by Ellery Queen
“If only—” began William, and stopped; and at the same time Coral murmured, “How long—” and checked herself. They moved out of the discotheque in silence, for they could not trust themselves to say another word.
When William got home he found that Eleanor had been sick again. As happened more and more frequently now, she had failed to get her head properly over the enamel bowl at her bedside; and as William, teeth clenched in a ghastly smile, set himself to his disgusting task, it suddenly flashed through his mind: This could be the last time; I don’t have to go on like this.
And that night, as he tipped the allotted two sleeping pills into his wife’s bony outstretched palm, the bottle shook and shuddered in his hand, and he felt the sweat springing out on his forehead, so that he had to turn his face away.
The impulse subsided almost as suddenly as it had assailed him; but it had left its mark, and during the ensuing week it would not leave him alone.
It would be so easy! Several times, as the days went by, he looked at the bottle as it stood on the bathroom shelf and had fantasies of mashing the pills and stirring the powder, all of it, into his wife’s nighttime cup of gruel. He had visions of rushing into the discotheque next Tuesday, crying, “She’s dead! She’s dead!” and flinging himself into Coral’s arms, and both of them sobbing for joy.
But he knew, really, that it was only a vision.
One night he tipped a whole lot of the pills into the palm of his hand, handled them, and knew, for certain, that he would not dare. Why, the very feel of them on his bare skin set his heart pounding, and dizziness so blurred his vision that he could scarcely get the pills back into the bottle. Two—three—several of them went pitterpatter across the floor, and as he bent to retrieve them he felt the breath choking his lungs, and his heart thudded as if it would burst through his ribs.
No, he, William, was not the sort of which murderers are made. He was the sort who would suffer, who would let Coral suffer. The weeks, the months, the years would go by, their love would wither, and still Eleanor would live on. . .
“William! William!”
The weak yet urgent voice twanged against his nerves, and he gave a guilty start.
“William, where are my pills?” the voice demanded, peevish and despairing. “Why are you being so long?”
Hastily, hands still trembling, he stuffed the last few pills back into the bottle.
“Coming, dear, coming,” he called, and hurried into his wife’s room. He looked into the gray sunken face in which no spark of beauty or gaiety was left; he looked at the sticklike arms that once, in their bloom, had held him close.
“If only I had the courage!” he thought.
But he reckoned without Eleanor’s courage. The next morning, the Tuesday morning, the bottle of pills was empty, and Eleanor was dead.
Dead on a Tuesday, dead on his glorious day. Had she known? And had she, knowing, chosen this day on which to release him?
He did not call the doctor, or indeed call anyone.
“Coral!” he kept repeating to himself. “When I see Coral. . .” And he sat all day in the silent house, waiting for the relief and the joy to wash over him, waiting for the moment when he would rush through the crowded discotheque crying, just as he had in his dreams, “She’s dead! She’s dead!”
The discotheque was more crowded and noisier than ever, and at first Coral did not hear what he was saying.
“She’s what?” she asked as he leaned forward to repeat the news.
“She—she’s—” He stopped, and he knew in that instant that he could never tell her.
For where now would be that sense of united well-being, that glorious sense of their joint health in contrast to Eleanor’s sickness? What would they talk about, he and Coral, now that Eleanor’s symptoms, her complaints, and her unreasonableness were gone?
Where would be Coral’s marvelous sympathy and understanding now that Eleanor had escaped them forever, had moved on into a realm where the barbed insights of pop psychology could not follow her? What was Coral, anyway, now that she was no longer a bulwark against his dying wife?
William stared across the table at the empty-faced little blonde, who was waiting so impatiently for him to speak.
“She’s—she’s worse.”
“Oh, my poor Willy! She kept you up again last night, did she? Oh, I can see she did, you poor darling, you look so tired! But you shouldn’t give in to it. Willy, you really shouldn’t. After all, we know, don’t we, that she’s not really in pain. It’s only her unconscious aggression and jealousy. . .”
