by Joan Aiken
A flash of terror mixed with betrayal lit up her eyes. “That’s a lie! Serge is madly in love with me. We’re going to be married. It was only because of his love for me that we needed—”
“Another fifty thousand shares of RCA. Face it, Jeanne. After our afternoon session, Serge will check with you during the dinner break. Don’t tell him I’ve drawn his fangs. Simply say that you consider yourself a better bridge player than Edna and that, since his is better than mine, why not enjoy the added sport of beating us fair and square? If you really have a sophisticated sense of humor, you’ll enjoy the look that comes into his eye. But within an hour after the evening session starts, little Sergie is going to get an urgent call. His Upper Slobovian uncle, the grand duke, is dying in Zurich. Surely he’s told you about the grand duke…”
Her mouth was like a thin fresh scar. “You are the most despicable, cynical, skeptical rat-fink I’ve encountered. Get out!”
The afternoon session was a subdued affair, with both the Countess and the Prince playing with a withdrawn, almost desperate intentness. Edna, appearing not to notice, was nonetheless impelled to flow copious coats of lacquer to preserve a patina of social grace. The cards ran flat and indecisive, but Jake drove them, scoring game after game with the aid of a little inept defense. Three times he pushed to the five level in quest of dubious slams, but each time, failing to hold the critical controls, Edna correctly signed him off. He was almost equally relentless in presenting Edna with tough, brutally stretched contracts, but she bagged far more than her share with beautifully judged dummy play.
“Oh, dear,” she observed, as the session broke up. “I seem to be so lucky today.” Her eyes met Jake’s blandly. “You played magnificently, Wink. It’s such a pleasure, isn’t it? Thank you. Shall we resume about eight? I must tell Hanson.”
She presented the score to Jeanne and the Prince. They were down $27,000.
Edna’s performance at dinner, Jake decided, deserved at the very least an Academy Award. She was serenely solicitous, fumbled the table talk into channels that were as bland as an ulcer diet, and avoided any word or mannerism that might hint at a feeling of triumph. How much did she know? Or suspect? He’d be damned if he could tell. He thought of Kipling and of treating those two imposters—“triumph and disaster”—just the same.
He was seated at her right—and that was another thing. For there were two other guests tonight—Randy Maxwell and a dowager by the name of Mrs. Adrian Phelps. Like a litany, it kept bugging him. How much did Edna know? He put down his coffee cup, picked up her chubby hand and kissed it... No one seemed to take the slightest notice, least of all Edna.
The evening session was scarcely under way before Jake and Edna smoothly assumed a comfortable margin. Maxwell and Mrs. Phelps were playing a quiet game of Persian rummy at a nearby table. The Prince made one of his dashing bids, ran into a rock-crusher in Jake’s hand, and got pulverized. Randy and Mrs. Phelps came over to observe the carnage. It was almost a relief when Hanson appeared to inform the Prince of an urgent phone call. He excused himself to take it in the library. When he returned, his face was clouded.
“I am prostrated,” he announced. “An unpardonable turn of events. I must at once leave. It concerns a matter about which I cannot speak.” He bowed deeply and headed rapidly for the stairs. The Countess looked as if she had been drugged, but Jake noted a tiny ember smoldering in her eye.
The whole tempo went into a new gear. Many things happened fast, but there was an almost stage-like coordination about them, so that they seemed to take place with slow-motion definition. Edna withdrew to a nearby escritoire and carefully wrote a check. The Prince’s bag appeared almost as if by magic in the front hall, followed by the Prince himself. He accepted Edna’s check, clicked his heels, and was gone, a waiting cab whisking him away. Mrs. Phelps was in his seat at the bridge table, calmly shuffling the cards.
Randy Maxwell lit a cigar and nudged Jake toward the library. “The call came from the Uppingham Hotel on East Delaware, but it was a little cryptic.” He blew out a puff of smoke. “You did want me to tap the phone, didn’t you?”
