by Otto Penzler
Immediately a nervous laughter broke out and the company, chattering, began to scatter through the rooms.
Mrs. Kildair, stopping in her bedroom, donned a Watteau-like cooking apron, and slipping her rings from her fingers fixed the three on her pincushion with a hatpin.
“Your rings are beautiful, dear, beautiful!” said the low voice of Maude Lille, who, with Harris and Mrs. Cheever, was in the room.
“There’s only one that is very valuable,” said Mrs. Kildair, touching with her thin fingers the ring that lay uppermost, two large diamonds, flanking a magnificent sapphire.
“It is beautiful—very beautiful,” said the journalist, her eyes fastened to it with an uncontrollable fascination. She put out her fingers and let them rest caressingly on the sapphire, withdrawing them quickly as though the contact had burned them.
“It must be very valuable,” she said, her breath catching a little. Mrs. Cheever moving forward, suddenly looked at the ring.
“It cost five thousand six years ago,” said Mrs. Kildair, glancing down at it. “It has been my talisman ever since. For the moment, however, I am cook; Maude Lille, you are scullery maid: Harris is the chef, and we are under his orders. Mrs. Cheever, did you ever peel onions?”
“Good Heavens, no!” said Mrs. Cheever, recoiling.
“Well, there are no onions to peel,” said Mrs. Kildair, laughing. “All you’ll have to do is to help set the table. On to the kitchen!”
Under their hostess’s gay guidance the seven guests began to circulate busily through the rooms, laying the table, grouping the chairs, opening bottles, and preparing the material for the chafing dishes. Mrs. Kildair, in the kitchen, ransacked the ice box, and with her own hands chopped the fines herbes, shredded the chicken and measured the cream.
“Flanders, carry this in carefully,” she said, her hands in a towel. “Cheever, stop watching your wife and put the salad bowl on the table. Everything ready, Harris? All right. Every one sit down. I’ll be right in.”
She went into her bedroom, and divesting herself of her apron hung it in the closet. Then going to her dressing table she drew the hatpin from the pincushion and carelessly slipped the rings on her fingers. All at once she frowned and looked quickly at her hand. Only two rings were there, the third ring, the one with the sapphire and the two diamonds, was missing.
“Stupid,” she said to herself, and returned to her dressing table. All at once she stopped. She remembered quite clearly putting the pin through the three rings.
She made no attempt to search further, but remained without moving, her fingers drumming slowly on the table, her head to one side, her lip drawn in a little between her teeth, listening with a frown to the babble from the outer room. Who had taken the ring? Each of her guests had had a dozen opportunities in the course of the time she had been busy in the kitchen.
“Too much time before the mirror, dear lady,” called out Flanders gaily, who from where he was seated could see her.
“It is not he,” she said quickly. Then she reconsidered. “Why not? He is clever—who knows? Let me think.”
To gain time she walked back slowly into the kitchen, her head bowed, her thumb between her teeth, “Who has taken it?”
She ran over the characters of her guests and their situations as she knew them. Strangely enough, at each her mind stopped upon some reason that might explain a sudden temptation.
“I shall find out nothing this way,” she said to herself after a moment deliberation; “that is not the important thing to me just now. The important thing is to get the ring back.”
And slowly, deliberately, she began to walk back and forth, her clenched hand beating the deliberate rhythmic measure of her journey.
Five minutes later, as Harris, installed en maître over the chafing dish, was giving directions, spoon in the air, Mrs. Kildair came into the room like a lengthening shadow. Her entrance had been made with scarcely a perceptible sound, and yet each guest was aware of it at the same moment, with a little nervous start.
“Heavens, dear lady,” exclaimed Flanders, “you come in on us like a Greek tragedy! What is it you have for us, a surprise?”
As he spoke she turned her swift glance on him, drawing her forehead together until the eyebrows ran in a straight line.
“I have something to say to you,” she said in a sharp, businesslike manner, watching the company with penetrating eagerness.
There was no mistaking the seriousness of her voice. Mr. Harris extinguished the oil lamp, covering the chafing dish clumsily with a discordant, disagreeable sound. Mrs. Cheever and Mrs. Enos Jackson swung about abruptly, Maude Lille rose a little from her seat, while the men imitated these movements of expectancy with a clumsy shuffling of the feet.
“Mr. Enos Jackson?”
“Yes, Mrs. Kildair.”
“Kindly do as I ask you.”
“Certainly.”
She had spoken his name with a peremptory positiveness that was almost an accusation. He rose calmly, raising his eyebrows a little in surprise.
“Go to the door,” she continued, shifting her glance from him to the others. “Are you there? Lock it. Bring me the key.”
He executed the order without bungling, and returning stood before her, tendering the key.
“You’ve locked it?” she said, making the words an excuse to bury her glance in his.
“As you wished me to.”
“Thanks.”
She took from him the key and shifting slightly, likewise locked the door into her bedroom through which she had come.
Then transferring the keys to her left hand, seemingly unaware of Jackson, who still awaited her further commands, her eyes studied a moment the possibilities of the apartment.
“Mr. Cheever?” she said in a low voice.
