by Marvin Kaye
Goodbye
William Legrand
With strong emotions I had raised a glass to the portrait in my library. As much as Madeline prizes the riches that await her, far more do I hold dear this final letter from Legrand.
CARTOON, by Andrew Toos
AN OLD-FASHIONED VILLAIN, by Nick Andreychuk
Desiree fought back the wave of nausea that washed over her body. The dry cloth that was stuffed between her teeth would undoubtedly block any vomit from exiting, causing her to slowly choke to death on her own bile. It was possible she’d die soon anyway, but she had no intentions of letting fear be the instrument of her demise.
Desiree felt tied in such a way that she could barely move. The blindfold that pushed cruelly against her eyeballs made it difficult to determine where she was. She could tell from the warm breeze and fresh scent of manure that she was outdoors, and she knew that it was Michael who had brought her here . . . but she knew nothing else. She could only imagine what she was lying on—two hard, slender rods digging painfully into her shoulders and knees. Her head lay on what felt like hundreds of sharp stones.
Suddenly, the ground shook beneath her.
The intensity of the vibrations increased steadily, and it felt as if something immense was heading her way.
It was all Desiree could do not to give in to the hysteria that threatened to take over her mind. Being eighteen, she knew she was unlikely to have a heart attack, yet she didn’t see how her heart could continue to function at the frenetic pace it was beating.
In the distance, she heard a loud whistle—a sound that was all too familiar from the years spent living near a railroad station. A sound that, when combined with the rail-like objects beneath her, left little doubt as to where she was . . . and how short her life expectancy was.
“Mmmph!” Desiree tried to call out to her captor, but the gag muffled her attempts. Michael! she screamed in her mind. What the hell is wrong with you?
Was she bait to lure her boyfriend Dylan to some violent, macho showdown? But what if Dylan didn’t show? Would Michael leave her here to die?
She could hear the clickity-clack clickity-clack of the train getting closer.
Desiree realized with sudden certainty that Dylan wasn’t coming. Michael was possessive and quick-tempered, but he wasn’t stupid—he had to know that Desiree would never choose him just because he’d beaten Dylan in physical combat. So the only logical, terrifying reason for him to bring her here was to dispose of her. She had no doubt that he was deranged enough to enact the adage, “If I can’t have her, nobody will. . . .”
The noise from the oncoming train became all encompassing. Any second now it would smash right into her . . .
Desiree’s bladder let go just as the train blasted past her, mere inches from the top of her head.
* * * *
After several minutes, Desiree started to relax. Maybe that bastard Michael had just wanted to scare her. Maybe —
The ground began to shake again, and though the sound of the second train was still far away, the rails beneath her were already shaking much more violently than the first time.
THE PREMATURE MURDER, by Michael Mallory
If ever I needed a drink to calm my nerves, it was now.
On this stiflingly hot August afternoon in the year of our lord 1852, I strode into The Town Crier, reputed to be the oldest tavern in the city of Baltimore, not knowing whether I was going to be afforded respect for holding onto my principals as a gentleman, or whether I would soon join the ranks of the city’s unemployed. It had certainly not been my intention upon entering the private office of Mr. Samuel Bellwether to deliver a heated tirade upon my increasingly frustrating situation; I merely let my head get away from me. But I had a genuine grievance: I had been a part of the Bellwether Detective Agency for three months and I had yet to be assigned a case of any kind. The agency’s other operatives were all out on the job, in some cases multiple jobs, while I remained a glorified office boy. I suspected I knew why: like Old Sam Bellwether himself the others were former police officers, recruited from various constabularies, whilst I was a West Point man with no official police experience. Yet how was I expected to gain experience if I spent all my time in the office organizing files?
I ordered a beer and stood at the bar, silently ruminating about my problem, when I heard a voice calling my name from the other end of the tavern. Looking up, I was rather startled to see the open, friendly face of a man who had been a cadet with me at the Point. “Tom Macgowan,” I called back, “is that you?”
