by Marvin Kaye
“What?”
“If you don’t kill her in the next fourteen days, we’re history.” Jan got out of bed and began dressing. “Oh, and just so you know I’m serious, I don’t want to see you again till you whack her.”
* * * *
During the next few days Bob pondered his options. He had to admit that he was in love with Jan. He wanted to be with her, and to be free of his wife. In the nights that followed he tried a couple of dry runs. In the middle of the night he got out of bed and took his pillow, brought it over to his sleeping wife, put his finger against it, and made a ‘bang’ noise, like little kids do when they play cowboys and Indians. Then he got back into bed.
On another night he decided to rehearse using the real gun. He got out of bed, retrieved the gun from a locked box where he’d hidden it, and stuck it into a pillow. Then he went over to his sleeping wife and whispered, “Kapow.” Afterwards, he put the gun back in its hiding place and went to bed. Only now he found it difficult to get to sleep. He was having trouble getting from the practice sessions to actually doing it for real. His hand had shaken and he found the whole thing deeply disturbing. The prospect of losing Jan weighed heavily on him. Maybe if he gave it another day or two he could actually go through with it.
The next day, at his job, all Bob could think about were two things. Killing his wife, and Jan. Jan was the best lover he’d ever had. They’d been seeing each other for six months, and every time felt like the first time. With Linda it was like going through the motions. The killing would be just one shot at close range. He couldn’t miss. Then he’d have to get rid of the gun. Jan hadn’t mentioned that part, but it would be easy enough to do. He could even bury it in the park. He felt himself starting to feel more at ease about the whole idea. Maybe it was just a matter of getting used to it.
At lunch, Bob unwrapped a cheese sandwich Linda had made for him and bit into it. He noticed his co-worker Mike in the next cubicle drinking a can of soda and reading the afternoon paper. Bob saw the headline and nearly choked. It read, “Husband Arrested In Wife’s Murder.” He started coughing and took a sip of bottled water. His co-worker looked up from reading and said, “You okay, Bob?”
“Yeah,” said Bob, swallowing, “I’m fine.”
“You look a little green.”
“I’m fine. Uh, do you know anything about the cover story?”
“Huh?” said Mike, closing the paper and glancing at it. “Sure, it’s been all over the news this week. Where’ve you been living, in a cave?”
“I haven’t been following the news this week.”
“Some guy killed his old lady and tried to make it look like an accident. The cops were suspicious from the beginning. When a wife dies, everyone figures it’s the husband who did it. Who else would want to kill somebody’s wife?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“You sure you’re all right? You look kind of pale.”
“I’m okay. I think I’ll just go to the men’s room and wash my face.”
Bob stumbled through the hallway, got to the men’s room, went into a stall, and threw up. Afterward, he leaned against the wall and took a few deep breaths.
After work, Bob went straight home. Linda wasn’t there yet. He went to his hiding place, opened the locked box, removed the gun and left the apartment. He walked a few blocks to the river, up to the water’s edge, threw the gun as far as he could, and watched it vanish beneath the waves.
On the way back to his apartment he thought the whole situation over again. Yes, he and Linda had their problems, there was no denying that. But he knew that he couldn’t kill her. And as far as the money went, was a hundred thousand dollars’ worth walking around with the guilt of having murdered someone? Not to mention the possibility of going to jail for life, or even getting a lethal injection? He decided that it wasn’t. He would suggest to Linda that they see a marriage counselor. If she agreed, he would give it his best try. He’d stop seeing Jan. If things didn’t work out with Linda, he’d get a divorce, just like many people do when they have problems in their marriage that they can’t solve.
