The Night People Read Online Free

die from it was a young girl, and when you saw it in the papers it scared you. You realized you’d made a mistake, and you were afraid the other four would die too, or at least get sick from it. The death of the girl had somehow passed more or less unnoticed, but a series of morphine deaths would be quickly traced to you.
    “So you had to kill the other four, because by confessing your mistake in time to save them, you’d have ruined yourself for life. Your profession was more important than a few lives. It was everything to you.
    “And somehow I understand it. I understand what was in your mind better than anyone else could….
    “Because it’s in my mind, too….
    “Why the axe? I suppose that was some fantastic bit of misdirection to keep attention away from the body, from the stomach, where traces of the morphine could be quickly found. But actually only the old woman took enough for us to notice. Or perhaps you didn’t make the same mistake with the other three after all….
    “My head is aching again. It’s taken me a long time to find you….
    “You tried to make us think it was the work of an insane fiend, but I know you aren’t mad….
    “You just wanted to keep your job.
    “Like I do….
    “Because you know when I bring you in, I’m all through. They’re going to retire me then, like an old horse.
    “There isn’t anything else for me, but they’re going to retire me and this is my last case….
    “Inspector Fleming’s Last Case….
    “Perhaps that’s what the newspapers will call it.
    “Perhaps….
    “My head aches.
    “You killed four people to keep your job … four people….
    “But this doesn’t have to be the end, does it? I’m the only one who knows….
    “Suppose the axe fiend kept on killing….
    “Then I couldn’t retire. Then they’d keep me. Then….
    “Suppose you were to die, Mr. Wagner, the way the others did. Suppose I were to pick up the axe like this and….
    “Suppose….”

The Man Who Was Everywhere
    H E FIRST NOTICED THE new man in the neighborhood on a Tuesday evening, on his way home from the station. The man was tall and thin, with a look about him that told Ray Bankcroft he was English. It wasn’t anything Ray could put his finger on, the fellow just looked English.
    That was all there was to their first encounter, and the second meeting passed just as casually, Friday evening at the station. The fellow was living around Pelham some place, maybe in that new apartment house in the next block.
    But it was the following week that Ray began to notice him everywhere. The tall Englishman rode down to New York with Ray on the 8:09, and he was eating a few tables away at Howard Johnson’s one noon. But that was the way things were in New York, Ray told himself, where you sometimes ran into the same person every day for a week, as though the laws of probability didn’t exist.
    It was on the weekend, when Ray and his wife journeyed up to Stamford for a picnic, that he became convinced the Englishman was following him. For there, fifty miles from home, the tall stranger came striding slowly across the rolling hills, pausing now and then to take in the beauty of the place.
    “Damn it, Linda,” Ray remarked to his wife, “there’s that fellow again!”
    “What fellow, Ray?”
    “That Englishman from our neighborhood. The one I was telling you I see everywhere.”
    “Oh, is that him?” Linda Bankcroft frowned through the tinted lenses of her sunglasses. “I don’t remember ever seeing him before.”
    “Well, he must be living in that new apartment in the next block. I’d like to know what the hell he’s doing up here, though. Do you think he could be following me?”
    “Oh, Ray, don’t be silly,” Linda laughed. “Why would anyone want to follow you? And to a picnic!”
    “I don’t know, but it’s certainly odd the way he keeps turning up….”
    It certainly was odd.
    And as the summer passed into September, it grew odder still. Once, twice, three