Night Call and Other Stories of Suspense

by Armstrong Charlotte

  Strong hands pulled at John’s body. David was just as glad the man was unconscious. He could see the officer in the police car talking, talking—sending out the warnings.

  David got out and hauled Mike March’s body back on the seat. The doctor’s patient was in agony. “Doctor?” he said. It was a cry for mercy, help and mercy. It was the cry that David Blair could not ignore.

  “Got to get him to the hospital,” David said to the police, “right away.”

  “Okay, Doc,” they said with a certain respect. “We’ll take care of Barca. Be seeing you.”

  David backed, turned, and went ahead. He could hear behind him the sound of pain, the sound of weeping.

  But had it been in time? Had the Chief met injury or death? Or not yet? Had Maggie gone running home? Into what? Oh, had he been in time?

  Dr. Blair did not know and had not waited to be informed. Bitterly he knew what it was that he must do. He couldn’t hang around out on the highway waiting for messages to return. He couldn’t go haring to the Chief’s house, either, to see for himself what had happened to his girl. Other men, dedicated to other things, had their own directing ideas. He must trust to this. As other men must trust him.

  This time it wasn’t easy.

  5:45.

  He pulled into the receiving entrance for emergency patients at six in the morning. Attendants came and helped get Mike March out of the car. March was unconscious now. Connie was just a ghost, walking in a mist.

  David helped her into the Emergency Room. Dr. Parker was there. He and David bent over the injured hand. Decisions were made. This was the work and it had to be done.

  Oh, God, where was Maggie Fowler?

  Whatever had happened, it was over. All that was left was to know.

  Dr. Parker agreed they might give the hand another 24 hours. Perhaps the new drugs . . . the risk was indicated. The patient would be watched.

  Connie lay back in a chair against the wall. Spent. David put his fingers on her wrist. “What now?” she asked him, gasping. Floating.

  A pawn. Nothing to direct her.

  “Just rest,” he said to her kindly. Her pulse was fine. It wasn’t her body that was off the beam.

  He went to a phone and called Connie’s father. “Mr. Miller? David Blair. Connie is here at the hospital. In very bad trouble, I’m afraid.”

  “I’ll be right down. Is she ill, Dave?”

  “It’s her husband who is ill and in bad trouble. Connie needs you, Mr. Miller.”

  “I’ll be there. Thanks. Thanks very much, Dave.” Connie’s father seemed to have a direction.

  David turned from the phone. A nurse was giving Connie a cup of coffee. David sent her the responsibility with a nod, and the nurse, with a nod, accepted it.

  So David had now done all that he ought to do. He was free. He ran up the stairs to the hospital’s first floor. Joan Dixon was at the switchboard.

  “Where’s Maggie?”

  “Oh, she’s gone home, Doctor. A long time ago.”

  David turned away. The foyer was dim; very little daylight could get in. The sounds of the working hospital clattered in the branching corridors. But there was nobody here in the dim and silent foyer. He started toward the front portal. He saw a big form coming through, blotting the light.

  “Hey, Dave!” Then Chief Fowler was holding David’s right hand hard. “You had me on the phone to every big shot in this town. Who’d have thought the big shot was me? But it worked out. The word got to headquarters, and I got out the window. Say, March is here, is he? And listen, where is Maggie?”

  David swallowed in a dry throat. “Did they get the bombs?”

  “They sure did. Two of them. Mean little gadgets.”

  “Then she’s all right!” David felt a trembling begin.

  “She mightn’t have been,” Chief Fowler said, and his big voice wasn’t perfectly steady. “But she didn’t come home.”

  “Dave!”

  Maggie came running out of a dark corner. David opened his arms and Maggie, without any hesitation, burst into them. “I was in the phone booth—talking to headquarters. So I know what happened. Dad’s all right! Dave, are you—”

  “Sure I’m all right,” the Chief said. Then he sent his big feet stepping around them. He had tact. He also had business—talking to March.

  David held on to the girl in his arms. “It was you, Maggie, that had me crazy. I found out where the bombs were—I knew you’d be going home.”

