A Cry from The Penthouse

That was coombs for you; he had to pick a night like this to settle his affairs. Chet Brander tightened the muffler around his throat and dug his gloved hands into his overcoat pockets, but there was no way of barricading his body from the subzero cold. The city streets seemed glazed with ice, and the taxis rumbled past the corner with clouds of frost billowing from their exhaust pipes. The wind carried knives; Chet winced at every thrust, and was almost tempted to forget the whole thing. But he couldn't afford it. Tonight was payoff night, and he longed to get hands on the money that had lingered so long in Frank Coombs' pocket.

Then he got lucky. A cab pulled up and a redcheeked matron got out, he almost knocked her down in his haste to occupy the back seat. He gave the hackie the address of Coombs' apartment house on the river, and stepped out 10 minutes later into a night that had grown even more insufferable. He fought the arctic river breeze all the way to the entrance, and was grateful when the glass doors closed behind him.

There was something eerie about the apartment house, an unearthly quiet that was a combination of overcar-peting and underoccupancy. The building had been opened for rentals only two months before, with plenty of fanfare and slick newspaper ads. But the stampede of renters had never really gotten underway, the hundred-dollar-a-room apartments remained largely untenanted. Nevertheless, Frank Coombs had been impressed. Frank Coombs had been one of the first to sign a lease, and for nothing less than the building penthouse. In the oper-atorless elevator, Chet Brander's mouth twisted in a frown as he rode past eight unoccupied floors to reach the plush apartment that Coombs' borrowed money had bought him.

At the door of the penthouse, he stabbed the bell and muttered: "Big shot!"

Warmth flooded out of the doorway when Coombs answered. Pleasant steamheat-and-fireplace warmth, whiskey warmth, the warmth of geniality. That was Coombs for you: the perennial host, always ready to smile and clap you on the back and make you welcome, and all so smoothly that you hardly even noticed the hand dipping into your pocket to count the contents of your wallet. "Chester!" Coombs chortled. "Damn nice of you to come out on a lousy night like this. Come on in, fella!"

Brander went in, shedding his coat as he followed Coombs into the lavish front room. It was a room rich in textures: furry carpets and nubby upholstery, satiny drapes and grainy wood paneling. Coombs had many textures himself: waxen smooth hair, silken cheeks, velvety smoking jacket, roughcut briar. He gestured with the pipe, and said:

"Well, what do you think, Chet? Does this place beat the pants off that old dump of mine or not? Minute I heard about this building I jumped for it – –"

Brander grunted. "Nobody's killing themselves to get in. Half the apartments are empty."

"Only the top-floor apartments; they're the ones that cost real dough, you know." He gathered up his visitor's outer clothing. "Let me hang this stuff up. Maybe you want that jacket off? I keep it warm in here." He put his hand on Brander, and was shaken off.

"I'll hold on to it," he said, looking around. "Yeah, it's quite a place, Frank. Sure you can afford it?"

Coombs laughed. "Don't you worry about old Frankie. When I told you I knew my investments, I knew what I was talking about. You won't regret lending me that dough, Chet, take my word for it."

"Then the deal worked out?"

Coombs coughed. "Let's have a drink, pal. I'm ten fingers ahead of you."

"We can have the drink later. Look, Frank, I came out on a hell of a night for this. You made a lot of big promises about that dough, and now I have to know. Is it a payoff, or a stall?"

Coombs started to make himself a highball, and then ignored the soda. He downed the drink in three large gulps, and said: "It's a payoff, Chet, like I told you. Before you leave, I'll give you a check for every nickel you loaned me. Plus."

"Plus what?"

Coombs laughed again, and took a step forward, swaying slightly. "You'll see, Chet, you'll see. But come on, don't be so mercenary. We used to be pals, remember, I want you to see the place ––"

"I saw it."

"You didn't see the best part." He swept his hand around the room, encompassing the wide, heavily draped windows. "I got three hundred feet of terrace out there, and it's all mine. Greatest view of the city you ever saw ––" He strode over to the double doors and flung them open, admitting an inquisitive cloud of cold air.

"Hey," Chet Brander said.

"Come on, you won't freeze. Just lake a look at this, will ya? You never saw anything like it in your life––"

Brander stood up. Through the open doors, the lights of Manhattan blinked and glowed. It was a hard sight to resist; city lights, like earthbound stars, had always compelled and excited him. Then, as if to tempt him further, Coombs gleefully pulled back the drapes from the window, enlarging the view.

"How about that, huh? Gets you right here, don't it?" Coombs touched the monogram on his velvet jacket.

"What are all the bars for?" Brander said.

