Alfred Hitchcock’s A Hangman’s Dozen
- Автор: Артур Роберт, Брэдбери Рэй Дуглас
- Год: 1962
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Publishing
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s A Hangman’s Dozen». Краткое содержание книги:
Then Ferlini was deposited inside the chest, and the chest was locked and bolted by the city councilman. The committee examined it, declared it escape proof, and then stood back as a quartet of hired musclemen lifted the chest from the ground and deposited it in the stem of the motor boat that was moored to the dock.
The supper club orchestra struck up the funeral march, swinging the mournful melody. Roscoe stepped into the boat first, and then helped Wanda — who looked like a bereaved widow — aboard. The pilot of the craft, a jaunty crew-cut young man, waved at the crowd and unfastened the line. He started the engine, and moved the boat slowly out towards the deep of the lake.
“You all right?” Roscoe asked the woman.
Wanda murmured something, and reached for his hand.
When they were five hundred yards off shore, the pilot cut the engine.
“This okay, Mr. Roscoe?”
“This’ll do fine.” Roscoe trained binoculars on the edge of the lake, to see what the newsmen were up to. They were watching him just as eagerly; the photographers, some with telescopic lenses on their cameras, were hard at work.
“Let ’er go,” Roscoe said.
Wanda cried out feebly, and the pilot grinned, put his hands against the iron chest, and tipped it over the side. It fell into the water with a splash that sprayed them all, and then vanished from sight, spreading a huge ripple all the way back to the shore.
Then they waited.
Roscoe looked at his watch. When thirty seconds went by, he looked at Wanda and smiled reassuringly.
Then they waited some more.
At the end of the first minute, the pilot’s grin faded, and he began to whistle off-key. Wanda shrieked at him to be quiet, and he stopped.
At the end of the second minute, Roscoe could no longer look at the terrible chalk-whiteness of Wanda’s face, so he lifted his binoculars again and studied the shore-line. The crowd had pressed forward to the water’s edge by now, moving like some dark, undulating animal.
“My God,” the pilot said. “He’s not coming up, Mr. Roscoe I”
“He’s got to come up! He’s got to!”
Three minutes passed, but there was no sign of the great Ferlini.
At the end of six minutes, Wanda Ferlini moaned, swayed, and fainted. Roscoe caught her falling body before it struck the floor of the boat. Five minutes later he ordered the pilot to head back for shore.
They recovered Ferlini’s handcuffed body late that night.
Baggett tried to see Wanda on the day of the funeral but it was Phil Roscoe who refused him admittance. Phil didn’t care about Wanda’s love life; he had too many problems of his own. But he was still a businessman, and Wanda was still a client, even without her famous husband. It just didn’t seem smart to have Wanda appear as anything more than a tragic widow.
Wanda was playing the role well. By some strange cosmetic alchemy, her sorrow made her look younger. Her white-powdered face and pale lipstick contrasted well with her black mourning attire.
Roscoe had made the funeral arrangements, and they were almost as spectacular as the water escape itself. The turnout was large and well-covered by the press; a horde of show people, not averse to being seen themselves, were on hand to mourn the passing of the great escape artist. The funeral procession wound slowly through the streets of the town, requiring a full half-hour to pass any one city block, but by the time Ferlini’s coffin had reached the point of no return the crowd had thinned out considerably. Only a handful watched the final ceremonies in the graveyard.
Wanda sobbed against Roscoe’s shoulder, and he patted her consolingly.
“It’s the way he wanted it,” he said inanely.
“I know, I know,” Wanda said.
The eulogy, delivered by the town’s most prominent clergyman, was brief. He spoke of Ferlini’s courage, of his devotion to his art, of the pleasure he had given so many people in his lifetime. As he spoke, Wanda’s eyes glazed oddly, and for a moment, Roscoe was fearful that she might swoon again.
They brought the coffin to the edge of the grave. The bearer in front, a waiter in the supper club, seemed puzzled by something, and murmured to the man beside him. Roscoe stepped forward, spoke briefly to them, and then conferred hastily with the minister. The conference piqued the curiosity of the solitary newsman on the scene, who came out of the sidelines to ask what was happening.
“I dunno,” Roscoe said, scratching his head. “Freddy here thinks something is wrong. Says the coffin feels strange.”
“How do you mean, strange?”
The waiter shrugged. “Light is what I mean. It feels too light.”
“Really,” the minister whispered. “I hardly think—”
“No, he’s right,” another bearer said. “Hardly weighs anything at all. And you know Ferlini, he was a big, hefty guy.”
They looked at the coffin, waiting for someone to make a suggestion. It was Roscoe, finally.
“I hate to do this,” he said softly. “But I think we’d better open it.”
The minister protested, but they were already working on the lid.
“What’s happening?” Wanda said. “What’s going on, Phil?”
“Keep back,” he pleaded. “I don’t want you to see this, Wanda—”
But there was no way for her to avoid it. The lid was opened, and the truth was revealed to the sight of all. It sent a shock through the crowd as tangible as a blow.
The coffin was empty, and Wanda Ferlini was screaming like a high wind among the treetops.
Dr. Rushfield rolled a pencil along the blotter of the desk, and said, “Go on, Mr. Roscoe, I want to hear it all.”
Phil Roscoe licked his dry mouth and wished he had a drink.
“You’ve got to understand how it is in my business, Doctor. Everything is showmanship, everything. That’s why Ferlini made this deal with me, maybe ten, twelve years ago.”
“And just what was this deal?”
“Nobody else knew about it, just him and me. It was crazy, I told him that. But you don’t know how stubborn a guy like that can be. He made me promise that if anything ever happened to him, I mean if he died, that I would arrange for one last trick — something that would make him remembered even longer than Houdini. That’s what it was, Doc.”
“A trick?”
“A real easy one. I just slipped the undertaker fifty bucks, and he arranged to have Ferlini buried some place in secret. Then he put an empty coffin in the hearse, and that was that. You see what I mean, don’t you? Honest-to-goodness showmanship.”
“I see,” Rushfield said, frowning. “But I’m afraid that it had quite an effect on Mrs. Ferlini. I gather that she wasn’t too well-balanced before this happened, and now...” He sighed, and stood up. “All right, Mr. Roscoe. I can let you have one look at her, but I can’t let you talk to her. I’m sorry.”
Roscoe followed the doctor down the hall. They stopped at a door with a small barred window, and Roscoe looked inside. He drew back, appalled, at the sight of Wanda, her eyes round and unseeing, her arms straining uselessly to escape from the tight, unrelenting grip of the straitjacket.
Not a Laughing Matter
Evan Hunter
Don’t laugh — or smile ambiguously — when a sensitive person is present. He may very well be a paranoiac Perchance he may even be given to homicide — a homicide that may be your very own.
He hated the manager most.
Last night he had come to that realization. This morning, as he entered the department store with the Luger tucked into the waistband of his trousers, he allowed his hatred for the manager to swell up blackly until it smothered all the other hatreds he felt. The manager knew; of that he was certain. And it was his knowledge, this smirking sneering patronizing knowledge which fed the hatred, nurtured it, caused it to rise like dark yeast, bubbling, boiling.