100 Malicious Little Mysteries

by Isaac Asimov

  Tom Randall stepped into the skiff and sent it skimming out into the channel. “This,” he said. “I’ll take old Johnny’s boat and shotgun and go on out to the point blind myself. He can shoot with one of you.”

  “Johnny won’t like it.”

  “Johnny won’t mind,” Tom Randall said, laughing, although no one laughed with him. “Johnny doesn’t mind anything.”

  He was gone when Johnny came back with the 20-gauge, but it appeared that he was right. Johnny just shrugged and got into the boat with me, and we matched with the others to see who would take the channel blind and who would take the others. Then we poled off into the darkness, feeling for the channels in the grass to the open water.

  And of course there had been no shooting. The sun came up clear and full and burned the frost off the marsh. The warm air from the Gulf moved up the river, and the birds getting up off the refuge climbed their aerial staircase straight up into the wonderfully blue sky, and no one truly cared except Johnny.

  A little later the mud hen came back across the channel, swimming in narrow suspicious circles, but pressed by curiosity to see what had frightened it the first time. It was forty yards from the point blind, craning its neck, when Tom Randall fired. The charge of No. 4 shot splattered against the water, catching the bird in the center of a lethal pattern four feet in diameter, and presently the bird floated feet up, dead in the water.

  “It shoots as good as it looks,” Tom Randall’s voice said across the water. “I think I’ll keep it.”

  Johnny Tennant sat on the platform in our blind, not smiling. The retriever, awakened by the gunshot, peered out at the distant mud hen, and then, in the absence of a command to fetch, went back to sleep.

  “He’s a very funny man,” I said in disgust.

  Johnny Tennant shrugged. “I suppose he had to try it,” he said. “He couldn’t just look at it.”

  “I’m really very sorry. We didn’t have a chance to stop him.”

  “It doesn’t matter... Maybe he thought it was safer to take my gun than take the one I was getting just for him.” He smiled a little this time.

  “Sure,” I said. “You might have fixed up the 20 just for him, with a nice plug rammed down the barrel, or something.”

  “That isn’t a good idea. A ballistician could tell if a gun blew up because the barrel was plugged.”

  He smiled again, almost wistfully. “If I wanted to kill a man accidentally in a duck blind,” he said, “there are better ways.”

  The sun was warm in the blind and there was no swell in the channel, but suddenly I felt the touch of a cold wind blowing.

  “A worn sear,” Johnny said. “Or a cracked bolt in the block, so that the receiver would come right on back into your face after a shot. And when you use hand-loaded shells, it would be easy.”

  I did not say anything.

  “You could make all kinds of mistakes,” he went on. “You could pick up the wrong over-powder wads and block the blow-by just long enough to split a barrel. Or you could measure from a flask of rifle powder, instead of regular nitrocellulose.”

  He paused, and said, “You remember that just one grain of a nitrocellulose rifle powder can raise breech pressure by almost 10,000 pounds.”

  He was sitting on the platform, still smiling a little and rubbing the dog’s ears, when the dog raised his head abruptly, looking at something in the sky beyond the point. We followed his gaze, from habit, and presently we could see a bird, coming in low, laboriously, head swinging.

  “A young goose looking for the family,” Johnny Tennant said. “It looks as though he might come right down the channel.”

  Hearing him talk about the goose made me feel better. The cold wind let up for a moment, and I said: “It looks as though Tom will get the shot. I’m glad he’s already fired once.”

  Johnny Tennant looked at me with a strange expression. “Did I make you nervous, talking about mistakes?”

  “I had an odd feeling, while you were talking. I’m really very glad he already fired that gun once.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” he said, gently. “If a man made a mistake loading a shell, he could only afford one mistake — and there’s no way to tell where it would be in the magazine.”

  The hair rose on my neck and I stood up, but down in the point blind Tom Randall was already up on the shooting platform. The young goose was flaring over him, in easy range, and Randall swung the beautiful gun, the sun flashing on its scrollwork and its splendid inlays. As the goose hung in panic at the top if its flare, the whole top of the blind dissolved in a white flash that was quite distinct before the shattering sound of the explosion swept across the water.

  I stood dumbly in the boat, hearing the emptiness after the blast, and then the patter of raindrop-falling shot and metal fragments in the water around us, and then, preposterously later, the heavy sound of the body falling in the point blind.

  “Damn him,” Johnny Tennant said, in a thick, sad voice.

  I looked at him and the tears were running down his defeated face.

  “Tom always took everything I wanted for myself,” Johnny Tennant said. “Even this.”

  Blisters in May

  by Jack Ritchie

  Dr. Kaufmann wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “You mean you want a transfer to the road gang?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Fred, you have one of the best jobs inside the walls. You’re out of the sun and there’s no sweat. Don’t you like being a medical orderly?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “But...” I shrugged. “I guess you could say that I’d like a change of pace.”

  He thought about it for a few seconds. “How long are you in for, Fred?”

  “Life,” I said.

  He smiled faintly. “All right, Fred. I’ll arrange the transfer. But I’m making book that after a few days with a pick and shovel, you’ll be begging to come back. Anyway, I’ll keep your present job open. When would you like this change of pace?”

