + +Maria's fingers tore at his legs as she sought to clutch him, and his +left heel ground into her face, forcing her back in the seat. The +roadster smashed through the wooden rail, teetered for just an instant +on the edge of the cliff, then plunged forward. + +The noise of nearly two tons of metal smashing on rock a hundred feet +below, shocked the night. And Gruin dropped into the road and ran to +the edge. He looked down. + +Flame was rising from the wreck far below. He saw a black cascade in +the path of the flame. Maria's hair. He was whimpering a little as he +moved, without being conscious of it. There was a ledge ten feet down, +with a thick bush growing from it. He lowered himself to that, clung to +it, and began shouting for help.... + + * * * * * + +It all went as he had thought it would. The papers got just the right +angle. + +A Gruin, scion of one of the city's best-known, if not richest, +families, had been out with some girl named Maria José. He had parked +at the edge of the Palisades. Probably there'd been a little drinking. +When leaving, he had carelessly shifted the gear lever forward into +second instead of forward into reverse. The car had plunged over the +cliff carrying both of them, but he had been thrown out and had caught +a bush which saved his life. The girl had gone on down--to death. + +There was unfavorable publicity; there were infuriated lectures +from his grandfather; there was talk of prosecution for criminal +carelessness. + +And that was all. With one clever stroke Gruin had gotten rid of +a danger that had grown to intolerable proportions in his life. +Decorously he went to the funeral in which a girl's shattered body was +lowered into the ground. And afterward, Maria's father came up to him. + +Gruin looked hastily around. There was no one near, and he was a little +afraid of the somber fire in the man's deep-set black eyes. He had aged +twenty years. He looked like a gargoyle with an iron-gray beard and +white hair. + +"You killed Maria," he said, with the words coming slowly and painfully. + +"I know." Gruin's face took on a contrite and sympathetic expression. +"A terrible accident----" + +"That is not what I mean," said Maria's father. "It was not accident. +_I know._ You killed my girl on purpose. _You murdered her!_" + +"No, no! I swear----" + +Gruin stopped at the look in his eyes. And José went on, slowly, +painfully, with every word ringing in Gruin's brain. + +"I bring her curse on your head. You killed her to be free from her. +But you shall not be free. She will be with you always, beside you, +walking when you walk, stopping when you stop. Always, always beside +you...." + +Gruin got away from there, and also, he was sure, away from all that +had threatened him. + +There were, when all the smoke had cleared away, no consequences at +all. The charges of criminal carelessness never materialized. His +grandfather, unconcerned with death, finally forgave him for wasting a +few evenings with a cheap unknown named Maria. The world didn't dream +that the tragedy at the cliff was not an accident. He had murdered +successfully.... + +And then he strolled from his grandfather's house one evening, bent for +an engagement with a girl almost as beautiful as Maria had been and +much more sensible, and a queer thing happened. + +As he walked across the curb from door to car--a big new coupé to +take the place of the roadster--he heard someone walking beside him. +At least he thought for a moment that he had heard steps matching his +own. But he saw an instant later that he had been wrong, because when +he turned around, there was no one on the sidewalk. No one within half +a block of him. + + * * * * * + +He got into the coupé and drove to the apartment of the girl he had the +engagement with. Again, as he walked from curb to building door, he +heard steps sound out beside him--possibly a little behind him, that +matched his steps. But he scarcely thought twice about it, because +there were half a dozen people around him here, and any one of them +could have made the sound. + +He had one vague and irrelevant memory as he opened the vestibule door. +It was a memory of Maria and him walking down the street. Striving to +match his moods, Maria also, laughingly, strove to match his strides. +She tried to keep her small red heels clicking on the walk in time with +his steps. He had often teased her about it, taking longer and slower +strides that taxed her smallness more and more till finally she simply +could not keep step with him and would break rhythm with a gay laugh. + +Maria and he, walking down the street, with her absurd red heels +clicking in time with his step.... + +He thrust the picture aside and went up deep-carpeted halls and +stairways to the apartment of the blond with the slightly hard blue +eyes with whom he had a date. And they went to a Broadway club and +danced. + +During the evening, Gruin cursed his memory for bringing back the +picture of himself and Maria walking, with her red heels tapping the +time of his steps. Because, after that recollection, his imagination +really began to play tricks on him. + +He began to hear heels clicking with each of his steps as he moved. Not +just now and then, but all the time. + +When he stood up from the table as the orchestra started, and walked +around to help the blond with her chair, he heard a precise little +heel-click with each stride he took. The click sounded, scarcely +audible, right beside him as he escorted her to the dance floor. + +In spite of himself, Gruin thought of those words of Maria's father: +"You killed her to be free from her. But you shall not be free. She +will be with you always...." + +The blond smiled up at him. + +"Do you want to stand at the edge of the floor all evening? Or do you +want to dance with me?" + +He smiled back and they danced. He heard the click only once in a while +over the orchestra's rhythm. And he paid no attention to it. There were +many high heels here, and all high heels make that clicking sound. +He lost himself in the promises in the slightly hard blue eyes just +below the level of his own eyes. And he stopped his ears to the queer +clicking, which sounded as he moved, for the rest of the evening. + +But after he had left the blond and returned home, when he was walking +from the garage to his grandfather's house, he couldn't stop his ears +any more. The clicking was too infernally loud in the stillness that +clutches city streets at three in the morning. And there wasn't a +person within blocks that he could blame the noise on. + +Click, click, click came the sound, as he walked along through