“The Mystery in Room 913” was originally published in the June 4, 1938, issue of Detective Fiction Weekly; it was first collected in Somebody on the Phone (Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott, 1950).

The Mystery in Room 913

By Cornell Woolrich

THEY THOUGHT it was the Depression the first time it happened. The guy had checked in one night in the black March of ’33, in the middle of the memorable bank holiday. He was well-dressed and respectable looking. He had baggage with him, plenty of it, so he wasn’t asked to pay in advance. Everyone was short of ready cash that week. Besides, he’d asked for the weekly rate.

He signed the register James Hopper, Schenectady, and Dennison, eyeing the red vacancy-tags in the pigeonholes, pulled out the one in 913 at random and gave him that. Not the vacancy tag, the room. The guest went up, okayed the room, and George the bell hop was sent up with his bags. George came down and reported a dime without resentment; it was ’33, after all.

Striker had sized him up, of course. That was part of his duties, and the house detective found nothing either for him or against him. Striker had been with the St. Anselm two years at that time. He’d had his salary cut in ’31, and then again in ’32, but so had everyone else on the staff. He didn’t look much like a house dick, which was why he was good for the job. He was a tall, lean, casual-moving guy, without that annoying habit most hotel dicks have of staring people out of countenance. He used finesse about it; got the same results, but with sort of a blank, idle expression as though he were thinking of something else. He also lacked the usual paunch, in spite of his sedentary life, and never wore a hard hat. He had a little radio in his top-floor cubbyhole and a stack of vintage “fantastics,” pulp magazines dealing with super-science and the supernatural, and that seemed to be all he asked of life.

The newcomer who had signed as Hopper came down again in about half an hour and asked Dennison if there were any good movies nearby. The clerk recommended one and the guest went to it. This was about eight p. m. He came back at eleven, picked up his key, and went up to his room. Dennison and Striker both heard him whistling lightly under his breath as he stepped into the elevator. Nothing on his mind but a good night’s rest, apparently.

Striker turned in himself at twelve. He was subject to call twenty-four hours a day. There was no one to relieve him. The St. Anselm was on the downgrade, and had stopped having an assistant house dick about a year before.

He was still awake, reading in bed, about an hour later when the desk man rang him. “Better get down here quick, Strike! Nine-thirteen’s just fallen out!” The clerk’s voice was taut, frightened.