  “As soon as possible, sir. If you could make it Monday? That’s May 1st.”

  Before I left my job at the dispensary that day, I put a roll of adhesive tape in my pocket. On Monday, after breakfast, I fell in with the outside work crew and we marched to the waiting trucks. The gates opened for us and for the first time in nine years I was outside the walls.

  The ride was short and I spent the time taping my hands. The trucks pulled up in front of a large ramshackle shed which housed the tools and machinery. We got off and waited in formation while a guard unlocked the double doors. He went inside and a con named Mark Hanson followed him.

  After a few moments, the rest of us single-filed into the building. Hanson was in charge of handing out the tools. He marked me down for an axe.

  We lined up again outside and waited while Hanson went about the business of closing the doors. He was about to snap the padlock when he looked at the guard and grinned sheepishly, “I forgot my shovel.”

  Yes, I thought, you forget it twice a year.

  Hanson disappeared back into the shed and came out twenty seconds later with a shovel. He padlocked the doors and fell into the rear of the formation.

  We marched a quarter of a mile to the work site and started the day. It was make-work mostly, clearing the scrub pine and cutting pole wood.

  At noon, I got my plate filled in the chow line and sat down in the shade of a tree next to Hanson. He contemplated the contents of his plate and I had the feeling he wasn’t going to eat what was there. Not today, anyway. When he put down the plate untouched, I said, “How are the hands?”

  He glanced at his palms automatically. Blisters were beginning to form. I got out my roll of adhesive. “Try this.”

  He shrugged a small thanks and accepted it.

  “Kind of interesting about your hands,” I said. “Every first of May or thereabouts you develop blisters bad enough to have to be treated at the dispensary. Been that way for every one of the four years you’v
e been here.”

  He regarded me stonily. “So?”

  “So the prison keeps a pretty thorough medical record of everything that happens to you — whether it’s a sore throat, lumbago, or blisters. It’s put down in your file.”

  “What’s all that to you?”

  I chewed a piece of my bread and swallowed. “But the thing that really interests me is your appendix. Two years ago, when Dr. Williams was still the medical officer, he took it out. And what do you know, four months ago Dr. Kaufmann had to do the same thing again.”

  He made sure that we were out of earshot of the other prisoners and the guards before he spoke again. “The records are wrong.”

  “No,” I said. “They aren’t. I’m the one who kept them.” I tasted the cold tea in my tin cup. “When Mark Hanson went back into the shed alone for his shovel this morning, he had a small rip on the knee of his uniform. When he came out, the rip was gone.”

  I smiled and said, “The tool shed is outside the walls. It’s locked, but not guarded at night. So you slipped inside last night and hid. Maybe under the floorboards or something like that. And when the Mark Hanson with the rip in his uniform got the chance to go back inside alone this morning, the two of you traded places real quick and you came out. How long are you staying with us this time?”

  He studied me for a full minute before he made up his mind to admit anything. “May and June. Like always.”

  I nodded. “So I guess that makes you the real Mark Hanson. But if you can get the other one to do ten months for you, why not the whole year?”

  “He’s a family man. A wife and kids. He wouldn’t touch this deal if it kept him away for the full seven years of my rap.”

  “Who is he? Your twin brother or something?”

  “No. I used him for my double whenever I was worried about some of my friends and what they might have in mind. When this income tax thing hit me, I had a doctor work on him a little to make him even more like my mirror.”

  I put aside my empty tin plate. “So you get outside. Why don’t you stay out? The world’s a big place and they don’t extradite from Brazil.”

  He shook his head. “Maybe so, but I got my business interests in the U.S. and they need my touch. I’m running things from behind a door right now, but in a few more years I want to be able to step out without having the Government tap my shoulder again.”

  He looked at me. “So now we talked. What do you want? Money? Or you’ll toddle to the warden with a story?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want money.”

  He frowned. “Hell, you don’t expect me to arrange...”

  “Why not?” I said. “You got the connections and you ought to be able to find somebody with my face.”

  The guards blew their whistles and we got to our feet.

  I rubbed at the pain in my back and then picked up my axe. This kind of work really wasn’t for me, and I had the hunch that someone using my name would come to the same conclusion after about ten months and make noises about getting out.

  I didn’t think I’d hear him in Brazil.

  The Collector

  by Patricia A. Matthews

  Allister Hugh loved olden times. He adored the quaint, revered the ancient, and often declared sadly with his hand held over his heart that, “Things today are not the way they used to be.”

  That is the reason he loved Lenadine Lou Le Clare. Not that Lenadine was old, far from it. She was young and very beautiful. And to Allister she was the embodiment of all the charms credited to the belles of long past years.

  Her beauty was of the Dresden china type. Her hair pale gold and simply styled. She took tea at precisely three each afternoon and often fainted when upset.

  Every Sunday afternoon Allister called upon her. They had tea upon the terrace and spoke of gentle things.

  He presented her with flowers and once — much moved by her rendition of the Moonlight Sonata played upon an old-fashioned spinet — he composed a sonnet entitled “Lovely Hands of Palest Ivory,” which he dedicated to her.

