100 Malicious Little Mysteries Read online

“Why did you do that?” Raleigh asked.

  “An accident,” Harry answered. “It just slipped out of my hands.”

  “I don’t think so,” Raleigh told him evenly.

  “You don’t?”

  “No. I think you dropped it deliberately.”

  “Now why would I do a thing like that?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you.”

  Harry turned to the second man, Alex, and shook his head sadly. Then he produced a wallet from the inside pocket of his sharkskin suit and took a small white business card from it. He handed the card to Raleigh. On it were the words Sentinel Protective Association in black script. Below the words was an embossed drawing of a uniformed soldier with a rifle, standing at attention.

  Harry said, “Accidents happen all the time to small businessmen such as yourself, Mr. Raleigh. There’s nothing you can do to prevent them. But there is something you can do to prevent a lot of other costly business hazards — vandalism, burglary, wanton looting. This is a very bad neighborhood, you know — out of the way, poorly policed. The Sentinel Protective Association eliminates all such hazards here — all except, of course, simple accidents.”

  Raleigh smiled faintly. “And how much does the Sentinel Protective Association charge for this service?”

  “There is a membership fee of one hundred dollars,” Harry said. “The weekly dues are twenty-five dollars, payable on Fridays.”

  “Suppose I choose not to become a member?”

  “Well, as I told you, this is a very bad neighborhood.”

  “Very bad,” Alex agreed. “Why, just last week poor Mr. Holtzmeier — he owns the delicatessen on the next block — poor Mr. Holtzmeier had his store all but destroyed by vandals in the middle of the night.”

  “I suppose Mr. Holtzmeier wasn’t one of Sentinel’s clients.”

  “He was,” Harry said. “But he had decided to discontinue our services only three days before the incident. An unfortunate decision on his part.”

  Raleigh moistened his lips. “They call this kind of thing ‘juice,’ don’t they?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “These protective association shakedown rackets, like the one you’re working here.”

  “I really don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, Mr. Raleigh. The Sentinel Protective Association was formed on behalf of the small businessmen in this neighborhood and it operates solely with their interests in mind.”

  “Of course it does,” Raleigh said.

  “May we put you down on our membership list?”

  Raleigh did not answer at once. He glanced around the little shop; it was a comfortable old place, one that suited him perfectly, and the rent was moderate. The thought of being forced out of it was not an appealing one.

  After a time he turned back to the two men. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I haven’t any choice, have I?”

  Harry’s expression was guileless. “I knew you were a reasonable man,” he said.

  “I suppose you’ll want the money in cash?”

  “Naturally.”

  “I can have it for you by noon tomorrow.”

  Harry shook his head. “We’re sorry, Mr. Raleigh, but we couldn’t possibly offer you any protection until we receive at least a down payment on the membership fee.”

  Alex reached out to the display shelf and began to tilt to and fro a sculptured replica of the Eleventh Century head of Divinity. “A lot of things can happen before noon tomorrow,” he added meaningfully.

  Raleigh sighed. “How much do you want now?”

  “I think fifty dollars would be an equitable sum,” Harry said. “A guarantee of your good faith.”

  Raleigh worried his lower lip for a long moment. Then he sighed again, in a resigned way, and said, “Perhaps it would be better if I paid one month’s dues in advance, along with the membership fee. I wouldn’t want anything to happen unexpectedly.”

  The two men exchanged glances. Harry raised his eyebrows. “Why, that’s very wise of you, Mr. Raleigh,” he said. “Most prudent.”

  “Yes,” Raleigh said. “I have some money in my safe. If you’ll excuse me for a moment?”

  “Certainly.” The two men smiled.

  Raleigh turned and disappeared through a door leading into a storage room at the rear of the shop. After several moments he emerged and stepped to the small check-out counter, where he placed ten twenty-dollar bills on the vinyl top. “Well, there you are,” he said. “Two hundred dollars.”

