100 Malicious Little Mysteries Read online

  Jerome’s heart sank. “Different? In what way, Marie?”

  “Well,” said Marie, “Mr. Leach, my old boss, used to pinch me sometimes. And he used to sneak up behind me and kiss me.” She peered coyly at Jerome from under her lashes. “You’re a perfect gentleman, Mr. Kotter. You’re real different.”

  Jerome was enchanted and wasted no further time asking her out to dinner.

  For several weeks everything was wonderful. Then, unexpectedly, Benny Rhoades turned up. Jerome looked up from his desk one day to see his nemesis standing in the doorway.

  “Man,” said Benny, “if it ain’t Jerome Kotter.” He grinned.

  “Benny Rhoades,” exclaimed Jerome. “What are you doing here?”

  “Man, you’re the most,” said Benny softly. “I work in the mail room, man. You’re gonna see a lot of me, Jerome.”

  Jerome’s tail twitched.

  “Why did you come here?” he asked. “Why don’t you leave me alone?”

  Offended innocence replaced the calculating look on Benny’s pasty face.

  “Why, man, I ain’t done a thing. A man’s got to work. And I work here.” He lounged against the door jamb. “I hear you’re a real swingin’ cat around here. I wonder how long that’s gonna last.”

  “Get out,” said Jerome.

  “Sure, Mr. Kotter, sir. Sure. Think I’ll drop by your secretary’s desk. Quite a dish, that Marie.”

  “You stay away from her.” Jerome could feel the fur around his neck rising. His whiskers bristled.

  Benny smiled and glided away like an insidious snake.

  From that time on, Benny did what he could to torment Jerome. He held up his mail until important clients called the bosses to complain about lack of action on their accounts. He slammed Jerome’s tail in doors, usually when some VIP was visiting the office. Worse of all, he vexed Marie by hanging around her desk asking for dates and sometimes sneaking up to nibble at her neck. Marie hated him almost as much as Jerome did.

  Jerome didn’t know quite what he could do about it without jeopardizing his job, of which he had become very fond. The other people at the agency liked him, although they regarded him as a trifle eccentric since he always insisted on sampling the cat food he wrote about. But then everyone to his own tastes, they said.

  Things came to a head one evening when Jerome invited Marie to his apartment for a fish dinner before going out to a show. They were just sitting down to eat when the doorbell rang.

  It was Benny.

  “Cozy,” he murmured, surveying the scene. He slammed the door shut behind him.

  “A real swingin’ cat,” he said, sidling into the room. He produced a small pistol from his pocket.

  “Are you out of your mind, Benny?” said Jerome. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I lost my job,” smiled Benny.

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Marie complained that I bothered her. They fired me.” Benny’s small eyes glittered. “I’ll repay her for the favor, then I’ll take care of you, Jerome. I’ll fix it so they’ll think you shot her for resisting your charms, and then shot yourself. Everybody knows a big cat like you could go beserk anytime.”

  “You’re a rat,” said Marie. “You’re a miserable, black-hearted little rat.”

  Jerome stepped protectively in front of her.

  “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me,” chanted Benny gleefully.

  Jerome was looking at Benny thoughtfully. “A rat,” he said. “That’s what he is. A rat. Funny it never occurred to me before.” His tail twitched nervously.

  Benny didn’t like the look on Jerome’s face. “Stay away from me, man. I’ll shoot.”

  Before Benny could aim, Jerome leaped across the room with the swift, fluid motion of a tiger. He knocked Benny to the floor and easily took the gun from him.

  “A rat,” repeated Jerome softly.

  Benny looked at Jerome’s face so close to his own. “What are you going to do?” he squeaked, his own face pinched and white and his beady eyes terror-stricken. “What are you going to do?”

  Jerome ate him.

  It took a long time to get the police sergeant to take the matter seriously. Marie had urged Jerome to forget the whole thing, but Jerome felt he must confess.

  “You say you ate this guy Benny?” the sergeant asked for the twentieth time.

  “I ate him,” said Jerome.

