The Black Dream_Rue Morgue Vintage Mysteries

by Constance Little

  "Well, it's no wonder," I said crossly. "I come here for a vacation, expecting peace and quiet, and the place might as well be a lunatic asylum. How would you like it?"

  "I could not say," he replied equably. "I don't take vacations—I don't care for them."

  I said, "Pardon me."

  The doorbell rang, and he went along and opened up to Mrs. Budd, who was waving a card in the air.

  "Here it is, Mr. Egbert—but you musn't pay too much attention to what she says. Betty was only trying to scare John a little."

  Egbert took the card and studied it carefully, and I moved up behind him and peered over his shoulder.

  It was a plain penny postal, and the writing said simply:

  DEAR MOTHER,

  Have eloped with Homer. Don't worry about me. Feeling fine.

  Love,

  BETTY

  Egbert turned it over, and I saw that it was postmarked Binghamton, New York.

  "Is this your daughter's handwriting?" Egbert asked.

  Mrs. Budd widened her eyes in surprise. "Why, of course."

  "Are you sure?" Egbert persisted gravely. "Look again."

  Mrs. Budd wrinkled her forehead, searched Egbert's face in a perplexed manner, and then looked down at the card with the first faint shadows of doubt in her troubled eyes. "Why, I—I never thought of anything else. It must be her writing—she'd never go off without a word and leave me worrying."

  "You are prepared to swear that that is your daughter's handwriting?" Egbert asked.

  Mrs. Budd blinked over sudden tears and stammered, "Of course I'm sure—but what do you mean anyway? If you think my Betty didn't write this, then where is she?"

  Egbert shrugged. "Don't worry about it, in any case. We'll find her in a day or so."

  Mrs. Budd brightened and said eagerly, "Oh, I wish you would" Egbert patted her shoulder and suggested that she get a little rest and leave everything to him. They had a slight tussle over the card, since each wanted to keep it, but Egbert won. He tucked it into an inside pocket ushered Mrs. Budd out the front door, and then turned and made purposefully for the kitchen.

  There followed a considerable uproar. I gathered that Egbert wanted Ken, Lucy, and myself in the living room for what he called further questioning, while Ken and Lucy wanted to do their marketing for the evening meal. Egbert finally bullied us all into the living room, but Ken and Lucy were so unruly that he couldn't get his questioning done at all. Ken had been begging one of Egbert's two stooges to go and do the marketing—and in the end Egbert, in his exasperation, commanded the stooge to gather up the list and the ten-dollar bill that Lucy had been waving around and be on his way.

  The stooge was humiliated, and Egbert felt called upon to explain.

  "We should all be willing to step out of line a bit when it's a question of our armed forces. The sergeant naturally wants a home-cooked meal when he is on furlough."

  The stooge seemed more or less satisfied and biffed off.

  Egbert started on us in earnest then. In the first place he wanted a list of the guests who had been at the party, and it took Lucy and Ken a long time to remember everyone. While they labored over it I tried once or twice to steal away, but was nabbed by Egbert each time.

  When the list of guests had been completed we had each, in turn, to give a personal history of ourselves. Lucy rather enjoyed that part of it, and spent a lot of time telling about all her beaux. She mentioned Ken as being one of them, and he immediately spoke up and denied it. Lucy attempted to argue the point, but gave up cheerfully enough when Ken remained obdurate.

  Egbert flashed him a glance through the pince-nez and said crisply, "But you were Betty Emerson's beau."

  "I was not her beau!" Ken shouted. "I merely took her out once or twice."

  "Well, whose beau are you?" Egbert asked.

  "This one's," said Ken, indicating me.

  Lucy gave a little shriek, and Egbert snapped, "You only met her on Monday. Whose beau were you then?"

  "I was not a beau at that time," said Ken with dignity.

  Egbert rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a while and then stood up.

  "I'm going now," he announced in ringing tones, after which he gestured toward the remaining stooge and lowered his voice. "I'm leaving Mac here— he has his instructions. But I want to warn you people about Mr. Fredon— only you must not tell Mrs. Fredon, because she will undoubtedly try to hide him if she knows what we think."