the +night. Exactly as though a woman's high heels clicked beside him. High, +_red_ heels.... + +He stopped to light a cigarette which he thrust between disdainful, +half-sneering lips. And the clicking stopped. He went on toward his +grandfather's house--and the light, precise tapping continued, a click +for every step he took, like a ghost-thing marching in step beside him. +An unseen ghost-thing.... + +"Hell take it!" he said angrily aloud in the night. "I suppose this is +a sample of what they call remorse. Well I'll be damned if I----" + + * * * * * + +The light was on in the house. That was strange, at this hour of +the night. Gruin hurried to the door--with the neat, small clicking +increasing as his steps quickened. His grandfather opened the door +before he could insert his key--and the old man was icily angry. + +"Eldon," he said, "I want to speak to you, in the library." + +Gruin followed him to the room in which he had received most of the old +boy's rebukes. It was a psychological wood-shed where a verbal strap +was applied to him. But this time the strap was unjustified to the +point of being bizarre. + +"You have tried my patience to its extreme limit," the old man said, +ice-blue eyes smoldering. "You have achieved your final indiscretion. +How dare you bring a girl to this house and sneak her in when my back +is turned? And above all, a girl named Maria--after what happened a few +weeks ago? To this house!" + +Gruin's bewilderment was complete. + +"What on earth are you talking about?" + +"You deny you brought some girl to this house, to your room, secretly?" + +"I certainly do. I've never----" + +"Come upstairs, Eldon," the old man interrupted grimly. + +Gruin followed him from the library up to the second floor of the big +house. And as he moved, some unseen thing seemed to move beside him. +Very softly, almost furtively, the clicking tapped in rhythm with his +step. They got to Gruin's suite, a big bedroom and bath and a small +den, on the second floor. And there the old man pointed. He pointed +toward a great leather chair by a flat-topped desk. There was nothing +in the chair. + +Gruin turned with a puzzled frown to his grandfather. And then, without +going to the chair, he caught the odor that emanated from it--a faint +perfume that filled the den--an odor of hyacinth. + +Maria José had always used that scent. Hyacinth. + +"Some woman has been in this room," the old man accused sternly. "The +scent proves it. And her name was Maria. _That_, scribbled no doubt +idly while she sat with you here, proves it!" + +Gruin walked to his writing-desk. He wasn't quite aware of how he got +there. He knew only that in a minute he stood by the desk looking down +at it--at a torn scrap of paper on the blotter--at one word, faintly +scrawled on the paper. + +"Maria." + +And it was Maria José's handwriting. + +At the pallor on his grandson's face, the old man promptly forgot all +charges of ribaldry. He caught Eldon Gruin and helped him to another +chair, and then called the butler and a doctor.... + +Gruin was a strong-minded person. You have to be to plan and execute +deliberate, cold-blooded murder. It wasn't long before a logical +explanation occurred to him, and he drove to the shop of Maria's father. + +"You broke into our house," he accused. "You set a stage in my +room--dropped perfume of the kind your daughter used on my chair, and +wrote her name on a scrap of paper, imitating her handwriting, on my +desk." + +He had come there confident in his conviction. But that conviction +slowly faded as he looked into José's eyes. Dark eyes, smoldering, +mystic, so like Maria's eyes. + +"You know it was not I who was there," José said in his pedantic, +accented English. + +Just that. Nothing more. Gruin turned and almost ran from the basement +shop. And as he hurried, beside him hurried unseen little heels that +clicked and clicked with each swift step he took. They followed him out +the door, a little behind him as he rushed, and to his car. And there +they stopped. + +But he thought he saw the seat cushion beside him give a little with an +unseen weight as he drove away.... + + * * * * * + +A strong-minded person in good health--that was Eldon Gruin. There was +no insanity in the Gruin family. Yet in the days that followed he began +more and more to fear, with a mighty fear, that he was going mad. For +always he heard the little heel taps beside him as he walked, stopping +when he stopped, beginning again when he went on. And always in his +brain was José's curse, "_She will be with you always, beside you, +walking when you walk, stopping when you stop. Always, always beside +you._..." + +So Gruin came to know the worst fear the known holds for us: fear of +madness. But that fear did not last long. It very speedily deepened +into that last ultimate horror--of the _un_known--which can prey on a +man's mind. + +Mad because he seemed to hear the weird clicking of heels beside him? +_Seemed_ to hear? + +He went into the library one night when his grandfather sat at his +desk, reading. It was late, and the house was very still. The old man's +senses were excellent. He didn't become aware of Gruin's entrance for +a moment, but then he glanced up quickly, with a slightly surprized +expression. + +"Oh," he said, carelessly. "You're alone." + +"Of course. Why?" + +"It sounded for a moment as though there were two of you," the old man +said. "A sort of clicking. It must have been your hard heels against +the floor." + +Gruin managed to get out of there without letting his grandfather see +the chaos in his brain. But he staggered like a drunken man after +leaving the library. + +"Sounded as though there were two of you ... must have been your hard +heels against the floor." God! Gruin didn't wear hard leather heels. +Every shoe he owned had rubber on it. + +"A sort of clicking...." + +The clicking of Maria José's small red heels as they twinkled unseen +beside him! Maria José, who had died in flame and ruin at the bottom of +the cliff! + +He was _not_ mad, then. The sound he had thought to hear in madness, +actually was there to be heard. And then Gruin knew that ultimate +horror which comes with the unknown. For if the sound really was there, +perceptible enough for others to hear it, the cause of the sound must +be there too! + +A dead girl walking beside him! A thing from some unknown sphere! +"_Walking when you walk, stopping when you stop_----" + +"I walk with death!" Gruin told himself, shuddering, with the icy sweat +of horror on his forehead. + +Red heels clicking beside him, as small, unseen feet kept time with +his. As Maria had kept time