Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  Bennet came back a bit later and shook his head emphatically. “The passenger operators didn’t bring it up. I talked to all of them that were on duty today. So where does that leave us?” Bennet looked at Charlie. “Did you bring anything or anybody up here today?”

  “Sure. A couch for a lady down the hall, and laundry, cleaning, stuff like that for lots of people.”

  “But nothing for this apartment?”

  Bennet thought a moment, frowning. “Yeah, the groceries,” he said. “Mrs. Masterson orders by phone from the store at Lexington. The boy got here about three o’clock.”

  “How big a package did he bring?”

  “Well, it wasn’t big enough to hold all this junk,” Charlie said firmly. “It was a cardboard box, maybe a foot square or so.”

  “It’s probably still here then,” Bennet said.

  “Sure. The garbage and trash is picked up after supper, you know, around nine.”

  “I eat supper at five-thirty,” Bennet said.

  “Well, there’s different customs all over,” Charlie said tolerantly. “But our people eat dinner about eight. After cocktails, you know,” he said, twisting the knife.

  “Sure, they’re hot shots,” Bennet said.

  Dave followed Charlie and the detective into the small, well-equipped kitchen. An empty cardboard box was under the sink. Dave opened the refrigerator and saw lamb chops, asparagus, things for salad. He noticed also a tray on the sideboard which held two glasses, a cocktail shaker and ice bucket. Polly had had everything ready as usual; drinks on the tray, supper in the refrigerator.

  “I guess she put the food away,” he said. His voice sounded very thin and tight in his ears.

  “Well, nobody could have got all that junk into this little box anyway,” Bennet said. He scratched his head. “This business is beginning to annoy me.”

  THE BEDROOM door opened then and the doctor came out, wiping his glasses with a big clean handkerchief.

  “Mr. Masterson?” he said, looking Dave up and down.

  “Yes. How’s my wife. Can I see her now?”

  “Presently. She’s resting comfortably at the moment, and is in no danger. She’s had some sort of shock, and will require a day or two of rest. I’ve left a prescription on the table by the bed. You see to it that she takes it according to instructions. Understand?”

  “Yes, certainly. But what kind of a shock did she have?”

  “I don’t know,” the doctor said. “You’ll have to excuse me now.”

  Dave strode into the bedroom and knelt beside Polly. She opened her eyes and smiled at him. “I’ve been an awful bother, haven’t I?” she said softly.

  He shook his head quickly, not trusting himself to speak. Then he caught her in his arms and pulled her close to him, needing her warm and safe against him as a man dying of thirst needs water.

  He didn’t realize that they weren’t alone until Bennet cleared his throat and said, “Sorry to intrude, Mr. Masterson.”

  Dave looked up at him, still holding Polly in his arms. “What do you want?” he said.

  “Just a question or two of your wife. Mrs. Masterson, I’m a detective. Your husband called me when he came home and found you lying in the living room. Now,” Bennet paused and rubbed his forehead, “can you tell us how those things got in there?”

  “What things?”

  “Do you feel strong enough to walk in there and see?”

  “To the living room? Certainly.”

  “You don’t have to, honey.”

  “But I want to know what this is all about.”

  With Dave holding her arm, she went into the living room. She looked about for a few seconds in silence. “What is all this stuff?” she said.

  Bennet frowned. “We don’t know, Ma’am. And nobody seems to know how it got here. But your husband tells us you were lying on that stone wheel when he came in.”

  “Was I, darling?”

  “That’s right,” Dave said. “Now look, you’d better get back to bed. The doctor said you had to rest.”

  “Mrs. Masterson, what do you remember about passing out?” Bennet asked her.

  “The doctor asked me that same question, but I wasn’t much help, I’m afraid. I had left the bathroom after my shower, and I was thinking of getting the ice cubes out. And that’s all I remember.”

  Bennet looked at her closely for a moment or so, his mild blue eyes deep and thoughtful. “Well, I hope you’ll feel better in the morning,” he said. Then he scratched his head. “I’ll run along now. There’s no laws been broken that I can see. But I’m not happy about this business, not for a moment.”

  After he’d gone Dave took Polly back to bed. He plumped up the pillows, removed her sandals and made her lie down under a light blanket.

  “Do you feel like something to eat?” he said then. “Maybe a clear soup and a chop.”

  “No, darling. Realty I’m not a bit hungry.”

  “Okay. I’ll call the drug store and get this prescription in the works.”

  When he returned to the bedroom, she said, “Sit here beside me, please.”

  “Sure. It’s a pleasure.” He sat on the edge of the bed and held her hands. “Feeling better?”

  “Yes, I think so. Dave I have something to tell you. Try to be patient with me, please.”

  “All right,” he said slowly. Her face and eyes were very grave. He had never seen her this way before.

  “I bought those thing in the living room,” she said.

  “You what?”

  “I bought all of those things,” she said firmly. “At junk shops and antique shops on Second and Third avenues. And I made Charlie promise to tell no one that he brought them up here.”

  “But this is crazy, honey,” he said.

  “I know,” she admitted. “And the worst of it is that I don’t know why I did it. Isn’t that weird?”

  “Well, sort of,” Dave said, scratching his head. “But maybe it’s nothing to worry about. I was getting a little sick of the way the living room looked, if you must know. That new stuff dresses it up pretty nicety. Don’t you think?”

  “Now don’t be kind and thoughtful about it,” she said.

  “Should I tie you to the bed and beat you? Seriously, you probably had a whim to get those things, so you went ahead with it. Nothing wrong with that. Good healthy reaction, as a matter of fact.” He squeezed her hands, smiling at her and not believing himself for an instant. And he was very frightened. “Let’s don’t talk about it anymore,” he suggested.

  “All right. You’re being very sweet.”

  “Nonsense.”

  THE BOY from the drug store arrived a little while later, and Dave gave Polly her medicine. She felt a bit hungry then, so he fixed her a bowl of broth with crackers. There was nothing externally wrong with her; she looked the same and talked the same but this semblance of normality was belied by that hideously incongruous assortment of junk in the living room. She had bought that stuff, had smuggled it into the apartment, and for no reason at all. And she had lied about it to the detective, Bennet.

  Dave went to bed that night a very worried man. He didn’t sleep right away, of course. He lay staring at the ceiling, smoking in the darkness and listening with part of his mind to her deep even breathing. With the rest of his mind he was toting up his savings and credit possibilities, and splitting them up in terms of specialists, sanitariums, changes of scene . . . Finally, toward morning, he dropped into restless sleep.

  He awoke, dazed and shaken, to the clatter of the alarm clock. For an instant he couldn’t remember what was wrong. He had only the vague troubled presentiment that soon he would recall some distressingly bad news. And he did remember of course when he turned to Polly’s bed.

  It was empty, but the sight of the rumpled bedclothes, and the soft indentation in the pillow reminded him of last night, of the stone wheel, and of her bewildering behavior.

  He left the bedroom, wondering where she was, and it didn’t take him more t
han ten seconds to realize that she wasn’t in the apartment. When he returned to the bedroom, half-running now, he saw the note pinned to the edge of her pillow.

  Why hadn’t he spotted it instantly? He ripped it loose from the pillow and read the message, which was written in her neat, precise handwriting. It was a very short little note: “Darling, I’m sick. I know it. So I’m going away until I feel better. Please don’t follow me. If you still love me, don’t try to find me.”

  She hadn’t bothered to sign it.

  Dave hesitated a moment, aware in a dim, confused fashion that his mind wasn’t working at all. He was like a tree or a vegetable, rooted to the ground, unable to think or move. How long this inanimate inertia gripped him he didn’t know; but at last he was moving and his mind was functioning.