  "But what do you think?" Lucy whined, looking scared.

  "We think he's a dangerous lunatic," said Egbert.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  EGBERT'S ASSISTANT created a diversion by coming in with the groceries. He was red in the face and loaded to the chin with packages. Egbert—rather unfairly, it seemed to me—gave him a cold stare, brushed past him, and left the apartment. The fellow spilled the packages onto a table, dropped some change down amongst them, and fled after his boss. Mac was left standing rather forlornly in the hall.

  Ken approached him and with a suspiciously friendly air invited him into the living room for a smoke. Mac started to refuse, but Ken took him by the arm and pushed him along. He established him in the living room with a cigarette and a drink of some kind at his elbow, and then gave Lucy and me a significant look.

  "Now you girls run along and cook the dinner. Mac and I will take care of the dishes."

  Mac looked somewhat astonished, and Lucy and I were stared out of the room by Ken, who was saying volumes without opening his mouth.

  In the kitchen Lucy went briskly to work, and I hung around waiting for orders. Apparently she had none for me; however, as she began to move swiftly back and forth across the room, she bumped into me, no matter how small I made myself. I decided to remove the hazard and, murmuring something about setting the table, I eased out and crept along to the living-room entrance.

  Ken was doing the talking, as usual.

  "Yes—Mr. Egbert told me before, about Mr. Fredon. It began at his office, I believe—he was behaving oddly, and the officers of the company went into conference about him."

  Mac's voice sounded eager and interested. "I'll just make a note of that, Sergeant—Mr. Egbert will want to hear it, because he contacted the office, and they all clammed up—said he had been behaving as usual."

  "Don't bother making any notes," Ken said hastily. "I'll tell him when I see him again. But about the people who live in the other apartment here—I heard there'd been some talk among them about Mr. Fredon."

  "People never want to tell the police anything," Mac said, sounding disgusted. "Mr. Egbert took a lot of trouble to inquire all around, and everybody seemed to think there hadn't been any change in Mr. Fredon in twenty years— right up to the time he disappeared. And this Mrs. Emerson, too—nobody noticed anything different about her. Maybe we better phone Mr. Egbert—he ought to have this information."

  "I'll do it," Ken said quickly. "Just give me his phone number—or a number where you think I can reach him—and I'll contact him."

  Mac handed out a couple of phone numbers, and Ken put them carefully in his pocket to be thrown into the wastebasket later. He took another swallow of his drink and said without a blush, "If there was no suggestion from anyone that Mr. Fredon was unbalanced, I don't see why Mr. Egbert came to the conclusion that he is a dangerous lunatic."

  Mac set his glass down and said judicially, "What else can we think? He seems to have spirited this Mrs. Emerson away, and you know what he did to the girl Suzy."

  "You can't be absolutely sure that he had a hand in either one of those things," Ken pointed out.

  "Well. . ." Mac shrugged. "Mr. Egbert has to have some angle to work from—and that's the one he's taking."

  Ken nodded gravely and murmured, "H'mm—yes, I see—yes. of course. And—er—are you a fisherman, Mac? Speaking of 'angle,' reminds me—"

  I turned and left. The job of pumping Mac seemed to be over, and I had no wish to listen to Ken telling lies about his prowess as a fisherman.
r />   I went into the dining room and threw a cloth over the table—and then wondered whether I ought to set a place for Mac. He was not supposed to have his meals with us, I thought, and I was quite sure that Mary would be annoyed if he did. On the other hand, Ken would almost certainly bring him in and sit him down, so I arranged a place for him, and when I had finished with the table I made off to my room.

  Mary was there, stretched out on the studio couch, sleeping. The table and chair were now properly on the floor, and artistically arranged against the wall.

  I tried to be quiet, but Mary stirred almost immediately and turned her head.

  "I've been having a little nap," she explained, blinking. "I didn't want to crumple any of the bedspreads, so I came in here."

  I nodded and said, "See if you can get off again—you need some sleep."