The more he went over it all, the better he felt. The idea of staying with Jan was crazy. Any woman who could encourage him to murder his wife could never be trusted. And speaking of trust, if he had gone along with her scheme, then she’d always know his secret. Suppose that in a couple of years they broke up, she could blackmail him, or worse, turn him in to the cops. He decided that he was making the right decision on every front. He’d call her tomorrow, ask to meet her, tell her he just couldn’t go through with it. Then it would be over. Bob took a deep breath. He felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
Instead of going directly back to his apartment, he stopped at the deli across the street and brought a bouquet of daisies for Linda. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten her flowers. Bob walked into his apartment, put the flowers behind his back and called out, “Linda, it’s me.” When he got no answer, he walked to the bedroom and opened the door. He saw Jan holding a gun and standing over Linda, who lay on the floor, bloody and unmoving.
“What have you done?” asked Bob.
“I knew you didn’t have the guts to do it, so I had to take matters into my own hands.”
“But I’d changed my mind….”
“Well, change it back, dear.”
“How did you get into the apartment?”
“I told Linda I was a co-worker of yours; she let me right in. Now, my love, unlock the gate to the fire escape, and open the window. And after you’ve done that, be a doll, and call the police.”
THE OUTBURSTS OF EVERETT TRUE 2
THE SOMERSET WONDER, by Ron Goulart
Less than five minutes after the elephant halted the train, an attempt was made on Harry Challenge’s life. That was late on the misty afternoon of Sunday, April 29, 1900.
He’d been sharing a table in the moderately swaying dining car with his magician friend, the Great Lorenzo. A lean, clean shaven man in his early thirties, Harry was in a downcast mood. The reason for that was the neatly folded cablegram in the breast pocket of his conservative dark suit.
It had reached him at his London hotel late on Saturday and read:
Dear Son: Your nitwit reporter ladyfriend has disappeared. Get yourself to the village of Dimchester in Somerset. The New York Enquirer, that yellow rag she works for, is paying us a hell of a lot more than Jennie Barr is worth to find her. So go find her. Your devoted father, the Challenge International Detective Agency.
“I have never claimed,” the portly magician was saying, “to be more than the world’s most gifted illusionist, Harry. However, from time to time, it is true that I am visited with what might be termed visions, glimpses of what is going on elsewhere or portents of the impending future.”
“Yep, I know that.” Harry frowned. “And those visions that you suffer from have helped me in the past.” Leaning forward, he rested both elbows on the crisp white tablecloth. “That’s why I’m asking you to see what you can come up with about Jennie. She’s been missing for close to three days and—”
“Alas, my boy, as I’ve explained before,” cut in Lorenzo as he tugged at his ample side whiskers, “I have no control over this particular gift. The visions strike without warning. I can’t summon them at—Yow!” His face suddenly went pale, he dropped his fork, doubled slightly and clutched at his ample middle.
The glasses and the silver on their table rattled as the train went chuffing around a bend. Outside the mist was growing thicker, masking the English countryside and the woodlands they were rushing through.
“Something?” asked Harry. “Or is it just indigestion? Since you’ve knocked off two éclairs and a fairy cake, it—”
Lorenzo, slowly, straightened up. His plump face was pale, dotted with perspiration, and this voice thin and a bit shaky. “Jennie is sitting next to a massive black safe. She’s tied in a clawfooted chair, also gagged…it looked like they used a paisley scarf for that.
” Sighing, the magician leaned back in his chair. “That vision just hit, unbidden. At any rate, Harry, we now know the girl is still alive and in relatively good shape.”
“Any idea where she is?”
The Great Lorenzo, forlornly, shook his head. “The majority of my glimpses don’t come equipped with street addresses,” he explained. “If I were to hazard a guess, however, I’d say she’s being held somewhere in the vicinity of Dimchester. Since we’ll be arriving in that benighted hamlet in…” From the watch pocket of his checkered silk vest he drew out a fat gold watch. “…in roughly ten minutes. I suggest you commence your search there.”
“That’s where I’m figuring to start anyway, Lorenzo,” Harry pointed out. “Her editor, since Jennie’s extremely independent, only knew that she came to Dimchester, chasing an important story. But he had no details. It’d be helpful if your next vision could provide a few more specifics.”
“You’re the detective,” reminded the magician. “I have offered you, in my modest opinion, a helpful, a very helpful, hint. It is now up to you to exercise your considerable gift for ratiocination to find the poor lass.”