  “He was a rat,” said Marie.

  The sergeant shook his head. “We get all kinds,” he muttered. “Go home. Sleep it off.” He sighed. “Self-defense, you say?”

  “Benny was going to shoot both of us,” said Marie.

  “Where’s the body?” asked the sergeant.

  Jerome shook his head. “There is no body. I ate him.”

  “He was a rat,” said Marie.

  “There’s no body,” said the sergeant. “We sent a coupla men up to your apartment and there’s no body and no sign of anybody getting killed. We even called this Benny’s family long distance to find out if they knew where he is, but his old man said as far as they are concerned he died at birth. So go home.”

  “I ate him,” insisted Jerome.

  “So you performed a public service. I got six kids to support, buddy. I don’t want to spend the next two years on a head-shrinker’s couch for trying to make the Chief believe I got a six-foot cat here who ate a guy. Now go home, you two, before I get mad.”

  Jerome remained standing in front of the desk.

  “Look,” said the sergeant. “You ate a guy.”

  “A rat,” corrected Marie.

  “A rat,” said the sergeant. “So how do you feel?”

  “Terrible,” said Jerome. “I have a most remarkable case of indigestion.”

  “You ate a rat,” said the sergeant. “Now you’ve got a bellyache. That’s your punishment. Remember when you ate green apples as a kid?” He sighed. “Now go home.”

  As they turned to leave, Jerome heard the sergeant muttering to himself about not having had a vacation in four years.

  Despite his indigestion, Jerome felt marvelous. “Let the punishment fit the crime,” he said with satisfaction. He took Marie’s arm in a courtly fashion and sang softly as they walked along. “My object all sublime, I shall achieve in time, to let the punishment fit the crime, the punishment fit the crime...”

  “Gee, Mr. Kotter,” said Marie, gazing up at him in admiration. “You’re so different from anyone else I ever went with.”

  “Different?” asked Jerome. “How, Marie?”

  “Gee,” said Marie, “I never went out before with anybody who quoted poetry.”

  Don’t I Know You?

  by Henry Slesar

  The man was well-groomed, in a sleek, furry way midway in style between Broadway and Bond Street. His hands were buried in the deep pockets of his camel’s-hair coat, and he blew a frosty breath of winter past his mink mustache as he waited for the light to change.

  The other man, smaller, not so well-groomed, his brown tweed overcoat threadbare in comparison, looked at him sharply, looked away, looked back, and was finally rewarded by an answering stare, equally puzzled and involved.

  They crossed the street together, matching stride for stride, and then stopped at the opposite corner and looked at each other again. The mustached man cracked the silence first, with a smile and the words:

  “Don’t I know you?”

  It took the smaller man a longer time to thaw. He said, “I sure as heck think I know you. Only I can’t remember—”

  “Carmody’s the name,” the mustached man said, in a manner suggesting the click of heels or the presentation of a card. Actually, he didn’t move his well-shined shoes or remove his hands from his pockets.

  “My name’s Siegel,” the smaller man said. “Frank Siegel. And if we do know each other” — here he finally managed the smile — “must have been a heck of a long time ago. You don’t come from Michigan, by any chance?�
��

  “Never been there,” Carmody said. “But I’ve traveled a lot. South mostly, Florida, the Caribbean, southern Europe. I like the sunshine — hate this beastly cold.” He said the adjective without a hint of English accent.

  “No,” Siegel said, “Never been to any of those places.”

  “School, maybe? No, I suppose not. I went to Washington and Lee.”

  “City College.”

  “Must have been some place,” Carmody said. “The more I look at you, the surer I am.”

  “Same with me,” Siegel said.

  “Look,” Carmody said, searching the east and west of the street, “I’m in no great hurry, are you? We could stop for a drink — nice warm bar — puzzle it all out.”

  “Well,” Siegel said uncertainly. But he wasn’t in a hurry. “All right,” he finished. “One drink.”

  They chose a small uncrowded cocktail lounge on 50th Street and took a booth in the rear. Carmody had a martini, and Siegel, who didn’t like liquor much, had a beer. He was content to let Carmody do the probing of the past.