  But she moved her head restlessly and began to talk instead. She had some bitter things to say about Egbert, because of his insinuations regarding Homer.

  "Homer isn't like that," she insisted. "And even if he had had a mental breakdown—as that man seems to think—it wouldn't affect him like that. I know it wouldn't, Eugenia—I know Homer too well. Oh, if he'd only come back and I could talk to him."

  "You'll want to talk to him before the police get to him, won't you?" I said thoughtfully.

  "Oh yes—yes indeed. It would be terrible if they started pounding at him before I could warn him."

  "Well then, why don't you sleep in Homer's room tonight, and when this Mac settles down somewhere—"

  "What Mac?" she interrupted excitedly.

  I had to explain about Mac, and she didn't take it very well; in fact, she was furious. She wanted to get up then and there and order him from the house, and it took a lot of soothing and explaining on my part to balk her.

  "It will be all right," I said finally. "We'll get a shabby chair that's fairly comfortable and put Mac in it. He's bound to go to sleep."

  "I have no shabby chair," said Mary coldly.

  "As soon as Mac is soundly asleep we can stick a note in the front door telling Homer to go to his own room, and that you will be waiting for him there."

  She thought it over and then not only gave her approval but seemed to be quite pleased. The only thing that troubled her was finding a suitable chair for Mac's slumbers, since she seemed convinced that he was certain to soil or damage anything with which he came in contact.

  I told her to think it over carefully, warned her that dinner would be ready soon, and left her mumbling something about an old slipcover that she might bring out.

  I headed for the kitchen, figuring that I ought to pretend to help Lucy again, but I ran into Ken in the hall. I told him that I had arranged for Mary to be out of her room during the night, but my voice trailed off at the end when I noticed that Mac had seated himself in the hall near the front door. He had helped himself to a chair from the living room—a delicate thing of curved, softly glowing old mahogany, upholstered in pale rose brocade.

  I flew to him and told him that he'd have to take it back and then wait until the missus appeared to tell him what chair he might use.

  He did as he was told, and after he had sweated off to the living room Ken dropped the grin with which he had watched the performance and asked me, "How the devil can we get into Mary's room tonight with the gendarme sitting in the hall?"

  "If we can get him to face the front door we might be able to sneak in behind his back," I suggested.

  "Maybe," Ken said dubiously. "Anyway, if he catches us we'll just have to take him along."

  Lucy let out a trilling call that dinner was ready, so we collected Mary and went along. We tried to collect Mac, too, but he insisted stubbornly that it was not his place to eat with us, and asked if he could phone out for a sandwich. In the end he ate in the hall, in the nearest approach to a shabby chair that Mary could find, and from a tray that Lucy insisted on preparing for him. He sat with his back to the hall, directly facing the front door.

  The dinner was delicious in every detail, but Mary dominated and dampened the conversation by wondering over and over again how she could get Mac away from the door, so that Homer could get in unobserved. Ken finally told her to go to bed in peace and leave it all to him. He'd think of some way to entice Mac from the line of his duty.

  The evening was tiresome. Mary would not go to bed, and spent her time fretting about Homer, Suzy, and the condition of her chair when she should finally get it back from Mac.

  Our combined efforts did get her off to bed at last, and when we had settled her the three of us retired to the kitchen for a drink. Lucy wanted to go on drinking and kick her heels up a bit, but after we had finished one round Ken hustled us both off to bed. It was eleven-thirty, and he said to me out of the corner of his mouth. "One hour from now—exactly."

  But he was badly off schedule if he expected Lucy to be in bed and asleep within an hour. At twelve-thirty she was patting cream into her face and still had a few exercises to do. Even when she slid in between the sheets on the studio couch and stretched out with a sigh, she was not ready to go to sleep. She talked at some length on a variety of subjects, and when she unexpectedly fell asleep in the middle of a sentence I waited five minutes before I dared to leave.

  Mac was still in his chair, but I decided that he had gone to sleep, since he made no move when. I crept across the hall behind him.