“You’re right, yeah.” Harry extracted a thin black cigar from his case. “Worrying about her has made me a shade surly. Excuse it.” He lit the cigar with a wax match. “Since your visions are usually damned reliable, we can be sure she’s alive. That’s good.”
“Exactly. So now you can cease moping and concentrate on finding Jennie,” said Lorenzo as he materialized another chocolate éclair out of the air. “And I can devote my evening not to commiserating with you over the temporary loss of your sweetheart but to planning my upcoming magic presentation at—”
“Jennie and I aren’t exactly sweethearts, Lorenzo,” he told him. “We like each other, sure, and we’ve spent quite a bit of time together. Since she covers unusual international stories for her newspaper and I specialize in cases with a supernatural element, that means we’re going to coincide on—”
“Balderdash,” observed the Great Lorenzo, taking an ambitious bite out of the latest pastry. “You two babes in the woods are a love match if ever I—”
“Get back,” advised Harry, “to thinking about the magic show you’re going to stage in Dimchester on May first.”
“I’m not at all certain, you know, if the simple rustics who reside in and around Dimchester are anywhere near sophisticated enough to appreciate my performance, which has awed the crowned heads of Europe and many of the great minds of the Nineteenth Century.” He took another bite of the éclair. “Yet, since I’ve been invited and paid a princely sum—princely, yet perhaps not anywhere near my true worth—to stage my Amazing Hour of Magic & Mystery at Tuesday’s May Day Fête, I shall, seasoned trouper that I am, do my best.”
“It was a fortunate coincidence that I’m heading for Dimchester, too, and we wound up on the same train.” Harry exhaled smoke.
Lorenzo stroked his grizzled sideburns. “Perhaps, my boy,” he observed quietly, “it is not a coincidence at all but, rather, the inexplicable doings of the fates who weave our—”
The train car suddenly stopped with a great series of grinding thumps. Harry’s wine glass hopped free of their table, hitting the floor and splashing red as it turned into glistening fragments.
The misted windows rattled, silverware fell from surrounding tables. Diners shouted, gasped, pushed back in their chairs.
The door at the end of the dining car was yanked open and a capless conductor came stumbling in. “We nearly collided with an elephant,” he said, one hand to his temple. “That’s highly unusual in these parts.”
The clowns came charging into the halted dining car as a dozen or so of the patrons were hurrying out to take a look at the elephant, who could be heard trumpeting angrily out in the fading afternoon.
There were three clowns and, although of varying sizes and shapes, they were all identically costumed. Each clown wore a small yellow bowler hat atop a luxuriant carrot-colored fight wig, a bulbous crimson nose, blue and gold polka dot pantaloons and an oversized purple peacoat festooned with six huge silver buttons. Two of them carried pistols and the third a hand-axe.
Lorenzo and Harry had remained at their table. “More strays from the circus that’s playing Dimchester during the May Day festivities?” mused the portly magician.
“I doubt they’re employed by the employers of the strayed elephant.” Harry, casually, slid his hand into his coat. “Although they may be the ones who conveyed him onto the tracks to halt our train.”
“Meaning that they, despite their outwardly jovial appearance, are up to no good.”
The leanest clown was about ten feet away from them. Impatient, he shoved aside a heavyset, white-moustached and deeply tanned gentleman who might have served as an Army colonel in India earlier in life.
“I say, old fellow,” the gentleman protested as he slammed against an abandoned table and sent the flower vase to the carpeted floor, “that’s hardly sporting.”
“Hard cheese, gov,” replied the spurious clown. “You there with the fat bloke, are you “’Arry Challenge?”
“Fat, sir?” cried out the Great Lorenzo as he assumed an affronted look. “Fat, am I?”
While the armed clown’s attention was turned toward the magician, Harry yanked his .38 revolver from his shoulder holster and shot the intruder in the pantaloons before he could aim his pistol at the detective.
“I am Harry Challenge, yeah,” he answered, dodging to his left and ducking low.