Jake shrugged. “What else, Steinmetz? It was probably better than bribing Hanson to listen in.”
“Oh, much better,” Randy agreed. “Some people are so devious.” He took a small radio from his pocket. “I just happen to have this tuned to the cab company’s frequency.”
There was a squawk...“thirty-seven to dispatch...pickup at Mallory...destination Pierpont Plaza...ten-four.”
Maxwell pocketed the radio and turned to Jake. “You see? Perhaps we can have that drink next time.”
Jake’s bags had replaced the Prince’s in the hall, and a Mercedes was idling under the porte-cochère.
“Mrs. Mallory ordered it brought round when she saw your bags,” Hanson said, “I daresay you’ll leave it at the airport, sir?”
Jake nodded. ’Td rather not disturb Mrs. Mallory just now. Say goodbye for me when she’s free. In fact, give her a kiss for me, Hanson.”
“Only you could do that, sir. You’re the only one I’ve ever seen—I think I may have said too much, sir.”
Jeanne was in the front seat. He whipped the car out through the long curving driveway. “You’re about to get your ego shattered, Countess. Are you sure you can take it?’’
“Drop the Countess stuff, Wink. I’m a skurvy, rotten nothing. I need a catharsis.”
“Castor oil is cheap.”
“But it won’t make me into an Edna?”
“Only Edna could make Edna.”
She was silent for several miles. “Wink, what do you honestly think of my bridge game?”
“With or without an electronic mirror? Without, it stinks.”
“I know it stinks. I meant do I have the latent ability?”
“Anyone has the ability; not everyone the guts.”
Nothing more was said until Jake pulled into the parking lot of the Pierpont Plaza on Chicago’s near-North side. She handed him a small camera. “Randy said to give you this. It has a built-in electronic flash that will take pictures in any light.”
“Polensky,” Jake told the desk clerk.”Give me his room number and tell him Jake Winkman’s on his way up.”
The Prince was completely urbane. So was the bleached blonde with the long cigarette holder who lounged on the divan. “It was thoughtful of you to spare Mrs. Mallory the scene,” he said. “But you have had a trip for nothing.” He completely ignored Jeanne. “Mrs. Mallory will not make the charge. Nor Mr. Maxwell. Nor will she stop the check.” He shrugged his shoulders. “So there is to discuss really nothing.”
“True,” Jake admitted. He unstrapped one of the Prince’s bags, sprawling the contents on the floor, and came up with a shoe. He calmly detached a heel, placed shoe and heel on an end table, and proceeded to photograph them.
The Prince suddenly changed to a tiger, showing his fangs in the form of a small automatic. “Give me that camera. I demand also payment for my ruined shoe. Then out get or I will shoot!”
Jake snapped his picture. “Sergie, you are many things, but a gunman isn’t one of them. Besides, Mr. Maxwell doesn’t trust me. I spotted two detectives from the Bronco squad in the lobby.” He snapped a picture of the blonde. “Be a good fellow and give me the check.”
The tiger turned to a fawning jackal. “But that I cannot. I have the expenses.” His eyes slithered to the blonde. “Very heavy expenses. And I need money Europe to return.” He spread his arms. “Let us like gentlemen the compromise make.”
The blonde began to pack. It didn’t take her long.
Winkman shook his head. “These pictures and a full report will go to the American Contract Bridge League and the World Bridge Federation. You’ll be blown from Oslo to Oskaloosa, right down to your denture charts. You’ve had it, Sergie. The check.”
The blonde hustled her bags to the door. “Serg, you always were a yellow fink. The man says two words and you curl up like wet spaghetti. He
hasn’t a thing on you that would stand up. You could sue and double your money on a settlement. Mrs. Mallory would no more let this come out in court than fly. Her own sister… The least you could do is beat this man up and throw him out. Goodbye!” She slammed the door.