  “Mutual friends, maybe?” Carmody said. “Know anybody named Martin? My life is loaded with people named Martin. No? How about George LeRoy? Carl Kramer? Lillian Dietz?”

  Siegel kept shaking his head. He began to feel tired, and even to lose interest, until Carmody said, “Well, I know one thing. We don’t have the same occupation.” He lifted his glass. The gin twinkled and so did his eyes. “I’m a thief,” he said.

  Siegel’s eyebrows met. “How do you mean that?”

  “Why, literally, my friend, literally,” Carmody said. “I’m a member of a vanishing species. A good thief. Society thief. Used to be the darling of the fiction writers and Sunday supplements — but no more.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Siegel said, in an injured voice.

  “No, I wouldn’t do that,” answered Carmody. “I steal for a living. Steal very nice, pretty things, with high price tags. Only from people who can afford it, of course — that’s my one principle.”

  He took his left hand out of his pocket for the first time. There was a jeweled bracelet in the hand. Rows of neat diamonds made blue daggers of light in the darkened booth.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it? Belonged to a widow who hasn’t worn it in fifteen years. I’m doing everybody a favor by restoring it to circulation.”

  “And you really stole this bracelet?”

  “This morning,” Carmody smiled. “It was very easy, really. And of course, now I’ll sell it — to anybody who wants it. I’ll even sell it to you.”

  “I couldn’t buy something like that,” Siegel said.

  “Maybe you could. I’d guess that it’s worth, oh, five, six thousand dollars. You could have it for five, six hundred, whatever you could afford.”

  “You really mean this?”

  “Of course,” Carmody said. “It’s the least I can do for an old friend.” The smile broadened, showing most of his good teeth. “Even if I can’t remember who you are.”

  Siegel sighed. It was a sigh of regret. He reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. He opened it lengthways to show Carmody something else that glittered, even if dully. It was his police badge.

  “I’m a detective,” he said, with genuine sadness. “I’m sorry, Mr. Carmody, but I’ll have to place you under arrest.”

  Carmody’s facial muscles gave a twitch of surprise. He groaned slightly, and put the “diamond” bracelet into the ashtray. He was plainly distressed, but he forced himself to restore a shadow of his lost smile.

  “Of course,” he said. “Now I remember where I know you from.”

  Meet Mr. Murder

  by Morris Hershman

  Roy Worth said, “That’s a lot of nonsense! Do you expect your own husband to believe in the supernatural?”

  “It’s true.” Edie Worth put a hand to her heart, as usual when her judgment was disputed. “The man stood in front of Dr. Arbuckle’s house all night, and on the next day he died.”

  “Arbuckle was sick. He’d had a heart condition for years. Sooner or later he was sure to die, only sooner in his case. So was that old Mrs. Gulp, who suffered from an aortic aneurism.”

  “But he stood in front of the house.”

  “You mean the man called Gray because he always wears gray. All you know about him is that when he stands in front of a house somebody in it dies very soon.”

  “Yes, and you know where that man is right now.”

  Roy pushed back his chair from the kitchen table and stood up. “I could understand your getting excited about it if we lived in Africa, for instance, but this sort of thing doesn’t happen in Lakevale.”

  “Look outside,” Edie suddenly whispered, both hands around her heart area. “You know how sick I am. Don’t argue with me, Roy. Just look.”

  He walked over to the window. A man stood across the road, facing them. The swiss-cheese colored full moon lighted him so that it was possible to see him leaning against a pole with his legs crossed. He wore a gray topcoat, a gray pair of pants, and a hat to match,

  “Do you want me to call the police? He’s loitering, after all, and I suppose he can be arrested for that.”

  “Go see Hugo Bradford,” she insisted. “He’s on the police force. Maybe he’ll know what has to be done.”

  “It’s late at night to be disturbing neighbors.”

  “Please,” she said in a choked voice.