“It is!” he said, charging like a bull in my direction. “What on earth are you doing here?
I clasped his hand. “I might ask you the same.”
“Don’t you read the American and Commercial Advisor?”
“I do not. Do you work on the paper?”
“Work on it?” he cried. “I will have you know I am the paper’s star reporter. Of course, my editors do not realize that yet, which is why I find myself writing death notices and accounts of church socials.”
I laughed heartily. “We share a predicament! I happen to be the best operative in the Bellwether Detective Agency, though my superior believes that my true talents lie in keeping track of the files and fetching him growlers of ale whenever his throat dries.”
“Here’s to Baltimore’s most underappreciated gentlemen,” Tom said, raising his glass to me.
Tom and I spent the remainder of the afternoon drinking, talking, laughing, and reliving our cadet days. As the clock tolled six, Tom set his glass down and said: “Great God, I just realized that I am supposed to be at work this evening. After what I have consumed, I hope I can find the offices again.”
Tom suggested that we make a pact to meet at the tavern at least once a week, and after I agreed, he lurched out into the sultry evening. I, meanwhile, made up my mind to return to Mr. Bellwether’s office and beg his forgiveness for my impetuosity. As I stood there, however, I heard a strange, whispery voice beside me say: “Did I hear you correctly, sir, that you work for a detective agency?”
I turned and saw a small man with a lined, weathered face, rheumy eyes and a gin-blossom nose. I judged him to be roughly seventy years of age, though possibly younger but marked by hard living. The dark suit he wore was shabby, threadbare, and not in a clean state, though somehow he managed to inhabit it with autumn dignity.
“You heard correctly, sir. Is it of some concern to you?”
“Only in that I find myself in need of your help. It is my son, you see.”
“Your son is in trouble?”
“He is dead.”
“I am sorry.”
“His death was my fault.”
I studied the man’s face more closely. “You mean that you killed him?”
“I did nothing intentionally to hurt him. But my presence in his life ended it as effectively as though I had plunged a dagger into his heart with this hand.”
That would have been difficult, I saw, since the hand he presented to me was maimed, having but two fingers, and unnaturally red in color. The old man caught my stare. “I used to make a living with these hands, as a cardsharp,” he said. “But now...” He thrust his damaged hand into his pocket and with the other, raised his glass to his lips. After draining it, he asked: “Have you ever heard of an actor named Danton Prince?”
“I do not frequent the theatre.”
“Even if you were, I daresay you would not be familiar with me.”
“You were speaking of your son, Mr. Prince?”
Gazing at me blearily, he said: “Have you experienced the crashing realization that you have made the most grievous error possible?”
I said nothing, and he continued.
“Many years ago I rose from my bed having listened for most of the night to the caterwauling of my third child, and the distraught sobbing of its mother. At that moment I realized I was not meant to be a husband and father, so I disappeared into the night and fled.”
&nbs
p; “You walked out on your family?”
“I know it sounds heartless and perhaps it was, but I was young and ambitious, and I felt like I was being entombed by responsibility. I contrived to falsify the report of my death and assumed a new identity under which to resume my career. After my wife died my children were all raised by adoptive families. Then three years ago I presented myself to my middle son.”
“And you say that led to his death?”
Instead of speaking, Danton Price began to examine his empty glass, as artful an act of begging as I had ever seen. After I paid for a fresh drink for him he resumed his tale. “The last decade has been harsh,” he said. “I began to accrue gambling debts on so many fronts that threats were being made against me. Some were carried out...” he held his maimed hand before me once more “...and some were not, as the fact that I stand here before you, still drawing breath, confirms. Threats were made on my life. I knew I was being followed, watched. My situation was becoming so precarious that I had but one option left, which was to seek out my son and beg him for assistance.”
The old man downed the remainder of his drink and I resolved not to buy him another.
