I would have suspected a trick—collusion perhaps between the two men—but I had actually seen the thing done, and I knew that trickery was impossible. There is simply no way for a normal human body to sustain suspension under the circumstances I had witnessed. I could hear my stepfather’s voice repeating in the stillness and darkness of my room a word or a phrase or a sentence that I had heard from the hall, and suddenly I was listening intently.
You will have the appearance of a corpse, he was saying.
And then a strange thing happened. I was hearing all at once another voice in another time in another place. It came to me as a whisper over more than a decade of intervening years, and I was a boy again outside a door in a building that smelled of death.
Did you get my ticket and reservation? the voice had said.
It trailed away, a whisper diminishing to a sigh. After a silent interval of seconds or years, it came back.
Thanks, Ned. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your kindness.
When I had first heard those words, so long ago, I had assumed they were spoken by Dr. Crandall, the man who was later to become my stepfather. I had made this assumption, hardly thinking about it, simply because he was the only man, besides Uncle Ned, to be seen in that room when I was admitted. But another man had been there. A third man who had spoken with an irony that I had mistaken for simple gratitude.
My father had been there in his casket, and it was his voice I had heard.
Call this a revelation if you wish. Call it what you will. As for me, I prefer to believe that it was an instance of long-delayed insight, a tardy wakening of dormant truth that had been waiting in my subconscious all those years for the one missing fragment of knowledge that it needed to rouse it.
Whatever you call it, whatever it was, I did not reveal it to my mother and stepfather. I took it with me as my secret to the medical center where I was studying, and in the following week or two, between practice diagnosis and theoretical treatments, I reassessed the circumstances of my father’s death, and every odd circumstance fell into a new and startling pattern.
Let me itemize them, one by one.
In the first place, consider the cast. There was my father, a wastrel and an alcoholic and altogether a problem. There was my mother, who wanted to be rid of him. There was my Uncle Ned, who loved my mother and despised my father and practiced an essential trade. There was, finally, the man who became my stepfather, Dr. Crandall, who also loved my mother and also despised my father and also practiced an essential trade.
Consider the strange factors of my father’s death. Attended by Dr. Crandall, taken care of later by Uncle Ned personally, he was ill, he died, and he was prepared for the grave in what amounted to almost complete secrecy.
Then the funeral. Remember that the services were conducted with a closed casket. The two brief periods when my father had been exposed to the public view had been daring and brilliant strokes. Hypnotized, lying in the appearance of death with his breathing reduced to an indiscernible level, he had allayed all possible suspicions that might arise. Between the two periods—the night before and the morning after—he was revived and fed and rested in secrecy. After the second period—before the funeral in the afternoon—he was revived again and held in secrecy until Uncle Ned, that night, could take him to the city to catch the train to Chicago. There was very small risk in this. After all, my father had been observed in death by nearly a dozen people. Even if he had been seen later by someone who happened to know him, the slightest disguise would have been sufficient to maintain the deception.
Finally, consider the insurance policy. It had been arranged by my Uncle Ned, not as protection for my mother, but as a bribe to induce my father to participate in the conspiracy. No doubt Uncle Ned could have raised $50,000 if he had been forced to, but it was, after all, much less painful to have it paid by an insurance company. And no doubt my father, being what he was, was glad to leave with the money either in his pocket or soon to be delivered.
Shall I confess something? Once I had reassessed the circumstances and become convinced of the truth, I felt, far from shame or guilt, a kind of perverse pride. It was surely one of the most bizarre and daring conspiracies to commit fraud that had ever victimized an insurance company. Moreover, the fraud had been incidental. The primary purpose of the conspiracy had been to rid my mother of my father.
I did not know what happened to my father later, and I must say I had singularly little curiosity about it. Inasmuch as my mother had remarried two years after my father was last seen, I could assume that he had died, or had secured a quiet divorce in some remote place, or that my mother and Dr. Crandall, protected by father’s part in the conspiracy, had boldly committed bigamy. To me, it didn’t much matter. I loved my mother and respected my stepfather, and I was certainly not going to divulge anything to hurt them. Besides, you see, I had no tangible evidence. However much I knew, I could prove nothing.
And so I lived comfortably with my guilty knowledge until all the parties to the conspiracy were dead. Uncle Ned was the first to go, then my stepfather, and finally, my mother. Then, when all were beyond hurt or harm, my mental attitude changed. I was beset by a persistent and intolerable itch to know once and for all, and beyond any possible doubt, whether I was right or wrong. In brief, I simply had to know if my father had gone to heaven or to hell or to Chicago. Did his casket hold his bones or merely ballast?
I came back to find out. As I said in the beginning, I arranged to have the niche and the casket opened, and I employed competent workmen to do the job. I waited at the open door of the mausoleum, and remembered all these things, and smelled red clover in the sunlight following rain, and the work was eventually done.
The casket was laid out on the floor, and the lid was opened. The workmen, in deference to me, had gone outside.
I went over and kneeled beside the casket and looked in—and I wish I hadn’t. I would give anything now if only I hadn’t.
