Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 12, No. 60, November 1948

The Thrill Is Gone by Fulton Oursler and Rupert Hughes

From Colliers, copyright, 1942, by Fulton Oursler and Rupert Hughes

Fulton Oursler (alias Anthony Abbot), creator of Thatcher Colt, detective, and Rupert Hughes, creator of Dirk Memling, criminal, combine their rich talents on the strange story of Henry Dawkins, the member of a murder jury who went to extraordinary lengths to live dangerously...

The news in yesterday’s papers was not the beginning of a new life for Henry Dawkins, as many of his friends supposed, but the logical next step in a strange and long-concealed pattern that stretched from his cradle to the courtroom.

The hidden passion of Henry’s heart was a desire for excitement, a dream of adventure and danger. He was a small, freckled man with volcanic blue eyes and he worked in a piano factory in one of the distant and almost uninhabited reaches of the Bronx. He lived not far from the plant in the third floor front of a rooming house. In his room was a grand piano and a shelf filled with secondhand detective and Western novels. Henry could not play the piano and had bought his instrument merely to make the proper impression on his employer. Neither was he a detective or a cowboy, but he lived in a storybook world, always hoping that some day something would happen to him. And one day something did.

There came in Henry’s mail a summons for jury duty. As he was not acquainted with the defendant, had never been arrested, and had no prejudices against capital punishment, he was acceptable to both sides, and so became a member of the jury.

The prisoner was Wilma Bowers, a widow, and the charge was that she had willfully, and knowingly, and with malice aforethought, dropped into her husband’s beer enough cyanide of potassium to kill a horse. Mrs. Bowers admitted having bought the poison but only at her husband’s command. She admitted also that she had induced him to take out a life insurance policy for ten thousand dollars, but she felt this was no more than proper wifely prudence. Finally she asserted that her husband had suffered from chronic headaches and dosed his own beer with poison because he was tired of pain. In fact, he wrote a suicide note and left it on the table in the hall. Unfortunately, in the distraction of her grief, Wilma could not remember where she had mislaid this vital document.

“A likely story!” flared the district attorney, rolling his eyes at the jury. But Dawkins was not listening to the district attorney. He could concentrate only on the lovely prisoner. Henry thought that Wilma was a fascinating, glamorous creature. The modest dressing of her dark hair, the hope and fear in her large eyes, the curvacious figure, made the blood incandescent in his veins. In fact, he barely heard the impassioned arguments of prosecutor and counsel for defense.

The first vote in the jury room was eleven to one for a verdict of guilty. The one acquittal ballot was Henry’s. When he realized that all the other jurors were ready to send the beautiful prisoner to the electric chair he was stunned. Then he sprang into action. Never a garrulous man, he suddenly found himself gifted with a superb eloquence. He argued and debated, pleaded and denounced, while hours rolled on. Just before dinner, a second vote was taken and the count stood seven to five — for acquittal. By midnight, the last stand-out for electrocution, a Mrs. Harrington, changed her vote. The jury reported a unanimous vote of not guilty.

Naturally the defense attorney learned of the magnificent behavior of Henry Dawkins. The result was an invitation to luncheon, from which counsel then excused himself. Wilma Bowers and Henry were alone at last.

Eventually Henry said, “You are the most wonderful woman in the world. I wish I could be with you forever.”

“This is sudden,” admitted Wilma, “but I like it. I accept.”

One week later they were married. Then began for Henry Dawkins a period of ecstatic and thrill-filled days and nights. Wilma, the widow, was a tender and affectionate teacher of her bachelor pupil. But the familiar joys of wedlock were of wholly secondary importance to Henry Dawkins. He accepted them only as a pleasant byproduct of a larger bliss. His was a secret and solitary happiness, the thrill of living close to danger.

Not for one moment had Henry ever felt himself deceived about Wilma. He devoutly believed the whole story as told to the jury by the district attorney. Now he felt certain that the time would soon come when she would do to him what she did to her first husband. At last he was living a real adventure! Thus he was not surprised when Wilma suggested that he take out life insurance; he signed the application with glee. Until the policy was issued he felt uncomfortably and disappointingly secure.

But once the policy, naming Wilma as sole beneficiary, without possibility of change, was delivered to him, life really became exciting. If Wilma baked an apple pie, Henry tasted it with eyes to one side, tongue poised, for the distant tang of an alien taste. He went curiously to sleep wondering if he would ever wake up.

Then came a winter’s night, with the wind crying like a bad child. The lamps were low in the Dawkins’ living room, and Henry was in his easy chair reading a detective novel. Through the door came Wilma, smiling; in one hand she carried an empty glass and in the other an uncapped bottle. Henry’s heart vaulted and fell. He remembered; his predecessor had passed out after a draught of beer.

“My dear,” he grinned, “that looks like brown October ale. You remember — the song in Robin Hood?”

“Robin Hood?” repeated Wilma, aghast. “Did you say Robin Hood?”

“Yes,” said Henry. “Anything wrong about it?”

Wilma’s hand, pouring the beer, began to tremble. “Robin Hood,” she repeated. “I remember now.”

She rushed across the room toward the bookcase, and her hands raced from title to title. She gave a little triumphant squeal and pulled out a book, shook it, and a piece of white paper fluttered to the floor. With a cry from the heart she seized it and held it triumphantly before Henry’s bug-eyed stare. There it was, and no mistake. Her first husband’s note, proclaiming his intention to commit suicide.

Wilma was not a murderess. She was vindicated...

The squib in yesterday’s paper told how Henry Dawkins of the Bronx went to Reno and got his divorce.