Free Death Has a Small Voice by Frances Lockridge

“Sven Helder. You know? At the building.”
    â€œYes,” Jerry said. “What is it, Helder?”
    â€œI got to wondering,” Helder said. “Mrs. North got home all right last night?”
    â€œWhat?” Jerry said. His voice was quick again.
    â€œMrs. North,” Helder said. “She was here last night. Up at your office. She got home all right, didn’t she?”
    â€œShe was there?” Jerry said. “At the office? No—she didn’t get home all right. We’re trying to find her.”
    There was a brief pause.
    â€œWell,” Helder said, “she was here and she left all right. Anyway, I thought—I tell you how it was. I got worried. She was—”
    â€œWait!” Jerry said. “You’re there now?”
    â€œSure,” Helder said.
    â€œStay there,” Jerry told him. “I’m coming up. You’ll stay there?”
    â€œSure,” Helder said. “I got to, anyway. I got—”
    Jerry North did not wait. He cradled the telephone. He went hatless, without a coat. He thought an empty cab would never come along Sixth Avenue. But one came.
    The glass doors of the building were closed. There was a dim light in the lobby. Jerry put a finger on the night bell and held it there. Sven Helder came through the lobby, lifting a suspender strap over his shoulder. He peered through the glass. He nodded. He took keys from his pocket, slowly. He selected a key; he peered at it and shook his head. He turned the bunch of keys slowly in his hands and chose another. To this one, unhurriedly, he nodded. Finally, he opened the doors.
    He talked as slowly as he had moved. Jerry had to hold tight to himself, force himself to wait. He got the story.
    Pam had come to the building at nine-thirty Monday night—9:32, exactly, by Helder’s watch. He took the watch from his pocket and showed it to Jerry North, and nodded at it, and put it back. He had taken her upstairs. At ten-thirty, when it was time to lock the building for the night, she had not come down. He went up then and found the offices dark, and knew she had left, walking down. He had locked up after her, checked that she had not signed out, grumbled a little about it.
    â€œOnly today, I got to worrying,” he said. “You know how women is. Just as likely to forget to sign out as remember. Regulations, but what do they care? But then I got to thinking—I never know Mrs. North be like that. Thinks about other people, know what I mean? So I thought tonight I’d just call up and see if she was all right, and you say she didn’t get home. So—”
    â€œLet’s go up,” Jerry said.
    They went, in the reluctantly trundling elevator. Again, Jerry fought slowness; again he felt a desperate need to be in time.
    But when the lights were on in the offices, it was again as it had been. There was only emptiness; only, again, the disturbing strangeness of familiar things.
    Pam had come here Monday night—come to this place of empty desks. She had been here—how long? She had come here—why?
    The lights glared down on the empty general office, revealing everything and nothing. As much out of habit as for any reason, Jerry went to his own corner office, and Helder followed him. The lights there revealed only the flat surfaces of familiar things—revealed a cleared desk, a Voice-Scriber on a small, wheeled table, chairs, and a telephone and two walls of books. Here—almost certainly here, to this office—Pam had come at about nine-thirty the evening before. She had been here; she had touched these chairs, this desk. Had she opened and closed again the small, personal file beside the desk? Had she put something in, or taken something out?
    He sat at the desk; he looked at the memo calendar on it. Tuesday, October 28, the calendar assured him. When Pam was there, it had said Monday, October 27. Miss Corning had dusted the desk, torn off