The Will to Kill Read online

  Had he

  THE WILL TO KILL?

  IT BEGAN WITH THIS:

  “I came out of the blackout standing in our bedroom . . . standing there in the moonlight with the scissors glinting in my hand . . . standing over the body of Marie and looking at the place where those same scissors had cut her throat . . .”

  IT ENDED WITH:

  Women of the streets mutilated and slain, kids scared of their shadows, people staying off the streets and huddling behind doors and windows—a city gripped by fear!

  AND ALWAYS THE QUESTION: “WAS I THE MANIAC KILLER?”

  IT’S ROBERT BLOCH’S LATEST!

  An ACE BOOK Original Novel

  Never Before Published

  “For each man kills

  the thing he loves . . .”

  This thought always lurked in Tom Kendall’s mind. True, the police had called Marie’s death a suicide . . . but why couldn’t Tom remember that evening? Why his secret dread of knives? Still, he could start all over again, couldn’t he?

  And then the mental blackout came again and Tom found himself sharing a room with a love-for-hire girl—straight from a date with a “ripper.” Tom clung desperately to the hope that he was innocent. The silent evidence of the knife said otherwise—and repeated—and repeated . . .

  Horror stalks the sidestreets in this brilliant, suspenseful ACE Original by the author of SPIDERWEB, THE SCARF, THE KIDNAPPER, and other great thrillers.

  THE WILL TO KILL

  Copyright, 1954, by Ace Books, Inc.

  All Rights Reserved

  Printed in U.S.A.

  This book is for

  OSCAR J. FRIEND

  who started the ball rolling.

  ONE

  I ran down the street.

  It was a beautiful, sunny day, and no one was chasing me—that is, no one I knew about. But I ran down the street as though all hell was at my heels. And maybe it was.

  When you’re running, and everybody else is walking, people look funny to you. They look as if they’re all moving in slow motion. Some of them seem almost frozen—particularly the ones who actually stop and stare after you.

  You’d think that they’d never seen a man running before. You’d think that they were shocked at the very idea of anyone who dared to move fast, who hurried to get somewhere or to get away from somewhere else.

  Well—which was it? Was I running to or from? I didn’t know. I honestly didn’t know. But was that any reason for them all to stare at me, as though I was a thief, or a murderer?

  My heart began to pound as I turned the corner and ran up the block.

  Thief or murderer. Was I either, or both? I didn’t know. I just knew that I was running, had to keep running. And now my heart and my feet were pounding in rhythm: rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief . . .

  I concentrated on the rhythm. Another part of me took over, guided me across the street, down the other side, to the store front. Another part of me brought the rhythm to an end before a small door. Then I stopped and I knew where I was, who I was.

  This was my store. This was my name on the door.

  TOM KENDALL

  STAMPS—COINS—SECOND HAND BOOKS—MAGAZINES

  Yes, I was Tom Kendall, all right. I was the tall, crewcut character with the puzzled brown eyes staring at my own reflection in the window pane.

  I was Tom Kendall, I was alive and breathing in the city of Empire on this fine day of August 25th.

  But where had I been last night?

  I took another look at the mug in the mirrored window surface. Yes, it was good old Tom to the life; good old Tom, badly in need of a shave. Badly in need of food, rest, and a few answers. I could see it in those big brown eyes of his. My eyes. They’d been open for a long time and they’d seen things.

  What had they seen last night?

  I couldn’t remember.

  Oh, I could remember plenty of nights before the last one. I could remember the night I left college. I could remember the night before I joined up, the night before I married Marie, the night before I shipped out, the night before I cracked up, the night before Marie died.

  I could even remember the night before last. But that was the kicker. It was always the night before something big happened. The big things themselves were lost and forgotten.

  I nodded at myself in the mirror. “Come on, you sad-looking bum. I’ll buy you a shave and a cup of coffee.”

  The coffee came first, over at Nick’s.

