Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense by Linda Landrigan Page B

that were still a million miles away; he slowly pulled himself forward, grimacing against the pain.
    But his legs wouldn’t work. He was paralyzed below the waist, nothing but his arms and his head were still working. He was dying, good God, he was dying, death was creeping slowly through his body. He had to get help before death reached his heart.
    He tugged himself forward, and the pain lashed him, and his mouth stretched open in what should have been a scream. But no sound at all came out, only the strained rush of air. He couldn’t make a sound.
    The television set laughed with a thousand voices.
    He looked again at the screen, the comic leering there. “Please,” he whispered.
    â€œâ€˜That’s all right,’ she says,” the comic answered. “‘I got an extra engine in the trunk.’”
    The television set roared with merriment.
    Bowing, bowing, on the screen, the comic winked at the dying man, laughed and waved and ran away.
    Then the unwounded image of himself came back, tiny and colorless, but whole and sound, breathing and laughing, alive and sure. “That was great, Andy, great!” The image grinned up at him from the screen, asked him, “Wasn’t it?”
    â€œPlease,” he whispered.
    â€œWho do you suppose we have next?” the image asked him, twinkling. “Who?”
    Who? Who had done this? He had to know who had done this, who had shot him, who had tried to murder him.
    He couldn’t think. A busy spider scurried across his brain, trailing gray threads of fuzzy silk, webbing him in, slurring his thoughts.
    No! He had to know who!
    A key. There was a clear thought. A key, it had to be someone with a key. Remembering, thinking back, he seemed to hear again the tiny click of a key, just before the door had swung open.
    They had to have a key; he had locked the door; he remembered that. The door was always locked, this was New York, Manhattan, one always locked doors.
    There were only four people in the world who had keys to this apartment, aside from Denton himself, only four people in the world.
    Nancy, his wife, from whom he was separated but not divorced.
    Herb Martin, the chief writer for The Don Denton Variety Show .
    Morry Stoneman, Denton’s business manager.
    Eddie Blake, the stooge-straight-man-second comic of the show.
    It had to be one of the four. All four of them knew that he would be here, alone, watching the show at this hour. And they were the ones who had keys.
    One of those four. He let the remembered faces and names of the four circle in his mind—Nancy and Herb and Morry and Eddie—while he tried to figure out which one of them would have tried to kill him.
    And then he closed his eyes and almost gave himself up to death. Because it could have been any one of them. All four of them hated his guts, and so it could have been any one of them who had come here tonight to kill him.
    Bitter, bitter, that was the most bitter moment of his life, to know that all four of the people closest to him hated him enough to want to see him dead.
    His own voice said, “Oh, come now, Professor.”
    He opened his eyes, terrified. He’d almost faded away there, he’d almost passed out, and to pass out was surely to die. He could no longer feel anything in his legs, below the knee, and his fingers were no longer really parts of him. Death, death creeping in from his extremities.
    No. He had to stay alive. He had to fool them, all four of them. He had to somehow stay alive. Keep thinking, keep the mind active, fight away the darkness.
    Think about the four of them. Which one of them had done this?
    â€œ Gott im Himmel ,” cried a gruff voice, and the canned laughter on the TV set followed dutifully.
    Denton strained to see the television screen. Eddie Blake was there now, doing that miserable Professor routine of his. Denton watched, and wondered. Could it have been him?
    E DDIE B LAKE STOOD in the doorway of the