Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 19, No. 99, February 1952
- Автор: Грубер Фрэнк, Кемельман Гарри
- Год: 1952
- Язык: английский
- Год: American Mercury
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 19, No. 99, February 1952». Краткое содержание книги:
No one spoke. Milt breathed heavily; slowly he reached out a hand that shook with agitation. He took up the glass. Excited whispers arose. “He’ll drink!” “No! He’s afraid!” “And, by Heaven, he has reason to be!”
Milt lifted the glass to his lips; but at the last moment, when he seemed about to toss the liquid down his throat, he changed his mind, and with a shout of “Blast the lot of you!” he hurled the crystal to the floor, where it shivered to pieces.
Then he leaped to the window.
“Stop him!” roared everyone.
But there was no need. Milt had become abruptly paralyzed. Clutching the dark curtains, his eyes a-glare, he was looking into the street as if he saw some unimaginable horror there.
“There he is!” he gasped. “The fourth time! He is looking up at me! He is coming over — he! Bolt the door! For God’s sake keep him out!”
There was a rush to the window. Garman was first. In the light of a street lamp, crossing the road, his gaze lifted steadily towards the window, they all saw a square-built man with a brownish-yellow beard, and wearing a blue reefer-cut coat, and the white light flashing on the lenses of his gold spectacles. They all saw its stone-like, bloodless face.
“That’s Tracer,” said Garman, pitching his voice low for control.
Milt spun round as if he had been cut with a whip. “That’s a lie! Tracer’s dead!” he snarled.
“Perfectly true, and he is coming up here,” said Garman.
That grim figure in the street was now so far below the window level as to be out of sight. A tense silence had gripped the occupants of the room. And then, as everyone listened in the most acute suspense, they heard the door downstairs open and close. Thirty seconds followed that ominous sound, but no other was heard.
Someone tried to scoff — “What are we getting scared about?”
No one replied. Garman stepped to the door which opened upon the long steep staircase. He opened it softly, gave one look, then recoiled as if a pistol had been thrust into his throat.
“It’s coming up!” he gasped.
Milt turned round, staggered, and fell upon his knees, with one hand grasping the table’s edge. At the same moment a face, ashen-livid, appeared in the doorway. Its eyes were fixed upon the crouching man.
“Keep him off! Keep him off!” screamed Milt, writhing.
But no one stirred. The bizarre figure approached the agonized Milt, slowly and stealthily. It flung out both its arms and gripped him by the throat! Milt uttered a frightful cry and closed with the terrible visitor. For a moment they rocked to and fro as if in a death clutch.
Then Milt broke loose with a shout of laughter.
“Call it off, Yeatman!” said he. “Show the cards! You’ve introduced me all right; and I reckon I’ve earned a membership to the Club!”
“I perfectly agree,” said the visitor, with a chuckle. He swept off his beard, removed his spectacles, rubbed his cheeks effectively. He looked round upon the stupefied company. “A true Sensation, gentlemen! Admit it!”
“Dr. Yeatman!” gasped every voice.
“Precisely and exactly,” purred that beaming individual, “and one of yourselves. This is my friend, Mr. Milt, and he is my candidate for membership. Allow that he has proved himself a most suitable applicant! We worked this little stunt together. Only he and I were in it. I knew that Garman was to dine this evening at The Nine Bells, Windy Oaks, for he told me so. At my suggestion my friend Milt — whose remarkable powers of acting you must concede — passed himself off as the man looked for by the police. Garman was tricked absolutely. I felt certain that he would perceive, in the encounter, an opportunity to make a big hit at the Club. To bring to it the man all the country is talking about! What a chance! And Garman snapped at it; fairly ate it up. I ask his pardon. As for me — I became a suggestion of poor Mr. Tracer, whose cruel end, still a mystery, we all hope justice will avenge.
“That is the very simple story. Allow me formally to introduce my friend and candidate for membership of The Sensation Club. May I venture to predict his enrollment?”
“I think you may,” said the President.
He had to shout to make himself heard above the din of applause; and he furtively passed a handkerchief over his forehead, which was beaded with perspiration.
Gifts for His Highness
by Sam Young
Here are some random quotations from the letter Sam Young wrote to your Editors, after we had bought his first story: “I sat before my Underwood, wondering how to begin to tell you about myself Michael, my eight-year-old son, entered. ‘What’s the matter, daddy? Is your typewriter broken?’ I answered, ‘No. Would you like to break it?’ He hesitated. ‘No-o,’ he said doubtfully. He watched me type. It fascinates him. I can’t concentrate... Fortunately, a pal of his called him out to play. Alone, at last. My wife’s out in the laundry washing clothes. She won’t bother me, I hope. We’ve been married sixteen years and I still haven’t been able to cure her of the habit of interrupting me when I’m in the throes. But she’s a lovely woman, a wonderful mother to our two children. Laurel’s the other one — she’s thirteen... I mention all this to point up the delicious handicaps I’ve had to overcome in order to write. It’s been a struggle but I can’t say I’ve been unhappy about it...
“I started writing twenty-six years ago when I was seventeen. I wrote for the Paterson, New Jersey high-school monthly, ‘The Spectator.’ When I left high school, I went to New York City. I got a job at Macy’s, did my writing nights. I managed to get in three terms with Angus Burrell’s story-writing class at Columbia University. That constitutes the only ‘college’ education I’ve ever had. Mr. Burrell wasn’t too pleased with my stories. I was writing ‘artily’ at the time. De Maupassant and Chekhov were influencing me. I was letting the dead masters dictate to me...
“All my life I’d been sheltered, protected. When I left New York, it was the bravest act of my life. With a shoe-shining outfit in a zippered bag, I hitch-hiked across the country, shining shoes for meals and lodgings. I became a new person. I found myself going through hardships and actually enjoying them. This was a new kind of loneliness...
“And I continued scribbling... Los Angeles... San Francisco... The town wrapped its arms around me and adopted me... I attended night classes. I had a job during the day, earning eighteen dollars a week. It was when I obtained this job that I sent for Ruth who was back in Passaic, New Jersey. She came to San Francisco. We were married. We lived beautifully on my eighteen dollars a week...
“Why do I want to be a writer? Why do I want to breathe?”
Would you bet on Sam Young? We would...
“Gifts for His Highness” is one of the seven “first stories” which won special awards in EQMM’s Sixth Annual Contest. We thinly most of you will agree that the story has “something” — a quality, a sense of style and mood, a simplicity and sincerity seldom found in the work of a beginner. Yes, we would bet on Sam Young, if only he persists...
Every day the stairs laughed at Hillman Poolk’s 210 pounds. Each step was a chuckle. The entire flight a burst of insulting laughter.
What an indignity! A man of his position. He, the owner of this two-story house, must climb the stairs while his tenant and her brood resided in the flat below.
Ah, but she was of royal blood, this tenant. A Princess from his native Bulgaria whence he had emigrated many years ago. She was old, this Princess. A very old lady. Too frail to mount the stairs.