A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

Mind Over Murder

Two women were sitting having tea together in a crowded fashionable restaurant. All about them were others like them, that throng such places at that hour in the afternoon, while the men are for the most part busy at work in their offices. There was not a vacant table in the entire establishment, yet there was scarcely a man to be seen in the room. The vivacious hum of dozens of feminine conversations going on at once all over the place filled the air.

Only the beige complexions of the pert little waitresses darting busily about from table to table, the summery hued dresses of the customers themselves, and a certain languorous warmth in the air, betrayed the fact that this was on a tropical island dependency of the United States and not some smart restaurant along Fifth Avenue or Michigan Boulevard. Otherwise it would have been impossible to tell the difference, at least indoors here.

There was nothing to distinguish the two women from any of the others about them. They were smartly dressed, both reasonably pretty, both of approximately the same age: in their late twenties, or at the very most, their early thirties. One was a comely blonde; the other, the smaller of the two, a fair-skinned brunette. The blonde wore a wedding-band upon her finger. The brunette lacked one. There was absolutely nothing about them to set them apart from all the other women who gather at that hour, in just such places, all over the world, both north and south.

Their conversation, it could be surmised, would be the same as that of all the others; small-talk about the latest styles in hats, about clothes, about ways of doing the hair, spiced with an occasional bit of gossip or scandal. The blonde, Pauline Baron, had been doing most of the talking for some little time past. The brunette, Marie Stewart, had been listening, with an occasional nod of understanding or brief comment of accord such as one gives to one’s friends.

Both were entirely matter-of-fact, casual, their attitudes one of graceful relaxation. A cigarette was held between Marie Stewart’s shapely fingers. Pauline Baron would occasionally raise her teacup to her lips and take a dainty sip.

The topic of conversation could not possibly have been anything more important than a discussion of what was a good way to stop runs in silk stockings or a recital of one’s latest shopping adventures and the bargains one had seen.

Yet if one had stepped closer to the little table, close enough to overhear—

Pauline had stopped talking just then. A brief silence fell, as she concluded whatever her recital had been. Marie delicately tapped ash from her cigarette with one tapered nail. “Then why don’t you kill him, if you hate him so greatly, and find living with him so unbearable, and yet he won’t let you get away from him?” she suggested, without altering the even tenor of her voice. “Have you ever thought of that?”

Pauline looked at her as though uncertain whether to take her seriously or not. “Oh, many times,” she admitted ruefully. But what good does that do? That’s as far as it goes—”

Marie nodded understandingly. “Probably everyone has thought of things like that at one time or another. I know I often have myself. Not with anyone in particular in mind; just theoretically, you know.”

Pauline sighed with a hint of regret. “What’s the good of joking about it? Even if I were serious, I–I’d never have the nerve. Wives that kill their husbands are arrested and tried, and have to go through all that notoriety, it gets in all the papers—”

Marie shrugged. “That’s if they’re foolish enough to get caught.”

“You’re always caught when you do a thing like that.”

“That’s if you do it in the usual foolish way,” Marie said placidly. She took another sip of tea, lit another cigarette. “People always think of violent methods like guns and knives, or even poisons. It’s so glaring, naturally they’re found out. There are other ways. Now, if I were going to rid myself of anyone, if I wanted to kill someone—” She interrupted herself to ask: “I’m not shocking you, am I?”

“Of course not. We know each other so well, why should we be reticent with one another? I wouldn’t discuss this with anyone else, of course—”

“Exactly. It’s just theoretical, anyway.” Marie poised her cigarette with charming detachment back toward her own shoulder. “The thing to do is find the person’s own weak point or weakest point, and turn that against him. This business of shooting someone or knifing them, that’s for cutthroats. But a really clever person can commit a murder, and never be detected, if they only use their wits.”

Pauline eyed her friend questioningly, lashes upraised. “I’m not sure I know what you mean by weak point.”

“Well, let’s go at it in this way. Let’s take your husband for a model, shall we? What is it that he’s most afraid of?”

Pauline’s face became slightly downcast. “He’s not afraid of anything. He’s unusually courageous, as a matter of fact.”

“Everyone is afraid of some one thing, no matter how courageous they are in everything else,” Marie insisted. “You live with him, you should know if anyone does.”

Pauline pondered. “Nothing that I know of. He’s unusually aggressive.”

“There was never a human being yet who didn’t have one thing he dreaded more than others. What is his: think. Fire? Water? Falling from a great height?”

Pauline continued to shake her head reflectively. “I can’t think of anything, unless— Well, there was an incident once — oh, it was nothing to speak of — but that might be it. I think he has a mortal fear of snakes.”

“Most people have an aversion toward them.”

“This seemed to be deeper than just that.”

“Good, that’s what we’d want, then. Tell it to me.”

“We were in a newsreel theatre one night. This was up in New York, before we came down here. A short ‘clip’ was flashed on the screen, taken at some snake farm. It showed them writhing on the ground. Just a brief shot, really; it hardly lasted any time. Nobody else in the audience turned a hair. I noticed he got up suddenly and left his seat. I thought simply he was on his way back to the washroom. But before he could take more than a step or two up the aisle, the scene was already over, it was so brief. He seemed to change his mind; he turned around and came back and sat down again. I noticed him mopping his forehead, though. Afterwards when we got home I asked him what had made him do that, and he admitted he had a horror of snakes, said he couldn’t stand the sight of them. He didn’t tell me what had caused it, and I didn’t ask him; in fact we never spoke of it again from that time on.”

“They are quite common down here,” Marie said thoughtfully. “You don’t see them in town where we are, of course, but the canefields outside are loaded with them.” She tilted her nose, let a smoke-tendril curl from her shapely nostrils without adding breath-pressure to it. “I know an old native woman, sort of a witch-doctor, who catches them by the bushel. Uses them in her cures and remedies, or something.” She let her voice trail off.

Pauline looked down, as though a spot on the tablecloth hypnotized her; with that sort of a fixed stare.

Marie was speaking again. “Carrying out this hypothetical example we’re discussing, that would be the point of attack, then. The Achilles heel. This morbid dream, this phobia, of snakes. If, for instance, he were to think there were one at large, in the house with him—”

“How could he be made to think that? By simply being told that, you mean?”

“That would be second-hand, wouldn’t it? That wouldn’t do. You see, this would be a death by the imagination. And though the imagination feeds on phantoms, it needs a premise in reality to begin with. Then it can go on from there under its own power. No, he would have to be shown one was in the house with him. Then let his imagination go on from there.”

“I still don’t—”

Marie sighed with the tolerance of a teacher toward a disciple. “The sight of the snake, according to our calculations, should bring on a fright-spasm, should it not?”

“Yes, but how would that cause death?”

“It wouldn’t, if allowed to evaporate again. But if prolonged long enough without respite, a thing like that could very easily lead to death. Would, I’m sure.”

“But how could it be prolonged? Wouldn’t the first thing he’d do be to take a stick or gun and go after it, get rid of it?”

Marie lidded her eyes briefly in well-bred impatience. “You must construct the thing so that he doesn’t. You are not being constructive about it. I have given you the opening wedge, the point of attack, but you must construct from there. If you leave him his freedom of action, of course he chases it out, or runs away from it himself; it becomes simply a very bad fright, quickly over. But if you constrict his freedom of action, so that he is held powerless, so that the fright is kept at boiling-point for God knows how long, then it becomes death, death through the imagination. Do you see what I mean?”

The blond Pauline, the wife of Donald Baron, didn’t speak. She bit inscrutably at the far corner of one fingernail.

“Are there any solid, substantial doors in your house?” Marie purred.

“All of them are. They’re made of this native mahogany, inches thick. It would take an axe to cut through them.”

Marie idly unlidded the teapot, looked in to see if there were any more of it, lidded it again. “Is there a closet in your house that’s dark, that has no light inside it?”

“There’s one under the stairs. It’s the size of a small room, really. It takes up the whole base of the staircase.”

“No one could break out of it, you are sure?”

“No one could, I am sure. Not the strongest man alive.”

“If our theoretical victim should become trapped in that place, then. The imagination is given the phantom fact to feed on that the snake is in there with him. But his freedom of movement is taken away; he can neither get away from it, nor find it to kill him. He is held in a straitjacket of terror. Fright becomes frenzy; frenzy, paroxysm; paroxysm, death. No human being could stand that. Within thirty minutes, forty at the most, he would be dead, untouched by human hand. They could examine him exhaustively afterwards, and what is there to say? Death by the imagination leaves no traces.” She doused her cigarette neatly within her teacup. “There’s your murder — for which no after-price of punishment is paid.”

Pauline shook her head as though bedazzled. “It doesn’t seem like murder at all, does it?” she marveled.

“Murder is such an elastic term, isn’t it?”

“Wouldn’t his screams, perhaps, be heard outside?”

“Not if there is a radio close by; it could be tuned on rather loud.”

“But he would be found afterward in the closet, and questions—”

“The person committing it could very easily remove him, before investigation got underway.”

Pauline Baron had but one more question to ask, in this theoretical discussion that had proved so absorbing. “But would someone actually die, in that way? I mean, if they survived, it would be worse than if no attempt had been made—”

“Within forty minutes, I guarantee you, he will be dead of acute terror. The heart can stand just so much, and no more.”

A silence fell.

Presently she said, “There is just one possible obstacle. Very few would be strong enough to carry it out. It would be unimaginably cruel, of course. One of the cruelest deaths that have ever taken place. I’m not sure anyone’s hate would be strong enough to inflict that on another human being—”

“The cruelty would come from himself, not the other person. If the snake is not really in there with him at all. There is another kind of cruelty, that goes on for years and years; it doesn’t kill you, but it’s just as bad. As you said, this would be a death of the imagination. And this other kind of cruelty, too, is of the imagination. So it would be a fitting repayment in kind.”

Marie began to draw on a pair of gossamer mesh gloves, with that precision which women habitually bring to the act; slowly stroking downward along each finger, one by one, until not a suggestion of a wrinkle remained. This was a token not of immediate but of eventual departure. “What strange byways one’s conversations can stray into, can’t they?” she murmured apologetically. “Anybody overhearing us just now would have taken us seriously, would have thought we really meant it, wouldn’t they?”

“Wouldn’t they?” echoed Pauline Baron with a deprecating little laugh. She gathered up her own paraphernalia of table-occupancy, touched a small powderpuff twice to the tip of her nose and once to the point of her chin. “I really must be going,” she sighed. “What did you say this native woman’s name was?”

“I didn’t say. But I think they call her Mama Fernanda,” Marie drawled negligently. “I only know of her through my maid. You know how they are. You follow the road to the country club, oh, for quite a distance out. And then at one place, there’s a little foot-trail that strikes off from there. Or so I’ve heard my maid say. She has a hut along there someplace. They all go to her for this and that, I understand. She’s quite a specialist in extracting the beneficient qualities from the, er, wild life about her. Toads and frogs and lizards, and, er, snakes.” She was so completely uninterested that she kept looking about her detachedly while she spoke. “She grinds their bones and compounds native curealls. Makes charms out of their skins. Milks them and even makes use of their venom in certain instances. Or so my maid tells me.” For a moment her eyes looked piercingly into her friend’s. “My maid’s name is Martelita,” she added quite inconsequentially. Then dropped them again and looked down at her wrist, to make sure she had fastened the catch of one glove.

They shifted their chairs to rise from the table. The conversation was at an end.

“I’ll leave the tip, Marie,” Pauline said. “It’s been very — interesting having tea with you.”

They made their way across the crowded place toward the entrance, moving side by side with leisurely grace. Two smartly dressed women, no different from the many others around them who sat chattering frivolously of hats and clothes and the latest styles in hairdressing.

The oncoming beams of a pair of headlights flowed like quicksilver along the narrow, rutted dirt trail, and the car behind them pushed aside giant banana-leaves with a hissing sound. A hut of sun-baked mud bricks, thatched with palm fronds, suddenly sprang upright into the silvery wash, as though it had been flat a moment before. A figure already stood in the opening, attracted by the oncoming brilliance, eyes slitted to peer into it under the sheltering shade of one hand. The figure of a gnarled woman with seamed coffee-colored skin, wisps of white hair escaping from under the shawl hooded closely about her head.