The Prince was nervously lighting a cigarette. He flung it down in a sudden gesture of ultimate frustration and made a desperate lunge at Winkman. At the last second, Jake stepped aside and measured him for a Judo sweep that scythed his legs from under him and dropped him like a bag of wet cement.
He leaned down and retrieved Edna’s check from the Prince’s wallet. Maxwell’s check was missing, but there was $20,000 in large denomination bills with the bank’s paper strap still around them.
He held out his hand to Jeanne. “Give me your lighter.”
White-faced, she handed it to him and he touched the flame to the check.
Three more times on the way to the airport, he asked to borrow her lighter.
“That—that woman,” Jeanne said, as they pulled into O’Hare, “She was right, wasn’t she? You just psyched him.”
He looked at her and sadly shook his head. “Let’s just say I seldom psych.”
She sat up as if suddenly galvanized. “Good heavens! Do you actually believe that Edna might have done it? Reveal herself and the great Fred Mallory as dupes and unwitting shills—and her own sister as a crook! Do you honestly think—”
“I don’t know,” Jake said softly. “Edna’s a quality person. I suspect she’d choose the integrity that cost her the most. I’m glad it won’t be necessary. Lighter, please.”
She was silent as he slid out of the car, gathered his grips, and handed her the envelope with the $20,000 for Randy Maxwell.
“Jake...wait. Why have you kept borrowing my lighter? What happened to that beautiful gold lighter Edna gave you?”
“It’s in Sergie’s pocket with his fingerprints all over it. I put it there when he went to answer the phone. If he’d made a fuss—as his mistress suggested—I’d have nailed him on grand larceny. And don’t kid yourself that I wouldn’t have pressed the charge.”
She sat looking up at him for a long moment. “For a dumpy, frumpy woman like Edna?”
“No,” he said. “Just for Edna.”
In the rotunda, he picked up a public phone, and got Edna. “I think Jeanne is coming home,” he said. He hoped he had got the right inflection on the word “home.” But with Edna you could never tell.
“Thank you, Wink, we’re waiting. It’s been such a pleasant day, hasn’t it?”
Never Hit a Lady
Fred S. Tobey
Short and neat! That is the art of the short short.
“You really ought to get married, Paul,” George said. “It simply isn’t right for a man of forty to be living alone.”
If I hadn’t known him for such a busybody, I would have thought George was joking. He thinks he can speak as he pleases to me because he’s older, and was a close friend of my father’s before the auto accident that killed both my parents and crippled my brother.
“Bring a woman into this house? Ridiculous!”
“Paul, you have no idea what a woman’s touch could do for this place—and for you, too. You need a new incentive.”
“What I need,” I said, “is just to be left alone. Don’t forget I took care of my brother for twenty years. I’m entitled to relax a little.”
All four of us were in the accident, the whole family. I came through all right except for a concussion that made me fuzzy in the head for a year or two. Taking care of my crippled brother was a terrible chore, but I faced up to my duty. Mother always told us a gentleman never shirks his responsibilities.
“I couldn’t help thinking,” said George, “after your brother tumbled down the stairs in his wheelchair last year and broke his neck, that at least you would now have a chance to enjoy life a bit.”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing. Fixing up the house the way I want it. Have you seen the new retaining wall I’m building out back? I’ll have twice as big a flower garden after that place is filled in.”
I might have added that I also would be able to buy the fill without an argument, now that my brother was gone. Our parents left quite a lot of money, but it had dwindled to the point where it wasn’t really enough to take care of two of us. I’m afraid that toward the end, my brother and I quarreled quite a bit about how the money was to be spent.
“Paul,” said George, “I’ve a friend I’ve been wanting you to meet. Quite an attractive woman. She’s pretty much alone in the world. Suppose I bring her over?”
I absolutely forbade it, but he went on trying to persuade me. “Don’t get the idea that she’s a fortune hunter,” he said. “She’s got money. Travels all the time. That would be good for you, Paul—getting out to see a little of the world.”
