The Richard Deming Mystery Megapack

by Richard Deming

  “Eleven p.m. would be a safe time,” Ellen said. “That’s my normal bedtime, and I know there is no party or anything scheduled at the ranch tonight that might keep me up later.”

  “All right,” Mother said. “Want me to do it?”

  “I’d love it. I didn’t get much sleep last night either, anticipating the trip.”

  Mother went to get the star sapphire pendant she always uses in her act, dangled it in front of Ellen’s face and told her to concentrate on it. Ellen proved to be an easy subject, and within minutes was in a deep hypnotic trance. Mother gave her the posthypnotic order to fall asleep at exactly eleven that night, then clapped her hands and woke her.

  “Now I have implanted an order in your subconscious to go to sleep exactly at eleven,” Mother told her. “Please remember that you must be in bed at that time. If for some reason you haven’t reached home by that time—because of engine trouble, for instance—you will have to rent a motel room and get to bed. Understand?”

  “I understand,” Ellen said.

  At five o’clock Mother told me to go make a pitcher of martinis and put them in the freezer, as she had told Dad to be there at five-fifteen. She wanted to serve dinner no later than six, she said, so that Ellen could he on the road by seven.

  Dad arrived on time, and Mother managed to get dinner on the table at a quarter to six. We finished in sufficient time for Ellen to help clear the table, which she insisted on doing. It was only five of seven when I walked out to the car with Ellen.

  When I leaned in the window to kiss her good-bye, she said, “You have the ranch phone number, in case something happens that you can’t drive up Monday?”

  “I have it, but nothing will happen.”

  “I hope you like my parents as much as I like yours.”

  “I’m sure I will.”

  “Do you love me?”

  “I’m nuts about you.”

  “Then I’ll see you Monday,” she said, smiling at me and shifting into drive.

  When I got back inside I found Dad seated in what had been his favorite chair in the front room, smoking his pipe. Mother said they were going to have a second cup of coffee, and asked if I wanted one too. When I said yes, she asked me to pour brandy for all of us while she was getting the coffee.

  It was perhaps fifteen minutes later, as we were finishing our brandy and coffee, that Dad remarked contentedly, “Ellen seems like a fine girl, son. You’re very lucky.”

  “She’s faultless,” I said. “Except for situational insomnia.”

  “And how do you know that?” he asked with raised brows.

  I grinned at him. “Not the way your evil mind is surmising. It’s only an occasional thing, anyway. She’ll sleep tonight because Mother put her under and gave her the posthypnotic order to fall asleep at eleven.”

  Dad gave Mother a quizzical glance, reached for his nearly empty brandy glass, then suddenly stiffened. His gaze shot at Mother. “Just exactly how did you phrase your posthypnotic order, Miriam?”

  She looked surprised at his tone. “Why, I just told her to fall asleep at exactly eleven tonight.” Coming to his feet, Dad asked in a flat tone, “Haven’t you ever heard of circadian rhythm?”

  For a moment I missed the urgency in his voice. With amiable fatuousness I said, Circadian rhythm: the inner clock that tells, us when we need to sleep and when we need to awake. Physiology II, in my junior year.”

  Ignoring me, Dad said to Mother, “Didn’t it occur to you that when she woke up this morning, she was on the East Coast? Her body may not adjust for days. She’ll go to sleep when it’s eleven p.m. in New York, which is roughly forty minutes from now.”

  It registered on me then that his calm tone concealed a desperation approaching panic. I looked at Mother and saw that she was staring at him with enormous eyes. All at once I became almost dizzy with fear for Ellen. In forty minutes she would still be traveling on the freeway at high speed. If in her eagerness to get home she exceeded the speed limit by ten miles an hour, she might even be on Sulphur Mountain Road, which she had described as a narrow, winding road with sheer drop-offs at some points.

  In either event she couldn’t possibly get home by eight p.m.