when they walked down the street together. +With one difference. Maria, alive, had been unable to match his strides +when he increased them to their full masculine length. Maria, dead, +could do that. He caught himself crazily shortening and lengthening +his step as he walked down the street--with people turning to look +curiously after him. But no matter how he walked, the unseen little +heels beside him clicked in even pace. + +Walking with death. Escorting a dead girl wherever he went. Sometimes +Gruin talked with her, damning her, whispering curses, telling her to +get back to the grave from which she had come. And more people began to +turn to look after him as he walked the streets. + +His grandfather and his friends began asking him what was wrong, and he +couldn't tell them. His grandfather sent him to a great psychiatrist, +and Gruin couldn't tell him what was wrong, either. Confession as +to what was wrong with him lay too dangerously close to a murder +confession. + +Red heels clicking always with him as he walked, stopping when he +stopped, beginning again when he moved ... the red heels of Maria who +had been sent by him to death over the edge of a cliff.... + + * * * * * + +He drove in his coupé to the street-end where the roadster had crashed +over the wooden barrier and plummeted to piles of rock below, while he +hung from the branch over the road. + +There was no wooden barrier there now. There was a concrete wall, +hastily erected after the "accident." It was a thick wall. It would +stand any shock. Or--would it? + +Gruin got out of the coupé and went to the wall. As he strode, beside +him sounded the quick, half-dancing, half-marching accompaniment. + +Gruin shuddered, as much with cold as with ever-present horror. He +weighed only a hundred and twenty pounds, as against his former hundred +and eighty, and the winter wind seemed to go through his coat and to +his bones. + +The wall was pretty solid. He walked along it. And, click, click, +click, click, walked the unseen Thing beside him. + +"Solid," he said aloud, chuckling a little and then jerking his head +around to see if anyone had heard him. "Not so easy to send anybody +over the edge here, now." + +He stood on top of the wall and stared down. The piles of crushed stone +were still there; it had been too cold for work on the dock. + +"That's where you went, damn you," he mumbled to the Thing in the +phantom red heels that clicked beside him. Beside him--even as he +walked down the wall with nothing but thin air on either side. + +He began to chuckle again, aloud, craftily. + +"Nobody's ever suspected, except your father. And he can't hurt me any. +Nobody knows I killed you." + +He stepped down from the wall. And beside him a click sounded, a +little louder than usual, the click of a red heel coming down from the +two-foot step from the top of the wall. + +"_Damn you!_" Gruin shouted. And then he pressed his hand to his lips. +On the highway, several blocks away, a hitch-hiker stared curiously at +him, then went on his way, signaling for rides. + +"Shouldn't be out here," Gruin muttered laboriously. + +He started for the coupé, parked a dozen yards from the new concrete +wall. Dully he strode toward it. And as he walked, with each step came +the accompanying small tap of little red heels, almost coinciding with +his step on the ice of the road. + +"Better not come out here again," he mumbled, "I'm safe now. But +somebody might see me here and think it was funny--might start +investigating the accident again." + +He got into the coupé, settling laboriously behind the wheel. And then, +as his eyes strayed sideways, his teeth met through his upper lip. + +Always when he got into his car--which was often, as he drove a great +deal to save walking and hearing the tapping heels beside him--he +strove to keep his eyes from going sideways, to the cushion beside him. +And always he was unsuccessful. + +And always he saw the same thing--saw the seat cushion give a little as +though someone had sat down there, next to him. + +He saw it now. + +"Damn you--damn you----" he cried brokenly. + +The motor of the coupé was thrumming, responding to the mechanical +touch of his foot to the starter. The depression in the seat beside him +shifted a little. + +"_You'll go back to hell where you came from!_" + +Like another person, Gruin heard those words keen from his lips. Like +another person he heard the motor roar into full-throated power as his +foot jammed down on the accelerator. + +"No," he breathed, as his hand slid the gear-shift lever into first. +Like another person, pleading, remonstrating--and being unheeded. "No!" + +The motor bellowed, the coupé's tires screamed as they felt full and +sudden power applied. The car leaped forward. + +"_Oh, my God, no_----" + +The car, nearly two tons of steel, hit the concrete wall with all the +power of the great motor, in first gear, behind it--hit the wall, +crumpled, then crunched on through. The thunder of the coupé's crash on +the rock far below shocked the late February afternoon.... + + * * * * * + +Remorse, they called it. Eldon Gruin was so weighed down by the +carelessness that had taken a life that he had gone to the scene of the +accident and committed suicide by driving his car over the same cliff. + +That was what was in the papers. What was not in them was something +else; something that puzzled detectives for a while, till they gave it +up as irrelevant, since they had no knowledge of the little red heels +of Maria that had clicked beside Gruin from the time of her death. + +That was, the curious thing found in each heel of each shoe that +Eldon Gruin owned--a little sliding weight that had been inserted and +re-covered by some deft cobbler. They didn't move when the shoes were +handled, unless they were shifted briskly up and down as a person +walking would move them. Then they made small clicking noises in unison +with the movements.... + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76644 *** diff --git a/76644-h/76644-h.htm b/76644-h/76644-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5fe46c5 --- /dev/null +++ b/76644-h/76644-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,783 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + Clicking Red Heels | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .51em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .49em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + +hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} +@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } +hr.full {width: 95%; margin-left: 2.5%; margin-right: 