"The window bars?" Coombs tittered. "You know me, Chet. Never trusted anybody. Burglars are always bustin' into penthouses, so I had the building bar all the windows. Even the door is made of steel; I don't take any chances. But come on, fella!"

Brander went forward, out onto the terrace, no longer feeling the cold or hearing the wind. Manhattan, obliterated in contours, was etched before him only in golden lights. He caught his breath.

"What do you say, Chet?" Coombs chuckled. "Is this living, Chet? Is this the life?"

"Yeah," he breathed.

"You feast your eyes, boy. I'm going to make us a drink. You just look at that, Chet," Coombs said, going back into the room.

Chet Brander looked, and felt strange and restless and exalted. As if in a dream, he looked, until he realized that he was coatless and hatless in the worst cold that had descended upon the city in seven years. Shivering, he turned back to the doorway of the warm apartment, just in time to see Coombs' grinning face, in time to see Coombs, calmly and without hurry, closing the terrace doors.

"Hey," he said, shaking the knob. "Open up, Frank."

Misty behind the small diamond-patch of glass set into the metal door, Coombs' face stopped grinning and became a silken mask. He lifted the drink in his hand, as if in salute, and took a long swallow. Then he moved away.

"Hey!" Chet Brander shouted, shaking the door harder but not causing a single rattle in its hinges. "Let me in, Frank! It's goddam cold out here!" He couldn't see Coombs any more, but he knew he must be there, enjoying his little prank. Brander thudded on the small pane of glass with his fist, and felt the solidity of it, saw the tiny octagonal wire mesh that made it unbreakable. He shoved against the door, and remembered that it was steel. "Frank! Goddam it, cut out the clowning, Frank! Let me in, will ya?"

Then the lights went out in the pent house apartment.

It was only then that Chet Brander knew that Coombs had planned more than an impulsive prank. He wasn't going to reopen the sturdy door that led back into the warmth, not in the next minute, or the next hour. Maybe even ––

"Frank!" Brander screamed, and realized that he could barely hear his own voice as the wind came by and swallowed the syllables greedily. "Let me in!" Brander yelled soundlessly, hammering and pounding and kicking at the door.

There was no telling how long he stood there, denying the fact that die entrance was closed to him. Finally, he moved away, toward the windows; one touch of his hand recalled that they had been barred against intruders, against the entry of strangers or friends. He was neatly sealed out of Coombs' penthouse, where the warmth was. He was alone, outside, with the cold.

Cold! So heated had been his exertions that Brander hadn't even been aware of the temperature. But he felt it now – a cold that gripped his flesh as if there hadn't been an ounce of clothing on him. Cold, and a howling, vicious wind that whirled the frost like an icy shroud around his body. Cold so terrible and so inescapable that Chet Brander had thoughts of death and the grave.

It was no prank. He knew that now. It was no coincidence that Coombs had chosen this night for his rendezvous. It was cold that Coombs had been waiting for, cold and the freezing wind and dark night, and the chance to leave his creditor shivering and alone outside the steel door of his penthouse apartment, to end his debt forever in death.

But how would Coombs explain it? What would he say when they found Chet Brander's body, a victim of exposure in the middle of the city? . . .

Brander stopped thinking about it, and went to the terrace wall, to peer down at the terrifying distance between himself and the street.

"Help!" Chet Brander shrieked: "Help me!"

The wind took his words. He cried out again, but the lights were dark in the untenanted floors beneath him, and no one heard.

"They'll never hear me," he said aloud, the sobs beginning in his throat. "They'll never know I'm here. . . ."

. . .

He made a circuit of the terrace, round and round and round the penthouse, searching for some weakness in the fortress of Coombs' apartment. There was none. Already, his feet had become numb; he could barely feel his own footsteps. He clapped his hands together, (continued on page 40) Cry from the Penthouse (continued from page 36) and then pounded them over his body in an effort to keep the blood circulating.

"Got to keep moving," he muttered. "Keep moving. . . ."

He began to run. He ran wildly, staggering around the terrace, until his breath left him, and he fell, panting, to the frigid stone floor.

"Got to get help," he said to himself.

He began a frantic search of his pockets. His hands first touched the bulk of his wallet, but his fingers barely felt the leather. He looked at it stupidly for a moment, and then took it to the edge of the wall.

"Write a note," he said. But even as he said it, hopefully, he knew that he had discovered no solution. He carried no pen, no pencil, no tool that would help him tell the indifferent world below that he was a prisoner of cold 20 stories above the street.

He looked at his wallet, and then flung it over the wall. He lost sight of it at once, and there was no hope in his heart for rescue.