The car stopped with a slurring of brakes. The door opened and its occupant stepped down to the ground. She wore a “garden-party” hat with a large, floppy brim which bent downward in front to hide her entire face except for her mouth and the point of her chin. Her arms and throat, however, were milky white.

“The senora has lost her way?” the figure in the doorway croaked. “The country club is on the other road, the one that goes straight on out.”

The arrival reached into the car and the headlight-beams suddenly dimmed, died out. They were left alone in the starlit darkness. “I do not look for the country club,” she said gropingly. “I do not speak very well. Can you understand me?”

“Speak. Fernanda will understand,” the old woman said encouragingly.

“Martelita sent me. She spoke of you to me. You know Martelita?”

For a moment the crone looked puzzled. Then suddenly she nodded. “Ah, yes. The one who works for the lady from over the sea, in the town.” She came forward helpfully. “The senora is sick?”

“No, I want to borrow something from you. How do you say it? I want you lend me something you have.”

The old woman gestured with flowing arms. “My poor hut is yours.” She opened the wattled door, motioned her into the darkness after her. The visitor, however, remained at the threshold. A twig was thrust into live embers glowing in a crude fireplace fashioned of flat stones on the floor. When it had kindled she carried it to a clay vessel filled with oil, from which a wick protruded; lit this. A wan, flickering light filled the interior from this point on. The face of the caller remained shadowed under the capacious, downturned brim.

“What is it the senora asks me to give her?”

“One of those things that go like this on the ground.” One white wrist made a flurried writhing motion.

The old woman’s jet-black eyes sparkled understandingly. “You want my remedy, that is made from them?”

“No, no, alive.”

This time there was a pause, brief but eloquent. There was rebuke implicit in it, somehow.

Finally the old woman spoke again. “What does the senora want with such a thing?”

The wrists were busy dipping into a tasselled draw-bag. Silver coins clinked musically. “In my house are many small things. Mice, bugs that crawl, grasshoppers. For just one night or two I want it, to eat them up. Then I will bring it back to you. It must be the kind that is not dangerous, you understand?” She pinched the back of her own hand, then swept her fingers past the place to show it was not serious. “Not dangerous. The bite does not kill.”

The old woman nodded alertly. “No poison, I understand. Harmless. No poison.”

The old woman removed a quantity of sacking spread out in one corner of the hut. A number of clay jars and jugs of varying sizes were revealed, of the kind used for carrying water from wells. A peculiar dank odor of musk rose into the air.

The woman in the doorway took a slight step backward.

The old woman held the crude lamp over the mouth of one, peered into it. Then the next. At the third, she stopped, thrust a forked stick inside.

The visitor turned her head aside for a moment, as though overcome by unconquerable repugnance. When she had looked back again, the old woman had taken down a flat straw basket that hung from the wall, was dropping something into it from the end of the stick. The basket was fairly wide in diameter but exceedingly shallow, not more than five or six inches in depth. It was lined with flat, dark leaves of some kind.

She came toward the woman with it, holding it with the top left off. The woman’s chest began to rise and fall more rapidly, but she held her ground. Within was coiled a glistening silken thing like a polished rubber tube, one end moving a little. Very little.

The caller in the garden hat craned her neck gingerly. “So small? And it doesn’t look very— Not a bigger one, perhaps? One that looks more frightening?”

The old hag shrugged shrewdly. “The senora wants the pests eaten, not just frightened, I thought.” She went back to the row of water-jars, emptied the basket gently into the mouth of one, thrust the forked stick into still another.

She brought the basket back. An ugly, gray huddle of rags lay in it, almost feathery in its scaliness. Two small horns protruded from one end. The underside was creamy-yellow.

The woman grimaced at the hideous sight, warded up one hand toward her eyes. “It has no poison, you are sure?” she faltered.

“No poison. Look, I will show you—” The old woman deliberately extended her gnarled, scrawny arm above the basket, while she shook it slightly with her other hand, to rouse its occupant.

The purchaser-to-be quickly stopped her, horrified. “No, no — for heaven’s sake, don’t! I don’t want to see—”

The old woman fitted the flat lid over the basket. A leaf or two protruded around the edges, giving it the appearance of containing fruit or some such delicacy.

“He is a new one,” she murmured fondly. “I only caught him a few days ago. He is a little sleepy now from eating. When he gets hungry he will wake up. When he wakes up he is quick and fast.” She held the basket toward her flatly, with both hands.

The woman in the doorway instinctively recoiled.

“The senora wants me to carry it outside for her?”

“No, I–I’ll train myself not to be afraid. Just stand there with it a minute, like that. Give me time to get up my courage.”

She thrust out her hands, finally, a little shakily, and placed them on the rim of the basket. The coffee-colored ones withdrew. The transfer was effected.

The new owner took a deep breath.

“Nothing to be afraid of,” the old woman said reassuringly. “Just hold it even, like that, so it doesn’t spill out.”

“When I want to pick it up, how do I— Must I use my hand?”

“No, a stick. Look, like this.” Mama Fernanda showed her. “Flat on the ground, so. Underneath it. But always in the middle, not too far at one end, not too far at the other. Then lift, straight. It curls itself around as it goes up. Or else it hangs straight.”

“Here. Here is some money. Is that enough?”

“Oh, that is too much!”

“Take it anyway.” The woman in the floppy hat moved carefully back to the car, holding the basket out before her. She placed it on the outside seat, went around to the opposite side and got in beside it. The headlight-glare splashed up again, bleaching the scene.

The old woman stood once more in the doorway of her hut, shading her eyes against it. “Bring it back when the mice are gone,” she called out as the car began to move off backwards down the dirt lane.

A note of harsh, satiric laughter sounded from the obscured driver’s seat, behind the flaming head-lamps. “I’ll bring it back when the mice are gone!”