It was all right! It was old Coral again, just as she had always been! Nothing had been changed, nothing spoiled. Their Tuesday conversations could go on exactly as before.
But for how long? For how long can you keep your dead wife propped against the pillows, never calling a doctor, never letting the neighbors in? He, William, too much of a coward to be a murderer, was going to be transformed, as the days went by, into a creature far, far worse than a murderer. A monster, a ghoul—the horror of it would blazon across the front page of every Sunday paper—and all because he didn’t dare do anything.
He wondered, dreamily whether any others of the ghouls and monsters of the world had attained their awful status in this way? By just doing nothing.
“Q”
William Brittain
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
Three men in an open boat—lost in the Indian Ocean off the western coast of Australia—no drinking water—only a little food—and three killers of the deep their constant company, circling, circling. . .
Here is a contemporary variation of the “end game” that was invented and named by Wilkie Collins more than a century ago. (Clue: the first American appearance of Wilkie Collins’ original version was in the April 1858 issue of “The Atlantic Monthly.”)
Dabney, the little pilot, swam back to consciousness, and the heat struck him like a sledge hammer. He tried to raise his right hand to shield his eyes from the blast-furnace rays of the sun, and the pain that shot along his forearm almost made him pass out again.
“Take it easy, man.” Dabney recognized the deep rich voice of Croft, the gigantic black man who was built like a prizefighter but who was a student of oceanography. “Don’t try to move around. Maybe this will help.”
A handkerchief soaked in water was draped over Dabney’s face. The little pilot sucked greedily at the cool liquid and then tried to spit it out. It was salty. At the same time he became aware that the surface on which he was lying was slowly undulating beneath him.
Gingerly Dabney propped himself up on his left elbow, feeling the dull ache in his head and the sharper pain in his right arm. He was thankful that at least one of his passengers was safe—for the present, anyway. But the other?
“Tiedeman?” he asked in a whisper. “What about Tiedeman?”
“I’m here. Wherever here is.” The voice of Tiedeman, the mining engineer, was whining and querulous. “‘The trip from Port Hedland to Broome will be a piece of cake’—that’s what you said. I should have known better than to try and ride to such a Godforsaken part of Australia in that broken-down plane of yours. Of all the stupid—”
“I wouldn’t carry on so, Tiedeman,” Croft said, his voice quietly ominous. “Those tropic storms can come up awful fast. Dabney had no way of knowing about it when he took off.”
The trip from Port Hedland, on the west coast of Australia, to Broome, less than 300 miles north, usually held no particular dangers. Dabney, how ran his own small charter plane service “on tuppence and adhesive plaster,” had made the flight dozens of times. But this trip he’d made the error of trying to save both time and expensive petrol by flying over the ocean rather than taking the longer but safer route which followed the coastline.
The storm, striking with sudden fury, had shaken the tiny twin-engined plane the way a terrier shakes a rat. Heaven only knew how far off course they’d been blown. The last thing Dabney recalled was looking thr
ough the windscreen toward the billowing water below. He’d shouted to the others to break out the survival supplies and the inflatable raft. There’d been a crunching sound as a structural member of the plane was torn loose, and then—
“You struck your head on the instrument panel when we hit,” Croft said, “and a piece of glass cut a gash in your forearm. We were lucky, though. I managed to get out the first-aid kit and I bandaged the gash as tight as I could. It really should have stitches, but I think it’ll be all right until we can get you to a doctor.”
“And the food,” murmured Dabney. “What about the food?”
“I got the crate out just before the plane sank,” Tiedeman replied. “There’s not very much, though, if it’s got to be split three ways.”
Dabney managed a weak smile. They weren’t so bad off then. With the small crate of tinned meats, fruits, and vegetables there’d be enough for at least a few days if they went on short rations. And the juice in which the fruits and vegetables were packed would furnish a little liquid for their already parched bodies. Now if only the ruddy raft would hold together and not spring a leak.
