Ellery Queen's Crime Cruise Round the World

by Ellery Queen

  I have never been much of a dreamer, neither by day nor by night. Reveries, daydreams, these are the products of vaulting ambition or vaulting desire, of both of which I have remained for the most part gratefully free. And though science assures us that some part of every night’s sleep is spent in the manufacture of dreams, mine must normally be gentle and innocuous, even dull, as I rarely remember them in the morning.

  I would date the beginning of the change in my life from the moment of the retirement of old Mr. Randmunson from his post as manager of our local Willis & DeKalb store, and his prompt replacement by Mr. Miller, a stranger from the Akron branch.

  Mr. Miller is a hearty man, cheeks and nose all red with ruddy health, handshake painfully firm, voice roaring, laugh aggressive. Not yet 35, he moves and speaks with the authority and self-confidence of a man much older, and he makes it no secret that some day he intends to be president of the entire chain. Our little store is merely a stopover for him, another rung upward on the ladder of his success.

  His first day in the store, he came to me, ebullient and overpowering and supremely positive. He asked my opinion, he discussed business and geography and entertainment, he offered me a cigarette, he thumped my shoulder. “We’ll get along, Ronald!” he told me. “Just keep moving those shirts!”

  “Yes, Mr. Miller.”

  “And let me have an inventory list, by style and size, tomorrow morning.”

  “Sir?”

  “Any time before noon,” he said carelessly, and laughed, and thumped my shoulder. “We’ll have a great team here, Ronald, a first-rate team!”

  Two nights later I dreamed for the first time of Delia.

  I went to bed as usual at 11:40, after the news on channel six. I switched out the light, went to sleep, and in utter simplicity and clarity the dream began. In it I was driving my automobile on Western Avenue, out from the center of town, It was all thoroughly realistic—the day, the traffic, the used-car lots along Western Avenue all gleaming in the spring sun. My six-year-old Plymouth was pulling just a little to the right, exactly as it does in real life. I knew I was dreaming, but at the same time it was very pleasant to be in my car on Western Avenue on such a lovely spring day.

  A scream startled me, and my foot trod reflexively on the brake pedal. Nearby, on the sidewalk, a man and girl were struggling together. He was trying to wrest a package from her but she was resisting, clutching the package tight with both arms around it, and again screaming. The package was wrapped in brown paper and was about the size and shape of a suit carton from Willis & DeKalb.

  I want to emphasize that everything was very realistic, down to the smallest detail. There were none of the abrupt shifts in time or space or viewpoint normally associated with dreams, no impossibilities or absurdities.

  There was no one else on the sidewalk nearby, and I acted almost without thinking. Braking my Plymouth at the curb, I leaped out, ran around the car, and began to grapple with the girl’s attacker. He was wearing brown corduroy trousers and a black leather jacket and he needed a shave. His breath was bad.

  “Leave her alone!” I shouted, while the girl continued to scream.

  The mugger had to give up his grip on the package in order to deal with me. He pushed me away and I staggered ineffectively backward just as I would do in real life, while the girl kicked him repeatedly in the shins. As soon as I regained my balance I rushed forward again, and now he decided he’d had enough. He turned tail and ran, down Western Avenue and through a used-car lot and so out of sight.

  The girl, breathing hard, still clutching the package to her breast, turned to smile gratefully on me and say, “How can I ever thank you?”

  What a beautiful girl! The most beautiful girl I have ever seen, before or since. Auburn hair and lovely features, deep clear hazel eyes, slender wrists with every delicate birdlike bone outlined beneath the tender skin. She wore a blue and white spring dress and casual white shoes. Silver teardrops graced her graceful ears.

  She gazed at me with her melting, warm, companionable eyes, and she smiled at me with lips that murmured to be kissed, and she said to me, “How can I ever thank you?” in a voice as dulcet as honey.

  And there the dream ended, in extreme closeup on my Delia’s face.

