Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 26, No. 4. Whole No. 143, October 1955

“Well?” by Rebecca Weiner

In our July 1954 issue we brought you a group of four stories by children — “first stories” by a twelve-year-old boy from Brooklyn, a twelve-year-old American boy living in Ireland, an eight-year-old American girl living in Germany, and a six-year-old child prodigy from New York These four tales were remarkable efforts to have come from such young writers, and the stories themselves almost ran the gamut of the mystery field — a study of juvenile delinquency, a hardboiled satire, a “pure” detective story, and a new-fashioned ghost story. We wondered if our publication of stories by children would quicken the interest of other children to try so difficult a “game” as creative writing. We hoped it would, and we are glad to report that our hopes were fulfilled.

We are now ready to give you The Second Children’s Hour — this time two stories, one by a fifteen-year-old girl and the other by a nine-year-old boy... what talent there is in the younger generation!

First, then, meet Rebecca Weiner, a Junior (at the time she wrote her story) at Hillhouse High School in New Haven, Connecticut. In her letter accompanying the story, Miss Weiner said: “I have always been a little shy of showing my stories even to my family; now I am taking a step that is just about killing me — sending you a story.” Have you ever read a more touching, more sensitive, more penetratingly true statement made by a young — a very young — author?

Miss Weiner told us that her family ties are exceptionally close, and that she has always received warmth and encouragement from her parents. In her senior year in high school she was editor-in-chief of the school literary magazine, “The Gleam.” Writing, she insists, is not an avocation with her; “rather [and we now quote] it is a part of me and something I must do. I wrote my first story when I was six, and since then I have not stopped writing, nor have I changed my mind as to my life-long ambition — to write a really great book some day.”

Miss Weiner’s favorite authors include Thornton Wilder, J. D. Salinger, William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, and John Steinbeck; and one of her ambitions is to study creative uniting under Archibald MacLeish. Oh, this wonderful, fabulous, awe-inspiring younger generation!

And now, Rebecca Weiner’s story...

Miss Riley was very afraid for the first time. The sensation was new to her; she thought back and back and remembered nothing like this. She did a great deal of thinking now, sitting in her lonely, darkened apartment over a cup of coffee and idly scratching on the chrome table-top with a roving finger. Three young-old faces looked up at her from the shining chrome, but when she whirled around to see, they were not there. She had known it. They were nowhere, yet she saw them in every store window, in every passing car, in every low, tight voice. She had read of such things; now, in the table-top, circled by a ring of spilled coffee, was terror, grinning up at her in a merciless death’s smile.

Miss Riley had been born of a wealthy Yankee-Irish father, whom she adored, and in her celibate girlhood, emulated in every way. She learned to do his accounts and she learned to play good golf, and she learned to tell a good stock from a bad one. Her mother was sweet and soft and often lonely, and sometimes she would sit outside her husband’s study and watch the two together, and she would become wistful and perhaps cry a little. They rarely noticed her.

Miss Riley had become a schoolteacher. She never married. While her parents were alive, she lived with them in a giant, old house surrounded by a great expanse of garden and lawn. One night her father died, and her mother, whose every hour without him was pain, hurried after him a few days later. Miss Riley was 46 then; she moved to a small apartment of her own, and sold the great, old house. She was sad, looking at it for the last time, but because her father was a Yankee, she clasped her hands and walked briskly off.

She had no close friends but she was companionable with the teachers and they admired her if they did not like her.

She had stood behind the same desk for 32 years. She had seen so much come and go, and now the-legends had grown around her: stories of how her lover had been killed on the way to their wedding; of how she was afraid of fire because her father and mother had been killed in one. She heard them and laughed and still stood, at 60, behind the desk and taught the history of England and the history of France.

She had seen the tough boys and conquered them, and they adored her for it and called her tough. It was a compliment and it pleased her to hear them say it, so she faced them as they came, cold and straight, gazing out at them through rimless glasses.

Then things changed and the face of fear became known to her... and somehow it was different and terrible.

Three boys sat with a class in September. They sat, one behind the other, and looked up at her, and each one wore a very slight grin, but she noticed it. It was her custom on the first day of school to lay down the law. This day she stood in front of her desk, unbending and stern, outlining the year. The three boys grinned, but it wasn’t really grinning. She noticed that the ends of their mouths turned up in a mirthless way, and it was ugly.

There was the leader, Jeffrey White, a good-looking, slender boy with cold eyes and light, short-clipped hair. His school record had been brilliant up until a few years before, when his mother had died and his father had lost his job. Henry Voking had dark eyes. They were lonely eyes. His mouth was often twisted into a practice grimace of scorn. His father was a drunkard with an uncontrollable temper. His mother worked hard to support the family. Larry Crane lived with his aunt, but he didn’t go there much. “She’s got five kids of her own,” he had once been heard to say, “and she just don’t want me around.” These three had been rejected; and they rejected all. They were not three but one.

One day Miss Riley found Jeffrey and Larry methodically ripping a schoolbook into small pieces. She had them suspended from school. For two weeks, Henry Voking was also absent, and Miss Riley visited his home to find out why. His father, a bearded man in a dirty undershirt, said that Henry had been helping him. It was a lie and they both knew it, but Miss Riley left. She wrinkled up her fine nose at the smell of the place.

One Monday of the third week, the three returned. And then, in a week they were gone. The rumor went that they were hitch-hiking to Florida. