Merchants of Menace

by Joan Aiken

  Roderick giggled over that one, almost like a naughty little boy. But his eyes were serious as he continued.

  “Finally, I called that old goat, Dr. Vinson, and told him I wanted to cancel my appointment. He couldn’t quite figure out why until I told him I was leaving for Europe on a midnight flight. He wanted to know if you were going and I said no, it was a big surprise because I was going to have a baby over there, and you weren’t the father.

  “After that, I went out to the house—but I was very careful, you understand, in case any cops should happen to be around. Lucky for me I’d anticipated them, because not only was there a prowl car parked down the street, but when I sneaked back through the alley and looked in the kitchen window, I could see this detective talking to Ella in the hall. So I got out of there. But it wasn’t necessary to do any more. I could see that. Ella looked like the wrath of God. I don’t imagine she’d had any sleep for two nights. And by today, word must have gotten around. Old Higgins in saving and loan will do his share of talking. So will Doc Vinson, and some of the others. And your wife will keep insisting to the police that she saw this face. Now all you have to do is go back and wrap everything up in one neat package.”

  “What do you mean?” George asked.

  “I imagine they’ll all be calling you. Your only job is to give the right answers. Tell them that Ella has talked about taking a lot of crazy trips. Tell them she wants to hide her money in the house. Tell Doc Vinson she’s afraid he wants to poison her, or attack her, or something. You ever hear about paranoid de­lusions? That’s when people get the idea that everybody’s persecuting them. Built up a yarn like that. You know what to tell Ella; she’s so confused now that she’ll go for anything you say. Mix her up a little more. Ask her about things she’s told you, like trading in the Buick for a Cadillac. She’ll deny she ever said anything like that, and then you drop the subject and bring up something else. A day or two—with a few more looks through the window at the mask—and you’ll have her convinced she’s screwy. That’s the most important thing. Then you go to Vinson with a sob story, have her examined while she’s scared and woozy, and you’ve got it made.” Roderick laughed. “If you could have seen her face…”

  George shook his head in bewilderment. Why was Roderick lying to him? He’d talked to Ella Wednesday night and tonight, and she’d been quite normal. Nothing had happened, nothing at all. And yet here was Roderick, coming a hundred miles and boasting about all kinds of crazy stuff—

  Crazy stuff.

  Suddenly George knew.

  Crazy stuff. A crazy scheme to drive someone crazy. It added up.

  Roderick was the crazy one.

  That was the answer, the real answer. He was more than cruel, more than childish, more than antisocial. The man was psychotic, criminally insane. And it was all a fantasy; he’d started to carry out his delusions, then halted. The rest of it took place only in his disordered imagination.

  George didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to hear his voice. He wanted to tell him to go away, wanted to tell him be had just talked to Ella and she was okay, nothing had happened.

  But he knew that he mustn’t. He couldn’t. Roderick would never accept such an answer. He was crazy, and he was danger­ous. There had to be some other way of handling him.

  All at once, George found the obvious solution.

  “I’m all through here,” he said. “Thought I might drive back tonight. Want to ride along?”

  Roderick nodded. “Why not?” Again the childish giggle. “I get it. You can’t wait, isn’t that it? Can’t wait to see the look on her fat foolish face. Well, go ahead. One good thing, you won’t have to look at it very much longer. They’re going to put her on ice. And we’ll have the sunshine. The sunshine, and the moonlight, and all the rest of it. The tropics are great stuff, George. You’re going to be happy there. I know you don’t like insects, but even they can come in handy. Take ants, for instance. Suppose one of these girls disobeys us, George. Well, we can tie her to a tree, see? Spread-eagle, sort of. Strip her naked and rub honey all over her. Then the ants come and…”

  Roderick talked like that all during the drive back home. Sometimes he whispered and sometimes he giggled, and George got a splitting headache worse than anything Ella could ever have had. But still Roderick kept on talking. He was going to have Ella locked up. He was going to take George to the islands. Sometimes it even sounded as if he meant the island, the one where they’d been in the stockade. And he was going to do things to the girls the way the guards used to do things to the prisoners. It was crazy talk, crazy.

  The only thing that kept George going was the knowledge that it was crazy talk, and if anyone else heard it they’d realize the truth right away. All he had to do was get Roderick into town, stall him on some pretext or other, and call in the police. Of course Roderick would try to implicate George in the scheme, but bow could he? Looking back, George couldn’t remember any slip-up on his part; he hadn’t actually said or done anything out of line. No, it was all Roderick. And that was his salvation.

  Still, cold sweat was trickling down his forehead by the time he pulled up in front of the house. It must have been close to midnight, but the front room lights were still burning. That meant Ella was up. Good.

  “Wait here,” George told Roderick. “I’m just going in to tell her I’m home. Then I’ll put the car away.”

  Roderick seemed to sense that something was phony. “I shouldn’t hang around,” he said. “What if the cops have a stake out?”

  “Let me check on that,” George said. “I’ve got an idea. If the cops aren’t here, you could give her one more taste of the rubber mask. Then I can deny seeing it. Get the pitch?”

  “Yes.” Roderick smiled. “Now you’re cooperating, George. Now you’re with it. Go ahead.”