There were candles on the table, and Mr. and Mrs. Donald Baron sat at dinner. In the candlelight their faces were like two parchment masks against the shadowy background of the walls. Eyeless masks, with the eyelids permanently lowered against the sight of one another. Under each a V-shaped shield of white peered out; in her case, the low decolletage of her dress; in his, the bosom of his dinner-shirt. Other than that, their forms above the table-line were hidden against the darkness, for both wore black.

There was complete silence at the table, save for the occasional whispered tread of the little maid who brought in or removed some dish or other. Neither spoke. Neither had spoken. Neither would speak. There is nothing more terrible than the stony silence of hatred.

He had a book open at his elbow, was reading in the uncertain light while he ate, in an attempt to forget her presence opposite him. She was silently fluttering the fingers of one hand against the table-edge, over and over.

He looked up from the book finally, shot a look of impatience over. Not at her, simply at the restless hand. She dropped it to her lap and it lay still, like something dead. He looked down again, his forehead ridged with annoyance.

She made a slight motion with her hand, and the little serving girl slipped out of the room, left them. He lit a cigarette, turned a page. She was worrying her wedding-ring now, but down below the table where he could not see it. Twisting it around on her finger, endlessly, as though it were something that she were screwing off.

Suddenly she rose, moved away from the table, left the room by the same door the maid had just taken. She went into the kitchen, cheerful and bright by comparison with the torture-chamber she had just quitted. The maid and the fat cook had been whispering together. They jumped apart as she appeared.

“Something was wrong with the dinner, senora?” the cook asked anxiously.

“No. What is your night for going out?”

“Wednesdays.”

“I change it. Go tonight. You too, Pepita. Go at once, both of you.”

They were both overwhelmed by this sudden generosity. “Thank you, senora, thank you.”

“Never mind the sweet. We have finished.”

She reentered the pall-like dining-room again. He shifted the other way in his chair as she did so, cradling the book on one arm now, so that his back, or at least one shoulder, was turned toward her.

Her eyes sparked briefly, lidded themselves again. “Does it annoy you even if I come into the same room with you?” she murmured with leashed ferocity.

He didn’t look up at her, as though he hadn’t heard. “Everything about you annoys me,” he answered, in an equally quiet voice to hers. “Even to look at you annoys me.”

“Then why don’t you let me go? Why do you keep me chained to you? Why must you torture me like this, day after day, week after week?”

“The door is open. I have told you many times, go. You are the one who stays.”

“You know I can’t just walk out into the streets here. I am thousands of miles from home. I have no money of my own to get back.”

“You will have to stay, then. I stick to my bargains, even the bad ones. I will not be a party to breaking up my own marriage.”

“You don’t love me—”

“I know, but I found that out too late.”

“For the last time, let me go. I will never ask you this again. Donald, while there is still ti—” She stopped suddenly, went on: “Donald, before something happens, let me go.”

He traced a line he was reading with the point of his finger, as though he only half-heard her. “Must you talk to me? I can’t stand the sound of your voice.”

She rose from the table, moved across the room to a massive carved mahogany sideboard, with a mirror above it. She stood there for a moment, with her back to him, watching him in the mirror. He continued to read, turned full-back to her now.

She removed a small key from the bodice of her dress, unlocked the lower section of the sideboard, opened one of the thick slabs. Within were several fat-bellied bottles of imported cordials that they habitually kept locked-away from the servants. She continued to watch him in the mirror. He went on reading, head inclined.

She relocked the slab, turned away. A flat circular straw-plaited basket stood on top of the sideboard now.

She reseated herself at the table, put a cigarette to her lips, drew one of the candles over toward her to light it by. The hand that held it shook a little. A shadow fell across his face for a moment as she did so, then cleared again as she replaced the candle with the others.

He looked up, annoyed at the momentary eclipse.

“I beg your pardon,” she breathed coldly.

Silence fell between them. Neither one moved after that. The only signs of life in the entire room were three: the occasional turning of a page, the unraveling thread of smoke that rose from her neglected, waiting cigarette, and from time to time, a flicker from the candle-flames

A quarter of an hour went by.

He looked up at last and glanced toward the kitchen-door, as though belatedly noting it had not opened for some time past.

“I want some fruit,” he said curtly. “Where is the maid?”

“She has gone.”

“I thought she went on Wednesdays.”

“She took tonight instead. One of her relatives is sick. She asked me if she could, and I told her yes.” She feigned a motion to rise. “I will get you some fruit.”

“I don’t care to have you do anything for me. I will get it myself.” He got up and went toward the sideboard in the gloom.

He placed his hand on the lid of the basket.

She let the cigarette fall from between her fingers, flattened both her own hands against the edge of the table. Otherwise she did not move.

He turned away and came back again. Picked up one of the candles and returned to the sideboard a second time.

“What is in this basket? It looks as though it might have some in it.”

“I don’t know what that is. One of the servants must have brought it in and left it there by mistake. Something they wanted to take home with them, maybe, and forgot.”

He held the candle aloft, raised the lid with his other hand.

The flame of the candle streaked downward through the air like a small comet, went out on the floor. He gave a scream like the whinny of a horse. The lid of the basket settled back into place again as his hand flew off it. He staggered backward, until the edge of the table against his back had brought him up short.

“There is a snake in there!” he said hoarsely.

“You must be mistaken,” she said calmly. “The shadow over there fooled you. How could there—?”

He had rolled around forward against the table, was leaning heavily on it with both hands, breathing with difficulty.

“I saw it with my own eyes! It opened its mouth and reared at me as I—”

He was holding his stomach now with one hand, covering his eyes with the other. “I–I can’t help it — they do something to me—” he coughed.

“Pull yourself together. You are ill.”

She was at the sideboard now in turn. There was the quick click of a key. He was too overcome by nervous shock to watch her. She gave the hinged kitchen-door a quick push with the flat of her hand that set it swinging lightly to and fro, as though she had just passed quickly in and out again.

“It’s gone. Look. See for yourself. It’s not there. I took it away.”

“When I was a kid, one got into my bed,” he panted. “I knew enough not to move, and I lay there all night long with it twined around my leg, waiting for them to come in to me the next morning. They managed to kill it without my being bitten, but the experience scarred my mind for life—”

“It’s gone,” she murmured again.