  “How could I go home?” she asked. Tears were in her eyes. “I happen—happen to need to be sure that you’re all right.”

  “Me, too,” he said. “Need you.” And he did. “Maggie, why was it you didn’t go home? You just stayed here?”

  “That’s simple!” Her square face was illuminated. “I knew where you’d be. If you could be.”

  “You knew—?” He choked.

  Maggie curved her hand at the back of his head. “Ah, Dave, of course I knew. You had a patient for the hospital. Don’t I know what you live by? Don’t you think I understand?”

  Although the title for this particular story may suggest a dichotomy (bad versus good), Armstrong, in her work, often focused on providing a variety of potential forms of luck, often options, to her characters, if they only have the quick wits, intuition, calculated logic, support of a community, or unforeseen good fortune to address the situation at hand. In the present story, from EQMM in 1967, more than one kind of luck marks various characters as they pursue their goals.

  MORE THAN ONE KIND OF LUCK

  The bearded man was sprawled on a sofa in the sitting room of Suite 209 at the Belmont Hotel. His full red lips moved greedily to suck in a green grape; the beard moved as his teeth crushed it. He was not an old man.

  “I’m only asking you to move faster, Chic,” said his visitor, a neutral-looking man called Johnson. “Because I can’t stand the pace. It’s costing too much,” he complained. “You don’t seem to realize. I don’t live in any suite like this. I should start getting a little return on my investment.

  If you asked me up here to tell me there’s another delay . . .”

  The bearded man, who was calling himself Charles Castle, spat out a grape seed.

  “I’m not trying to pressure you because I want to,” said Johnson. “It’s just a fact of life. The capital is running out.”

  “If you’d lay off the horses, the facts of life wouldn’t be so limiting,” said Castle sourly.

  “Never mind what I do. What’s holding you up this time?”

  “I can’t stand the old crow’s conversation,” Castle said, and his eyes flashed rage.

  “For the profit in this, you should be able to stand anything.”

  “You can talk—you’re capital. I’m labor.” The man with the beard grinned, but there was no improvement in his mood. His personality was thunderous this Saturday morning.

  Johnson’s quiet voice took on a nasty edge. “You were in a bad spot, Chic. On the run. Broke. Nobody to turn to. Now you stand to live in luxury the rest of your life. What’s wrong with that?”

  “That’s how it looks to you, eh? You want to know how it looks to me?”

  The other did not, but he resigned himself to being told.

  “You put up the money for this set-up because I’ve got to live comfortably and make it look good—the hotel, the clothes, the price of the dinners and shows. Right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And what do I put in?” said Castle. “My time. My trouble. My charm. I have to be there. I have to look at her. I have to listen to her conversation. Right?”

  “For two million dollars.”

  “Which, in order to get, I have to marry her. So then you get your money back, plus interest—plenty of interest. That’s how it looks to you.” He ripped grapes off the stem. “But to me, that’s where it goes sour.”

  “What’s so sour?”

  “Because marrying the old bag means I have to keep on putting in my time, my tro
uble, my person. The labor, Johnson. The labor. You keep collecting but where am I? I’m in a cage. I’m the gilded bird. I wouldn’t be able to take it.” His strong teeth mutilated the innocent fruit.

  “Listen,” said Johnson wearily. “We agreed, didn’t we?”

  Castle sat up. “Makes no difference what we agreed,” he said viciously. “I’d kill her in two weeks.” He glared at the wall. “I mean that. I know myself, Johnson. I’d strangle her. I wouldn’t be able to help myself.” The hands that he held out were ready now.

  Johnson’s undistinguished countenance turned bleak. He knew the truth when he heard it.

  Castle got up and took a tighter hitch on the sash of his deep-red dressing gown. “You’ll agree that wouldn’t get us anywhere. If I marry Mrs. Meade and then kill her, which is what would happen, it’s going to be obvious. The cops will catch on, very quickly, to the fact that she had no charm and I had no money.” His mouth sneered in its frame of hair. “You don’t think I’d inherit, do you? You don’t think I’d be left loose to keep slipping along those little payments to you?”