  Alex came forward and counted the currency. Then he nodded in satisfaction, put the bills into a leather executive wallet, and removed a receipt book and a ballpoint pen from his coat. Laboriously he wrote out a slip and presented it to Raleigh.

  “Congratulations on becoming one of Sentinel’s clients, Mr. Raleigh,” Harry said. “You can rest assured that your cooperation is appreciated, and that you won’t have any trouble whatsoever.”

  Raleigh nodded.

  “Goodbye for now, then,” Harry said in a pleasant voice, and the two callers walked out leisurely.

  As soon as they had vanished from sight, Raleigh hurried to the front door, locked it, and drew down the shade. Then he went quickly into the storage room.

  He sighed a third time, wistfully now, as he set to work. It really was a very nice location — but then, he was reasonably certain, he would have little difficulty finding another quiet, side-street spot, perhaps in another state, where he could set up his Facsimile Shop — and the Old Heidelberg printing press that he was now beginning to dismantle.

  He smiled only once during the lengthy task, and that was when he thought of the inferior-quality throwaways he had run off for testing purposes that morning; and of what would happen when the Sentinel Protective Association tried passing those particular genuine imitation twenty-dollar bills.

  A Corner of the Cellar

  by Michael Gilbert

  “And don’t forget the boiler,” said Mrs. Cotton. “I opened it up so that we can have a nice bath. It’ll need two scuttles of coke.”

  Sam Cotton groaned.

  When they had moved into the Old Rectory at Marlhammer, he had felt in his bones that he was making his last move. He was only forty-nine. But the time comes in every man’s life when he will settle down to enjoy the fruits of his toil.

  Starting as an unskilled, untrained, almost unpaid assistant to an assistant in a shaky firm of chartered accountants, he had worked. How he had worked! Twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day — in his spare time, at night, during the weekend. Now he was a qualified accountant, a partner, a director of four companies, and a rich man.

  Too fat, not healthy, seldom happy, but rich.

  The Old Rectory had cost money. It was a plain, Georgian house, of dark red brick and darker red tile, with more solid wood in its window-frames and box shutters than a builder would put into a row of houses these days.

  It stood back a little, isolated by beech trees from the road. It had its private path to the little church, but it was nearly a quarter of a mile from its nearest human neighbour.

  “It’s pretty,” agreed Mrs. Cotton, “but it’s got too many rooms.”

  This, like most of Bertha Cotton’s deceptively simple remarks, was true. The house had been designed for and occupied by old-fashioned country parsons. It had many bedrooms and vast box-rooms. It had a pantry, which the Cottons used as a kitchen. A kitchen, which they had used as a storeroom. And range upon range of stores and sheds and cellars.

  “I wonder how the Grundsells managed?” said Mrs. Cotton. She referred to their immediate predecessors, who had purchased the house from the last incumbent some five years previously.

  Mr. Grundsell had been a small, happy, cheerful person, popular in the village. Not nearly as rich as Sam Cotton, but perhaps happier. His wife, older than he by some years, had been something of a mystery at first. A heavy, dark, foreign-looking woman, who seldom spoke.

  However, nothing is hidden for long from the legion of charwomen and da
ily helps, and it became known — whisper it softly — that she drank. Seldom, but my, how deeply!

  “A cupboard full of bottles,” reported Mrs. Tyzer. “Gin. And another pile — so big — buried in the paddock.”

  However, Mrs. Grundsell had not lasted. Perhaps she found the house too isolated. She spoke wistfully of Blackpool. Mr. Grundsell, who gave in to her in everything, gave in to her in this. One night of dark and storm when no one was about, he packed her and her belongings into their big, closed car and drove her off. Or so he reported, when he mentioned it later.

  Marlhammer saw her no more. Shortly afterwards, Grundsell had decided to sell.

  “Not surprised, really,” said Mrs. Tyzer. “A great big house, and him all alone in it.”