  “Hello, Tom,” he said. “The usual?”

  “Sure.” He poured it black and edged the sugar nearer to me.

  “Boy, I didn’t expect to see you around this early,” Nick told me. “Not after last night.”

  “Was I—pretty high?”

  “Not high at all, far’s I could tell. Whattsa matter, don’t you remember? You was in here and you musta had four-five cups, just like that. You and this frienda yours, you know, whatsis-name.”

  I nodded, but I didn’t know whatsisname. That’s what I wanted to find out.

  “Big fellow?” I asked.

  “Naw. Whattsa matter’th you today? The skinny guy, one you allus argue with. Boy, you sure was fannin’ the breeze.”

  Art. It must have been Art. I breathed a little easier as the coffee went down. I could call him later and find out—not ask any direct questions, of course, but find out what had happened. If anything. Art didn’t know about the forgetting; that is, I’d never told him and I didn’t think he suspected. If he had notions he kept them to himself. Even your best friends won’t tell you—

  “Fill ’er up!” I said.

  Nick poured for me again, and I glanced down below the counter while he wasn’t looking. My coat was all right. A bit rumpled, but nothing torn. And no bloodstains. That was a relief, too. I’d found several times in the past—I could remember that only too clearly. Maybe I’d gotten into some fights. Maybe I’d gotten into—

  But that I couldn’t remember, didn’t even want to think about.

  I stood up, laid a quarter on the counter, and went out. Nick was busy with the early morning stenographer crowd, so I didn’t say good-by.

  That stenographer crowd. “Gimme a cuppa coffee ’n a cruller.” Then out with the cigarettes. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Never a change.

  Up until recently, I never drank coffee in the morning. I preferred cocoa, or hot chocolate. And I wouldn’t be caught dead with a cruller in my hand. “Cruller.” There was a word for you. Whatever became of the good old American breakfast of ham and eggs?

  Went up to ninety cents, I told myself. And I suppose that was the answer, or part of the answer. The rest of the answer was the course of least resistance. You go into a one-arm joint or a counter place, and the first thing they do in the morning is slap a cup of coffee in front of you. If you tell them you don’t want it, didn’t order it, they look at you as though you were a freak. And it’s the same with the cruller and the cigarettes.

  Up until about a year and a half ago, up until the crackup and getting out of the hospital, I’d been willing to let them think I was a freak—anything, just as long as I didn’t have to sear my sensitive stomach lining with rancid coffee, greasy doughnuts and acrid cigarettes.

  But I didn’t want to be a freak any more. I didn’t want to be different. So I conformed all down the line, and I was all right—except that I couldn’t remember what happened last night.

  Last night.

  I lay back in the barber chair, and George put on the hot towels. I tried opening my eyes, and everything was dark and hot . . . dark and hot . . . and the chair was way back so I was off-balance. It felt a little bit like the restraint, like the hydro-therapy, and I wanted to get up and run out of th
e place.

  But I had to conform. Conform and conform. Doctor Greene had told me I was all right. Hell, I had my discharge certificate. Everything was down there in the black and white.

  Only there was no white now, only black. Dark and hot. Like restraint, like hydro-therapy, like something else. Something else I couldn’t remember. I wanted to remember, but I was afraid.

  What was it?

  George took the towels off and cranked me up, and then he went at me with the razor. Razor and tongue. Neither of them were too sharp, either.

  “How’s business?” As if he cared.

  “Oh, so-so.”

  “See you got the front painted.”

  “Yeah, last week. Getting pretty shabby.”

  “Soak you much for it?”

  “Hundred and fifty.”

  “Boy, that’s the racket! I should of been a painter, that’s the line I should of went in for.”

  Maybe he was right; he certainly wasn’t much of a barber.

  As for his conversation, I could answer it in my sleep. Talking was almost like that, with me, because I kept trying to remember.