  Johnson’s face was long. “Why you had to take such a dislike to her, I don’t know. You should get over it, Chic,” he pleaded. “Think of what she’s worth. Be times you’d like to choke her, sure. But for two million dollars—”

  “No.” Castle took a turn on the carpet and swung around. “I wasn’t built for bars and I’m not going to walk into a cage. I just don’t kid myself. I can’t stand her.” His eyes glittered. “The way I feel, I doubt if I can trust myself even to take her to lunch today, as I’m supposed to do.”

  “Don’t take her to lunch, then,” said Johnson hoarsely. “But you’ll have to check out of here.”

  “Now, now, now,” said Castle. “I didn’t get you up here to say I was quitting. How would it be if we dropped the original idea and I just took the diamonds? Give us both a return on our investment.”

  Johnson swallowed. “You got to know the ropes, Chic. You never was a jewel thief.”

  “It’s okay with you if I do? Be better than a total loss.”

  “Okay, if you could get away with it,” began Johnson nervously, “but—”

  “Same split?”

  “What do you mean the same split,” said Johnson indignantly. “I was willing to settle for a percentage on a steady income deal, but this would be one haul, Chic, a oneshot.”

  “Half?”

  “You’re getting generous with what you haven’t got,” said Johnson bitterly. “You got a plan how you can get away with the diamonds?”

  “We have tickets to the concert tonight,” Castle said briskly. “Dressy affair. She’s getting the diamonds from the bank right now. She’ll have the necklace, the earrings, the tiara—the works—hung on her for the occasion.”

  “Well?”

  “So I remove same.”

  “How?”

  “Leave that to me.” Castle’s eyes were hooded.

  “Then you’ll run? With that beard?” Johnson said sharply. “They’d pick you up in half an hour.”

  “Oh, I have that worked out. All I’ll need is a little help from you at the right moment.”

  Johnson stiffened. “Listen, Chic, just because I saw a little opportunity here with this rich old dame, and I took a little gamble, that don’t mean . . .”

  “I know where to turn the stones to cash. A safe connection.”

  “It’s too dangerous, Chic.”

  “Listen. Two days ago she announced our engagement, didn’t she? Fifty old hens cackling, and me in the middle.” Castle shuddered. “They know I stand to gain the two million and the diamonds. Everybody knows that. Right?”

  Johnson didn’t say anything. His face turned bleaker.

  “So somebody robs her. So it’s my loss, too, isn’t it? Do I get suspected?”

  Johnson’s mouth smiled without humor.

  “And if I’ve got a perfect alibi for the time of the robbery as

  well . . . There is where you can do some good.” Castle sat down suddenly and leaned back. “Of course, if you don’t like it . . .” He shrugged. But watched.

  The other man thought a while. His lashes worked rapidly. Then he said in a cool thin voice, “I’m interested in a return on my money but not prison.”

  “Nobody’s going to prison.”

  “No? What’s with her all the time you’re taking the jewelry off her? Is she blind? Can’t she squawk?”

  “There’s no danger,” said Charles Castle impatiently.

  “How,” said Johnson, “do you figure that?”

  There was time out. Then the man with the beard said coldly, “Because she won’t be able to squawk.”

  “I thought so,” said Johnson in the same thin voice. “You’re no conman. You’re a killer. I should have known.”

  “I can’t run,” said Castle savagely. “You said so yourself. I know how to take the diamonds and leave nobody talking. All you have to do is help out with the alibi.”

  Johnson shook his head.

  “So do you want to wash it up as of now?” Castle fingered the grapes. “Take the loss? Forget it?” He fell back on the sofa and stretched his long legs. “Okay, I can do without you.” He thumb-brushed the bloom off a grapeskin. “Won’t be so safe, of course. And if I’m caught, you’re in for a little bother . . .”

  The other man began to perceive that he had better protect his investment. He said mildly, “What do you think the diamonds would bring, Chic?”

  Charles Castle smiled in his beard.