“I like it right where I am.”
But George is never content unless he is arranging someone else’s life, so he brought her in spite of anything I could say, and of course I had no choice but to be polite to her. No true gentleman is ever impolite to a lady. Mother always told us that.
The entire evening was a nightmare. Cynthia mistook my politeness for genuine cordiality. I caught her looking around the living room as if she were thinking of how to rearrange the furniture.
When George stopped in to see me the next day, he was jubilant. “Cynthia liked you.”
“Did she indeed? Well, I’m afraid it wasn’t mutual.”
“Oh, come on, Paul,” he said. “Admit that she’s an attractive woman. You’d make a handsome couple.”
“She’s a determined woman who would run every minute of my life.”
“Maybe that’s what you need,” he said. The fool!
“Just leave me alone, George. Please don’t bring her here again.”
A few days later, however, when I was in the backyard working on my new wall, I heard his voice and turned to see him approaching—with Cynthia striding vigorously along beside him. Of course I had to play the host and make them welcome despite my true feelings.
“What are you going to do about that cavity under the big boulder?” George asked.
“The wall will cover it.”
“You ought to fill it with something,” said George.
Cynthia leaned over to peer into the opening. Suddenly, I thought how perfectly that big-boned, muscular frame would fill the cavity, if I could just bring myself to push her into it! I saw myself bashing Cynthia over the head with a rock, rolling her into the opening and saying to George, “There! You wanted it filled, didn’t you?”
But quite apart from the foolishness of doing such a thing in front of a witness, I would have been utterly incapable of striking Cynthia, despite the repugnance I felt for her at that moment. No true gentleman ever raises his hand against a lady. If Mother said that to us once, she said it a hundred times.
You can imagine how delighted I was when George called to say that he was going away for a month on a business trip. “Call up Cynthia and take her out,” he said, “I think she’s becoming quite fond of you, Paul.”
I most certainly would not call Cynthia, and of course it was unthinkable that she would call on me without her old friend George. As Mother used to say so often, a lady simply does not call unescorted on a gentleman.
My wall was coming along famously when, one sunny Saturday afternoon, I was surprised to hear footsteps on the gravel behind me. I swung around and was absolutely dumfounded to see Cynthia standing there, quite alone.
“Hello, Paul,” she said brazenly. “You didn’t call, so I stopped by to tell you I have two tickets to the show that’s opening tonight at the Belmont. You’ll go, won’t you?”
It was less a question than a statement of the inevitable. I stood speechless, my trowel in one hand and a rock in the other, while Cynthia drew a pamphlet from her purse and began reading aloud about the show at the Belmont.
When George returned, he paid me a visit.
“How are you and Cynthia getting along?” he asked. “I called at her apartment, but there was no answer.”
“I haven’t seen her,” I replied. “Probably she’s away on one of those trips of hers.”
“Very likely,” said George. “Well, I’ll keep trying to reach her. I want to get you two together again as soon as she comes back.”
But Cynthia did not come back. George says he always thought some day she’d find some place she liked so much that she’d just stay there, but he worries because she doesn’t write, and says he misses her.
Frankly, I can’t imagine why he would—a woman like that who could call on a man unescorted. She certainly was no lady.
Farewell to the Faulkners
Miriam Allen deFord
There is an eerie quality to this tale as the characters, one by one, disappear. But at the same time, Miriam is telling a classic detective story and the clues are there to point a finger at the villain.
Miss Harriet Faulkner never missed a Friday evening symphony concert. Riding home now in a taxi—only her brother Philip ever drove the roomy Faulkner car—she hummed a bit of Brahms to herself and reflected comfortably that really her life was as satisfactory a one as often falls to human lot. She had never missed love or marriage very much—both, she thought, are overrated; her parents had died so many years ago that now they were only a vague memory; she bad always been reasonably well off; she had her music, to which she was devoted; and she had dear Caroline and dear Philip.