“I’m going upstairs and lie down. For God’s sake, see that all the screen doors are closed tight. It may — it may come back in again in some way.” He staggered out toward the stairs, as unsteady as a drunk. “I won’t get over this for nights now. It’s the first one I’ve ever been that close to since the first time it happened. My hand was inches away, I could almost feel the current of its breath against my thumb—”

She watched him go up the stairs. How right she was, she thought remorselessly. How utterly right!

She heard him being sick upstairs. Then presently the sound of his shoes dropping off, and the creak of his bed-frame as he threw himself down upon it.

She waited a long while before doing anything. There was so much time, the night was so long. She went back to the table and sat there once more, alone now in the candlelight. She played with the idea in her own mind, worrying it, turning it over like a cat does a mouse.

She opened a small silver compact and looked at her face in ts mirror. I am still guiltless, she thought, I have not done it yet. But I will look the same when I have done it; nobody will know the difference by looking at me. She touched the little puff twice to her nose and once to her chin. She closed the compact and put it away.

It was quiet upstairs now. He had stopped tossing and turning on the bed, he had fallen asleep.

She rose. It was time. She made her preparations slowly. With a calm detachment that had neither tension nor guilt in it. She carried a candle to the closet beneath the stairs first, examined the inside of that. Tested the lock, to make sure that it was in good order.

She went back to the sideboard then, removed the lethal basket. She left it there untouched a moment, went looking for something that might serve as a substitute receptacle. When she came back she had a large empty cannister she had found on the kitchen-shelf, that had once held flour or meal or something of the sort. Also a pointed stick that the cook used to poke up the fire in her stove apparently, for it was slightly charred at one end.

She placed the two side by side, basket and cannister, opened both. She was not afraid. She had long ago overcome her original repugnance. You grew used to them, just like anything else. The knowledge that it was harmless, of course, helped. And then, this was not her focus of fear, as it was his.

It didn’t move. It must have been his imagination that had made it seem to rear and widen its jaws.

It was hard to get the stick under it, for it was coiled now, not stretched out flat upon the floor. Twice it dribbled off it. Then, briefly, it did open its mouth each time, but the gusts of anger were quickly over and it lay supine again.

The third time she managed to clear it full-length from the basket, holding it like a ribbon up at full-length, doubled over the stick. She quickly transferred it, let it slither down into the cannister, put the lid back on. Its tail got in the way and the lid wouldn’t close over it altogether, but that didn’t matter, she left it that way. It would draw itself completely in in its own good time.

She carried the empty basket to the closet now. She separated the two halves. The lower part she placed in one corner, upside-down, so that its emptiness could not be immediately perceived, would remain questionable. The lid she placed over in the opposite corner. That gave two foci of danger to contend with, one on each side. He could not retreat from one without drawing near the other. He would be held riveted between the two.

Either disk, revealed by the brief flare of a single match, might have covered something. Something already as good as released, since the two halves were not separate from one another.

She went upstairs to where he was now, moving softly. He lay there asleep, twitching, murmuring unintelligibly in inner torment. He had taken his jacket off. His matches would be in that, that was where they always carried them. She found a folder of them, stripped them all away but one. One she left him, to confirm his own danger by, to illuminate for a brief moment his doom. That and the sandpaper for striking it on. But even that one she shortened to half its length by tearing it in two, reducing its burning-time by that much.

She stiffened, as he turned and moaned a little in his sleep, lips parted in anguish, tormented by some dream that, had he known it, was but a premonition of what was to come. But no dream could hope to equal the reality that would soon—

He lay motionless again after that, and her own rigidity unlocked. She went from the room backwards, a step at a time, like a threatening spectre in her black gauzy dress. A spectre, though, that even as it retreated became more threatening. Then turned and sidled down the stairs at a biased angle, hand behind her back glancing along the rail.

She went back to the closet-opening and struck one of his own matches and explored closely all along the door-frame on the inside. She found at last what she wanted, something that glittered minutely like a pin-head. It was a small nailhead, not quite even with the woodwork. It could scarcely have been called a projection, it protruded so very slightly, but it was sufficient for her purposes. It was at the right height too.

She drew her shoulder close to it, so that she stood in the closet-opening facing outward into the room. In other words, so that it was just behind her back. Then, working behind her back, sought to catch or snag the lacy material of her dress on it, in such a way as might have happened had she brushed carelessly by it on her way out of the closet.

The fabric would not stay on. Twice she had to trail it along the frame before the little metal projection finally pierced it, clung tenuously by a single looped thread drawn out from the rest. The slightest move would have severed it, and freed her. She didn’t want to sever it. She wanted him to.

She stood thus in the opening, half in, half out, and waited. Waited patiently.

She looked around the room. There was nothing there that menaced; it was sterile of threat. A clock that ticked the minutes of the night away. A radio, to bring in cheerful, chipper music playing hundreds upon hundreds of miles away, in the land he had taken her from and she would be able to return to now, once she was — his widow. A cannister upon the sideboard over there, its lid a little slanted, that was all, but nothing to show what lurked in it. How simple death without weapons was. How safe for the killer.

She was going to call up to him, first, but she knew he would not answer. He would hear her but he would not come. That was part of his torture of her. One night she had returned without her key, and though he had been upstairs at the time, had heard her below, had even looked out, he had made no move to admit her; she had to stay there huddled on the doorstep until the servants came early in the morning.

She made her summons an indirect one, therefore. There was a small bench against the wall, just beyond the closet-opening. She hooked her toe beneath it, tilted it, straight up, then let it upset itself legs upward. It struck the floor with a shattering clap that resounded through the silent house.

She heard him jolt upon the bed, start upright. She had roused him now, he would come down to see. She heard him come out to the head of the stairs in his stocking feet.

“What’s that? Who’s down there?” he called down in a voice blurred from recent sleep.

Instead of answering, she gave the overturned stool an added prod that made another wooden clamor. This brought him down to the foot of the stairs; he turned there and could see her. She was no longer motionless now, she was writhing, one arm bent behind her back as if in a vain effort to locate the hindrance and free herself.