“Yes, Mrs. Kildair.”
“Blow out all the candles except the candelabrum on the table.”
“Put out the lights, Mrs. Kildair?”
“At once.”
Mr. Cheever, in rising, met the glance of his wife, and the look of questioning and wonder that passed did not escape the hostess.
“But, my dear Mrs. Kildair,” said Mr. Jackson with a little nervous catch of her breath, “what is it? I’m getting terribly worked up! My nerves—”
“Miss Lille?” said the voice of command.
“Yes.”
The journalist, calmer than the rest, had watched the proceedings without surprise, as though forewarned by professional instinct that something of importance was about to take place. Now she rose quietly with an almost stealthy motion.
“Put the candelabrum on this table—here,” said Mrs. Kildair, indicating a large round table on which a few books were grouped. “No, wait. Mr. Jackson, first clear off the table. I want nothing on it.”
“But, Mrs. Kildair—” began Mr. Jackson’s shrill voice again.
“That’s it. Now put down the candelabrum.”
In a moment, as Mr. Cheever proceeded methodically on his errand, the brilliant crossfire of lights dropped in the studio, only a few smoldering wicks winking on the walls, while the high room seemed to grow more distant as it came under the sole dominion of the three candles bracketed in silver at the head of the bare mahogany table.
“Now listen!” said Mrs. Kildair, and her voice had in it a cold note. “My sapphire ring has just been stolen.”
She said it suddenly, hurling the news among them and waiting ferretlike for some indications in the chorus that broke out.
“Stolen!”
“Oh, my dear Mrs. Kildair!”
“Stolen—by Jove!”
“You don’t mean it!”
“What! Stolen here—to-night?”
“The ring has been taken within the last twenty minutes,” continued Mrs. Kildair in the same determined, chiseled tone. “I am not going to mince words. The ring has been taken and the thief is among you.”
For a moment nothing was heard but an indescribable gasp and a sudden turning and se
arching, then suddenly Cheever’s deep bass broke out:
“Stolen! But, Mrs. Kildair, is it possible?”
“Exactly. There is not the slightest doubt,” said Mrs. Kildair. “Three of you were in my bedroom when I placed my rings on the pincushion. Each of you has passed through there a dozen times since. My sapphire ring is gone, and one of you has taken it.”
Mrs. Jackson gave a little scream, and reached heavily for a glass of water. Mrs. Cheever said something inarticulate in the outburst of masculine exclamation. Only Maude Lille’s calm voice could be heard saying:
“Quite true. I was in the room when you took them off. The sapphire ring was on top.”
“Now listen!” said Mrs. Kildair, her eyes on Maude Lille’s eyes. “I am not going to mince words. I am not going to stand on ceremony. I’m going to have that ring back. Listen to me carefully. I’m going to have that ring back, and until I do, not a soul shall leave this room.” She tapped on the table with her nervous knuckles. “Who has taken it I do not care to know. All I want is my ring. Now I’m going to make it possible for whoever took it to restore it without possibility of detection. The doors are locked and will stay locked. I am going to put out the lights, and I am going to count one hundred slowly. You will be in absolute darkness; no one will know or see what is done. But if at the end of that time the ring is not here on the table I shall telephone the police and have every one in this room searched. Am I quite clear?”
Suddenly she cut short the nervous outbreak of suggestions and in the same firm voice continued:
“Every one take his place about the table. That’s it. That will do.”
The women, with the exception of the inscrutable Maude Lille, gazed hysterically from face to face, while the men compressing their fingers, locking them or grasping their chins, looked straight ahead fixedly at their hostess.
Mrs. Kildair, having calmly assured herself that all were ranged as she wished, blew out two of the three candles.
“I shall count one hundred, no more, no less,” she said. “Either I get back that ring or every one in this room be searched, remember.”
Leaning over, she blew out the remaining candle and snuffed it.
“One, two, three, four, five—”
She began to count with the inexorable regularity of a clock’s ticking.
In the room every sound was distinct, the rustle of a dress, the grinding of a shoe, the deep, slightly asthmatic breathing of a man.
“Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three—”
She continued to count, while in the methodic unvarying note of her voice there was a rasping reiteration that began to affect the company. A slight, gasping breath, uncontrollable, almost on the verge of hysterics, was heard, and a man nervously clearing his throat.
“Forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven—”
Still nothing had happened. Mrs. Kildair did not vary her measure the slightest, only the sound became more metallic.
“Sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine, and seventy—”
Some one had sighed.
“Seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five, seventy-six, seventy-seven—”
All at once, clear, unmistakable, on the resounding plane of the table was heard a slight metallic note.
“The ring!”
It was Maude Lille’s quick voice that had spoken. Mrs. Kildair continued to count.
“Eighty-nine, ninety, ninety-one—”
The tension became unbearable. Two or three voices protested against the needless prolonging of the torture.
“Ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine and one hundred.”
A match sputtered in Mrs. Kildair’s hand and on the instant the company craned forward. In the center of the table was the sparkling sapphire and diamond ring. Candles were lit, flaring up like searchlights on the white accusing faces.