  Ken was working on the bed with a flashlight held under his chin. He hissed, "Over half an hour late!" and then had to grab for the flashlight, which tumbled down his chest.

  "Shut up!" I hissed back. "Why don't you turn on a light?"

  "You want to bring everybody in here to find out what's going on?" he asked disgustedly. "Here, hold the damn flash while I work on these nails."

  I took the flashlight and watched him for a while in silence.

  "I suppose the drawer will be empty." I said after a while, trying to make my voice casual.

  He said nothing for a moment, and then straightened suddenly and announced, "Now she ought to work."

  I wanted to run away, and the flashlight drooped in my cold hands.

  Ken said sharply, "Hold the light up," and I raised it as he rolled the drawer smoothly out from the bed.

  There was a blue blanket covering something that lay beneath, and Ken snatched it away. I had only a glimpse of the thing before the flashlight fell from my numb fingers and hit the floor with a dull thud.

  It looked like an Egyptian mummy.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I HEARD KEN MURMUR. "Steady!" and felt his hand on my arm. My one thought was to get out of the room, but when I tried to move away Ken's hand tightened and held me.

  "Stay where you are." he whispered. "You mustn't go rushing out there— what's the matter with you? Hold still while I pick up the flashlight."

  He stooped over and groped around on the floor but contrived to hang onto me at the same time. I hoped hysterically that he would not find the flashlight, but after a moment he murmured, "Here it is—now don't scream," and threw the beam of light directly into the drawer.

  It was a body, swathed from head to foot in bands of yellowish material—something that might have come from a museum. I began to tremble and Ken jerked at my arm warningly.

  "I'm going to turn on a light," he announced, suddenly brisk. "We'll have to get hold of Egbert at once."

  He began to grope around the walls, and I presently shook off the numb feeling that had held me silent, and whispered loudly, "Ken, don't be a fool— look for a lamp. This is not an ordinary room with a common wall switch— it's like a museum—mummies and all—"

  I began to giggle shrilly, and he was back at my side in an instant.

  "For God's sake, don't get hysterical—leave it to Lucy. She does a better job anyway."

  This brought me around at once, and I helped him to look for a lamp. When we had found one and lighted it, its small glow was so eerie in the large, dim room that I flew around and switched on all the others
, including even the delicate crystal pair on Mary's dressing table. Ken removed the shades from two that were close to the bed and stooped to examine the swathed body more closely. I gave it a quick glance and saw that the windings, in this brighter light, seemed pinkish rather than yellow.

  But I could not look at the thing, and I turned away until Ken had finished.

  He presently joined me and said, "Come along, we'll get in touch with Egbert."

  I went into the hall without a backward glance, feeling intensely relieved to be out of that dreadful room.

  Mac jumped about a foot when Ken tapped him on the shoulder, and I slipped into my room and left them to handle the matter. I got into bed and lit a cigarette, while Lucy continued to sleep peacefully through the sounds coming from the hall.

  Mac was phoning, and Ken pacing up and down, and after a while I heard Mary's voice. Ken talked to her, but she seemed to be arguing, and I knew that she was trying to get them out of the hall so that Homer could come in.

  Ken apparently urged her back to bed eventually. I could not hear what he said to her, but I knew he had not told her about our discovery, or there would certainly have been a rumpus.

  I put out my cigarette and immediately lit another one. Lucy continued to slumber, and I thought—with a giggle that stemmed from my controlled excitement—that she would soon be out in the kitchen again, making coffee and dainty tidbits to keep our spirits up. And then, although I tried not to. I thought of Homer. A dangerous lunatic—he must be—he must have stolen that mummy from somewhere. Or perhaps he made it himself— wrapped it up. He had wrapped it up himself—of course he had—it was not a real mummy. I was sure of it, somehow—even though I had had only brief glimpses of the thing.

  I flung out of bed and took two aspirins, and then I caught sight of my face in the mirror. It looked so ghastly that I put on some powder and lipstick—and then I wiped it all off again, because I thought it looked even worse.

  I heard Egbert come in, and at the same time Lucy gave a prolonged snore and woke up.