“What the devil are you doing there?” he asked surlily. She continued to writhe and wince facially in time with her supposed efforts. She had once hoped to bean actress, before she had met him. She could never have hoped for a part such as this. “The back of my dress, somewhere, is caught on a nail. I can’t reach it.”

He didn’t come toward her at once. She had hardly expected him to. Hate had long ago withered all consideration between them. But he could be lured to coming to her aid without realizing it, that was what she was counting on. Lured to coming to his death.

He crossed the room to where there was a humidor, stopped by it, took out a cigar. He passed this absently back and forth below his nose, lengthwise, inhaling its fragrance. Then he bit the end off. He felt for matches, noticed he had left his jacket upstairs. She saw him look over at one of the lighted candles, and sudden fright welled up in her. He went over to it, held it, lighted the cigar by it.

She hadn’t expected this. That candle could save his life. If he retained it in his hand, went in there with it, it could show him there was nothing—

She swore within her own mind in maniacal silence. Even the crime without weapons had its pitfalls.

She was deathly afraid now; she didn’t want him to come over, not while he was holding that candle.

He said to her over his shoulder, “What are you going to do, stand there all night? Why don’t you just pull it?”

“I’m afraid of ruining my dress. It’s the last good one I have. If I could only find it, I could work it off gently—” She continued to hitch in a half-circular movement, like a muscle-dancer in a sideshow.

“What were you doing in there anyway?”

“I stepped in for a minute to look for something.” Why didn’t he put it down! His cigar was lit now. Why didn’t he put it down!

He turned, took an impatient step toward her, candle in hand. He was bringing it over with him, the very thing she had wanted him to do least of all! “What am I, your servant?” he muttered disobligingly.

“Don’t bring that candle near me!” she called out sharply. “You’ll set fire to me! This dress is all fluffy, and I just had it cleaned with benzine!”

To her surprise it worked. She hadn’t expected it to. He set the candle down, placed his lighted cigar in a dish beside it, and came on without them. He’d discarded the only thing that could have saved his life. He came on to his death, empty-handed.

“Stand still a minute,” he ordered brusquely. He stepped inside the closet-opening, went around to the back of her. She was between him and the outside room now.

The rest was as instantaneous as the shuttering of a cameralens. She suddenly whisked herself out of the entrance, the door swept around in a cyclonic arc, crashed into the frame, the lock fell shut automatically, and he was trapped.

The candle-flames spread out flat with the wind, then straightened again. Death had begun. No, not yet. Death had been unleashed. It still had not found the weak spot, the crevice, by which it was to enter.

Knowledge, now, came next. She would impart it. That would be the only weapon used in this from first to last; her voice, her message through this door. And how could such a weapon ever be found, ever be traced afterward?

She moved close to the door, already vibrating under his first trapped onrush. She moved so close to it she seemed to be pressing her face against it, though she was only aiming her lips at the seam, so he would not fail to hear her.

“Donald, do you hear me? Donald.” Then waited a moment. “Are you listening? In the pocket of your trousers, in the right-hand pocket, is a single match, and a tab of sandpaper. Take it out and light it a minute. I want you to see something.”

He must have thought she was trying to help him. There was a faint orange wink for a moment, along the seam. That and no more.

“Look over your shoulder. Look over into the corner. Now into the other corner, quick — while it still lasts.”

A curious moaning sound, like wind heard through a tube, came faintly through to her.

“Don’t move. Stand still, and you’ll be all right. It’s — it’s in there with you. I wanted to put it someplace where you wouldn’t see it, and the basket dropped out of my hands and rolled. I–I think it opened. Donald, don’t move, whatever you do. Stand perfectly still, that’s your only chance.”

A hollow voice as from a tomb groaned. “The match just went out. I’m in here in the dark with it.” She heard his head go forward and strike the door.

And now death had begun. The weapon had been used. The weapon that no detective would ever find.

It was time to cover up the sounds it might make. The sounds that would come as soon as the first swooning vertigo of terror had passed away. It might take a long time.

She turned and came away from the door, smiling. Not very much, not in broad humor; just a tiny little pinched uplift at each corner of her mouth. She looked around the room. The clock was still ticking peacefully. The candle flames were still pointed jewellike toward the ceiling. His cigar was still consuming itself on the dish where he’d left it just now. It was just as though nothing had happened. And what had, after all? A door had closed.

She pressed the radio-switch, sank down into a chair close by it. Not one of the stiff upright ones they used at dinner, a sloping overstuffed one that was his favorite for lounging in. The depression from his body was still in its cushioned seat and back. She crossed her legs and clasped her hands at the back of her head and lolled there in supine indolence.

Just a woman listening to a radio. A woman in her own home, with nothing to do, listening to the radio.

She had said: “You could not hate anyone that much—” She was mistaken. What did she know? She felt so good right now, this must be hate, what else could it be?

Pattering native music came on thinly, from the country club nearby. She didn’t want that stuff. She wanted her own country. She turned on the short-wave dial. That country he had taken her from, to torture and revile her.

There it was now. It was like a breath of heaven. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is N’Yorleans, beamed on a special shortwave broadcast—”

Something kept throbbing every once in a while, as though there were some sort of dynamo or generator bedded under the floor of the house. And muffled sounds like static, that didn’t come from the loudspeaker. Her own name, in ghostly echo. “Pauline! Pauline!”

It would have to be made a little louder. It, the other thing, was still coming through. She gave the dial a delicate little adjustment, sloped back again.

The music came into the room moderately loud and diamond-clear. It was a good night for reception. Her old favorite, Honeysuckle Rose. She caught herself tapping her toe lightly against the floor in time with it. And then something new, that must have come out since she’d been away.

There was a reading-lamp there, over to the other side of her. They had electricity in the house, of course; it was just at his morbid insistence that they always used candles. So that he wouldn’t have to see her so clearly, he’d once explained when she had asked him. This wasn’t lighted now, but the chain-pulls dangling from it kept swaying a little, as though there were some unnoticeable vibration going on near at hand. Otherwise you couldn’t tell anything. Only when there was a pause for station-identification could you hear anything discordant.