2.5%;} +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + +x-ebookmaker-drop {display: none;} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.right {text-align: right;} + +.smcap { font-variant:small-caps; } + +/* Images */ +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} + +.caption p +{ + text-align: center; + text-indent: 0; + margin: 0.25em 0; + font-weight: bold; +} + +div.titlepage { + text-align: center; + page-break-before: always; + page-break-after: always; +} + +div.titlepage p { + text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + font-weight: bold; + line-height: 1.5; + margin-top: 3em; +} + +.ph1 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; } +.ph1 { font-size: x-large; margin: .83em auto; } + + + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76644 ***</div> + +<div class="titlepage"> + +<h1>Clicking Red Heels</h1> + +<p class="ph1">By PAUL ERNST</p> + +<p><i>Nobody knew that Gruin had killed his<br> +sweetheart, but her little red heels tapped<br> +a march of death wherever he went, driving<br> +him to a desperate resolve.</i></p> + +<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br> +Weird Tales June 1937.<br> +Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br> +the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> + +</div> + +<hr class="chap"> + +<p>There are two kinds of fear. There is fear of the known—terror of +death or disease or accident, or of social consequences of wrong +actions. This is bad enough, but it is a little thing compared to fear +of the unknown. <i>That</i> is the horror that freezes your brain and stops +your breath in your throat; <i>that</i> is the terror that wrings sweat +in icy drops from your clammy skin. Somewhere near you a black force +lurks, some shadow from a hell incomprehensible to mortal mind, some +<i>thing</i> from another world which looms over you and threatens you with +a menace all the more awful for being unguessable. It is then that you +go mad and babble in your frightful torment of danger—and cannot even +say what that danger is....</p> + +<p>Eldon Gruin was in the grip of the first fear. He was to know the +second, too; but at the time he knew only the first, and thought that +bad enough. His fear was of the consequences of a wrong act, and it was +embodied in a girl.</p> + +<p>The name of Gruin's fear was Maria José, whose father cut and stitched +leather in the repair of shoes in a dingy basement shop on Eighth +Avenue in New York. Her father was a gargoyle of a man, alone in the +world save for his Maria. But Maria—ah, she was a throw-back to some +Castilian ancestress who supplied inspiration for the fiery men who +made Spain unconquerable.</p> + +<p>Maria had great black eyes with ridiculously long lashes, and a +perfect, dainty oval of a face, and red, red lips, and a body that +sculptors in old Greece would have loved, and tiny feet on which—as +a sort of symbol of her mercurial temperament and gayety—were always +red-heeled shoes. They danced, those red-heeled small shoes, in a sort +of gay, mad rhythm of their own as Maria clicked down the street in +them. They had danced into hearts and out again, with an unsatisfying +trill of laughter before they carried their shapely, tempestuous young +owner into Gruin's life.</p> + +<p>It was all inconsequential, a thing no sane person should have built +hopes on, Gruin often reflected irritably.</p> + +<p>He was thirty-one, fairly wealthy, single, and out for fun. He had +met her at a night club where—till the fat proprietor had tried to +mix intimacy with managership—Maria had danced for a little while +professionally, in twinkling white satin pumps with red heels.</p> + +<p>Gruin had made her a few promises, perhaps. A man does when he is +captivated. And Maria had begun to cling. At first it had been +exhilarating. Men looked after her when she clicked up the sidewalk on +those ridiculous, pathetic, appropriate little red heels to meet him. +Gruin, who was not bad-looking, knew that he and Maria made a striking +pair together.</p> + +<p>Nice to have a girl like that live only for your whims. Intoxicating +to have such beauty almost abjectly at your command. Exhilarating to +the ego to know that you can turn on such a love-stream. Natural to +forget that it might be difficult to turn that love-stream off again.</p> + +<p>It wasn't long before Gruin had found that he was driving a force that +could not be controlled much longer. And then it was annoying. No, more +than that—it was rather terrifying!</p> + +<p>So he sat in the Lance Club lounge the afternoon of the evening which +was to be the turning-point in his not very useful young life, and +condemned Maria José.</p> + +<p>Any girl with any sense would have known that the affair must be +transient. She was a garlic-eating cobbler's daughter. He was heir to +a modest fortune and owned an old name. Had she seriously thought he +meant to—marry her? She couldn't have! Yet she was certainly acting +like it now.</p> + +<p>Gruin shifted in the leather club chair and sipped some of his +cocktail. And he felt faint perspiration steal out on the palms of his +hands as he reviewed Maria's recent conduct.</p> + +<p>When she clicked up on her red heels to meet him now, it was more often +than not to burst into tears because she hadn't seen him last night +or the night before—she demanded all of his time. When he talked of +taking a trip, she stared deep into his eyes, tearful no longer, and +advised him not to. There had been a newspaper rumor of his engagement +to a debutante in New York, and——</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Gruin sipped his cocktail again. Rather, he gulped it for strength. He +had at first thought it cute and picturesque of Maria that she carried +a little knife in her garter just above her beautiful right knee. He +didn't think it was at all cute now. So Gruin sat in the lounge of the +sleek, quiet club and knew what had to be done.</p> + +<p>He had started something with Maria that would never die while she +lived. If he tried to slide out of her life, she would raise a scandal +that would ruin him with his righteous grandfather, from whom all +monetary blessings flowed. If he tried to leave town, she would follow. +If he tried to get it over quickly and finally by marrying some girl of +his own class——</p> + +<p>The knife at her knee was small, but it was slim and sharp, and it had +been flashed more than once before his white face.</p> + +<p>Living, Maria, the cobbler's daughter, was a constant menace to Eldon +Gruin. So Maria must die.