  Dad swung toward me. “What route did she take?” he asked quietly.

  I gave my head a helpless shake. “We didn’t discuss it. The San Diego Freeway, I imagine. That would be closer than driving clear over to catch the Hollywood Freeway. She might have taken the Coast Highway, though.”

  Dad looked at Mother. “Did she mention to you which route she was taking?”

  Mother numbly shook her head. Dad strode to the phone, dialed the operator and crisply told her to get him the highway patrol. After a short wait he said in the same crisp tone, “This is Dr. Philip Loudan. I am a local psychiatrist. With whom am I speaking, did you say?”

  After a pause he resumed, “A young lady named Ellen Whittier is at this moment en route from Beverly Hills to a ranch on Sulphur Mountain Road, which comes off Route thirty-three this side of Ojai. Do you know where that is, Sergeant?”

  After another pause, he said, “Right, beyond Casitas Springs. She left here about five of seven and we believe she is traveling on the San Diego Freeway, although we aren’t sure. I haven’t time to explain how and why this happened, but she was placed under hypnosis just before she left and was given the posthypnotic order to fall asleep at eight p.m. She will fall asleep at precisely that time, and if she isn’t stopped first, the probability is that she will be driving at high speed at the time.”

  There was a short silence, then, “Yes, I am quite sure. I haven’t time to give a lecture on hypnotism over the phone, so I am afraid you will just have to take it on faith.”

  He listened again, then said, “I don’t know, hut my son is here and he can tell you. Just a moment.”

  Handing the phone to me, he said, “The man’s name is Sergeant Johnson. He wants a description of Ellen’s car.”

  I said into the phone, “This is Francis Loudan, Sergeant. The car is a brand-new blue-and-white two-door Ford sedan. It’s a rental car and I don’t know the license number.”

  “That’s all right,” a pleasant voice said in my ear. “We’ll just stop every car headed that way that answers the description. You reasonably certain she took the San Diego Freeway?”

  “No, she could have taken the Coast Highway. But the freeway is faster, because you don’t have to slow down for all those towns. I don’t think she would have picked the Hollywood Freeway, because we’re in the far west end of Beverly Hills.”

  “Seems unlikely,” the sergeant agreed. “I wouldn’t rule out the Coast Highway, though. Be a lot of holiday traffic tonight, and she may have figured it would be faster in the long run than the freeway. It would be if the freeway gets really jammed.”

  “Well, can you check both routes?”

  “We’ll check all three, just in case she took the Hollywood Freeway for some reason. Give me your phone number and I’ll call you back as soon as there’s news.”

  I gave him the number.

  After I hung up, I started pacing the room. Mother and Dad sat silently watching me for a time, then Mother went to make more coffee. Dad relit his pipe.

  At five of eight I stopped pacing to stare at the phone. At eight I gave a little shudder and went over to the bar to pour myself another shot of brandy. I had a third brandy at eight-fifteen and a fourth at eight-thirty.

  The phone rang at a quarter to nine. I caught it in the middle of the first ring.

  “Sergeant Johnson here,” the pleasant voice said. “This the doctor or the son?”

  “Francis,” I said. “The son. “Well, we found her, and you can stop worrying. Just in the nick of time, though.”

  I let out a relieved sigh. Cupping my hand over the phone, I said, “She’s all right.” Then into the phone I said
, “Where was she?”

  “On the Coast Highway, just pulling into Oxnard. There’s no road divider there, so she could have crashed head-on into somebody if she had fallen asleep driving. It’s blind luck we caught her at the exact moment we did, because it was almost eight when a patrol car pulled her over. The officer was just asking her if she was Ellen Whittier when she fell sound asleep.”

  I felt my stomach constrict at the closeness of it. “Where is she?” I asked.

  “At St. John’s Hospital in Oxnard.”

  “In the hospital!” I said sharply. “I thought you said she was all right.”

