Murray Leinster

“ In the utter stillness that followed, the vastly muffled purring of his own motor-car reached the murderer, and the slow, drizzling sound of rain, even the curious humming of the telephone wires that led away from the house.
But then he heard the noise again, such a sound as might have been made by a man drumming softly and meditatively upon a table with his finger-tips. A tiny sound, an infinitely tiny sound, but the sound of something alive. The murderer stifled a gasp. It came from the chair where the dead man was sitting! ”

“ The man in the chair was beyond reach. No more harm could come to him. And he could toy with the living man as a cat toys with a mouse.
Numb with unreasoning terror of the thing that was dead, and yet moved, that was not two yards away and yet was removed by all the gulf between the living and the dead, the murderer pressed the flashlight button again. He clenched his teeth as he seemed to sense the stoppage of a stealthy movement by the thing in the chair. His cigarette-case was gone, missing from the table. ”

“ Some of the neighbors would be there—some because it was the proper thing, but more from curiosity. The only person who would really regret the old man's death would be the telephone-girl. The old man paid her a small extra sum to give his line special attention. It was, he said, his burglar-protection. And every month, grudgingly, he paid her a small sum, with a deduction for each time he could claim to have been kept waiting for a number.
There was a scratching sound from the chair. The murderer sprang to his feet, his terror making his throat dry. ”