  Then the hot towels went on again, and then he was working me over with the razor once more, and then—

  “Oops! Sorry!”

  The edge of the razor cut my chin. The edge of the razor, and it was bright and gleaming, and so was the blood, only the razor was silver and the blood was red. Red blood, Jimmy’s and Sam’s and Marie’s—

  “No!”

  I threw off the towels and the cloth and stood up.

  “But it’s nothing, Mr. Kendall, only a little cut. Here let me put something on it—what’s the matter?”

  I turned away from the mirror so that I couldn’t see the razor or the blood on my face, and then it was all right again.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Guess I’ve got the shakes. Bad hangover—you know.”

  “Brother, do I ever? Take like last Sattiday night, me’n my uncle Steve, we—” He halted. “Boy, you had me scared for a minute, though. The look on your face!”

  I grinned. “Not much of a face, is it? But I hate to have anyone spoil my manly beauty. No, it’s all right, George, I don’t need any tonic. The bleeding’s stopped.”

  I tossed him half a buck and left.

  Does the bleeding ever stop?

  Fine questions to ask myself, and the day hardly begun. Such a nice day, too. My watch registered five to nine. The mail must have been delivered already.

  Sure enough, after I opened the door I scooped it up from the floor. Eleven pieces. I walked over, switched on the overhead light and then the light above my desk. I sat down and looked over the morning’s loot.

  Light bill. A memo from a jobber in New Jersey—special offer on Coronations. Old stuff, and I was overstocked. Coronation sets hadn’t gone as well as had been expected.

  Nine other letters. Five were returning approvals, with payments. I counted up the money-orders and the checks. Eighteen dollars. Not too bad. And here were four new requests. I checked the files to make sure they were new, then put the letters on the other desk.

  Then the door opened and Kit came in.

  Kit came in, and for the first time I truly realized that it was a beautiful day. Oh, it wasn’t the sunshine and the sudden singing of birds; it wasn’t the blue sky and the balmy breeze.

  It was hair the color of fresh honey, and eyes that slanted upward with the oriental inclination of the true Norwegian. It was the swaggering stride of long, slim legs, the rounding upthrust of a sweater that was just tight enough, the tantalizing tan of neck and throat and bare arms. Kit made my days for me—and some of my nights, too.

  Coming in this way, the least I could do was tell her about it.

  “I love you,” I said.

  The oriental eyes gave me a long-lashed look. She smiled that smile of hers—the one da Vinci almost captured in his Mona Lisa. Then she spoke.

  “Go to hell,” said Kit.

  TWO

  It might have been the start of a very interesting conversation, but it wasn’t. Because Ferguson came in just then, and he wanted me to stock up on a new album line.

  I’d just gotten rid of him and was going over to Kit’s desk, where she was sorting approvals for the mail, and in walked two amateur numismaticians, aged ten and twelve, with their inevitable, “Hey, Mister, what’ll ya give me for an Indian head penny?”

  Kit took them over immediately, but by this time I was trying to find a copy of the April, 1943, Astounding. The science-fiction fans were out in force today, because right on the heels of this request came Doctor Kleiner, to paw over that new stock of British prozines I’d gotten in. Then somebody wanted to see what I had in 19th Century Newfoundland—it turned out to be a twenty-dollar sale before I got through—and Kit sold a bunch of pocket books, and a copy of The Golden Bough, of all things.

  It went on like that all morning, with the cash register ringing merrily, and then it was time for lunch.

  Nora came in with her little tray. “What’ll it be, folks? I got ham, egg salad, peanut butter, cheese—”

  “Two hams,” I said. “What about you, Kit?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Egg salad for the lady,” I told Nora. “And a coke. Make mine a root beer.”

  Nora set the stuff down on the desk, and I paid her. “Ain’t it a grand day?” she asked.

  “It was.” She wasn’t really listening for my answer, so she said nothing as she waddled out.

