“Right then and there, I knew that something had to be done. It didn’t make any difference what the doctors or her mother said, something had to be done and I was the one who had to do it.
“I telephoned for an undertaker.
“Met him downstairs.
“‘It will be a private funeral,’ I told him, ‘and no publicity, and I think after you are through you will have no trouble obtaining a physician’s certificate.’
“He went up stairs. In about five minutes he came down stairs.
“‘I must have gone to the wrong room,’ he said.
“‘The second story front bedroom,’ I replied.
“‘But the woman there is not dead,’ he said.
“I paid him for his trouble and shut the door in his face. Was I helpless? Doctor, you have to believe me. I was at the end of my rope. I had tried every way I knew and there was not anything left to do. No one believed me. No one agreed with me. It seemed more and more as though they thought I was insane.
It was impossible to keep her in the house longer. My health was giving way. Working all day at figures that were going wrong all the time and coming back night after night cooking my supper and sleeping in a room next to the thing that had been my wife. What with the smell of lilies of the valley and the buzz of flies and the constant dread in my mind of how things would be the next day and the next week, and the mortgage due. I had to do something.
“And it seemed to me that she wanted me to. It seemed that she recognized that things were not right, that she was entitled to a different kind of an ending. I tried to put myself in her place and I knew what I would want done with me if things were reversed.
“So I brought the trunk up from the cellar. We had used that trunk on our wedding trip and every summer since on our vacations and I thought that she would be more at peace in that trunk than in a new one. But when I had the trunk by her bed, I saw at once that it was too small unless I used a knife.
“That seemed to be the proper thing to do, and I was sure that it would not hurt her. For days she had been past hurting. I told her I was sorry but it just had to be done and if people had just believed me things could have been arranged in a nicer way. Then I started.
“Things were confused after that.
“I seem to remember a scream and blood spurting, and the next thing there were a lot of people in the house and they arrested me.
“And that is the peculiar part of it all, Doctor. Perhaps you do not know it but I am accused of murdering my wife. Now I have told you all about it, Doctor, and I just want to ask you one question. If you had been in my place, day after day, and night after night, what would you have done, Doctor? What would any man have done who loved his wife?”
THE DOORBELL
Originally published in Wonder Stories, June 1934.
The two men stood on the suspension bridge that hung over the trackage of the largest steel works in America. They were watching a crane and an electromagnet load scrap iron from the ground to small freight cars. The crane would swing the magnet over the hill of scraps; suddenly, several tons of iron would move up to meet the magnet, and then the crane would carry the magnet and the mass of attracted metal to a position above a car. Then the load of iron would fall off the magnet into the car.
“Rather clever!” exclaimed one of the men. “I see it every day but never fail to think it clever. Man throws a switch and the magnet starts pulling, throws another switch and it stops pulling. Does the work of twenty men and does it better. I own this place and am fairly busy, but almost every day I walk out on this bridge and watch the thing work. Been a big help to me.”
“I wish it would help me,” sighed the other man. “There ought to be a story in it, but I cannot find it. That is the bad part of being an author; you could write lots of things if you just had lots of things to write about.”
“There is a story in it,” replied the steel man softly. “I owe you something and I think I ought to pay you with the story. How about spending the weekend with me up at my shack in Canada?”
The author blushed.
“Sorry. I can’t. No money to pay the carfare; not the right kind of clothes for the kind of shack you live in and the kind of guests you will have. Thanks for the invitation, but no is the answer.”
“Come on,” urged the rich man. “There will be only one other guest but he stays by himself all of the time. Here is the program. You know my office in New York. Be at the front door at three, Friday afternoon. One of my men will be waiting for you in a Rolls-Royce.
“Tell him who you are and he will bring you to my place. He is a fast driver and makes the trip in six hours. He will leave you at the front door. Push the electric button on the side of the door and my man will admit you. I will wait supper for you and come back to New York with you early Monday morning. You will have an interesting weekend—and I promise you a real story, though whether you will be able to sell it or not, I don’t know. What does a story have to have to sell?”
“Originality—the sound of truth—human interest.”
“Then you will never sell it because no one will believe it, but come anyway. Sorry about your wife, but this is the kind of a weekend party I cannot invite her to.”
“That will be a hard thing to explain to her. Of course, she has heard of you, but she will think it queer, her not being invited to a weekend visit.”
“Don’t explain. Just tell her that it is a business trip—that I want you to write a book about me. Tell her that I paid you five hundred in advance. Show her the money. Here it is in hundred dollar bills.”
“I can’t do that,” protested the writer. “I am hard up but I can’t take the money for nothing.”
“Sure you can. I owe you more than that. Be at the office, Friday at three. I’ll see you at supper.”