  A little after two o’clock that afternoon Mrs. Lydia Coonley, Mrs. Mimi Meade’s housekeeper, neat in her black-and-white, opened the door for Mrs. Meade and her escort.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Coonley,” the escort said.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Castle.” Mrs. Coonley nodded to Gustav, the chauffeur, who followed his mistress carrying a black, suede-covered box. Mrs. Coonley’s round blue eyes turned in her plump fresh-colored face, and her small pink mouth tightened as she took it from him. Gustav stepped back to wait passively beside the door.

  Charles Castle’s voice sweetened. “Forgive me if I must hurry away so early, Mimi darling.” Mrs. Coonley watched the beard bend to the freckled claw of her employer. “If I’m to dine here,” said Castle, “there are some dull matters I must attend to.”

  “White tie, Charles,” Mrs. Meade said in her piercing soprano. She was a bit hard of hearing.

  “If you say so.” He was a foot taller than his fiancée, and looked twenty years younger.

  Her head with its dyed-black hair lifted, and her faded eyes looked up a little blindly at his splendor. “You are the best-looking thing, Charles,” she screamed. “You’ll look so distinguished! I’ll wear green.”

  “Ah,” he said, “thank you. White roses, if I can find them?”

  “You spoil me.”

  “I try.”

  “Let Gustav run you back downtown. Shall I send the car again at seven?”

  “You spoil me, you know.”

  “I enjoy it,” she shrieked. “Until seven, then. Oh, wait. Lydia,” said Mrs. Meade to her housekeeper, “you have the box. Would you fetch the key? Charles, do let me show you my pretty beads and things.”

  “Diamonds?” he said, rather coolly. His eye flicked to Mrs. Coonley’s face. “No, dearest. They’ll have no character in the box. Can’t I wait to see them properly? When you wear them this evening?” Mimi’s chin drew in with her pleasure. “Now I must rush, if you’ll forgive me.”

  Mimi forgave him. Her vague eyes let him go. He went briskly, not forgetting to say, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Coonley,” as he left, followed by Gustav.

  Mimi sighed. “I think I’ll go straight up. A massage, Lydia? And then a nap. I must look as well as I can. The diamonds will help. Bring the box, dear.” She sighed again and set her aching old foot in the high-heeled sandal on the stair. “I’m an old fool, Lydia,” she remarked, “but I must say I’ve never had so much fun for my money.”


  Lydia Coonley’s smile was fond. “Just so you’re happy,” she said, “and he isn’t mean to you.”

  “Mean? Oh, no. Charles will never be mean to me.”

  Lydia’s strong body was close as they climbed, as if to support and protect the older woman. “Mimi,” she said in Mrs. Meade’s ear, for they were excellent friends, “You don’t really intend to marry him, do you?”

  “No, no, although I’m sometimes tempted. But you can be sure,” Mimi screeched confidently, “he’ll never be mean to me unless I marry him.”

  “I hope,” said Mrs. Coonley, “you won’t change your mind about that. I worry . . .”

  “There now, Lydia, you needn’t,” said her friend and employer. “I’m a rich old woman, and I shan’t forget it. Though he is a gorgeous thing, Lydia, don’t you think so?”

  Lydia Coonley did not altogether agree, but she murmured, “I suppose I see what you mean.”

  Sometime later, Mrs. Coonley said urgently to her nephew, George, on the telephone, “I tell you it is important, George! Couldn’t you find out anything?”

  “Listen, Aunt Lydia, I’m a third-grade detective, not Sherlock Holmes. I asked around, and he isn’t known.”

  “Charles Castle doesn’t have to be his right name. Did you get your friend to look at him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Will you do that, George? Please?”

  “Inspector Cameron isn’t my ‘friend,’ Aunt Lydia.”

  “Camera, I thought you called him.”

  “He’s called that because of his camera eye—never forgets a face. Well, I asked him to take a look at this Charles Castle and he said he would. But I dunno when, Aunt Lydia.”

  “Get him to do it as soon as you can, George. I don’t like to frighten Mrs. Meade, but I’m so afraid she’ll marry him, and I honestly don’t think she’d be able to handle him. It worries me a lot. They’re eating here tonight and going to the concert. Use your influence, George, please?”

  “Aunt Lydia, I’ve got no influence,” said George patiently. “I can only ask Inspector Cameron again.”