  That was how the Cottons had come to buy it. A handsome house, full of large, cheerful rooms, rooms still redolent of the line of sober, god-fearing clerics that had inhabited them with their industrious wives, their contingents of servants, and their quiverfuls of children. Against the edge of one bedroom door Sam Cotton had found their heights recorded, starting with Benjamin, a mere two-foot-nine off the ground and running up, through eight others, to Ruth.

  A cheerful house, with one reservation.

  He could not get used to the cellar.

  Well, it was not really a cellar at all. It lay down two steps only at the end of a series of pantries, dairies, and wash-houses. A sort of sunken cul-de-sac. It had been designed as a game-larder. As you shone your torch upwards — the electric light did not reach so far — you could see the great steel hooks, deep-rusted now, in the beams of the roof. It had a floor of badly cracked concrete.

  “Just the place for coke,” said Mrs. Cotton.

  It was late summer when they moved in, but, warned by her experience of the winter before, she had ordered four tons. And had got them.

  Mrs. Cotton usually got what she wanted in the end.

  As autumn turned into winter and winter into spring, and Sam Cotton made his nightly, dreaded pilgrimage, sometimes one scuttle, sometimes two, the huge pile diminished. As it diminished, a curious fancy grew in Mr. Cotton’s mind.

  There was something evil about the cellar. And the evil lay in the far corner where the coke was piled deepest.

  He got into the way of calculating how long, at his present nightly rate of progress, it would be before he uncovered this corner. Two months. One month.

  He said nothing directly to his wife, who was not an imaginative woman, and inclined to be impatient of her husband’s fancies. But he did suggest, casually and tentatively, that they might perhaps take on a resident servant. At the moment they had only Mrs. Tyzer, who worked like a giant by day, but deserted them at six o’clock.

  “I could never stand anyone living in,” said Mrs. Cotton. “They’d get on my nerves.”

  “We could afford it,” said Sam.

  “It isn’t a question of money,” said Bertha. “And anyway, it’s quite unnecessary. Do I ever ask you to do anything except get the coke at night?”

  It was true. She was a splendid manager. Twenty years younger than Sam, and five times as healthy.

  “I don’t even ask you to wash up,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t mind washing up,” said Sam. But he had left it at that. It would have been too difficult to explain. And it would soon be summer — and the last of the coke would be gone.

  A fortnight. A week.

  He had noticed lately that a crack in the floor seemed to lead directly into the corner. It grew larger as he uncovered it.

  That there was something in the corner, he was now certain. He had lived a great deal of his life by instinct, and now all his instincts told him so.

  As the pile of coke diminished, as he bent, night after night, to fill the two steel hods, nearer and nearer and nearer to that corner, the corner to which the crack pointed, a prickling sweat broke out all over his body. His heart thumped, and he felt curiously light-headed. He had never felt quite that way before, but it reminded him of an occasion when, as a boy, he had fainted from overwork and lack of food.

  There was something in that corner. Something inevitable, something deadly that would become apparent when the last scuttle of coke was removed.

  But how would it be if the last scuttle — the very last scuttle — was removed by someone else? Like everything in life, it was simply a matter of calculation. The daily woman filled four scuttles during the day. He filled two at night. It was like one of those card games when you have to arrange your play so as to avoid holding the last card.

  When he had seen the coke the night before there had been, he calculated, about sixteen scuttles of it. Four would have gone. He would take another two — then Mrs. Tyzer would take four more—

  “You’ve been doing sums to yourself for ten minutes,” said his wife. “What’s wrong? Money?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” said Sam.

  “Then hurry along and get the coke and we can get off to bed. I don’t know about you, but I’m dog-tired.”

  “We shall have to be ordering some more soon,” said Sam, cunningly. “I don’t suppose we’ve enough left for three days.”

  “We haven’t that,” said his wife, briskly. “I lent a bit to Mrs. Tyzer. She’s right out. You ought to be able to scrape up enough for tonight, though. They’re delivering a ton in the morning.”