Jacob Hubler did as he was told. It was not every day that he had five hundred handed to him; it was not every day that he had a chance to weekend with one of the rich men of America; it was not every day that a story was promised him. He had done Henry Cecil a real service. Even Mrs. Hubler admitted that, though she raised her eyebrows when her husband explained that it was to be a stag party for two. At any rate, the three p.m. appointment was kept. There followed a long, tiresome drive through New York and over into Canada. Hubler lost all sense of direction. The chauffeur was a better driver than conversationalist and most of the time simply grunted. Hubler tired of the grunted answers and stopped asking questions. The last fifteen minutes, they drove through a forest of heavy pine. At last they came to the house.
“There is the door,” announced the chauffeur. “I go back to town.” And there was nothing for Hubler to do but to walk up the pathway and ring the doorbell. There was a light over the front door—otherwise, the house was dark. The night was as black as pitch. It was impossible to tell anything about the house, the size, or the architecture. All that the author could see was the front door. All that he could hear was the constantly diminishing sound of the automobile racing back to some town. All that he could hope for was that Cecil, the steel man, had remembered the invitation.
On the top step, he found the electric push button which served as a doorbell. There was nothing peculiar about it—just a circular piece of polished brass with a small white button in the middle. He looked at it and thought that in some way it was incongruous with the doorway and the house and the dark silent night. A brass door-knocker, a pull bell that would tinkle merrily, some kind of announcer that could be heard by the visitor would have been more friendly, more sympathetic to his lonely mood.
He hesitated, and his hesitation was born of the haunting fear that if he pushed the button, he would not hear the bell within; he would not know whether it even did ring within the house or if it rang whether there was anyone there to hear it. He wished that he had a horn to blow and then laughed bitterly realizing that he had never blown one, and even if he knew how and did blow it lustily, how could anyone hear him it there was no
one in the house? He realized the neurasthenic quality of his fear, the almost psychopathic tendency of his imagination. Perhaps Cecil had done it all on purpose, to furnish him the thread of a story—a six-hour ride ending on the doorsteps of an empty house, and the nearest dwelling God knows where. There was a story there, and it might be more of a story before he returned to his home in New York. He looked moodily at the doorbell. It was just a plain, ordinary, everyday electric push-button.
The only way he could go on with the adventure was to take a finger and press on it.
And that was the thing that he suddenly dreaded to do.
Yet he had to!
So, cursing himself for an imaginative fool, he pressed the button; he rang the doorbell. Not just for a second did he ring it, but for what seemed at least a minute; or was it five?
Suddenly, the silence was broken by the sobbing shriek of a thing in pain, the terrible howling of a tortured animal. Above the silence of the night, the menacing noise rose carrying with it the terror of deadly agony, only to die away in throaty sobbings as he pulled his finger from the white button.
He found that he was shivering, sweating with the fear of the unknown burning through his soul. He wanted to escape, to run down the dark road, to plunge into the friendly, silent darkness, to do anything if only he could flee from a repetition of those sounds.
And then the door was flung open, lights blazing in all the windows of the house. A stately butler bade him enter. Cecil came to meet him—Cecil the steel man, in evening clothes and a friendly smile and a warm greeting.
“You are five minutes late,” he scolded laughingly. “You were due at nine. Have you been waiting all those minutes trying to find the doorbell? Hurry to your room and wash and join me as soon as you can. Supper is ready and I am sure that you are hungry.”
Everything seemed different. Hubler wondered if he had been the victim of auditory hallucinosis. Here was light, warmth, good fellowship, and the cheer of a fireplace. Supper was served there instead of in a formal dining-room—a supper of roast duck in front of the fireplace. Henry Cecil made a charming host; the butler was everything a butler should be; there was a quiet charm in the atmosphere of the room. Gradually, Hubler relaxed and, by the time the meal was over, was silently laughing at his former fears. The table was removed, the butler withdrew, and then the author asked the steel millionaire the question that had been bothering him for several days.
“You promised me a story, Mr. Cecil.”
“So I did. In fact, as I remember it, that was your real reason for making the trip.”
“Exactly.”
“Not being an author, I hardly know how to even start a story.”
“You start with a title. Every story has to have a name.”
“I understand that. You can call the story what you wish. If I were going to write it, I would call it ‘The Doorbell’ but no doubt that would sound uninteresting to you.” He spoke softly with a smile.
Hubler looked at him. Doorbell? Suddenly a memory that he had almost thrust back into the subconscious returned. He answered rather sharply.
“That will do for the name of the story. Go on.”
“I will have to begin years ago,” said the steel man. “I came originally from the western part of South Carolina. Perhaps we were related to the Cecils on the eastern shore of Maryland, or the Cecils of Louisiana. I have read their family histories, but I never was able to satisfy myself that my father was of either family. In fact, I never saw my father, for he died when I was a little fellow. My mother was Amy Worth from Atlanta, Georgia. She was related to the Fannings and the Stills. They were proud people but poor. After Father died, she tried to support the three of us. You see, I had a brother who was much older than I but not a man.
“We lived in a house in the country that at one time had been the home of a rich man. By the side of the front door there was a doorbell. It was the old-fashioned kind, a pull bell. A wire ran from the door to the kitchen, and when the knob was pulled, the bell tingled-tangled in the kitchen. Mother kept it in repair. She said that it was a symbol of former greatness and something for us boys to try to grow up to. She wanted us to become real men. Hardly anyone used the bell because we had few visitors and mostly they just came around the back way, like neighbors would.
