Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, December 1956 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

upon the folds of the print dress, something that flashed once in the starlight as it fell. “What was that?” Cliff asked, hushed. “Never mind. Bring me the tarp, please.” They folded it over her before they shoveled the dirt back. She looked quite relaxed and at peace, lying there among the deep roots with the tarp to keep the sand off her face. When it was finished, the extra earth scattered, the Joshua tree branches dragged back and forth over the spot, the woman said, “Go on back to the car. I'll be with you in a minute.” He went and sat quiet, watching her. She stood there motionless, looking down, for perhaps five minutes. The wind in the Joshuas made a strange rattling and whis- tling sound that was as lonely a noise as he thought he would ever hear again. They drove back to the city to- gether in silence. _ “Where shall I drop your” she asked as they came off the freeway. “The Greyhound Bus Station is where I’m headed.” She pulled over to the curb on a cross street a little way from the station and sat there looking’ at him in the reflection of the street light. Her face was more like Anne’s than ever, looking thin and drawn now as it had not when he had seen her earlier that evening. “She told you about herself,” she said. It wasn’t a question, but he nodded. “All right. Now listen to me and pay very close attention. You and I committed a crime to- night. It wasn’t our doing that she died. It was somebody else’s doing. I’ve had to make the best of it. In a way it’s lucky for you. The publicity would have been bad, and besides—” She looked down at the wheel and her hand clenched on it, and she smiled a thin smile. “And besides, I saw the answer to an old problem. But it was a crime we did, You and I are in it to- gether. No matter what happens, no matter what you ever read or hear about this, no matter if they find her body or not—you'll be safe only as long as you never say a word to anyone. Do you under- stand that?” Cliff nodded, his eyes not mov- ing from hers. © “Don’t ever think you can black- mail me,” she went on. “The gun has your prints on it, and I’ve got the gun. We must both keep still as long as we live.” He thought about it, his hand on the door, ready to get out. He said, “Yes, I understand—most of it. But I wish you'd tell me what it was you dropped into the—in with her.” , She smiled at him. He didn’t - smile back, but he was surprised to find how close he had drawn to her in the sharing of this terrible, this shattering thing. Since that 14 ALFRED “HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE Gomichbooksteo