  I awoke the next morning in a state of euphoria. The dream was still vivid in my mind in every detail, and most particularly I remembered the look of her sweet face at the end. That face stayed with me throughout the day, a day which otherwise might have been only bitter, as it was on that day Mr. Miller gave the two-week notice to my friend and co-worker Gregory Shostrill of the stockroom. I shared, of course, the employees’ general indignation that such an old and loyal worker had been so summarily dismissed, but for me the outrage was tempered by the continuing memory of last night’s wonderful dream.

  I never anticipated for a second that I would ever see my dream girl again, but that night she returned to me, and my astonishment was only matched by my delight. I went to bed at my usual hour, fell asleep, and the dream began. It started precisely where, the night before, it had ended, with the beautiful girl saying to me, “How can I ever thank you?”

  I now functioned at two levels of awareness. The first, in which I knew myself to be dreaming, was flabbergasted to find the dream picking up as though no day had elapsed, no break at all had taken place in the unfolding of this story. The second level, in which I was an active participant in the dream rather than its observer, treated this resumption of events as natural and inevitable and obvious, and reacted without delay.

  It was this second level which replied, “Anyone would have done what I did,” and then added, “May I drive you wherever you’re going?”

  Now here, I grant, the dream had begun to be somewhat less than realistic. That I should talk with this lovely creature so effortlessly, without stammering, without blushing, with no worms of terror crawling within my skull, was not entirely as the same scene would have been played in real life. In this situation, in reality, I might have attacked the mugger as I’d done in the dream, but on being left alone with the girl afterward I would surely have been reduced to a strained smile and a strangled silence.

  But not in the dream. In the dream I was gallant and effortless, as I offered to drive her wherever she was going.

  “If it wouldn’t be putting you out of your way—”

  “Not in the least,” I assured her. “Where are you going?”

  “Home,” she said. “Summit Street. Do you know it?”

  “Of course. It’s right on my way.”

  Which wasn’t at all true. Summit Street, tucked away in the Oak Hills section, a rather well-to-do residential neighborhood, was a side street off a side street. There’s never any reason to drive on Summit Street unless Summit Street is your destination.

  Nevertheless I said it was on my way—and she accepted pleasantly. Holding the car door for her, I noticed my Plymouth was unusually clean and I was glad I’d finally got around to having it washed. New seat covers, too, very nice-looking; I couldn’t remember having bought them but I was pleased I had.

  Once we were driving together along Western Avenue I introduced myself. “My name’s Ronald. Ronald Grady.”

  “Delia,” she told me, smiling again. “Delia Wright.”

  “Hello, Delia Wright.”

  Her smile broadened. “Hello, Ronald Grady.” She reached out and, for just a second, touched her fingers to my right wrist.

  After that the dream continued in the most naturalistic manner, the two of us chatting about one thing and another—the high schools we’d attended and how odd it was we’d never met before. When we reached Summit Street, she pointed out her house and I stopped at the curb. She said, “Won’t you come in for a cup of coffee? I’d like you to meet my mother.”

  “I really can’t now,” I told her, smiling regretfully. “But if you’re doing nothing tonight, could I take you to dinner and a movie?”

  “I’d like that,” she said.


  “So would I.”

  Our eyes met, and the moment seemed to deepen—and there the dream stopped.

  I awoke next morning with a pleasant warm sensation on my right wrist, and I knew it was because Delia had touched me there. I ate a heartier breakfast than usual, startled my mother—I have continued to live at home with my mother and an older sister, seeing no point in the additional expense of a place of my own—startled my mother, I say, by singing rather loudly as I dressed, and went off to work in as sunny a mood as could be imagined.

  Which Mr. Miller, a few hours later, succeeded in shattering.

  I admit I returned late from lunch. The people at the auto store had assured me they could install the new seat covers in 15 minutes, but it actually took them over half an hour. Still, it was the first time in five years I had ever been late, and Mr. Miller’s sarcasm and abuse seemed to me under the circumstances excessive. He carried on for nearly half an hour, and in fact continued to make reference to the incident for the next two weeks.