“I guess Father had enemies. He must have had. There was one family of four brothers who claimed they owned our farm, but Mother held that she had a clear title to it. I was away one day hunting, like a little fellow will be, and when I came back toward dusk, I found the front door open. Brother was dead and Mother was almost dead, but she told me what had happened. From the way she was shot, I don’t see how she lived as long as she did, but she had Fanning blood in her and the Fannings die hard. Anyway, I sat down on the floor and put her head on my legs and wiped the blood away from her mouth. Then she told me what had happened. Perhaps this is not interesting you, Mr. Hubler?”
“On the contrary, I find it more than interesting. Go on.”
“All right. Anytime you tire, tell me to stop.
“Mother said that she and Brother were in the kitchen when the doorbell rang. It was such an unusual thing that they felt sure something was going to happen, but they went to the front door and opened it, because they were in their own house and they were not afraid. Mother explained that to me—that they were not afraid. Even when she was dying, she took the time to tell me that she was not afraid because she had the Fanning blood in her. They opened the door and there stood the four brothers. They had come to the front door and rung the doorbell instead of going around to the back door the way the friendly neighbors would have done. They never said a word, just started to shoot, and when they left, they told Mother they were going to come back after dusk and finish with me. I wanted to stay, but Mother made me promise I would go. She said that there was work for me to do but that I had to do it when I grew to be a man and that it was not anything for a little lad to undertake. She died in a while, after she had told me what there was to tell. So I took my rifle and left that part of the country. The neighbors found them and buried them. Years after, I went back and put a stone over their graves. That is the end of the story.”
“Not much of an ending,” Hubler insisted. “It is not the kind of an ending that would interest the average editor. The story could not stop right there. There must be something more.”
“Perhaps,” replied Henry Cecil, “but it is all true so far. And there is the rifle I brought with me from the Carolina mountains. When I bought this land and built this house, I brought it up here and hung it above the fireplace. End the story yourself.”
“I cannot do it. A thousand endings have been written to the story you have told me. You should have taken the rifle and hunted down the four brothers. You should have shot them one at a time. But things like that have all been written before—nothing new to it. Instead, you come north, learn the steel business, become a rich man, have a palace in Canada, and hang the gun above the fireplace. That is interesting, but it is not a story. Why didn’t you use the gun?”
Cecil smiled.
“There would have been no originality in it. A thousand mountain boys would have done that, but as far as I know, I am the only mountain boy who became interested in steel and electricity. I had to be in every way different. You see, I was just a lad when Mother died with her head on my lap and when I was not looking at her face, I kept looking at the doorbell. She had always said that the doorbell was a symbol; that rich people had doorbells, that the Worths and Fannings and Stills in Georgia always had doorbells and if Brother and I kept that in mind, we would grow up to have lives with doorbells, and servants in the kitchen and everything that went with doorbells. But instead of bringing joy and happiness and prosperity into her life, it had been the signal of death to Brother and her.
“So I have never been able to forget the doorbell.”
“You mean?”
“Something like that. I am trying to explain why the rif
le was never used. Now a doorbell would be something different. You can see that for yourself.”
“There certainly is a difference—so much so, that there is no resemblance,” agreed the puzzled author.
“At least, Mother’s ambitions have been satisfied. I have become rich, well known, and somewhat important to the financial life of the nation. In fact, some of the Maryland Cecils have been trying to show that they are related to the Carolina branch. I have a home in the country and a doorbell at the front door. I have servants who can be trusted. My butler is a man of good breeding and high education. Being an ex-convict, in fact an escaped convict, this place is a city of refuge for him, and he appreciates the fact. His wife is the cook. My chauffeur also has certain things to be thankful to me for and in addition knows how to drive and keep his mouth shut.”
“He certainly is no conversationalist.”
“No. He does not talk. Then there is the doctor. I just had to have a doctor. I have guests, and when they become sick, it is so much better to have a physician in the house rather than have to send to Montreal. This man is a good fellow; drinks, and cannot return to the States. But he is a wonderful nurse and takes good care of my guests. I hunted for a long time to find a doctor who would answer my purpose. Different doctors, you realize, have different ideas concerning the administration of drugs. Some give powders, others liquids or hypodermics, and now and then you find one who thinks that the only way to administer medicine is in the form of capsules. This man I have is what you might call a ‘capsule doctor.’ He is clever. He has some capsules that dissolve in the stomach and some that do not dissolve till they enter certain parts of the intestines. That’s my family up here. I meet a man and become interested in him and invite him up for the weekend. If he becomes sick, he is well cared for—very well cared for. Well, it is late and you are tired from the drive. Suppose we retire?”
“That suits me,” said Hubler. “And is that all there is to the story?”
The Golden Age of Weird Fiction Megapack, Volume 5 Page 10