  So George got out of the car and walked up to the front door and opened it.

  Ella was waiting for him. She did look tired, and she jumped when she saw him, but she was all right. Thank God for that, she was all right! And now he could tell her.

  “Don’t say a word,” George whispered, closing the door. “I’ve got a lunatic out in the car there.”

  “Would you mind repeating that?”

  George looked around, and sure enough he recognized him. It was the detective he’d talked to after the fire alarm was turned in.

  “What are you doing here this time of night?’’ George asked.

  “Just checking up,” said the detective. “Now what’s all this you were saying about a lunatic?”

  So George told him. George told him and he told Ella, and they both listened very quietly and calmly. George had to talk fast, because he didn’t want Roderick to get suspicious, and he stumbled over some of his words. Then he asked the detective to sneak out to the car with him before Roderick could get away, and the detective said he would. George warned him that Roderick was dangerous and asked him if he had a gun. The detective had a gun, all right, and George felt better.

  They walked right out to the car together, and George yanked open the door.

  But Roderick wasn’t there.

  George couldn’t figure it out, and then he realized that Rod­erick might have been just crazy enough to pull his rubber mask trick without waiting, and he told the detective about that and made him look around under the front windows. The detective wasn’t very bright; he didn’t seem to understand about the mask part, so George showed him what he meant—how you could stand under the window on this board from the car and look in without leaving any footprints. The detective wanted to know what the mask looked like, but George couldn’t quite describe it, and then they were back at the car and the detective opened the glove compartment and pulled something out and asked George if this was the mask he meant.

  Of course it was, and George explained that Roderick must have left it there. Then they were back inside the house and Ella was crying, and George didn’t want her to cry so he said there was nothing to be frightened
about because Roderick was gone. And she didn’t have to be afraid if some­body played tricks on her like imitating her voice, because anyone could do that.

  The detective asked him if he could, and of course he could do it perfectly. He was almost as good as Roderick, only he had such a splitting headache...

  Maybe that’s why the doctor came, not Dr. Vinson, but a police doctor, and he made George tell everything all over again. Until George got mad and asked why were they talking to him, the man they should be looking for was Roderick.

  It was crazy, that’s what it was. They were even crazier than Roderick, the way they carried on. There were more police now, and the detective was trying to tell him that he was the one who had made the calls and worn the mask. He, George! It was utterly ridiculous, and George explained how he had met Roderick on the island in solitary and how he looked like the fiend in the Doré book and everything, and how he was a bad boy.

  But the detective said that George’s boss had heard him talking to himself in the office the other afternoon and called Ella to tell her, and that she had talked to the police. Then when George went on his trip they’d checked up on him and found he drove back to town the night he got drunk and also the night he said he was sleeping in his hotel room, and that he was the one who had done it all.

  Of course they didn’t tell him this all at once—there was this trip to the station, and all those doctors who talked to him, and the lawyers and the judge. After a while, George stopped paying attention to them and to that nonsense about schizophre­nia and split personalities. His head was splitting, and all he wanted to do was get them to find Roderick. Roderick was the one to blame. Roderick was the crazy one. They had to understand that.

  But they didn’t understand that, and it was George whom they locked up. George Foster Pendleton, not George Roderick the naughty boy.

  Still, George was smarter than they were, in the end. Because he found Roderick again. Even though he was locked up, he found Roderick. Or rather, Roderick found him, and came to visit.

  He comes quite often, these days, moving in that quiet way of his and sneaking in when nobody’s around to see him. And he talks to George in that soft, almost inaudible voice of his when George sits in front of the mirror. George isn’t mad at him any more. He realizes now that Roderick is his best friend, and wants to help him.

  Roderick still dreams about getting his hands on all that money and going away with George to the Caribbean. And he has a plan. This time there won’t be any slip-ups. He’ll get George out of here, even if he has to kill a guard to do it. And he’ll kill Ella, too, before he goes.

  And then they’ll travel on down to the islands, just the two of them. And there’ll be girls, and whips gleaming in the moonlight…

  Oh, George trusts Roderick now. He’s his only friend. And he often wonders just where he’d be without him.

  Wide O—

  Elsin Ann Gardner

  This is Mrs. Gardner’s first published story. With it she gives us a fresh talent and a nice soporific for the suburban housewife.

  Maybe I’ll put my head under the pillow—no, that’s no good at all. I can imagine him, whoever he is, sneaking up on me.

  Okay, that does it! I’m going to get up and stay up, put the lights on in the living room, turn on the television. Oh, I hate going into the dark...there! Overhead light on floor lamp on, TV on nice and loud. Now I’ll just sit down and relax and watch the—

  Hey, what was that? Oh. Old houses creak, remember? If it creaked when Russell was here, it’ll creak when he’s away, and it’s just—just something in the house. It’s only your imagina­tion, old girl, that’s what it is. And the more sleepy you get, the more vivid your imagination will get.