  Still, my hurt and outrage at Mr. Miller’s attitude were not so great as they might have been, had I not had that spot of warmth on my wrist to remind me of Delia. I thought of Delia, of her beauty and grace, of my own ease and confidence with her, and I weathered the Miller storm much better than might have been expected.

  That night I hardly watched the eleven o’clock news at all. I stayed till it ended only because any change in my habits would have produced a string of irrelevant questions from my mother; but as soon as the newscaster had bid me good night I headed directly for my own bed and sleep.

  And Delia. I had been afraid to hope the dream would continue into a third night, but it did, it did, and most delightfully so.

  This time the dream skipped. It jumped over those dull meaningless hours when I was not with Delia, those hours as stale and empty as the real world, and it began tonight with me back at Summit Street promptly at seven, and Delia opening her front door to greet me.

  Again the dream was utterly realistic. The white dinner jacket I wore was unlike anything in my waking wardrobe, but otherwise all was lifelike.

  In tonight’s dream we went to dinner together at Astoldi’s, an expensive Italian restaurant which I had attended—in daylife—only once, at the testimonial dinner for Mr. Randmunson when he retired from Willis & DeKalb. But tonight I behaved—and felt, which is equally important—as though I dined at Astoldi’s twice a week.

  The dream ended as we were leaving the restaurant after dinner, on our way to the theater.

  The next day, and the days that followed, passed in a slow and velvet haze. I no longer cared about Mr. Miller’s endless abrasiveness. I bought a white dinner jacket, though in daylife I had no use for it. Later on, after a dream segment in which I wore a dark blue ascot, I bought three such ascots and hung them in my closet.

  The dream, meanwhile, went on and on without a break, never skipping a night. It omitted all periods of time when I was not with my Delia, but those times spent with her were presented entirely, and chronologically, and with great realism.

  There were, of course, small exceptions to the realism. My ease with Delia, for instance. And the fact that my Plymouth grew steadily younger night by night, and soon stopped pulling to the right.

  That first date with Delia was followed by a second and a third. We went dancing together, we went swimming together, we went for rides on a lake in her cousin’s cabin cruiser and for drives in the mountains in her own Porsche convertible. I kissed her, and her lips were indescribably sweet.

  I saw her in all lights and under all conditions. Diving from a tacketa-tacketa long board into a jade-green swimming pool, and framed for one heartbeat in silhouette against the pale blue sky. Dancing in a white ball gown, low across her tanned breasts and trailing the floor behind her. Kneeling in the garden behind her house, dressed in shorts and a sleeveless pale green blouse, wearing gardening gloves and holding a trowel, laughing, with dirt smudged on her nose and cheek. Driving her white Porsche, her auburn hair blowing in the wind, her eyes bright with joy and laughter.

  The dream, the Dream, became to me much finer than reality, oh, much much finer. And in the Dream there was no haste, no hurry, no fear. Delia and I were in love, we were lovers, though we had not yet actually lived together. I was calm and confident, slow and sure, feeling no frantic need to possess my Delia now, now. I knew the time would come, and in our tender moments I could see in her eyes that she also knew, and that she was not afraid.

  Slowly we learned one another. We kissed, I held her tight, my arm encircled her slender waist. I touched her breasts and, one moonlight night on a deserted beach, I stroked her lovely legs.

  How I loved my Delia! And how I needed her, how necessary an antidote she was to the increasing bitterness of my days.

  It was Mr. Miller, of course, who disrupted my days as thoroughly as Delia soothed and sweetened my nights. Our store was soon unrecognizable, most of the older employees gone, new people and new methods everywhere. I believe I was kept on only because I was such a silent enduring victim for Mr. Miller’s sarcasm, his nasal voice and his twisted smile and his bitter eyes. He was in such a starved hurry for the presidency of the firm, he was so frantic to capture Willis & DeKalb, that it forced him to excesses beyond belief.