  “She’s just asleep. Nobody knew whether or not it would be dangerous to wake her, because hypnotism can be pretty tricky stuff. So they just put her in the hospital and let her sleep. Her car is at the Oxnard Police Station.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Have her parents been informed?”

  “We don’t know who her parents are.”

  They wouldn’t, I realized, because all their information about Ellen had come from Dad and me. I said, “I’ll take care of it, then. Thanks a lot, Sergeant.”

  “Just a minute,” he said. “I want to talk to your father.”

  It developed that what he wanted from Dad was an explanation of just how Ellen’s predicament had come about. Dad gave a detailed account of what had happened. When he hung up, he said with a grin that apparently Sergeant Johnson wanted to make sure it hadn’t been some kind of exotic murder attempt.

  I phoned Ellen’s parents to let them know she wouldn’t be there that night. They knew who I was, because Ellen had written about me, even though they were not yet aware that we planned to marry. It took a considerable amount of explaining to convince Ellen’s father that she was unhurt, even though she was in a hospital, but I finally got across to him what had happened. Then I let him talk to Dad, who elaborated on my explanation.

  Apparently in answer to a question by Congressman Whittier as to whether Dad thought he and his wife should drive to the hospital, Dad said, “It would be pretty pointless. She’ll wake up as soon as her body has had its normal requirement of sleep. If that is eight hours, she’ll be rising about four in the morning. She has her own car, so she can just drive on. If I were you, I would just sit tight until she arrives, instead of making a useless twenty or thirty-mile trip.”

  When he hung up, I said, “Useless or not, I’m driving up to Oxnard.”

  Dad regarded me curiously. “Why?”

  “So that I can explain to her what happened as soon as she wakes up. I feel responsible for letting Mother hypnotize her.”

  A trifle dryly Dad said, “Why don’t you just phone St. John’s Hospital and leave a message asking Ellen to call back as soon as she awakens?”

  I felt myself redden slightly. That easy alternative hadn’t even occurred to me. I took the suggestion.

  When I hung up after leaving the message, Mother said, “You shouldn’t feel responsibility for what happened, Francis. It was my error. The factor of circadian rhythm should have occurred to me.”

  “Yes, I think it should have,” Dad agreed. “We covered it when I taught you hypnotism.”

  “That was over twenty years ago,” she protested with a frown. Then she passed a hand over her eyes. “The excitement has me exhausted. Please go home, Philip, because I want to go to bed.”

  As soon as Dad left, we both went to bed. Although it was only about ten p.m. in Beverly Hills, according to my circadian rhythm it was one in the morning.

  Ellen’s call came at four a.m. local time. As I put the phone to my ear, I heard a click and knew that Mother had lifted her bedside extension phone too.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Hi,” Ellen’s voice said in my ear. “You must still be up, you answered so fast.”

  “It’s a bedside phone. Are you all right?”

  “Just fine. Pretty weird, wasn’t it? The nurses here told me what happened, but I don’t quite understand why it happened.”

  “Your body is still on East Coast time. Eleven o’clock there is only eight here.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I would never have thought of that.”

  “We didn’t either. Mother and I, I mean. Dad did, though, the moment we mentioned it to him. That’s why we set the cops on you. I nearly had heart failure waiting for news. We didn’t even know which route you had taken.”

  Ellen said in a surprised voice, “Your mother knew. I told her while we were scraping dishes and putting them in the dishwasher.

  I let several seconds tick by in silence before I said, “She must have forgotten. I think she’s listening in. Did you, Mother?”

  Several more seconds passed before Mother said apologetically, “I don’t remember it, Ellen. I have an unfortunate habit of sometimes not listening because I’m thinking of something else. Probably I was plotting how to get Francis to take me to church in the morning.”

  I am sure Ellen noticed nothing unusual about Mother’s voice, but I could detect the slightest change of inflection in it, and I knew that beneath her forced naturalness she was quaking with terror. She could detect the slightest change of inflection in my voice too, you see.