  All right, she’s gone, he thought. The first thing to do is get her back. And that was a job for the police. He was at the phone when he realized that they would want a description of what she had been wearing. That wouldn’t be too hard to determine. He went through her closet, sliding suits and dresses along pole and trying to decide what was missing. Two dresses were gone. Luckily they were similar in appearance. A white silk print with a pattern of small flowers. Brown-and-white spectator pumps, no hose. Short white gloves, a cocoa-colored straw hat. A bracelet of junk jewelry on her left wrist.

  That was the outfit she had worn, and she had taken an overnight bag for the extra dress, lingerie, and toilet articles.

  Within two minutes he was talking to Bennet. The detective listened quietly, interrupting him only once or twice with questions. Dave told him everything—that Polly had bought the unlikely assortment of items in the living room for no reason at all, and that she had left him. He read him

  Polly’s note and then gave him a description of the clothes she had worn.

  “All right,” Bennet said, when he finished. “I’ll give all this to the Missing Persons Bureau and they’ll get her on the radio right away. Let’s see, your wife was about five three and weighed what? One fifteen, one twenty?”

  “She was five two, and weighed one hundred and eight pounds,” Dave said.

  “You say she seemed pretty calm last night, eh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well—have you two been getting along okay? You know lots of wives pull stunts like this when they’re having trouble with their husbands.”

  “No, we’ve been getting along perfectly,” Dave said. But how could you be sure? he thought.

  “We’ll do our best to find her,” Bennet said. “Maybe her nerves are just a little shot. Maybe all she needs is a rest. I’ll call you if we get any news.”

  “Thank you.”

  DAVE phoned his office to tell his secretary he wouldn’t be in that day and then, because he couldn’t bear to be idle, showered, shaved and dressed. He made coffee and ate a piece of toast. After that he did all the dishes and tidied the apartment. Then he sat down in the living room and stared angrily at the junk that

  Polly had purchased. Why would she do it? What compulsion drove her to buy this great wheel, this dusty old saddle, the broken kite and long metal bar? It made no sense at all. And why had she left him? That was the most painful of all the questions that crowded into his mind. Surely she must know she could trust him for help and understanding.

  At noon Bennet phoned him. “We don’t have anything yet,” he said. “But the call is going out every fifteen minutes on the police radio, so we should get a break pretty soon. How much money did she have with her?”

  “I don’t know. Not a great deal. Fifty or sixty dollars maybe. But she could have stopped at the bank.”

  “We’ll check that. I’ll let you know when we get a lead.”

  The day wore on. Dave wandered distractedly through the small apartment smoking one cigarette after another and making a fruitless effort to convince himself that the police were doing everything possible, and that there was nothing for him to do but sit tight and wait for news from Bennet. That was all true enough but it didn’t relieve his galling sense of impotence. He decided to stick it out until six o’clock; if there was no news by that time he would go out to look for her himself. Anything positive was preferable to futile waiting.

  Then, at five-thirty, there was a knock on the front door. Dave ran to answer it, with only one hopeful thought in his mind: she had come back!

  But it wasn’t Polly who had knocked, it was a solidly-built, middle-aged man in a limp seersucker suit. He wore rimless glasses and behind these his blue eyes glinted with lively intelligence. There was a competent, efficient look about him, in the square thrust of his jaw, the steadiness of his gaze, and the high imposing sweep of his forehead.

  “I’m sorry to bother you at this time, Mr. Masterson,” he said in a deep and pleasant voice. “My name is Dr. Shaw, and I live in the building across the street.”

  “What was it you wanted to see me about?” Dave said.

  “I think perhaps that I can help you find your wife, Mr. Masterson. May I come in?” Dave caught him by the arms. “Is this some kind of a joke?”

  “Believe me, I am not a sadist, Mr. Masterson. This is no matter for joking. I have thought long and anxiously before coming here. I feared I might raise your hopes and be unable to fulfill them. But I had to come to see you, I realized at last. So long as there was the chance that I might help you, then it was my plain responsibility to do what I could.”

  DR. SHAW’S sincerity came through with each word, and Dave felt a new confidence growing in him. “Very well, please come in,” he said.