“He was not difficult to find,” Prince went on. “In the intervening years, he had achieved some renown as a man of letters. I caught up with him here in Baltimore, steeled my nerve, and introduced myself.”
“How did he accept the news of your existence?”
“As would anyone who is confronted by a ghost,” Prince replied. “But Eddie possessed an extreme sense of irony, so once he recovered from the shock he congratulated me on the joke I had perpetrated upon the world. He possessed an even greater sense of honor, and he offered to help me. He allowed me to stay with him in the room he was letting while in Baltimore, and even gave me his own clothes, which were in far more reputable shape than those I was wearing. I wear them to this day.” He ran his hands lovingly over his shabby suit. “He confessed to having little love for the foster father who raised him, and viewed my resurrection, as it were, as a chance to finally be a good and proper son. And how did I repay his kindness? By propelling him into the grave.”
I was beginning to think that I was being led down a path with this tale of woe. “Mr. Prince,” I said, “I beg you to explain yourself more succinctly. How did you propel your son into the grave?”
“I told you that he gave me his clothing, have I not?” he said. “My son stripped down to his undergarments right then and there and handed them to me. But that left him with nothing to wear, since he had only recently arrived in Baltimore and had not yet removed his steamer trunk out of storage at the dock. So he donned the clothes I had been wearing, which made him look like a tramp, and set out for the dock to facilitate the delivery of his trunk. He never returned. After four agonizing days, I learned of his death.”
“I still fail to see any trace of your involvement,” I declared.
“Can you not understand?” the old man cried. “He was wearing my clothing! We were of similar build and visage. Those who were following me, wishing to do me harm, mistook my son for me. My boy was murdered in my place!” His impassioned voice immediately gave way to a fit of violent coughing, and it did not take a detective to see that the man was unwell. “I do not believe I have long left,” he whispered upon regaining control. “I wish the matter to be resolved before I die. I beg you to help me.”
“What is it you want me to do, Mr. Prince?”
“Avenge my son. Bring his killer, or killers, to justice. Incidentally Prince is not my real name. It is Poe, sir. David Poe.”
“Poe, you say?”
“Yes. My son was Edgar Allan Poe.”
“Hell, junior, you’ve been flim-flammed!” Jed Hadley cried after I had proposed to Samuel Bellwether that I officially take up the case David Poe had put before me. Hadley was another operative and while he was no more than ten years older than I, he strode around as though he carried in his hat all the knowledge in the world. “You said the man was an actor. What you saw was a command performance!”
“Initially I thought the same thing,” I said, turning my attention to Old Sam Bellwether, who was rocking back and forth in a creaking chair behind his desk. “But I investigated what the old man told me. Edgar Allen Poe did indeed die here under mysterious circumstances in 1849.”
“What of it?” Hadley argued. “That in no way proves the old tosspot who conned you out of a drink was his father.”
“How else would you explain the accuracy of his details regarding his son’s death?” I countered, struggling to hold my temper.
“How do you know those details were so blasted accurate?” growled Pete Curlowe, another operative. Somewhere on the far side of fifty, Curlowe was built like a rock outcrop and he had a stony, expressionless face; even on those rare occasions when he laughed, Curlowe’s visage never changed.
“I discovered that an old friend of mine works for the Advisor,” I stated. “I consulted him and provided me with information about Poe’s death, based upon the newspaper accounts.”
“Oh, I see,” Hadley said, grinning snidely. “And it never occurred to you that the old man could have gotten the same information from the same newspaper and parroted it back to you.”
“All right, fellows, that’s enough,” Mr. Bellwether said. “Jed, Pete, go on back to work. I’ll talk to the lad.” After Hadley and Curlowe had gone, Old Sam closed the door to his private office and then sat back down in his ancient, creaking chair. “I know those two are not always easy to take,” he said, “but they do have a point.”
“So you believe I was taken in as well, sir?” I felt more chastened than defiant.