  When Ellen rang off a few moments later, I got up, put on my robe and went down the hall to Mother’s room. When I knocked, she called for me to come in.

  She had expected me, because she was seated on the edge of her bed with a robe over her nightgown. Halting in the doorway, I gazed at her steadily. She turned a brittle smile in my direction, but her gaze went past me to the door pushed back against the wall.

  I said quietly, “I would hate to lose either my mother or the woman I love. But if I had lost the one, I would have lost both.” Her smile became even more brittle as she concentrated on the door with increased intensity.

  “I love you, Mother,” I said. “But in a different way I love Ellen just as much. A man shouldn’t be forced to choose between the two types of love.”

  The fixed smile faded and her eyes misted. “Yes, a man,” she said, nearly inaudibly. “No longer a boy.” Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to look at me. “May I have another chance?”

  “I told you I love you.”

  She nodded. “Thank you, dear. You are very understanding.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Good night.” Actually I was more understanding than she imagined. I could easily have killed her simply by telling her she had lost my love. I am quite sure I would have found her dead in the morning.

  DAN AND THE DEATH-CELL BLUFF

  Originally published in New Detective Magazine, October 1952.

  The little sad-faced man in the worn seersucker suit arrived in Lake City on the nine-thirty a.m. train. He shook his head at the redcap who tried to relieve him of his bag, shook it again at the ring of eager taxi drivers, found his way to the waiting room and hunched his meager frame onto a bench in the farthest corner. For an hour and a half he sat there quietly, staring sadly at his folded hands, and he was such an insignificant little man, no one gave him a second glance.

  The big, heavy-shouldered man with the perennial lopsided grin arrived in Lake City on the eleven A.M. train. He, too, shook his head at the redcap, but he grinned when he did it, as though amused at the thought of hiring a youngster half his size to carry his heavy bag. He grinned again at the eager taxi drivers, said, “Later, maybe,” and went on to the waiting room.

  He was an enormous man, probably six feet four and two hundred and seventy pounds, but he moved with the controlled grace of a ballet dancer. His square, craggy face, lined by weather and seamed with laughter lines, looked forty; his iron-gray hair looked fifty. Actually he was thirty-six.

  The little man barely glanced up when the big man entered, then returned his sad eyes to his hands. But suddenly the hands were clenched tautly together.

  With his huge suitcase hanging as easily
at his side as though it were a bag of cream puffs, the big man scanned the benches of the waiting room. His eyes touched the little man without interest, moved over the assorted dozen other people in the room and settled on a black-haired girl reading a magazine. She looked up at the same moment.

  He grinned his lopsided grin, waited expectantly, and after studying him a moment, the girl rose and approached him.

  “Mr. Fancy?” she asked tentatively.

  He nodded, widening his grin and examining her with rank appreciation of her beauty, for she was as trim and flawless as a cut cameo. And not much bigger, the big man added mentally.

  “Mr. Dan Fancy?” she persisted.

  “How many people named Fancy do you think you’d find in one waiting room?” he asked quizzically. His voice was a husky, almost rasping bass.

  She grinned, then, too. “I’m Adele Hudson. Mr. Robinson wired me to meet you and explain about the town.”

  “I know. Can it wait till I settle in a hotel and catch a shower? Trains make me feel gritty all over.”

  She was looking beyond him, through the waiting room door, and her face was suddenly pale. “I’m afraid it will have to wait,” she said.

  Dan turned so effortlessly, the movement seemed deliberate, but he was facing the door before the girl’s sentence was finished. Two men in expensive gabardine suits entered the waiting room and stopped in front of him. One was a wide, barrel-chested man nearly as broad as he was tall, with a flat, swarthy face and a low forehead. The other was tall and lean, and carried himself with a sort of rawhide tenseness. He had a thin, cruel face and eyes containing no expression whatever. The tall man did the talking.

  “Your name Fancy?”