The raft resembled a misshapen yellow doughnut, if one could imagine a doughnut six feet wide and almost fourteen feet long. A nylon rope, held in place by grommets, went around the entire outer circumference. The flooring of the raft was nothing more than a single layer of rubberized canvas through which every movement of the water could be felt.
At one end of the raft hung the small metal tank which had contained the compressed C02 with which the outer rim was now filled. The gas, in its rubberized skin, was the only thing which kept them afloat. A single careless movement, a slash of a sharp bit of metal or a puncture by some pointed object, and they would all be floundering in the tepid waters of the Indian Ocean with no land in sight.
The sun settled slowly into the horizon, casting fantastic splashes of color against the sky. “At least we’ll be able to use the sun for directions tomorrow,” Croft said thoughtfully. “If we row far enough east we ought to hit the coast of Australia somewhere.”
“Unless we got blown farther than we thought,” Tiedeman growled. “For all we know we could be nearer to Indonesia than Australia.”
“I doubt that,” Croft said, “The storm didn’t last long enough to blow us that far. Besides, the wind was coming from almost due east. If anything we’ve just been blown a few miles farther out to sea. We’ll break out the oars and start rowing at sunup.”
“Well, what about some food, then?” Tiedeman asked. “When’s supper?”
“Supper’s first thing in the morning,” Croft snapped. “We’ve only got a little food, and it may have to last us a long time.”
“But I’m hungry. Besides, who put you in charge of that crate?”
“There’s only one way you can get to this crate of food,” Croft said in a flat voice, “and that’s to come down to this end of the raft and take it away from me.”
Tiedeman grumbled but made no move to approach the heavily muscled Croft. Dabney smiled. They were going to make it, he was sure of that. He didn’t trust Tiedeman as far as he could throw Buckingham Palace, but with Croft taking charge, everything was going to be fine. Just fine.
It was three hours before dawn when the sharks came.
Overnight the ocean had become glassy smooth as if to atone for the storm of the previous day. While the sun was burning off the early morning haze, Croft saw the first ripples: a dorsal fin, gray-brown and tipped with white, cut the water about 20 yards away like some demoniac broadsword; then off to the right a second fin broke the surface, and with a slight splash a third appeared behind the second.
“We’ve got company,” Croft said to Tiedeman, nodding toward the largest of the fins.
“Sharks!” Tiedeman’s voice rasped in his throat, and Croft caught the edge of panic in it. “Do you think they—I mean, this raft isn’t very strong.”
Croft shook his head. “I doubt they’ll attack. The bottom of the raft looks like just a lump in the water to them, Not very appetizing.”
“Sharks are sharks,” Tiedeman said, “and they eat people. But maybe they haven’t spotted us. Maybe they’ll go away.”
“Oh, they’ve seen us, all right. Look, they’re circling the raft.”
Around and around moved the fins in a counterclockwise direction, making no attempt to come nearer.
“You’d better wake Dabney and tell him about the sharks,” Croft said. “I don’t think we’re in any immediate danger, but I don’t want anybody dragging an arm or a leg in the water or throwing anything over the side that might attract them.”
Tiedeman shook Dabney awake. The pilot’s arm was thickly swollen and of a fiery red color from hand to elbow. He groaned with pain and gritted his teeth as he shifted his weight.
Without a word Tiedeman pointed toward the nearest of the gliding fins.
Dabney nodded. “I expected the ruddy blighters would ’ang about when I seen ’em come by last night.”
“Last night? But how—”
“The waters of this ‘ere ocean ofttimes glows when there’s somethin’ movin’ down there,” said Dabney. “Mr. Croft probably has some explanation for it, but all I know is, it happens.” The pilot’s eyes seemed to glitter brightly, and Tiedeman didn’t like the way the man was staring at him. He pressed his palm to Dabney’s brow. It was dry and burning with fever.
“I couldn’t sleep last night, with me arm and all, so I was lookin’ over the side. Saw a school of little fishies about ten feet down. The three sharks was cuttin’ through them time after time, gettin’ a mouthful of fish dinner with every pass. I must ’ave watched ’em for an hour or so before I dozed off again.”