</p> + +<p>Gruin shivered a little in the big leather chair in the luxurious +lounge. Murder is a large order, even when you're as sure you can get +away with it as Gruin was. In addition, there was a dim realization +in the back of his mind that the Josés, father and daughter, were +not quite as other people were. There was something a little—well, +mystic—in their vital black eyes.</p> + +<p>The one time when Gruin had consented indifferently to meet Maria's +father they had come upon him in the back room of his solitary +sweatshop, talking. Talking—with no one else in the room. Talking to +her mother, his dead wife, Maria had explained seriously, afterward. +And in the man's deep-set eyes had been a flame that killed laughter on +Gruin's lips. Something in the spirit and soul of the Josés, father and +daughter, that set them a little apart from others—something mystic +and unknown....</p> + +<p>"Hell," said Gruin, finishing his cocktail and grimacing contemptuously +at himself.</p> + +<p>He was a fool. He was imagining things. Maria was just a girl—a woman +whose ardent infatuation had grown to the point where it threatened a +fortune he was to inherit, and his whole future life and good name. He +could imagine his grandfather's disinheritance speech if he presented +the mercurial cobbler's daughter in the gaudy red heels as his wife!</p> + +<p>"It's my life or hers," Gruin told himself, to stifle the gray fear of +murder—even so easy and fool-proof a murder as he had in mind.</p> + +<p>And with the gray fear lulled by what he chose to call the inevitable, +he had dinner at the club and then went to meet Maria....</p> + +<p>He met her at Eighth Avenue and Thirty-Fourth Street at a little +after half-past eight. She clicked over the sidewalk in her red heels +to the curb, glowing and beautiful in a squirrel coat which he had +indiscreetly called an "engagement" present when he offered it—because +otherwise she would not have accepted it.</p> + +<p>"Eldon! My darling! You are late. I have waited and waited."</p> + +<p>"I said, eight-thirty," Gruin mumbled.</p> + +<p>"I did not want to wait that long. I could not. I have been here since +before eight.... Sweetheart, you haven't said you love me...."</p> + +<p>Gruin opened the door of his roadster and she got in.</p> + +<p>"Eldon, this waiting and waiting—I cannot understand it. When are we +going to—to stand before Father Mollé, so I will be with you always?"</p> + +<p>"Very soon," Gruin said, sliding into gear. "You will not have to wait +for me ever again."</p> + +<p>Up Riverside Drive they went, across the Hudson and up the Palisades, +to a place where they had parked often at night during the spring and +summer and fall—a place that had given Gruin courage to do murder by +simplifying it.</p> + +<p>There was a spot where you drove off the crowded highway, down half a +block of unfinished dirt road with a low wooden rail at the end. The +rail barred the street-end from a hundred-foot drop down the cliffside +to piles of crushed rock that were to be a new dock soon. And the rail +was very flimsy and a little rotten. And there was a great tree that +grew at the cliff's edge and flung one branch straight over the road so +low that a car's top almost scraped it.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Another car was parked in the road-end when Gruin got there with Maria, +in spite of the December cold. Gruin had to wait for this car to leave. +He put his arm around Maria, meanwhile gazing upward to be sure that he +had stopped the roadster directly under the low branch of the big tree.</p> + +<p>"It is cold," said Maria, shivering in spite of her fur. "Would we not +be warmer with the top up?"</p> + +<p>"The air tastes good," said Gruin hastily. It would ruin his plan if +the roadster's top were put up. He had to have a clear space above him.</p> + +<p>The other car left. He and Maria were alone in the open roadster under +the December stars.</p> + +<p>"Are you sick?" said Maria, gazing at him in the dashlight.</p> + +<p>"No, no. Not at all," said Gruin, whose teeth showed a tendency to +chatter.</p> + +<p>Maria looked deep into his eyes. Something mystic and inexorable in her +black ones....</p> + +<p>"Eldon, you are acting very strangely. It is not that you are thinking +of breaking your promise?"</p> + +<p>"Of course not," Gruin said hastily.</p> + +<p>Maria's eyes still searched his, aflame with infatuation, and with +tempestuous resolve. The light from the roadster's dash showed on +little red heels, on a length of silk stocking that even now could make +Gruin's pulses jerk a trifle, on soft white flesh with a twisted garter +under it—on a slim little dagger! Then slowly her skirt went down +again.</p> + +<p>"I think we'd better leave," Gruin said, a trifle thickly. God! this +was the kind of thing you read about in the funny papers. You didn't +dream, at first, that it would force you to murder....</p> + +<p>"We'll go," he said hoarsely.</p> + +<p>He started the car, and shifted to first gear with the clutch pressed +down. He raced the motor, pulling out the hand throttle on the dash so +that the engine speed would maintain itself.</p> + +<p>"Why are you making the engine go so fast?" said Maria.</p> + +<p>"The motor's cold—have to warm it up...."</p> + +<p>With the words, Gruin stood up suddenly, as nearly erect as the wheel +would let him. His fingers hooked over the overhanging tree branch—and +his foot left the clutch.</p> + +<hr class="chap"> + +<div class="figcenter"> + <img src="images/illus.jpg" alt=""> + <div class="caption"> + <p>"His fingers hooked over the branch and his foot left the clutch."</p> + </div> +</div> + +<hr class="chap"> + +<p>The scream of tires spinning from sudden power of a roaring, +full-throttled motor mingled with Maria José's shriek. The roadster +leaped toward the wooden rail at the edge of the cliff, with Gruin +hanging over the road behind.</p> + +<p>Maria's fingers tore at his legs as she sought to clutch him, and his +left heel ground into her face, forcing her back in the seat. The +roadster smashed through the wooden rail, teetered for just an instant +on the edge of the cliff, then plunged forward.</p> + +<p>The noise of nearly two tons of metal smashing on rock a hundred feet +below, shocked the night. And Gruin dropped into the road and ran to +the edge. He looked down.</p> + +<p>Flame was rising from the wreck far below. He saw a black cascade in +the path of the flame. Maria's hair. He was whimpering a little as he +moved, without being conscious of it. There was a ledge ten feet down, +with a thick bush growing from it. He lowered himself to that, clung to +it, and began shouting for help....