  All the doors are locked, right? And all the windows, ditto. Okay then. So I feel like an idiot, trying to stay up all night. Well, sitting here in the living room is a lot better than doing what I did the last time Russ was away overnight! Locking myself in the bathroom and staying there all night, for heaven’s sake—

  Oh! Oh, the furnace clicked on, that’s all that was. Calm down, girl, calm down! The trouble with you is, you read the papers. You should read the comics and stop there. No, I have to read Mother of Three Attacked by Intruder and Woman Found Beaten to Death in Home. But, oooh, they were so close to us! That old lady lived—what was it, only three-four blocks away?

  But she lived alone, and nobody knows I’m alone tonight. I hope.

  What is the matter with me, anyway? I’m acting like a child. Other women live alone—for years, even—and here I have to stay by myself for just one measly little night, and I go all to pieces.

  Oh, it sure seems cold in here. The furnace was on—still is on, in fact. Must be my nerves. I’ll go into the kitchen and make myself a nice hot cup of tea. Good idea! Maybe that’ll warm me up.

  Now where is that light switch...there…well, no wonder I’m cold, with the back door standing wide o—

  Death on Christmas Eve

  Stanley Ellin

  I read this story years ago when helping on an earlier MWA anthology and it haunted me long after I’d forgotten the title and author. Now it’s been rediscovered, and you can see if it haunts you too.

  As a child, I had been vastly impressed by the Boerum house. It was fairly new then, and glossy; a gigantic pile of Victorian rickrack, fretwork, and stained glass, flung together in such chaotic profusion that it was hard to encompass in one glance.

  Standing before it this early Christmas Eve, however, I could find no echo of that youthful impression. The gloss was long since gone; woodwork, glass, metal, all were merged to a dreary gray, and the shades behind the windows were drawn com­pletely, so that the house seemed to present a dozen blindly staring eyes to the passerby.

  When I rapped my stick sharply on the door, Celia opened it.

  “There is a doorbell right at hand,” she said. She was still wearing the long outmoded and badly wrinkled black dress she must have dragged from her mother’s trunk, and she looked, more than ever, the image of old Katrin in her later years: the scrawny body, the tightly compressed lips, the colorless hair drawn back hard enough to pull every wrinkle out of her forehead. She reminded me of a steel trap ready to snap down on anyone who touched her incautiously.

  I said, “I am aware that the doorbell has been disconnected, Celia,” and walked past her into the hallway. Without turning my head, I knew that she was glaring at me; then she sniffed once, hard and dry, and flung the door shut. Instantly we were in a murky dimness that made the smell of dry rot about me stick in my throat.

  I fumbled for the wall switch, but Celia said sharply, “No! This is not the time for lights.”

  I turned to the white blur of her face, which was all I could see of her. “Celia,” I said, “spare me the dramatics.”

  “There has been a death in this house. You know that.”

  “I have good reason to,” I said, “but your performance now does not impress me.”

  “She was my own brother’s wife. She was very dear to me.”

  I took a step toward her in the murk and rested my stick on her shoulder. “Celia,” I said, “as your family’s lawyer, let me give you a word of advice. The inquest is over and done with, and you’ve been cleared. But nobody believed a word of your precious sentiments then, and nobody ever will. Keep that in mind.”

  She jerked away so sharply that the stick almost fell from my hand. “Is that what you have come to tell me?”

  I said, “I came because I knew your brother would want to see me today. And if you don’t mind my saying so, I suggest that you keep to yourself while I talk to him. I don’t want any scenes.”

  “Then keep away from him yourself!” she cried. “He was at the inquest. He saw them clear my name. In a little while he will forget the evil he thinks of me. Keep away from him so that he can forget.”

  She was at her infuriating worst, and to break the spell I started up the dark stairway, one hand warily on the balu
strade. But I heard her follow eagerly behind, and in some eerie way it seemed as if she were not addressing me, but answering the groaning of the stairs under our feet.

  “When he comes to me,” she said, “I will forgive him. At first I was not sure, but now I know. I prayed for guidance, and I was told that life is too short for hatred. So when he comes to me, I will forgive him.”

  I reached the head of the stairway and almost went sprawling. I swore in annoyance as I righted myself. “If you’re not going to use lights, Celia, you should at least keep the way clear. Why don’t you get that stuff out of here?”

  “Ah,” she said, “those are all poor Jessie’s belongings. It hurts Charlie so to see anything of hers, I knew this would be the best thing to do—to throw all her things out.”

  Then a note of alarm entered her voice. “But you won’t tell Charlie, will you? You won’t tell him?” she said, and kept repeating it on a higher and higher note as I moved away from her, so that when I entered Charlie’s room and closed the door behind me it almost sounded as if I had left a bat chittering behind me.

  As in the rest of the house, the shades in Charlie’s room were drawn to their full length. But a single bulb in the chandelier overhead dazzled me momentarily, and I had to look twice before I saw Charlie sprawled out on his bed with an arm flung over his eyes. Then he slowly came to his feet and peered at me.

  “Well,” he said at last, nodding toward the door, “she didn’t give you any light to come up, did she?”

  ’’No,” I said, “but I know the way.”

  “She’s like a mole,” he said. “Gets around better in the dark than I do in the light. She’d rather have it that way, too. Otherwise she might look into a mirror and be scared of what she sees there.”