  With a curious leaden feeling which centered on the top of his stomach and the bottom of his chest, Sam Cotton walked heavily out to the cellar.

  It was as his wife had said. A pathetic remnant of coke and coke-dust covered the corner. The crack gaped, so wide now that he could almost put his fist into it. Two blocks of the cement flooring looked almost as if they had been taken up and carelessly laid down again.

  Sam picked up the shovel and bent down.

  It had come now. It had to be faced. As he had faced and outfaced other things in his hard life.

  His heart was pounding so that it nearly choked him. One scuttle. Then the other. The coke which was left would exactly fill it.

  He stooped again and scraped the shovel on the floor. A blinding red light. An uprush of dizziness. He was on his knees. Then on his face, his nose an inch from the crack...

  “Murder,” said the young doctor, savagely, to his partner. “Plain murder. Letting him go out, night after night, with his heart in that state, and grovel for coke and lift weights. But not the sort of murder she can be hanged for — more’s the pity.”

  Every Fifth Man

  by Edward D. Hoch

  You probably wonder why I’m still alive after all that has happened, and I suppose it is quite a story. I’d been living and training with the exiles for two years before the attempted coup, knowing — as we all knew — the penalty for failure. There were months of hand-to-hand combat and paratrooper training and even some explosives practice before we were ready for the big day, the day we returned to Costanera.

  I’d lived the twenty-five years of my life in the cities and towns and jungle villages of Costanera. It was my country, worth fighting for, every inch of it. We left with the coming of General Diam, but now we were going back. We would drop from the skies by night, join the anti-Diam military, and enter the capital city in triumph.

  That was the plan. Somehow it didn’t work out that way. The military changed their minds about it, and we jumped from our planes into a withering crossfire from General Diam’s forces. More than half of our liberation force of sixty-five were dead before we reached the ground, and the others were overrun quickly. By nightfall we found ourselves prisoners of the army in the great old fortress overlooking Azul Bay.

  There were twenty-three of us taken prisoner that day, and of these one man — Tomas — had a bad wound in his side. We were crowded into a single large cell at the fortress and left to await our fate. It was hot in there, with the sweat of bodies and a mustiness of air that caught at my throat and threatened to choke me. I wanted to remove my black beret and shirt and stretch out on the hard
stone floor, but I did not. Instead I bore it in silence and waited with the others.

  A certain custom has existed in the country, a custom which has been observed in revolutions for hundreds of years. Always faced with the problem of the defeated foe, governments had traditionally sent down the order: Kill every fifth man and release the others. It was a system of justice tempered with a large degree of mercy, and acted as a deterrent while still allowing something of an opposition party to exist within the country. Of course, the eighty percent who were released often regrouped to revolt again, but the threat that hung over them was sometimes enough to pacify their activities.

  This, then, was the fate that awaited us — twenty-three prisoners in a gloomy fortress by the blue waters of a bay. We had reason to hope, because most of us had the odds on our side, but we had reckoned without the cold-blooded calculation of General Diam. The order came down early the following morning, and it was read to us through the bars of the cell. It was as we had expected: Every fifth man will be executed immediately. The remaining prisoners will be released in twenty-four hours.

  But then came the jolting surprise. The officer in charge kept reading, and read the same message four times more. General Diam had sent down five identical executive orders. No one was to survive the executions.

  I knew something had to be done, and quickly. As the guards unlocked the cell door I went to the officer in charge. Using my deepest voice I tried to reason with him. “You cannot execute all twenty-three of us. It would be contrary to orders.”

  He looked down at me with something like scorn. “Be brave, little fellow. Die like a soldier!”

  “But the first order says that every fifth man should be executed immediately. It means just that. They should be executed before you read the second order.”

  The officer sighed. “What difference does it make? The day will be hot. Who wants to die under the noonday sun? At least now there is a bit of breeze out there.”

  “You must obey the orders,” I insisted. “Each order must be executed separately.”