</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>It all went as he had thought it would. The papers got just the right +angle.</p> + +<p>A Gruin, scion of one of the city's best-known, if not richest, +families, had been out with some girl named Maria José. He had parked +at the edge of the Palisades. Probably there'd been a little drinking. +When leaving, he had carelessly shifted the gear lever forward into +second instead of forward into reverse. The car had plunged over the +cliff carrying both of them, but he had been thrown out and had caught +a bush which saved his life. The girl had gone on down—to death.</p> + +<p>There was unfavorable publicity; there were infuriated lectures +from his grandfather; there was talk of prosecution for criminal +carelessness.</p> + +<p>And that was all. With one clever stroke Gruin had gotten rid of +a danger that had grown to intolerable proportions in his life. +Decorously he went to the funeral in which a girl's shattered body was +lowered into the ground. And afterward, Maria's father came up to him.</p> + +<p>Gruin looked hastily around. There was no one near, and he was a little +afraid of the somber fire in the man's deep-set black eyes. He had aged +twenty years. He looked like a gargoyle with an iron-gray beard and +white hair.</p> + +<p>"You killed Maria," he said, with the words coming slowly and painfully.</p> + +<p>"I know." Gruin's face took on a contrite and sympathetic expression. +"A terrible accident——"</p> + +<p>"That is not what I mean," said Maria's father. "It was not accident. +<i>I know.</i> You killed my girl on purpose. <i>You murdered her!</i>"</p> + +<p>"No, no! I swear——"</p> + +<p>Gruin stopped at the look in his eyes. And José went on, slowly, +painfully, with every word ringing in Gruin's brain.</p> + +<p>"I bring her curse on your head. You killed her to be free from her. +But you shall not be free. She will be with you always, beside you, +walking when you walk, stopping when you stop. Always, always beside +you...."</p> + +<p>Gruin got away from there, and also, he was sure, away from all that +had threatened him.</p> + +<p>There were, when all the smoke had cleared away, no consequences at +all. The charges of criminal carelessness never materialized. His +grandfather, unconcerned with death, finally forgave him for wasting a +few evenings with a cheap unknown named Maria. The world didn't dream +that the tragedy at the cliff was not an accident. He had murdered +successfully....</p> + +<p>And then he strolled from his grandfather's house one evening, bent for +an engagement with a girl almost as beautiful as Maria had been and +much more sensible, and a queer thing happened.</p> + +<p>As he walked across the curb from door to car—a big new coupé to +take the place of the roadster—he heard someone walking beside him. +At least he thought for a moment that he had heard steps matching his +own. But he saw an instant later that he had been wrong, because when +he turned around, there was no one on the sidewalk. No one within half +a block of him.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>He got into the coupé and drove to the apartment of the girl he had the +engagement with. Again, as he walked from curb to building door, he +heard steps sound out beside him—possibly a little behind him, that +matched his steps. But he scarcely thought twice about it, because +there were half a dozen people around him here, and any one of them +could have made the sound.</p> + +<p>He had one vague and irrelevant memory as he opened the vestibule door. +It was a memory of Maria and him walking down the street. Striving to +match his moods, Maria also, laughingly, strove to match his strides. +She tried to keep her small red heels clicking on the walk in time with +his steps. He had often teased her about it, taking longer and slower +strides that taxed her smallness more and more till finally she simply +could not keep step with him and would break rhythm with a gay laugh.</p> + +<p>Maria and he, walking down the street, with her absurd red heels +clicking in time with his step....</p> + +<p>He thrust the picture aside and went up deep-carpeted halls and +stairways to the apartment of the blond with the slightly hard blue +eyes with whom he had a date. And they went to a Broadway club and +danced.</p> + +<p>During the evening, Gruin cursed his memory for bringing back the +picture of himself and Maria walking, with her red heels tapping the +time of his steps. Because, after that recollection, his imagination +really began to play tricks on him.</p> + +<p>He began to hear heels clicking with each of his steps as he moved. Not +just now and then, but all the time.</p> + +<p>When he stood up from the table as the orchestra started, and walked +around to help the blond with her chair, he heard a precise little +heel-click with each stride he took. The click sounded, scarcely +audible, right beside him as he escorted her to the dance floor.</p> + +<p>In spite of himself, Gruin thought of those words of Maria's father: +"You killed her to be free from her. But you shall not be free. She +will be with you always...."</p> + +<p>The blond smiled up at him.</p> + +<p>"Do you want to stand at the edge of the floor all evening? Or do you +want to dance with me?"</p> + +<p>He smiled back and they danced. He heard the click only once in a while +over the orchestra's rhythm. And he paid no attention to it. There were +many high heels here, and all high heels make that clicking sound. +He lost himself in the promises in the slightly hard blue eyes just +below the level of his own eyes. And he stopped his ears to the queer +clicking, which sounded as he moved, for the rest of the evening.</p> + +<p>But after he had left the blond and returned home, when he was walking +from the garage to his grandfather's house, he couldn't stop his ears +any more. The clicking was too infernally loud in the stillness that +clutches city streets at three in the morning. And there wasn't a +person within blocks that he could blame the noise on.</p> + +<p>Click, click, click came the sound, as he walked along through the +night. Exactly as though a woman's high heels clicked beside him. High, +<i>red</i> heels....</p> + +<p>He stopped to light a cigarette which he thrust between disdainful, +half-sneering lips. And the clicking stopped. He went on toward his +grandfather's house—and the light, precise tapping continued, a click +for every step he took, like a ghost-thing marching in step beside him. +An unseen ghost-thing....