Dabney collapsed into the bottom of the raft, breathing heavily. “Wynken,” he said, gasping, “Blynken, and Nod.”
“What are you talking about, Dabney? I can’t understand you.”
“Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,” the pilot repeated. “That’s the names I gave to the sharks. Oh, don’t laugh at me. It’s from an old nursery rhyme me poor dear Mum used to tell me.”
“Croft!” Tiedeman called. “Come and have a look at Dabney. I think he’s off his head.”
The huge black man slid over beside Dabney, who was still mumbling in a soft voice:
“‘We have come to fish for the herring fish
That live in this beautiful sea;
Nets of silver and gold have we!’
Said Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.”
“Look at the way his flesh is swollen around that bandage you put on him,” Tiedeman said. “Don’t you think you’d better loosen it?”
“I don’t dare,” Croft replied. “If that cut of his begins bleeding again, we might never get it stopped. We’ll try keeping his clothes soaked in sea water. That may bring down the fever. Use his hat to dip with, but don’t make too much commotion. We don’t want to attract those sharks any nearer than they are right now.”
The simple remedy seemed to work, at least temporarily. Within half an hour Dabney, soaking wet, was complaining of hunger in a faint but coherent voice. Croft reached into the food crate and brought out three cans.
“Tomatoes, peaches, and”—he chuckled softly—“and cocktail sausages.” Croft turned to the pilot, smiling. “What were you going to do, Dabney?” he asked. “Have a little party when your plane went down?”
“You can give me the bloody bangers,” said Dabney, rolling over painfully and stretching out his left hand. “You and Tiedeman take the tomatoes and peaches.”
Tiedeman reached greedily for the can of peaches, but Croft jerked it away from him. “None of that,” he said. “The fruits and vegetables will have more juice in them than the meat, and we’ll be needing all the liquids we can get. It’ll be share and share alike.”
He gave a sudden grunt of amazement and held up one of the cans, looking at it thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose you thought about how we were going to open these cans, Dabney?”
; “No, I—Coo! That’s a rum go now, ain’t it? It never occurred to me to bring somethin’ to—”
Tiedeman reached into a pocket and brought out a small red object. “Swiss army knife,” he explained. “It’s got everything in it you’d want. Blade, scissors, awl, can opener—”
“Saved again,” Dabney murmured. “Just let Tiedeman find the right gadget, and Bob’s-your-uncle.”
Croft handed Tiedeman the three cans, and the engineer began prying at the top of one of them. “Chop everything up fine and mix it all together,” Croft ordered. “We’ll split it three ways. And when you’re finished don’t throw the empty cans overboard. We may need them to catch rain in—if it rains.”
When they had finished eating, Croft assembled the collapsible aluminum oars attached to the raft and inserted them through the oarlocks. Slowly he began rowing away from the rising sun. “Keep an eye on those sharks,” he told Tiedeman. “Let me know if any break the circle. The flashing of the oars might attract them.”
Tiedeman observed the sharks for several minutes. “They aren’t coming any closer, but they aren’t going away, either.”
“Me, I’m gettin’ used to havin’ ’em around,” Dabney said. “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod—they make a bloke feel he’s got company out here.”
“How do you tell them apart?” Croft asked, trying to hide his concern for the pilot’s sanity.
“It ain’t hard. Two of them fins is about the same size, right? Well, them’s Wynken and Blynken. Blynken’s got a notch cut out of the tip of his fin, so he must’ve been in a fight of some kind. And Nod’s fin is a good deal bigger than the other two.”
Again Tiedeman considered the fins. “You know, Dabney’s right,” he finally said to Croft. “You can tell them apart.” He pointed astern. “That would be Nod—the one with the biggest fin, and—Croft! It’s heading for the raft!”
Croft saw the flat side of the dorsal fin become a thin line protruding above the surface as the shark headed directly toward them. With a single swift movement he shifted the oars inboard. He was about to shout a warning to leap clear of the raft when the fin angled a few degrees to one side.