100 Malicious Little Mysteries

Child on a Journey by Fred S. Tobey

The big jet had scarcely lifted off the runway at Los Angeles Airport before the passengers began to busy themselves with the things that would pass the time on the long flight to Boston. Some turned their eyes to the TV screen, waiting for the movie; others took out books and magazines. A Hollywood actress drew a script from her handbag and began leafing through it. Two elderly men opened a pack of cards and started playing rummy.

Dr. Gordon Prince, sitting by himself in a window seat in the coach section, waited until the airliner was well above the clouds before he took his nearly completed treatise on medieval history from his briefcase and laid it on the little table that he had lowered from the back of the seat in front of him. The lengthy document, on which he had labored for weeks, was to be published in a distinguished journal, and the youthful professor of social science meant to spare no effort to perfect the syntax and punctuation. By great good luck, the two seats beside him had not been sold, and he was taking an almost sensual pleasure in the thought of the quiet hours of undisturbed concentration that would be his. He thought he might even pass up dinner, and work right through.

Midway through page two, as Dr. Prince raised his eyes to ponder a fine point of grammar, he became aware of a small figure standing in the aisle beside his seat. He brought his eyes into focus and saw that it was a girl of seven or eight. She was staring at him steadily with large blue eyes. A pair of auburn pigtails hung primly down the front of her blue denim dress.

“Hello,” she said. “My name is Suzy. Are you busy reading?”

Dr. Prince was a very literal man. “Not exactly,” he said. “I’m writing something.”

The child’s eyes grew even bigger. “Oh, that must be wonderful,” she said. “I’m going to write when I get older. Do you write for movies?”

“This is a different kind of writing,” the professor said. He supposed it was not surprising that a writer boarding in Los Angeles should be suspected of turning out froth for the screen. “This is history. Important things that really happened.”

Suzy dropped into the aisle seat. “I guess I’ll sit here a minute,” she said. “Unless you don’t want me to.”

“Well...” Dr. Prince began; then, rather lamely: “Won’t your mother be wondering where you are?”

“Mummy—” Suzy paused and looked appraisingly at Dr. Prince, as if wondering how much she should confide in this stranger. Then she shook her head. “Mummy’s dead,” she said. “Mummy and Daddy were killed in a car accident, and Uncle takes care of me.”

Dr. Prince looked at the child with increased interest. What a shame that one so young should lose her parents! The professor was not married, but he expected to marry someday when he found time, and if there were children he hoped they would be like this one: bright, neat and well-spoken.

“My big brother was killed, too,” Suzy offered. “He was driving the car and he and Daddy were having a big fight about money, and he went too fast and hit a tree. I was lucky because I was in the back seat and only got hurt a little, and I went to the hospital but I’m all right now.”

“Well, you poor kid.” Dr. Prince looked around. “Where is your uncle sitting?”

“Uncle didn’t come with me. He said he was too busy.”

“You mean you’re traveling by yourself? A little girl like you?” He knew that children sometimes were handed over to the care of stewardesses, but to his conventional thinking it seemed a strange way of life.

Suzy nodded. “Uncle put me on the airplane and went home to get drunk.”

Before Dr. Prince had a chance to respond, a stewardess who had been watching came toward them.

“Is the little girl being a bother?” she asked. “I said I’d try to keep her amused, but we’ve been kind of rushed today. But if you’re busy—” She nodded toward the manuscript on the table in front of him.

“Oh, no, it’s all right,” Dr. Prince said.

The stewardess smiled, patted Suzy’s head and went away.

“Who is going to meet you in Boston?” Dr. Prince asked.

“Uncle said his brother will take me home to stay at a mansion and give me a maid all for myself, and I can go out on a big yacht whenever I want. But I don’t believe him. I don’t think anyone is going to meet me at all.”

“Oh, come, Suzy! Of course someone will meet you. Your uncle wouldn’t say so if it weren’t true.”

“Yes, he would. Uncle Lucifer wants me to get lost and die, because he wants my money. When Uncle gets drunk he always says, ‘I hope you die, you little brat, and then I’ll get your money.’ ”

The information was coming too fast. “Lucifer?” said Dr. Prince. “His name isn’t really Lucifer, is it? What do you mean, he wants your money?”

“Of course his name is really Lucifer! Uncle says there’s always been a Lucifer in the family. Daddy left tons of money for me, but I can’t have it until I’m eighteen, and Uncle can only spend little bits of it to take care of me, so he wants me to die and he will get it.”

Dr. Prince looked speculatively at the little girl. How much of this was fantasy? She did seem an imaginative sort. On the other hand, of course, there certainly were people like the uncle that Suzy was describing. Dr. Prince made a mental note to watch and make sure someone did meet Suzy in Boston. Meanwhile, of course, there was his manuscript, which was being sadly neglected. He turned back to it and picked up a page, hoping Suzy would take the hint.

“I wish I had my teddy bear,” said Suzy, sighing.

Dr. Prince thought he saw an opportunity. “Why don’t you go back and sit with Teddy for a while, then?” he said. “I think they’re going to serve dinner now, and you ought to be with Teddy when you’re having dinner.”

“His name isn’t Teddy, it’s Smoky, and he didn’t come with me. He was in the suitcase but Uncle Lucifer took him out and put in a box of candy instead, because he said there isn’t any candy in Boston.”

“That was a foolish thing to say. There’s all sorts of candy in Boston, even some famous candies...”

Suzy nodded. “Uncle lies to me all the time. Anyway, it isn’t all candy, I know. There’s a clock.”

“A clock?”

Suzy nodded again. “I heard it going ‘tick, tick’ in the box when Uncle went out of the room for a minute, and I told him I heard it, but he just said, ‘Shut up, you little brat!’ and locked the suitcase.”

Dr. Prince felt a prickling at the back of his neck, and it seemed to him his forehead had suddenly become moist. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at it.

“Listen to me, Suzy,” he said. “Where is the suitcase now? Is it back at your seat?”

Suzy shook her pigtails. “Uncle gave it to a man at the airport and the man put a little tag with my ticket and said I could get the suitcase with it when I got to Boston.”

The public address system of the airliner came on with a sharp click. “This is your captain speaking,” said a confident, pleasant voice. “We have leveled off at our cruising altitude of thirty-six thousand feet. We have a good tail wind, and our ground speed is six hundred and—”

Dr. Prince cast a furtive glance around the plane. All these innocent people! he thought. How could anyone be so utterly unscrupulous! Fighting panic, he thought incongruously of his precious manuscript, saw, in his mind’s eye, the pages gliding and fluttering down, like autumn leaves, toward faraway earth.

Pull yourself together, you fool, he thought. With luck, you’ve found this out in time. There must be an airport we can get down to in a hurry.

He saw a stewardess in the service area, ten rows or so ahead, and he scrambled over Suzy and started up the aisle toward her. Then, turning back, he grasped the child’s hand and pulled her along with him. Better to have her there to repeat the story.

As they reached the service area, Suzy pulled her hand out of his grasp abruptly and went to sit down in a seat just ahead, in a rear row of the first-class section.

“I guess I’ll stay here a while,” she announced.

The frightened professor hurried toward her and tried to take her hand again, but the child pulled away and shrank toward the woman in the seat beside her. It was the Hollywood actress.

“Dammit, Suzy, honey!” said the woman, putting her manuscript down with a gesture of exasperation. “Where in hell is that stewardess who was going to keep your busy little mind occupied for a while? I told you all about my new movie, Uncle Lucifer. Now can’t you leave Mummy alone for a minute to study the script?”