</p> + +<p>"Hell take it!" he said angrily aloud in the night. "I suppose this is +a sample of what they call remorse. Well I'll be damned if I——"</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>The light was on in the house. That was strange, at this hour of +the night. Gruin hurried to the door—with the neat, small clicking +increasing as his steps quickened. His grandfather opened the door +before he could insert his key—and the old man was icily angry.</p> + +<p>"Eldon," he said, "I want to speak to you, in the library."</p> + +<p>Gruin followed him to the room in which he had received most of the old +boy's rebukes. It was a psychological wood-shed where a verbal strap +was applied to him. But this time the strap was unjustified to the +point of being bizarre.</p> + +<p>"You have tried my patience to its extreme limit," the old man said, +ice-blue eyes smoldering. "You have achieved your final indiscretion. +How dare you bring a girl to this house and sneak her in when my back +is turned? And above all, a girl named Maria—after what happened a few +weeks ago? To this house!"</p> + +<p>Gruin's bewilderment was complete.</p> + +<p>"What on earth are you talking about?"</p> + +<p>"You deny you brought some girl to this house, to your room, secretly?"</p> + +<p>"I certainly do. I've never——"</p> + +<p>"Come upstairs, Eldon," the old man interrupted grimly.</p> + +<p>Gruin followed him from the library up to the second floor of the big +house. And as he moved, some unseen thing seemed to move beside him. +Very softly, almost furtively, the clicking tapped in rhythm with his +step. They got to Gruin's suite, a big bedroom and bath and a small +den, on the second floor. And there the old man pointed. He pointed +toward a great leather chair by a flat-topped desk. There was nothing +in the chair.</p> + +<p>Gruin turned with a puzzled frown to his grandfather. And then, without +going to the chair, he caught the odor that emanated from it—a faint +perfume that filled the den—an odor of hyacinth.</p> + +<p>Maria José had always used that scent. Hyacinth.</p> + +<p>"Some woman has been in this room," the old man accused sternly. "The +scent proves it. And her name was Maria. <i>That</i>, scribbled no doubt +idly while she sat with you here, proves it!"</p> + +<p>Gruin walked to his writing-desk. He wasn't quite aware of how he got +there. He knew only that in a minute he stood by the desk looking down +at it—at a torn scrap of paper on the blotter—at one word, faintly +scrawled on the paper.</p> + +<p>"Maria."</p> + +<p>And it was Maria José's handwriting.</p> + +<p>At the pallor on his grandson's face, the old man promptly forgot all +charges of ribaldry. He caught Eldon Gruin and helped him to another +chair, and then called the butler and a doctor....</p> + +<p>Gruin was a strong-minded person. You have to be to plan and execute +deliberate, cold-blooded murder. It wasn't long before a logical +explanation occurred to him, and he drove to the shop of Maria's father.</p> + +<p>"You broke into our house," he accused. "You set a stage in my +room—dropped perfume of the kind your daughter used on my chair, and +wrote her name on a scrap of paper, imitating her handwriting, on my +desk."</p> + +<p>He had come there confident in his conviction. But that conviction +slowly faded as he looked into José's eyes. Dark eyes, smoldering, +mystic, so like Maria's eyes.</p> + +<p>"You know it was not I who was there," José said in his pedantic, +accented English.</p> + +<p>Just that. Nothing more. Gruin turned and almost ran from the basement +shop. And as he hurried, beside him hurried unseen little heels that +clicked and clicked with each swift step he took. They followed him out +the door, a little behind him as he rushed, and to his car. And there +they stopped.</p> + +<p>But he thought he saw the seat cushion beside him give a little with an +unseen weight as he drove away....</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>A strong-minded person in good health—that was Eldon Gruin. There was +no insanity in the Gruin family. Yet in the days that followed he began +more and more to fear, with a mighty fear, that he was going mad. For +always he heard the little heel taps beside him as he walked, stopping +when he stopped, beginning again when he went on. And always in his +brain was José's curse, "<i>She will be with you always, beside you, +walking when you walk, stopping when you stop. Always, always beside +you.</i>..."</p> + +<p>So Gruin came to know the worst fear the known holds for us: fear of +madness. But that fear did not last long. It very speedily deepened +into that last ultimate horror—of the <i>un</i>known—which can prey on a +man's mind.</p> + +<p>Mad because he seemed to hear the weird clicking of heels beside him? +<i>Seemed</i> to hear?</p> + +<p>He went into the library one night when his grandfather sat at his +desk, reading. It was late, and the house was very still. The old man's +senses were excellent. He didn't become aware of Gruin's entrance for +a moment, but then he glanced up quickly, with a slightly surprized +expression.</p> + +<p>"Oh," he said, carelessly. "You're alone."</p> + +<p>"Of course. Why?"</p> + +<p>"It sounded for a moment as though there were two of you," the old man +said. "A sort of clicking. It must have been your hard heels against +the floor."</p> + +<p>Gruin managed to get out of there without letting his grandfather see +the chaos in his brain. But he staggered like a drunken man after +leaving the library.</p> + +<p>"Sounded as though there were two of you ... must have been your hard +heels against the floor." God! Gruin didn't wear hard leather heels. +Every shoe he owned had rubber on it.</p> + +<p>"A sort of clicking...."</p> + +<p>The clicking of Maria José's small red heels as they twinkled unseen +beside him! Maria José, who had died in flame and ruin at the bottom of +the cliff!</p> + +<p>He was <i>not</i> mad, then. The sound he had thought to hear in madness, +actually was there to be heard. And then Gruin knew that ultimate +horror which comes with the unknown. For if the sound really was there, +perceptible enough for others to hear it, the cause of the sound must +be there too!</p> + +<p>A dead girl walking beside him! A thing from some unknown sphere! +"<i>Walking when you walk, stopping when you stop</i>——"</p> + +<p>"I walk with death!" Gruin told himself, shuddering, with the icy sweat +of horror on his forehead.