Sometimes a hurried scratching, like a cat trying its nails on a door. Sometimes a garbled screaming, as if from far away. “Pauline! Pauline! Take a gun to me. There’s one upstairs in my bureau-drawer. Bring it down and put it to my head, and end me fast! Only in the name of common ordinary humanity don’t leave me in here like this—”

The cigar was intact, had retained its recognizable torpedo-shape on the dish beside her, but slowly the brown of the tobacco-wrapping was being eaten away by the corrosive white of the advancing ash. Her eyes rested on it thoughtfully, as if it were a symbol. A cigar. A life.

The chain-pulls of the lamp kept up their intermittent jittering. Less often now than before, but more violently when they did. The radio kept up its jingling patter of monotonous two-four time notes, one combination of them scarcely distinguishable from another. The clock kept up its remorseless pit-pat, pit-pat, pit-pat. Time, the enemy of life.

The listener brooded, hand cupped to chin, face slanted downward, eyelids lowered. She had gotten New Orleans first. That was the closest of the home-stations. She shifted the wavelength a little, and Atlanta came in. It went like this:

“Male voice: “And now we’ll hear from little Dixie Lee, our silver-voiced vocalist. Hello, Dixie, honey; what’re you going to sing for the folks this evening?”

Female voice: “Got any suggestions?”

Male voice: “Fine. All right, folks, now you’re going to hear Dixie Lee singing ‘Got Any Suggestions?’ Hit it, boys.”

Female voice: “No, no, wait a minute! Let’s get together on this. That isn’t the name of my next number. That’s what I asked you.”

A third voice, faintly: “Mercy! Have mercy! I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it, I say!”

Male voice: “Pardon me, Dixie, my error. Now what’s it going to be this time?”

Female voice: “Gimme a Little Kiss, Will Ya, Huh?”

Male voice: “Sh, not so loud! My wife’s out there in the audience.”

A third voice, indistinctly: “Take it away! Take it away from me! I can feel it sliding across my shoe—!”

Male voice: “Here we go, folks. And this time we’re really on our way, all kidding aside.”

Orchestral introduction. Then female voice, nasally: “Gimme a little kiss, will ya, huh? What’re ya gonna miss, will ya, huh—?”

The listener sat motionless.

Something attracted her eye suddenly, some flurry of motion on the floor, offside to where she was sitting. She wasn’t quick enough to catch what it was. As she turned her head to identify it, it seemed to merge with the shadows under the table, draw in under there. Either that, or else she had imagined it in the first place, it hadn’t been real.

Some afterthought made her look inquiringly over at the cannister. The lid had become entirely dislodged, it wasn’t on it at all any more. She got up and went over closer to examine it. It was empty. It wasn’t in it any more. It had made its escape, unnoticed.

She wasn’t unduly frightened by the discovery. It didn’t matter so greatly. It was harmless. It would have to be found and put back, that was all.

She took up the stick she had used the first time and went looking for it. She picked up one of the candles and held it so that its light penetrated below the table, where she thought she had seen that receding scrap of motion just now. She peered under there.

It was down there. She located it almost at once. She got it on the stick the way the old woman had showed her and dredged it out. The table was an impediment, or something. The head hung too close to the hand with which she grasped the stick. It suddenly slashed at her. The pain was very little. Like jabbing yourself with a pin.

There was nothing to be frightened of. The old native woman had even offered to let it bite her on the arm as a test of its harmlessness, she remembered. She was annoyed, but that was all. She had a momentary impulse to fling it away from her, but she didn’t give in to it. She didn’t even drop it. It had slashed a second time before she could get it back into the cannister. Then it writhed a little and lay still. She replaced the lid, tightly this time, and went back to her former chair.

The back of her hand itched a little, where it had struck her. She scratched it, and her scratching reddened the skin slightly.

Female voice: “—will ya, huh? And I’ll give it right back to you.”

A sobbing voice: “Light. Light. Just a little light. Just for a minute. Just enough to show me where it is—” Sounds of violent threshing, as of something heavy caught in a trap.

The clock: Pit-pat, pit-pat, pit-pat; forty-six seconds, forty-seven seconds, forty-eight seconds— Time, the enemy of life.

She adjusted the wave-length once more. Then sat back again. She rubbed the back of her hand against her dress, to quell the insatiable tickling that seemed to afflict it. A five-pointed vermilion star was faintly visible on the back of it; with a white core, like an over-sized mosquito-bite.

A panting sound, as of a voracious animal tracing its muzzle close up against the seam of a door, came through. But not from the loudspeaker.

She had New York, her own town, now. The town he’d taken her away from. “This is the National Broadcasting Company, W-E-A-F, New York—” In her mind’s eye she could see the big double triangle, the lower half Times Square, the upper Longacre, with the crowds moving slowly along; Loew’s State, and the Astor, and Seventh Avenue splitting off from Broadway—

The clock: Pit-pat, pit-pat, pit-pat; fifty-eight seconds, fifty-nine seconds, sixty seconds — Time, the victor.

The white ash had reached the biting-end of the cigar now. There was no more unincinerated tobacco left to be consumed; there wasn’t anywhere further for it to go. It was a cold cylinder, a dead cylinder. A ghost-cigar. A memory.

The chain-pulls on the lamp hung in a mathematically-straight line, utterly still now.

The listener reached forward suddenly, there was the click of a switch, and the radio went off.

It had lasted fifty-five minutes.

She listened carefully first, without moving, eyes still in that downcast position.

Complete silence. Only Time, the enemy, the victor, the eternal, still going pit-pat, pit-pat, pit-pat.

Finally she stood up with calm deliberation, moved slowly forward, in the careful way of a woman trying not to arouse someone who is sleeping. She went toward the sealed door, stopped close against it, stood motionless, head inclined. There was no sound.

She reached out, rapped questioningly on the inscrutable woodwork. There was no answer.

She was smiling as she turned away. That same smile as before, only at the corners of her mouth. She came back closer to the light and took out the silver compact and opened it once more. She looked at herself in its mirror.

