Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 6, June 1999

He switched off the television with a violent snap of the wrist. He got up and went to the closet for his hat. “I need some air. You coming, Bland?”

“It walks by night,” droned Gardner in sepulchral tones, but there was cold sweat on his forehead.

Mrs. Helm bustled into the parlor. “Here, Mr. Strode, Mr. Bland, don’t you think of going out there tonight. It’s going to storm any minute. They just said so on the weather. Plus my operation hurts.”

“Well just go as far as the tracks into the plant,” said Strode.

Without further ado he and Bland trudged out of the house and started along the dark reaches of Ninth Avenue. The wind muttered in the leafless trees and squawked around the old houses. For a time they walked in silence, but at length Strode’s wrath boiled over into speech.

“Sharks and vultures. That’s all there is out there. It’s all a question of survival of the fist.” Bland vaguely remembered having heard his friend use this odd phrase before. Strode ranted on in the same vein, vowing revenge on his enemies but assuring Bland that he himself had nothing to fear in the coming purge, and perhaps something to gain. Bland tagged along wordlessly at his side, his doglike loyalty spiced with a dash of fear.

“Nothing out there but sharks and vultures. You forget that and you’re a lost man.” About the time the walkers reached the railroad crossing, the threatened storm broke, with the result that they returned home drenched, shivering, and out of breath.

Frank Strode’s fatal decline dated from that night. For a day or two he thought it was only a cold, and maybe it was at first, but then matters grew graver. He took to his bed and stayed there. No longer was Hugh Gardner’s sleep disturbed by dusk-to-dawn film festivals on television. No longer did Hans Drebbel fumble at chess while listening with half an ear to one of Strode’s quiz programs.

Mrs. Helm turned nurse as was her custom in such circumstances, and Boyd Bland took to sitting at Strode’s bedside for hours in the evening. The sick man would touch nothing but soup and juice.

A week passed, during which he seemed to go steadily downhill.

One evening when the dinner dishes were done, Boyd Bland tapped at the half-open door to Mrs. Helm’s private domain, which opened off the kitchen. In the parlor the chess players hunched in sober and contemplative silence over their board.

Mrs. Helm was taking advantage of a spell of leisure to black her shoes while watching a sitcom on her own television set.

“Is he awake?” she asked Bland.

“Yes, but he says he doesn’t want anything to eat. Says nothing tastes right to him.” Bland hovered indecisively in the doorway, the picture of a man chronically overwhelmed by the choices that life presents. “He seems awful weak.”

“You just take him some broth. I’ve got it on simmer.” She put aside the bottle of blacking and padded to the stove in her stocking feet. “That’s pretty full now, Mr. Bland. Don’t you spill it.” She watched him totter up the back stairs before returning to her sanctum.

Next morning Mrs. Helm was measuring the breakfast coffee into the twenty-five-cup urn (its contents would serve for lunch and dinner as well) when Hugh Gardner came into the kitchen looking pale and disheveled. “Well,” he announced with forced nonchalance, “old Strode won’t be drinking any more coffee. He’s dead.”

Mrs. Helm dropped the scoop into the coffee can and began wringing her hands. “Oh, are you sure, Mr. Gardner? Are you sure?”

“Yes, quite sure.”

“Oh, the poor dear soul! Mr. Schell! I have to call Mr. Schell.” She bustled distractedly into her room to find the phone directory.

In the course of the morning Mr. Schell of Boone and Schell, Funeral Directors, called with an assistant, conferred briefly with Mrs. Helm, and removed the late Frank Strode from the premises.

In the course of the afternoon a pudgy man with dark curly hair and gold-rimmed glasses called and handed Mrs. Helm his card.

“ ‘Coroner’s office,’ ” she read aloud in a vaguely inquiring tone. “ ‘Nicholas Stamaty.’ That’s foreign, isn’t it?”

“According to my grandfather,” said Stamaty with a good-humored expression that accentuated the premature crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, “it’s a Hungarian spelling of a Czech version of a Greek name.”

“Isn’t that interesting! Where was your grandfather born?”

“Right outside Cleveland.”

She may have thought that was interesting, too, but she didn’t mention it. “Is anything wrong? About Mr. Strode?”

“Mr. Schell at the funeral parlor reported the death to us, and we’re following it up as a matter of routine. Did you think anything was wrong?”

“No, but I’m just saying — nobody came to see me after Mr. Ambrose died. Another one of my boarders. That was two or three years ago.”

“Probably just an oversight. How long had Mr. Strode been living here?”

“About two years.”

“Was he related to you?”

“No, sir. What he told me is, he was born in Wisconsin—” she pronounced it “West Consin” “—but he didn’t have no living relations there nor here, neither one.”