</p> + +<p>Red heels clicking beside him, as small, unseen feet kept time with +his. As Maria had kept time when they walked down the street together. +With one difference. Maria, alive, had been unable to match his strides +when he increased them to their full masculine length. Maria, dead, +could do that. He caught himself crazily shortening and lengthening +his step as he walked down the street—with people turning to look +curiously after him. But no matter how he walked, the unseen little +heels beside him clicked in even pace.</p> + +<p>Walking with death. Escorting a dead girl wherever he went. Sometimes +Gruin talked with her, damning her, whispering curses, telling her to +get back to the grave from which she had come. And more people began to +turn to look after him as he walked the streets.</p> + +<p>His grandfather and his friends began asking him what was wrong, and he +couldn't tell them. His grandfather sent him to a great psychiatrist, +and Gruin couldn't tell him what was wrong, either. Confession as +to what was wrong with him lay too dangerously close to a murder +confession.</p> + +<p>Red heels clicking always with him as he walked, stopping when he +stopped, beginning again when he moved ... the red heels of Maria who +had been sent by him to death over the edge of a cliff....</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>He drove in his coupé to the street-end where the roadster had crashed +over the wooden barrier and plummeted to piles of rock below, while he +hung from the branch over the road.</p> + +<p>There was no wooden barrier there now. There was a concrete wall, +hastily erected after the "accident." It was a thick wall. It would +stand any shock. Or—would it?</p> + +<p>Gruin got out of the coupé and went to the wall. As he strode, beside +him sounded the quick, half-dancing, half-marching accompaniment.</p> + +<p>Gruin shuddered, as much with cold as with ever-present horror. He +weighed only a hundred and twenty pounds, as against his former hundred +and eighty, and the winter wind seemed to go through his coat and to +his bones.</p> + +<p>The wall was pretty solid. He walked along it. And, click, click, +click, click, walked the unseen Thing beside him.</p> + +<p>"Solid," he said aloud, chuckling a little and then jerking his head +around to see if anyone had heard him. "Not so easy to send anybody +over the edge here, now."</p> + +<p>He stood on top of the wall and stared down. The piles of crushed stone +were still there; it had been too cold for work on the dock.</p> + +<p>"That's where you went, damn you," he mumbled to the Thing in the +phantom red heels that clicked beside him. Beside him—even as he +walked down the wall with nothing but thin air on either side.</p> + +<p>He began to chuckle again, aloud, craftily.</p> + +<p>"Nobody's ever suspected, except your father. And he can't hurt me any. +Nobody knows I killed you."</p> + +<p>He stepped down from the wall. And beside him a click sounded, a +little louder than usual, the click of a red heel coming down from the +two-foot step from the top of the wall.</p> + +<p>"<i>Damn you!</i>" Gruin shouted. And then he pressed his hand to his lips. +On the highway, several blocks away, a hitch-hiker stared curiously at +him, then went on his way, signaling for rides.</p> + +<p>"Shouldn't be out here," Gruin muttered laboriously.</p> + +<p>He started for the coupé, parked a dozen yards from the new concrete +wall. Dully he strode toward it. And as he walked, with each step came +the accompanying small tap of little red heels, almost coinciding with +his step on the ice of the road.</p> + +<p>"Better not come out here again," he mumbled, "I'm safe now. But +somebody might see me here and think it was funny—might start +investigating the accident again."</p> + +<p>He got into the coupé, settling laboriously behind the wheel. And then, +as his eyes strayed sideways, his teeth met through his upper lip.</p> + +<p>Always when he got into his car—which was often, as he drove a great +deal to save walking and hearing the tapping heels beside him—he +strove to keep his eyes from going sideways, to the cushion beside him. +And always he was unsuccessful.</p> + +<p>And always he saw the same thing—saw the seat cushion give a little as +though someone had sat down there, next to him.</p> + +<p>He saw it now.</p> + +<p>"Damn you—damn you——" he cried brokenly.</p> + +<p>The motor of the coupé was thrumming, responding to the mechanical +touch of his foot to the starter. The depression in the seat beside him +shifted a little.</p> + +<p>"<i>You'll go back to hell where you came from!</i>"</p> + +<p>Like another person, Gruin heard those words keen from his lips. Like +another person he heard the motor roar into full-throated power as his +foot jammed down on the accelerator.</p> + +<p>"No," he breathed, as his hand slid the gear-shift lever into first. +Like another person, pleading, remonstrating—and being unheeded. "No!"</p> + +<p>The motor bellowed, the coupé's tires screamed as they felt full and +sudden power applied. The car leaped forward.</p> + +<p>"<i>Oh, my God, no</i>——"</p> + +<p>The car, nearly two tons of steel, hit the concrete wall with all the +power of the great motor, in first gear, behind it—hit the wall, +crumpled, then crunched on through. The thunder of the coupé's crash on +the rock far below shocked the late February afternoon....</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Remorse, they called it. Eldon Gruin was so weighed down by the +carelessness that had taken a life that he had gone to the scene of the +accident and committed suicide by driving his car over the same cliff.</p> + +<p>That was what was in the papers. What was not in them was something +else; something that puzzled detectives for a while, till they gave it +up as irrelevant, since they had no knowledge of the little red heels +of Maria that had clicked beside Gruin from the time of her death.</p> + +<p>That was, the curious thing found in each heel of each shoe that +Eldon Gruin owned—a little sliding weight that had been inserted and +re-covered by some deft cobbler. They didn't move when the shoes were +handled, unless they were shifted briskly up and down as a person +walking would move them. Then they made small clicking noises in unison +with the movements.... +</p> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76644 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/76644-h/images/cover.jpg b/76644-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..da05b2f --- /dev/null +++ b/76644-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/76644-h/images/illus.jpg b/76644-h/images/illus.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..8e8aa3e --- /dev/null +++ b/76644-h/images/illus.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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