For, you see, my father’s bones were there, still wearing the blue suit that had, in the dry niche, survived the years that had made dust of his less durable flesh.
But that was not the horror.
The horror was peeping over the edge of his breast pocket, where he himself had put it so that it would be immediately available for use when he should awaken to a command that was never given.
Even before looking closer, I knew that it was a train ticket to Chicago.
WAIT AND SEE
Originally published in The Saint Mystery Magazine, December 1965.
The hotel was a tower of glass and white stone rising above the sand and tile sea. High in the tower in a room overlooking the beach, Kate Wilde faced her sister across a vast distance of ten feet and ten years, a virtual stranger trying with quiet desperation to find the magic word or gesture that would wipe out a decade of silence. But there was no word, no gesture, no magic at all. Kate, with her hard, embittered mind and strong body burned brown by the semi-tropical sun, could hardly recognize the frail and diminishing woman she faced.
In the long decade since they had parted, she had heard from Ruth only three times. A letter had come when Ruth’s husband had been killed in an accident. Another had followed long afterward when Ruth, motivated by some obscure yearning of blood for blood, had felt impelled to confess her own illness and encroaching death. Kate had been unmoved by the first letter, and hardly touched by the second.
Ruth s death had not much mattered to her then, and it did not matter now. She hoped that it would impose, when it came, no claim that could not be readily adjusted and forgotten.
The third letter, which had arranged this reunion, had reached Kate only two weeks ago, forwarded from her former to her present address, which was a cheaper place in a meaner street. The years in Miami had not been easy, although there had been good intervals, but she had lived her own life
and had no complaints about the kind of life it had been. Lifting her eyes, she stared out the shining glass seafront wall to where the white gulls soared between the Atlantic and the sun.
“Why have you never married?” Ruth said.
“Because I didn’t choose to,” Kate said. Then, aware of the harshness of her reply, she added, “I never seemed to meet the right man.”
“You were always difficult to please, Kate.”
“Was I? I don’t remember.”
“I suppose I was too, however. After Jim was killed, I never wanted to marry again.”
“You were lucky that it wasn’t necessary. He must have left you comfortably off.”
“A bit better than that, as a matter of fact. He left me more than a million dollars, and I’ve taken good care of it.”
“That much?” Kate’s eyes, following the gulls, were as blue and clear and hard as the sky beyond them. “I didn’t realize.”
“You should have come to me after Jim’s death, Kate. There was plenty for both of us. I would have been glad to share.”
“I don’t like Chicago. It gets too cold there. I’ll never go back.”
“Are you so determined? I was hoping you’d go home with me.”
“Home? This is home. I have no other.”
“Won’t you come, Kate? I’d be grateful if you would.”
“Why should I?”
“You’re my sister, and I’m dying.”
“So you said in your letter. I’m sorry.”
“I’ve grown used to the idea. It only matters, really, because of Little Jim. Whatever will become of him?”
“With a million dollars?” Kate’s voice assumed for a moment a faint note of derision. “I should imagine that he’ll manage somehow.”
“He’s only a little boy, Kate. Only nine years old. He’ll be no more than ten when I’m gone.”
“There must be someone to look after him. His father’s people or someone.”
“Only an aunt and uncle who are not greatly concerned. I want you to do it, Kate. You’re my only sister. I’d feel so much better if I knew it were going to be you.”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“Will you at least stay here in the hotel with us for a week?”
“Yes. I promised you that, and I’ll stay.”
“You’ll love Little Jim. I’m sure you will. You’ll change your mind before the week is gone.”
“You may hope so, if you wish. I doubt it.”
“I want Little Jim to go on living in our house in Chicago, of course. It’s our home, and he loves it there. It’s where he belongs. But you could bring him down here sometimes to visit. Wouldn’t that be enough to keep you happy?”
“Living on charity is unsatisfactory, however you look at it.”
“It wouldn’t be charity, Kate. Not really. Everything will be left to Little Jim when I die, but there’s a provision in my will for you.”
“Oh? What’s left after everything?”
“If Little Jim should die, it will all come to you.”
“What on earth possessed you to make such a provision?”
“I’ve told you, Kate. I keep telling you. You’re my sister.”
“I see. And I keep forgetting.” The sharp edge of derision was again in Kate’s voice, a glint of bitter amusement in her eyes. “Well, no matter. We must at least enjoy our week together. Is Little Jim on the beach?”
“Yes. I promised that we’d join him there. Would you like to go down?”
“God, yes! This air-conditioning depresses me. Let’s go and lie in the sun.”* * * *
“Little Jim,” said Ruth, “this is your Aunt Kate.”
Little Jim squinted in the bright sunlight. His thin face, despite the squint, was grave and somehow composed. His body, which had been heavily coated with lotion, was straight and strong, but it was conspicuously pale among all the brown bodies on the beach, and it seemed, therefore, excessively naked where near-nakedness was almost a cult. He dug his toes into the hot sand and extended a hand.
“Hello, Aunt Kate,” he said.