  But I was, if not totally immune, at least relatively safe from the psychological blows of Mr. Miller’s manner. The joyful calm of the Dream carried me through all but the very worst of the days in the store.

  Another development was that I found myself more self-assured with other people in daylife. Woman customers, and even the fashionably attractive and newly hired woman employees, were beginning to make it clear that they found me not entirely without interest. It goes without saying that I remained faithful to my Delia, but it was nevertheless pleasurable to realize that a real-world social life was available to me, should I ever want it.

  Not that I could visualize myself ever being less than fully satisfied with Delia.

  But then it all began to change. Slowly, very very slowly, so that I don’t know for how long the tide had already ebbed before I first became aware. In my Delia’s eyes—I first saw it in her eyes. Where before they had been warm bottomless pools, now they seemed flat and cold and opaque; I no longer saw in them the candor and beauty of before. Also, from time to time I would catch a pensive frown on her face, a solemn thoughtfulness.

  “What is it?” I would ask her. “Tell me. Whatever I can do—”

  “It’s nothing,” she would insist. “Really, darling, it’s nothing at all.” And kiss me on the cheek.

  In this same period, while matters were unexpectedly worsening in the dream, a slow improvement had begun in the store. All the employees to be fired were now gone, all the new employees in and used to their jobs, all the new routines worked with and grown accustomed to. Mr. Miller seemed also to be growing accustomed to his new job and the new store. Less and less was he taking out his viciousness and insecurity on me. He had, in fact, taken to avoiding me for days at a time, as though beginning to feel ashamed of his earlier harshness.

  Which was fine but irrelevant. What was my waking time after all but the necessary adjunct to my dream? It was the dream that mattered, and the dream was not going well, not going well at all.

  It was, in fact, getting worse. Delia began to break dates with me, and to make excuses when I asked her for dates. The pensive looks, the distracted looks, the buried sense of impatience, all were more frequent now. Entire portions of the dream were spent with me alone—I was never alone in the early nights!—pacing the floor of my room, waiting for a promised call that never came.

  What could it be? I asked her and asked, but always she evaded my questions, my eyes, my arms. If I pressed, she would insist it was nothing, nothing, and then for a little while she would be her old self again, gay and beautiful, and I could believe it had only been my imagination after all. But only for a little while, and then the distraction, the evasiveness, th
e impatience, the excuses, all would return once more.

  Until two nights ago. We sat in her convertible beneath a full moon, high on a dark cliff overlooking the sea, and I forced the issue at last. “Delia,” I said. “Tell me the truth, I have to know. Is there another man?”

  She looked at me, and I saw she was about to deny everything yet again, but this time she couldn’t do it. She bowed her head. “I’m sorry, Ronald,” she said, her voice so low I could barely hear the words. “There is.”

  “Who?”

  She raised her head, gazing at me with eyes in which guilt and pity and love and shame were all commingled, and she said, “It’s Mr. Miller.”

  I recoiled. “What?”

  “I met him at the country club,” she said. “I can’t help it, Ronald. I wish to God I’d never met the man. He has some sort of hold over me, some hypnotic power. That first night he took me to a motel and—”

  Then she told me, told me everything, every action and every demand, in the most revolting detail. And though I squirmed and struggled, though I strained and yearned, I could not wake up, I could not end the dream. Delia told me everything she had done with Mr. Miller, her helplessness to deny him even though it was me she loved and he for whom she felt only detestation, her constant trysts with him night after night, direct from my arms to his. She told me of their planned meeting later that very night in the motel where it had all begun, and she told me of her bitter self-knowledge that even now, after I knew everything, she would still meet him.

  Then at last her toneless voice was finished and we were in silence once again, beneath the moon, high on the cliff. Then I awoke.