In his breast pocket, he found cigarettes and matches. He tossed the cigarettes aside, and then tried to light a match in his cupped hands, eager for even one pinpoint of warmth. The wind, capricious, wouldn't permit the luxury; in disgust, he hurled the matches over the wall.

In his right-hand jacket pocket, he found a key. He looked at it blankly for a moment, not recognizing it. It wasn't his key; he'd never seen it before. He almost threw it away, but then stopped when he realized what it was. It was a key to Coombs' apartment. Coombs must have slipped it into his pocket. But why?

Then he knew. If Coombs had given him a key, then Coombs could explain Chet Brander's mysterious death. If he were found with a key on his frozen body, then anyone would believe that he had used it to enter Coombs' apartment, and then had been locked out on the terrace by his own foolishness or misfortune. . . .

Clever! Brander wanted to laugh, but his features were like stone. Not so clever, he thought, getting ready to hurl the key out into the night. But then he stopped, clutching it in his hand, knowing that, though useless to him here on the terrace, it was a key to the warmth only a few tantalizing inches away. He couldn't part with it. . . .

He put the key into his trouser pocket, and went back to the penthouse door. He hammered on it until the skin of his hands cracked and bled. Then he fell in a heap and sobbed.

When he got to his feet again, he was in a delirium. For a moment, he thought that the cold had gone, that the weather had suddenly turned deliciously balmy. But it was only the delirium and a moment's surcease of wind. When the freezing wind came again, it was a kind of blessing: it woke him to his situation, filed him once more with the desire to help himself.

He leaned over the waist-high wall and shouted helplessly into the night.

"I'm here," he moaned. "Oh, my God! Don't you know I'm here?"

Then he thought of the roof.

The penthouse had a roof. If he could find access to it, he might find a door leading below, into the other floors of the building!

He took a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wrapped it about his painful, bleeding right hand. Then he felt his way carefully along the wall.

A wire brushed his face.

At-first, he didn't do more than touch it lightly. Then he gripped the wire between his numb hands and yanked. The wire held; it was thick, stout cable. If he could climb it. . . .

He tensed every muscle in his body, and held on. Then he leaped off the ground and swung his feet to the penthouse wall.

For a second, he was frozen in the posture, unable to move, willing to give up and die rather than force his aching, frozen body into action once more.

Then he thought of Coombs' silken smile, and the hate gave him strength. He inched upwards, slowly, the smooth wire cutting like a razor's edge into his palms.

It was an agony. He went upwards another inch, and then turned his eyes into the darkness. He saw the lights of the city, and now they seemed like the distant fires of hell.

Another inch. Another. He wanted to let go, and enjoy the luxury of falling, the tranquillity of death, but he kept on.

He saw the edge of the roof.

With a last, gasping effort, he clambered up the wire, scraping his knees against the side of the masonry walls until the rough stone shredded cloth and skin. Then he flung himself over the side, to safety.

It was only some 10 feet above the terrace, but the wind and the cold seemed more terrible here. Along the rim, ghostly jutting shapes surrounded him. Television antennas. He blinked at them, as if they were curious spectators.

He staggered about in the darkness until he found the roof door. His hand touched a doorknob, and he cried out in relief. Then the cry became a moan.

The door was locked.

He screamed and raged at it in fury, but not for long. He put his hand in his trouser pocket, and felt the key to the penthouse. "You win, Frank," he tried to say aloud, but his lips couldn't move to form the words.

He moved back toward the edge, knowing no sensation in his limbs. He leaned against a tall antenna, limply.

"They say don't fall asleep," he thought, chuckling in his throat.

He began to slip to the roof floor, and held on to a trailing wire for support.

The wire!

The flat, broad, light wire lay in his numbed hand, and he remembered what this wire could do.

He tugged at it. He tugged harder. He tugged frantically, desperately, insanely. He found other broad, flat wires depending from the antennas of the roof, and tugged at them. One of them came loose in his hand, but he wasn't satisfied. He went to them all, tugging and yanking until he felt sure that the effects of his work had been seen or noticed somewhere below, that he had ripped or torn the metal ribbons from the bright, glowing instruments of the warm, unaware people in the fancy apartment house by the river. . . .

He began to laugh, through unmoving lips, as he went about his destructive labors. And then, when he was too exhausted to go on, he fell to his hands and knees and tried to remember how prayer went.

Minutes later, a light exploded on the rooftop.

"Hey, will you look at this?" he heard a voice say.

"Must be some kind of nut. . . ."

"I thought my picture was acting funny, but I thought it was just the wind. . . ."

"I haven't been getting any picture . . . and right in the middle of the show. . . ."