“How are you, Little Jim? Do you like to be called that?”
“I guess so. Everyone does it. Father was Big Jim and I’m Little Jim.”
“I see.”
“Are you coming back home with Mother and me?”
“Why do you ask? Do you expect me to?”
“Mother said you might.”
“We’ll see. For the present, we must simply enjoy ourselves. Have you been swimming?”
“Not yet. I promised Mother that I’d wait for you and her.”
“Well, here we are, and you can swim all you like. Do you know how?”
“Oh, yes. I haven’t been this year, but one never forgets.”
“That’s true.”
“Would you like to come in with me?”
“Not just now. I’ll lie here in the sand with your mother. This is your first visit to Florida, isn’t it? How do you like it here?”
“It’s nice to visit. I wouldn’t want to live here, though. I like living in Chicago.”
“Run along, Little Jim,” Ruth said. “But don’t go too far out.”
“It’s quite shallow for a long way,” Kate said. “He’ll be all right.”
Turning, Little Jim ran down the beach past a little girl who sat digging intently in the sand just above the reach of the quiet tide. About twenty yards away, posed like a bronze model beside his observation tower, the lifeguard was allowing himself to be admired by a blond in a bikini. The admiration was apparently mutual and absorbing. On the terrace of the hotel, sun-soaked guests were dispersed at tables or stretched indolently in lounge chairs. Voices and laughter and the clinking of glasses drifted over the beach.
“He’s a nice boy,” Kate said.
“Yes,” said Ruth.
“But he needs more sun. He’s far too pale.”
“He had a bad experience earlier this summer. He was very ill for a little while.”
“Oh? I didn’t know, of course.”
“He nearly died, and it was all so cruelly absurd. The doctor said he has something called acute anaphylactic reaction.”
“It sounds deadly, but I have no idea what it is.”
“It’s being hyper-sensitive to something that is ordinarily not dangerous at all. Sometimes it’s a drug of some sort. In Little Jim’s case, it’s the venom of certain stings.”
“Stings?”
“Yes. We were in the country one day, outside Chicago, and Little Jim was stung twice by wasps. At least, we think they were wasps. Anyhow, Little Jim nearly died before we could get him to a doctor. It was frightening and horrible.”
Remembering the fright and the horror, Ruth shuddered in the bright warmth, the skin visibly crawling on her frail and wasting body. Turning away, she spread a vivid towel on the white sand and lay down upon it. She closed her eyes against the glare.
“But surely something can be done about it,” Kate said.
“Oh, yes.” Ruth’s eyes remained closed, her thin face haggard and old in the merciless light. “Something called hyposensitization. Injections of the allergen over a period of time. But one can never be certain that it will be effective in all instances. Only wait and see.”
Her fragmented speech was an effect of weariness. Waiting herself for death, alone and lonely wherever she was, she was resigned to waiting as an integral quality of truncated living.* * * *
How much time had passed?
Lying on the glittering beach beneath the high, hot sun, Kate raised her head and turned to see the frail body of her sister. Ruth’s thin arms were spread wide on the sand, as if open to receive the last precious degree of solar heat, and her meager bosom
rose and fell in a rhythm of rationed breath. Kate had a sudden notion that she was in that instant slowly bleeding to death, her thin and colorless blood seeping away through an invisible wound into the hot absorbent sand. With a feeling of faint and fastidious revulsion, she turned her eyes again into the glare of the sun. Between the sun and her, a gull slanted to a landing. Higher and farther out, above the sea and between the beach and the remote, discernible curve of Earth, a small airplane dragged across the sky a series of connected letters that spelled out the name of a nightclub in downtown Miami.
Beside his observation tower, the lifeguard still posed for the blond in the bikini. She tilted her face and laughed with her lips stretched wide, and the sun struck sparks from her polished teeth. The little girl still dug in the sand just out of the reach of the climbing tide, and beyond the girl in the blue water of the Atlantic, moving slowly into Kate’s range of vision with an awkward flailing of arms, was the head of a swimming boy.
It was Little Jim, she saw, and he was really quite far out. Perhaps too far. It was apparent from his flailing strokes that he was not a strong or practiced swimmer, and the angle of his course was taking him steadily farther from shore. He seemed, moreover, to be swimming with intent, a steadfast purpose, as if he had set himself a goal this side of Cuba. And so he had. Ahead of him some ten yards, afloat on the water, was a shimmering blue balloon, a pale and delicate transparency of seductive beauty. A small boy, an innocent inlander, he was straining to reach and to hold a casual wonder of the miraculous alien sea.
Kate sat erect in the sand, her lean body tense and a cry of warning rising in her throat. The shimmering bauble, blown in by the winds, was a Portuguese Man-of-War, that strange drifter of tropical waters that trails below its seductive pneumatophore a colony of long filaments armed with powerful nettle-cells. The multiple stings of the Man-of-War, she knew, were capable of causing paralysis, and perhaps even, in rare instances, death. What would be their effect on a small boy who was critically allergic to the sting of a wasp?
The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK Page 36