“Mr. Cheever, you may give it to me,” said Mrs. Kildair. She held out her hand without trembling, a smile of triumph on her face, which had in it for a moment an expression of positive cruelty.
Immediately she changed, contemplating with amusement the horror of her guests, staring blindly from one to another, seeing the indefinable glance of interrogation that passed from Cheever to Mrs. Cheever, from Mrs. Jackson to her husband, and then without emotion she said:
“Now that that is over we can have a very gay little supper.”
WHEN PETERS HAD pushed back his chair, satisfied as only a trained raconteur can be by the silence of a difficult audience, and had busied himself with a cigar, there was an instant outcry.
“I say, Peters, old boy, that is not all!”
“Absolutely.”
“The story ends there?”
“That ends the story.”
“But who took the ring?”
Peters extended his hands in an empty gesture.
“What! It was never found out?”
“Never.”
“No clue?”
“None.”
“I don’t like the story,” said De Gollyer.
“It’s no story at all,” said Steingall.
“Permit me,” said Quinny in a didactic way; “it is a story, and it is complete. In fact, I consider it unique because it has none of the banalities of a solution and leaves the problem even more confused than at the start.”
“I don’t see—” began Rankin.
“Of course you don’t, my dear man,” said Quinny crushingly. “You do not see that any solution would be common place, whereas no solution leaves an extraordinary intellectual problem.”
“How so?”
“In the first place,” said Quinny, preparing to annex the topic, “whether the situation actually happened or not, which is in itself a mere triviality, Peters has constructed it in a masterly way, the proof of which is that he has made me listen. Observe, each person present might have taken the ring—Flanders, a broker, just come a cropper; Maude Lille, a woman on the ragged side of life in desperate means; either Mr. and Mrs. Cheever, suspected of being card sharps—very good touch that, Peters, when the husband and wife glanced involuntarily at each other at the end—Mr. Enos Jackson, a sharp lawyer, or his wife about to be divorced; even Harris, concerning whom, very cleverly, Peters has said nothing at all to make him quite the most suspicious of all. There are, therefore, seven solutions, all possible and all logical. But beyond this is left a great intellectual problem.”
“How so?”
“Was it a feminine or a masculine action to restore the ring when threatened with a search, knowing that Mrs. Kildair’s clever expedient of throwing the room into darkness made detection impossible? Was it a woman who lacked the necessary courage to continue, or was it a man who repented his first impulse? Is a man or is a woman the greater natural criminal?”
“A woman took it, of course,” said Rankin.
“On the contrary, it was a man,” said Steingall, “for the second action was more difficult than the first.”
“A man, certainly,” said De Gollyer. “The restoration of the ring was a logical decision.”
“You see,” said Quinny triumphantly, “personally I incline to a woman for the reason that a weaker feminine nature is peculiarly susceptible to the domination of her own sex. There you are. We could meet and debate the subject year in and year out and never agree.”
“I recognize most of the characters,” said De Gollyer with a little confidential smile toward Peters. “Mrs. Kildair, of course, is all you say of her—an extraordinary woman. The story is quite characteristic of her. Flanders, I am not sure of, but I think I know him.”
“Did it really happen?” asked Rankin, who always took the commonplace point of view.
“Exactly as I have told it,” said Peters.
“The only one I don’t recognize is Harris,” said De Gollyer pensively.
“Your humble servant,” said Peters, smiling.
The four looked up suddenly with a little start.
“What!” said
Quinny, abruptly confused. “You—you, were there?”
“I was there.”
The four continued to look at him without speaking, each absorbed in his own thoughts, with a sudden ill ease.
A club attendant, with a telephone slip on a tray, stopped by Peters’ side. He excused himself and went along the porch, nodding from table to table.
“Curious chap,” said De Gollyer musingly.
“Extraordinary.”
The word was like a murmur in the group of four, who continued watching Peters’ trim, disappearing figure in silence, without looking at one another—with a certain ill ease.
THE WHOLE TOWN’S SLEEPING
RAY BRADBURY
With the publication of his first book, The Martian Chronicles, in 1950 and then Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, Ray Bradbury (1920–) quickly became one of the most popular and important writers of science fiction in the twentieth century. Strangely, although his first book was a success in hardcover with six printings in two years, his second book was issued as a paperback original before it was published in hardcover. Almost equally oddly for such a young author, a special edition of Fahrenheit 451, limited to 200 copies, bound in asbestos, was published soon after its initial printing and is one of the most sought-after books in the science fiction collecting world.
This prolific writer is less known as the author of mystery fiction, but he has produced several novels (Death Is a Lonely Business, A Graveyard to Let, and Something Wicked This Way Comes) and numerous short stories in the mystery, crime, and suspense genre, including the following story.
Bradbury’s stories have been described as haunting, fascinating, beautiful, and unique; many defy classification, and none more so than “The Whole Town’s Sleeping.”
First published in the September 1950 issue of McCall’s magazine, it was so baffling—and frustrating—that Alfred Hitchcock selected it for his 1962 anthology, Twelve Stories for Late at Night. It later appeared, in somewhat different form, as a chapter in Bradbury’s 1957 novel Dandelion Wine.