As the initial red-nosed clown hopped about on the leg that wasn’t bleeding, he yelled, “Foul, ’at’s a blinking foul.”
“I say,” said the gentleman with the white moustache, “that was hardly sporting, old man. This clownish chap had hardly a chance to aim before you potted him. When two gentlemen are dueling, it’s...”
“Shut your bloody gob,” advised the second clown, who grabbed the colonel and, using him as a shield, took a shot at Harry.
Harry, however, was no longer where he had been seconds earlier and the slug missed him and went smashing out through a window beyond their table. That let in a grey swirl of chill, late afternoon mist.
Lorenzo, who was ducked down behind a tipped-over table said, “Prepare for another diversion, Harry.”
From the floor of the dining car came rising a thick plume of deeply green smoke. It swiftly grew into an immense swirling cloud and engulfed two of the clowns and the protesting colonel.
The first clown was now, from the sound of him, lying flat out on the carpeting, kicking in pain, howling and cursing.
The second clown, also lost in the green mist, had decided to fire his weapon at random. “Your days are numbered, Challenge, and…Awk!”
Harry had ducked low, moved up close to the man and, making a shrewd guess as to the location, delivered a forceful kick to his groin. This clown now commenced howling and lamenting his fate in a high-pitched voice.
Harry sprinted clear of the green cloud in time to see the third clown, the one with the hand-axe, dive out of the dining car and off the halted train. “Look after these buffoons, Lorenzo,” he called. “I’ll catch the other one.”
The escaping clown was running, as best he could in his baggy pantaloons and large floppy shoes, up toward the head of the train.
Beyond him Harry could see, blurred by the mist, a group of men with ropes, nets and pikes urging the annoyed Indian elephant to leave the train tracks and move into the woodlands that constituted the outskirts of the town of Dimchester.
The fleeing clown suddenly stopped, spun around and raised the axe to hurl it at Harry. “This’ll fix you, you blooming toff.”
‘Not so fast, old chap.” From out of the mist above him swooped a large muscular man. He was clad in a dark-colored cable-stitch sweater, white riding breeches and highly-polished black boots. His curly blond hair was worn long and the upper part of his face was hidden by a mask of black silk.
He appeared to be flying and he r
eached down to take hold of the startled clown by the back of his jacket.
Effortlessly, he lifted the man completely off the ground, rising up at least ten feet with him. “Let this be a lesson to you, my good man,” he said in his deep, booming voice and dropped the clown.
One of the conductors was staring up at the masked man. “Blimey,” he exclaimed, “if it ain’t the Wonder!”
When the clown landed about two yards from Harry, his red nose popped free and went bouncing away on the grass.
* * * *
The constable of Dimchester was a middle-sized and chiefly bald man of fifty. Leaning with his elbow against the mantel of the small fireplace in the parlor of his overly cozy cottage on the town square, he was saying, “I am, Mr. Challenge, a great admirer of yours. I’ve clipped newspaper accounts of your investigative accomplishments for several years. I especially enjoy those written by that daring young reporter, Jennie Barr, and I—”
“That’s why I’m here.” Harry was sitting on the edge of a purplish Morris chair. “Jennie disappeared from your town three days ago and—”
“I was fully aware that the poor girl had vanished.” Constable Mulliner’s pipe went out again and he applied another match to the tobacco in the bowl. “It troubles me greatly that my men and I haven’t been able, after being contacted by her New York editors, to find a trace of her.”
“Have you learned anything?”
Mulliner took two puffs of his pipe. “She left the Cheshire Cat Inn, where I understand you’re also staying, at nine in the morning on Wednesday last. Although she told old Googins the innkeeper that she’d be back in time for lunch, she never returned. We have, alas, found no one who saw her after she’d left on that fateful morning.”
“You have any idea what sort of a story Jennie Barr was here working on?”
The constable shook his head. “If the young woman confided in anyone,” he replied, “we have been unable to find that person. I had hoped, since they ply the same trade, that Denis Farrington might have some notion of what the girl was up to, but he—”