  Roy glanced angrily at his wife, noticing how much her figure had run to fat. The once lovely bosom had started to sag, the legs had become much thicker, and nobody could have called her face a youthful one any longer.

  He shrugged and strode over to the phone.

  She said quickly, “Hugo only lives across the street, Roy. I don’t want the whole town to know about this.”

  Glumly he nodded. She wouldn’t quit pestering him, he knew. He had been married to her for twelve years.

  “I’ll be all right here,” Edie said. “And please go out the back way so he won’t see you.”

  “I’m going out the front way. It’s my house and I can do that much if I—”

  She said hoarsely, “My medicine, Roy. I need my medicine.”

  “You always do need it when I want to do one thing and you want me to do another.”

  But he brought it all the same, along with a teaspoon and a half-filled water glass. Edie swallowed an orange pill from the bottle and settled back.

  He went to the closet and put on his coat, jacket, and fur-lined gloves. He was still muttering about a heart condition being used by some patients to get their own way as he walked out the back door. Wind made his skin tingle.

  Roy’s jaw jutted out when he passed in front of the man called Gray, having changed his route on purpose; Gray didn’t look to the right or left. The Bradford doorbell was answered by Hugo Bradford himself, who invited Roy to the living room for a drink. Bradford was a tall, muscular man who’d been decorated for bravery during the Korean war and was now a police sergeant.

  “I can guess why you’re here,” Bradford said, “and I advise you and your wife to take no notice of the man and help smash his racket.”

  “Racket?”

  “Gray has established himself as sort of a harbinger of doom. What he now does is determine who in town is sick and phones the head of the house at work, if at all possible, and asks for two thousand dollars to stay away. You’d be surprised how many people pay up.”

  “Well, he’s varying his method with us,” Roy said promptly. “He just appeared and that’s all.”

  “Maybe you’ll get a phone call tomorrow, when your wife is more thoroughly scared,” Bradford said. “I’ll call the boys to take him away, but it’ll bring you some publicity, heaven knows. And he’ll only come back when he gets out of jail.

  “There’s really nothing that can be done. No one wants to testify against him. We only heard about his real racket by accident. One of his victims has a nephew who’s a stenographer at the courthouse.”
/>
  “You’d better have him taken away,” Roy decided. “For Edie’s sake. She really does have a heart condition, you know.”

  “Okay,” Bradford said. “We’ll try to scare him out of town, but it won’t work with anybody like that guy, you know. He’ll come back and take up his stand where he left it.”

  “I’m tired of being pushed around by him or by — well, never mind. Good night, Hugo. Give my best to Miranda and the kids.”

  Roy was muttering under his breath when he left Bradford’s house. He wondered if it would settle Edie’s mind to tell her the truth. Probably not. She had decided on what she wanted and was too stubborn about having anything but her way.

  Roy walked to the curb till he was directly in front of the man Gray. It only took a minute. As he passed by he said: “You wasted those phone calls you made to me, buddy, so do the worst to my wife that you can. The very worst.”

  Roy Worth remembered to wipe the smile off his face as he let himself into his house.

  Co-Incidence

  by Edward D. Hoch

  I first met Rosemary when I joined the editorial staff of Neptune Books, last summer. The job was my big chance, because prior to that time my editing experience had been confined mostly to the pulps and a chain of true crime magazines. For me, Neptune Books was a dream come true — a job with an unlimited future in a fast-growing phase of the publishing industry.

  I suppose everyone is familiar with Neptune Books, those dollar ninety-five reprints with a picture of a smiling King Neptune as their trademark. They say in the business that the reason Neptune is always smiling is that he’s just seen the latest sales figures. And if it’s true, he has plenty of reason to smile.

  For in three short years Neptune Books have risen to the top of the field. Their sales are beyond belief, and even their own officers shake their heads in pleased amazement as the money pours in.

  The cause of it all, as everyone in the publishing business knows, is Rosemary. At twenty-eight, she is already the brains behind Neptune’s smile. The simple fact is that she is a mathematical genius, not just in the usual sense, but in a very unusual sense.