  All went well. She received him with dignity and poise. Their courtship proceeded as gracefully as a minuet, and Allister was happy. He was certain that ultimately she would be his; a fitting culmination to years of collecting museum pieces.

  One lovely afternoon as they sat late at their tea upon the terrace, Allister decided that this was the moment to declare his intentions.

  The breeze was soft, the air fragrant with the scent of flowers from the garden. He sank to his knees beside Lenadine’s chair.

  “Lenadine,” he declared, looking passionately into her sea-green eyes. “Lenadine, I am mad about you. Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

  “Oh, Allister,” she answered in emotion-choked tones. “Long have I awaited the day when you would offer me your heart.”

  “My heart,” he declared movingly, “my soul, my life, are at your feet.”

  They were married. It was a lovely old-fashioned wedding and after a discreet honeymoon in Niagara Falls the couple took up residence in the old mansion Lenadine had inherited from her first husband.

  Allister found Lenadine all he had ever desired in a woman, and the old mansion was filled with the relics of bygone days which he loved. There was only one flaw. He could not interest Lenadine in his hobby. It was perhaps unrealistic of him to wish to do so, for who expects the collector’s item to be interested in the collection of which it is a part? But as many people will who have an absorbing interest, he wished to share it.

  One day he said to her, “Lenadine, my love, since you do not share my interest in antiques, perhaps you should have a hobby of your own.”

  Lenadine smiled sweetly. She always smiled sweetly, it was one of the things he admired in her.

  “Oh, I have a hobby of sorts,” she replied roguishly; and not a word more would she say on the subject.

  He thought it a feminine whim. Women were unpredictable creatures. He let it pass.

  Then one day he discovered the locked door. It was a heavy door, well reinforced and bolted. Curious, he asked Lenadine about it.

  She was vague.

  His curiosity became stronger. He insisted.

  She cried.

  After that he insisted no more, but his curiosity grew. He decided to break the lock and see for himself what the room contained. He determined to do it that very night, when Lenadine and the servants were asleep.

  That evening he was especially attentive to Lenadine, for he felt a trifle ashamed of what he planned to do. She, however, was much subdued that evening.

  “Come, my love,” he cajoled her. “Why is my little bird so quiet this evening?”

  “I did not wish to tell you,” she said, “but tonight is the very night that my former husband—” Here she burst into soft sobs which she muffled in her lace handkerchief.

  “Ah, my dear,” answered Allister sympathetically, knowing that her first husband had died in some vague but tragic manner. “Of course, love. It is natural that you should think of him. I am not offended. Perhaps it would be better if you retired now.”

  Lenadine smiled gratefully and, kissing him coolly upon the cheek, retired to her room.

  Allister was now free to examine the locked room. He secured a candle — he much preferred a candle to a flashlight — and approached the concealing door.

  It took him considerable time to force an entry. The lock was extremely difficult. But at last the door stood open and Allister was able to enter the room.

  He lit the candle and went in. The door swung slowly shut behind him. The flame from the candle flickered, but its pale light was sufficient to illumine the strange altarlike block of stone with the odd, dark stains upon it and the queer, round jars sitting in precise rows upon a shelf; each of the jars contained an unidentifiable object suspended in liquid.

  With a feeling of dreadful anticipation, Allister raised the candle and advanced toward the jars.

  The candle flickered perilously, the
re was a draught as if someone had opened a door. But before the candle went out Allister was able to see quite clearly the contents of the jars.

  And in the first frightful blackness after the extinguished flame, he recalled Lenadine’s words that sunny afternoon upon the terrace.

  “Oh, Allister, I have waited so long for you to give me your heart.”

  House Call

  by Elsin Ann Graffam

  She dialed the number and waited. Two rings, three— Maybe he wasn’t in on a Saturday, maybe—

  “Hello? Dr. Reed? This is Joe’s mother, Mrs. Forte. Yes. Well, please, you’ve got to come over and see my Joe! He looks awful bad and I’m so worried. What? Oh, no, he can’t come to your office. He’s — he don’t look good at all. You can come here, maybe? You will? In a half hour? Oh, thank you, thank you so much. Doctor!”

  She hung up the telephone slowly and smoothed back stray strands of gray hair. Her fingers were gnarled, but strong and muscular from forty years of taking care of her boys. Her boys. There had been five of them once, but now all she had left with her was her Joe. A good boy, he was; nothing bad would ever happen to her Joe. That’s why she had to make the doctor come to her home, had to get everything taken care of.

  She tiptoed down the hall to Joe’s bedroom and carefully opened the door. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his body rigid and his face as vacant as it had been the last five times she’d looked in on him.

  “Joe?” she whispered.

  He didn’t look at her.

  “Joe, everything will be all right. You wait and see. I’ll take care of you.”

  Closing the door as softly as she’d opened it, she looked at the hands of the old clock in the hall. Twenty-five minutes to wait. She’d go crazy just sitting, waiting—

  Going into the living room, she picked up her knitting and began to work on the sweater she’d started the week before. A bright shade of blue, it was Joe’s favorite color. He’d be real surprised when he saw it.

  “Oh, Ma,” he’d say, “you shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble for me!”