  Kit observed the silence and contributed to it, heavily. I unwrapped the sandwiches and brought over two paper cups for the drinks.

  “There’s salt in the drawer, if you want some,” I said.

  “I know.” Kit ate daintily, like the cat she was—the soft, sleek, supple feline with the slanted eyes.

  “Pretty hot,” I said.

  “I don’t notice it.”

  “Hot in here, I mean. Down here.”

  “Down where?”

  “In hell. Where you told me to go this morning. I’ve been here ever since.”

  “Well, fry there.”

  “Now, Kit. Come on, what’s it all about?”

  “You know what it’s all about.”

  Typical woman’s answer. And it was typical, too, that she carefully finished her sandwich before she started to sniffle.

  I suppose my reaction was also standard. I went over and put my arms around her shoulders, standing behind her chair. She shrugged a little, but not too much.

  “Come on,” I said. “Tell me.”

  “As if you didn’t know. After last night . . .”

  There it was again. Last night. Had I seen Kit last night? And if so, when and where? To say nothing of what. Nights with Kit could be so interesting: nothing I’d want to forget.

  “What about last night?” Not a very brilliant approach, but I didn’t feel brilliant. I just felt confused and lonely, and as though I wanted to hold Kit very tight for a very long time.

  “Oh, what’s the sense of talking about it any more? I meant what I said, Tom. We’ve had a lot together, we’ve had so much—but it isn’t enough. It can’t be enough, not for any woman. It isn’t that I’m a prude or anything like that. But dammit, I love you, and I want to get married.”

  So that was it. A little, a very little, was beginning to come back to me. Not enough really to add up, but I could guess at a bit more. Last night wouldn’t be the first time we’d gotten onto that subject.

  “You know how I feel about you,” I said. “And you know how I feel about the business. Everything I could beg, borrow or steal—the G.I. loan, every penny I had—went into this thing. I’m almost clear, now, after a year and a half. In a little while we’ll be in the black, and then we can really get rolling.

  “After all, Kit, I know something about marriage.” I wished I hadn’t said that, but it popped out. I went on hastily. “Takes a lot of moola to set up housekeeping. All that furniture and appliances, and a car, and a decent place to
live. Isn’t it worth waiting for a while longer? Why, we can get a down payment on one of those homes they’re putting up out in Longwood, we can do it in another year at the most, and—”

  But she was crying again, really crying this time. When Kit cried, her eyes never seemed to get red and swollen. She cried like a little kid, with her fists clenched and her mouth screwed up as though she was more angry than hurt.

  “Please, honey,” I said.

  She turned around and pushed my hands away. She had stopped crying quite suddenly.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she said, quietly. “Can’t you stick to the truth once you come out with it? Or was that just another lie, too?”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I waited.

  Kit stood up. “Everything you say you’ve said a dozen times before. And I always believed you. Even last night I did, until you went on and told me the rest. So why do you come back with the same old line today, when I know the real reason?”

  So I’d told her. Told her the real reason. That was bad.

  “Do you think I’d forget, overnight? Loving you the way I do, worrying about you the way I do? And do you think I’d care? I’d marry you today, if you’d have me. But no. You’ve got to be noble, you’ve got to be self-sacrificing, you’ve got to be the martyr, the hero! Except that you expect me to go on this way, without marriage. It’s just as apt to happen whether I’m wearing a wedding ring or not, if what you told me is true.

  “So don’t give me any more of that ‘I love you’ line, Tom. If you really loved me, you wouldn’t be afraid. Because that’s the real reason, isn’t it? You’re afraid, Tom. Not of what you told me—you’re just afraid to get married, to start over again and lead a normal life. Don’t you see, I want to help you. But I can’t unless I can be with you and—”

  This time, when she broke down, she wasn’t angry. It was grief that made her quiver against me, grief that sent her shoulders snug against mine, pressed her close to cling for comfort.

  But it was something else that made her break away once more, break away and stare up at me for a long moment.