Hands touched him. Warm hands.

"Hey, this guy's in bad shape. . . ."

"Wouldn't be surprised if he froze to death out here. . . ."

"Better get him inside. . . ."

"Thanks," Chet Brander tried to say, but it was only an unspoken thought. When he felt the first touch of the warmth on the other side of the roof's door, he let himself enjoy the luxury of unconsciousness.

. . .

He was on a sofa. His mouth held a bitter, molten taste, and there was a furnace roaring in his stomach. His hands and feet were burning, and he began to squirm to avoid the tongues of the flames.

He opened his eyes, and saw the broad, fleshy face of an anxious, elderly man.

"You OK, son? What the hell were you doing out there, anyway?"

He couldn't answer.

"That's all right, don't try to talk. I'm Mr. Collyer, from Apartment 12-D. (concluded on page 105) Cry from the Penthouse (continued from page 40) I found you up on the roof. Those other people wanted me to call the police, but I said, what for, all he needs is to get warm. That's why I brought you here, to my place."

Brander looked about him, and studied the new textures of the strange apartment. He forced himself to sit up, and recognized the alcohol taste in his mouth.

"I thought a little brandy'd help," the man said, watching him. "I guess you got locked out, eh? You live in the building?"

"No," Brander said, in a voice he didn't recognize. "I – I was just looking at the apartments upstairs. Thinking about renting, maybe. Then I remembered hearing something about a sun-deck on the roof, and I went to have a look —"

"Hell of a night for sightseeing," the man grunted.

"Yes. But I went, just to see. The next thing I knew, the door slammed behind me."

"Quite a wind up there, all right. We all thought it was the wind that knocked the antennas out, until we found you." He chuckled. "Lot of people in the building sore at you, son. 'Specially since they can't get a repair man til late tomorrow morning."

"I'm sorry."

"Never mind that; you did the smart thing. Hey, where're you going?"

Brander was on his feet, tightening the knot in his tie, moving unsteadily toward the doorway.

"You can't go out like that, mister —"

"It's OK, I'll get a cab. Got to be going."

"Let me lend you something. Coat or something–—"

"No, I'll be all right," Brander said, turning the doorknob.

"Maybe you ought to see a doctor. . . ."

"I will, I will!" Brander said, and went out into the quiet, overcarpeted hallway.

He pressed the button that would bring the automatic elevator to the 12th floor, and then dug into his trouser pocket. It was still there, icy to his touch. The key to Coombs' penthouse.

When the elevator arrived, he stepped inside the car and punched P.

. . .

He didn't turn on the lights as he entered. He went to the closet and found his overcoat, his hat and his muffler.

He put them on, but felt no warmer.

Then he went to the double doors of the terrace, unlatched them, and opened them a scant two inches.

He returned to Coombs' sofa, and sat down in the dark to wait.

At 1:30, he heard the key in the lock. He rose unhurriedly, and went toward the doorway of Coombs' bedroom, concealing himself behind it.

The front door opened. Coombs, muttering, stepped inside. He stumbled about the darkened room, dropping his overcoat on the carpet before his hand found the light switch. Then, still mumbling, he looked blearily toward the terrace, and chuckled drunkenly. He went to the liquor cabinet, and poured himself something from a bottle, no ice. He downed it, still looking at the terrace.

Chet watched the glass come down slowly, and heard Coombs say, thickly:

"What the hell?"

Coombs went to the doors. When he found them unlatched, he opened them wide and stepped out onto the terrace.

"Brander!" he heard him shout, in chorus with the wind.

But Brander wasn't there. Brander was racing across the carpet of the penthouse living room, racing to reach the terrace doors before Coombs could return. He won the contest easily, slamming the steel portals shut even before Coombs was close enough to see his triumphant face. But he waited behind the wire-meshed diamond pane of glass, waiting for Coombs to get near enough to know, to understand.

"Brander!" he heard Coombs cry, his voice muffled and thin. "For God's sake, Brander, let me in!"

Chet smiled, and moved away. "Don't try messing with the antennas," he said, although he knew Coombs could not hear him. "Nobody's watching TV tonight. . . ."

"Chet! Chet, for the love of God! Chet!"

Outside, in the hallway, he could no longer hear the faintest sound of Coombs' pleas. He took the elevator to the ground floor and nodded pleasantly at the doorman, who was looking skyward with a frown.

"Bad night," Chet said, conversationally.

"And gettin' worse," the doorman answered, holding out a broad, flat palm. "See what's comin' now?"

"What?" Chet asked, looking at the sky.

"Snow," the doorman said.

Chet corrected him: "Sleet."