  “Thank you.” Dr. Shaw entered the living room and looked at the strange objects that Polly had bought. He knelt beside the great stone wheel and peered at it closely. Then he inspected the saddle, the kite and the long metal tube, and on this last item he spent several minutes. Then from his squatting position he looked up at Dave.

  “I heard about these things, and your wife’s disappearance, from the doorman of my building. He had got the news from one of the staff here. I went to work as usual this morning but I couldn’t concentrate on my experiments.” He rose and began pacing the floor, a faint frown clouding his large intelligent features. “The presence of these things here plus the fact that your wife had vanished added up to a hypothesis which had ominous implications.”

  “You mean she’s in danger?”

  “No, not yet. If my guess is valid your wife is safe for the moment. But there is a good chance that she will face serious danger in the near future.”

  “How do you know so much about it?” Dave demanded.

  “I am not sure of what I know,” Dr. Shaw said, undisturbed by the challenge in Dave’s manner. “I am a scientist, a nuclear physicist, and I have spent a lifetime studying the properties of our universe and the nature of the time and space which enclose it. And I am sure of only one thing, and that is the uncertainty of my information and the conclusions I have drawn from it. Therefore I must beg you to listen to me in the same spirit of humility in which I speak to you. Make the effort to rid your mind of predjudice, of pre-conceived notions, of all rigid loyalty to that which is old and familiar, and all resentment to that which is new and strange. Only in that way can we progress toward a solution of a problem which is mine as well as yours. Will you make that effort, Mr. Masterson?”

  There was an honesty and integrity blazing in the man’s face and words, Dave nodded slowly. “I’ll do anything that will get my wife back,” he said.

  “Excellent. Now let us look at these objects carefully.” Dr. Shaw’s manner was brisker now, and charged with suppressed excitement. “Does their nature tell you anything?”

  Dave shook his head.

  “Then let us think about them. A wheel, a saddle, a kite. These three objects possess one common property; they can be used in flight or transportation. The last item, the bar of metal, may or may not have the same property. But I am going to assume that it does for the moment. And now to go on a bit. How did these things ge
t into your apartment?”

  “My wife bought them at junk shops around town, and bribed the freight elevator man to bring them up here and say nothing about it.”

  Dr. Shaw tilted his big head to one side. “No, that is not true.”

  “You mean she lied?”

  “She told you what she may have thought to be the truth. There is a difference. No, two of these objects at least did not come from New York junk shops. Most certainly not. Of the remaining two I cannot be so emphatic. Look at this stone wheel first. It is a chariot wheel, or a cart wheel more accurately, of a type common in Greece five hundred years before the birth of Christ. Its condition indicates that it received heavy usage. It is no longer serviceable. Therefore it was discarded, thrown into an old pit most probably, some twenty-five hundred years ago. Now who would bring so worthless an object to the United States? It is difficult to imagine anyone doing that, don’t you agree? Second, look at this metal tube. I do not know the nature of that metal, and I seriously doubt that it was mined on this planet of ours. As we know it, that is. Take a look at my ring now.”

  DR. SHAW extended the little finger of his right hand. He wore a diamond ring on that finger and the top of the stone was marred by two deep, jagged gashes.

  “I deliberately scraped my ring on the end of this tube when I was examining it a moment or so ago,” Dr. Shaw said. “You observe the result? This metal cut the diamond like a hot knife would cut butter. And since this metal is of a type hitherto unknown on earth, I think it is reasonable to doubt that your wife bought it in a Third avenue junk shop. Don’t you agree?”

  “Where did it come from?” Dave asked.

  “That I do not know. From another planet perhaps. Or from time. I lean toward the latter conclusion.”

  “What in the name of God are you talking about?” Dave demanded.

  Dr. Shaw took him by the arm and led him to a chair. “Please sit down,” he said. “I am going to tell you something which will sound fantastic. But I beg you to remember your promise to accept what I say with humility and imagination.”

  “Don’t worry, I can take it standing,” Dave said. “Fire away.”