She looked the same. You couldn’t tell anything. She looked no different than before. She wondered what they meant about a guilty conscience.

The telephone rang, and for a moment it startled her almost to the point of dropping the compact, the sound was so unexpected in the new, the final, silence that had now fallen.

She went over to it, hesitated for just a moment, then picked it up. It was a woman’s voice, and for a moment she had difficulty recognizing it.

“Pauline, this is Marie Stewart—”

She was impatient to the point of brusqueness. She didn’t want any witnesses, any accessories, who might later be dangerous.

“Why did you call me now?”

“I had to. Pauline, listen to me. That old woman we were talking about the other day, you know the one I mean?”

Oh, no, you don’t, she thought; she wasn’t going to get her to incriminate herself that easily. “I don’t know what you mean. We didn’t talk of any old woman. Will you excuse me now?”

“She has just been to see my maid. She walked all the way in from out there, to look her up. There was no other way she knew of reaching you. And my maid just came running to me a minute ago with what she told her, frightened out of her wits. I had to reach you right away. Pauline, don’t touch that thing you took from her. Don’t go near it. There has been a terrible mistake.”

“A mistake? Marie, what are you trying to say to me? What is it?” Her own voice had become hoarsely unrecognizable now.

“That — what you went there for. She gave you one of the wrong kind. She only found out after you were gone and it was too late. If it bites you, nothing can save you. You will be dead within fifteen minutes. There is not even a serum for it.”

It had bitten her fully thirteen to fourteen minutes ago. Something started to swell up inside her head; it felt like a balloon.

“No one has ever been known to survive, unless they got immediate treatment, and that means amputation if it was on a hand or leg—”

The rest of the message went rushing upward toward the ceiling, with the voice speaking it, with the telephone, with the table that held it — and she was down upon her hands and knees, like a felled ox slowly buckling to the ground under the effects of a mallet-blow.

She lay there flat for a minute, mouth open an inch or two above the floor, unable to scream. Then she turned and began to crawl with a maddened patter of bare palms upon the floor, that carried her along it crabwise, sidling like some maimed thing.

She couldn’t get up on her feet. She couldn’t scream. There was no one, nothing, to scream to. There was a door there she wanted to get to, a door that might have help beyond it. When she’d reached it, she reared up against it on her knees, like a clever quadruped, a dog or cat, seeking egress. Her breath was raucous in the stillness, like a bellows. Huff, huff, huff.

Then she fell flat again on the other side. She’d have to go on still further now. Help was so far away. And she had so little time.

They found her there when they arrived. She was still warm, but she was dead. They had arrived within a few minutes. They were used to many bad sights, but this was a bad one such as they had never seen yet; even their faces paled when they saw what she had done. She lay in a pool of blood on the kitchen-floor. The meat cleaver had dropped to one side of her. The severed hand, with the wedding band still on it, had stayed up on the edge of the table she had used for a chopping block.

They found him too, presently. He fell out upon them when they opened the closet-door. He must have remained sagging half-upright against it. He too was still warm. But he was much more difficult to recognize than she was. The thing they carried out through the closet-opening was scarecrow-like. Tatters of torn shirt fluttered from it here and there. Gray dust was ground into its bared chest and forehead. Cobwebs festooned its eyebrows and matted hair. And the hands were wide-splayed, fingertips worn to the quick, skinless, all but nailless, slow drops of blood oozing from each one, drop by drop.

They found the snake, last of all.

They were mystified. They couldn’t understand how it had got where it was. How he, the man, had got where he was. How she had come to do what she had.

They performed an autopsy, of course. The medical examiner’s office reported by telephone to the police at five that afternoon.

“The amputation was unnecessary. She must have thought she had been bitten by a deadly variety. That species of snake, of course, is absolutely harmless, as we recognized immediately. Just to make sure, however, we have tested it with several rabbits. All have survived the bite unharmed.”

And the expert reporting went on, “The man through some accident became locked fast in the closet. The wind may have slammed the door on him. Or she may even have done it herself, playfully, as a sort of practical joke. Before she could release him again, the snake-bite had already occurred, and her terror robbed her of all further presence of mind, so that she forgot to unfasten the door. The frantic efforts he made to get out and go to her aid show him to have been blameless in whatever it was that occurred.”

“Then the amputation was the cause of death, are those your findings?”

“On the contrary, the amputation was not the cause of death. We arrived quickly enough afterwards for her to have been still alive if it were simply a question of the amputation, even though she might have been weak or unconscious from shock and loss of blood. Our examination shows death to have been instantaneous. What caused it was a heart-attack, induced more by the terror of thinking she had been fatally bitten than by any amputation. It is what you might call a death by the imagination.”

Two heads close together in an invalid chair. A brunette one, and one streaked with white, the overnight white of shock. A man, resting on the chair itself, and a woman, perched on the arm of it, with her head close to his. Marie Stewart and Donald Baron.

“You will be better soon. Every day you get a little better, grow a little stronger. Soon you’ll be over it altogether. It may have even helped, terrible as it was; it may have even cured you of that old fear, as a sort of shock-treatment would.”

“I think what helped me to pull through was I lost consciousness altogether toward the end, and unconsciousness can be a great blessing. That way I escaped the full effects. You’ve been wonderful to me, Marie. Being with me, nursing me every day. Why have you been so good to me?”

“I’ve always loved you. I already loved you when I first knew you, back in the States, before your marriage. I loved you so much that — there isn’t anything I wouldn’t have done, to be with you like this.” She stopped, then asked with a little flare of curiosity: “Donald, what happened to her that night? No one seems to know.”

He didn’t answer. She knew he’d never tell her that his wife had tried to kill him. He’d always kept it a secret from her, let her go on thinking that he’d accidentally locked himself in the closet. He was loyal that way, even to the memory of one who had tried to destroy him.

And looking at her, as she lay there nestled so fondly against him it was impossible to guess that she too might have a secret from him.

The clever person can commit a murder without weapons, she had once said to someone.

But there’s a cleverer one still who can get someone else entirely to commit it for her — and pay the price at the same time.