“Maybe you were spoon-fed a nonesuch and maybe you weren’t. But even if the old man was telling the truth, how would we collect payment for the job? You described him as destitute.”
“If payment is the only obstacle, Mr. Bellwether, I would be happy to take on the case on my own time, outside of my duties here.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because if I am successful, it will prove to you that I am ready for a case of my own.”
“I see.” Old Sam leaned back in the ancient chair. “Look son, I hired you because I saw the seed of a good operative somewhere inside you. God knows you’ve got the gumption. But you’ve also got a temper, and that’s not a prime asset for a detective. When you can convince me that you can control that head of yours, we’ll talk about a case. Now then, go down to the Crier and fetch me a growler. Make sure you’re back by four o’clock.”
“Sir, if you would only—” I began, but then silenced myself, uncertain I had heard him correctly. Pulling out my repeater, I saw that it was just past one. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bellwether, did you say four o’clock?”
“I did. Until then you are on your own time. Unless that’s a problem.”
“No sir, not at all,” I said, unable to suppress a grin. “Thank you, Mr. Bellwether.” I dashed out of his office and walked past Hadley and Curlowe, I bid them both as cheerful a good afternoon as I could muster and then left the premises. Striding happily down Ashland Street for several blocks, I suddenly stopped. My elation at having been offered a chance to prove myself had completely clouded the fact that I had not the slightest whit of an idea how to proceed. After standing stupidly for a few moments, trying to collect my wits, I opted for heading to the place of my primary source of information, the offices of the Advisor, where I sought out Tom Macgowan.
“I sensed you would be back,” he said, greeting me in the lobby of the building. “Come with me, I have something for you.” He led me back to his desk, and from it picked up an envelope and handed it to me. “I was able to unearth more information concerning your Mr. Poe. I have culled together some clippings for you. It is not much, I’m afraid, but you are welcome to it.”
“This is wonderful,” I said, opening the envelope and fingering the small stack of newspaper cuttings and handwritten notes. “I owe you something for this, Tom.”
“Indeed you do,” he replied. “Dinner this Saturday would suffice.”
After leaving Tom to his work, I hastened to the Town Crier in the hopes that old Mr. Poe might be there. Alas, he was not. Taking a corner table, I pored over the clippings, which revealed Edgar Allan Poe to be a troubled and troubling man with a weakness for drink and a singular lack of friends. Obsessed with mystery during his life, Poe had managed to deliver one at the threshold of death. According to the notes, the dying author had repeatedly called out the name Reynolds, the significance of which no one could state. Accepting his father’s presumption that he was indeed murdered, it could have been the name of his killer, though it was hardly efficacious to track down everyone in the city named “Reynolds” and ask them if they were responsible. The only truly useful piece of information to be gleaned from the cuttings was that a physician named Dr. John J. Moran attended Poe in his final, delusional hours.
A glance at my repeater told me it was nearly half past three; my free time was nearly over. I moved to the bar and placed Old Sam’s order for ale with the barkeep, who, as he drew the amber liquid into the glass jug, instructed me to remind my boss that payment was past due on his tab. I agreed, but in exchange extracted a return favor: should the man who called himself Danton Prince return to the tavern, he was to be instructed to come immediately to the Bellwether Detective Agency offices and ask for me.
The rest of the day passed unceremoniously, and a bit after seven, I left for home. I had gone no further than a half-mile from the Agency when I heard rushing footsteps and then experienced something being violently pulled down over my head! It was a foul-smelling canvas sack that constricted my breathing. Even so, I did not panic. I attempted to lash out with my fist, hoping to strike my assailant, but as I did so powerful arms wrapped themselves around mine and held them behind my back. A second set of arms grabbed me around the waist and dragged me off of the sidewalk. I attempted to shout, but little sound emerged through the canvas covering my head. I steeled myself for blows, either from fists or a blunt object, yet none came. Instead I was thrown roughly to the ground, and was struck by a hard object which bounced off of my chest. Faintly, I heard footsteps running away.
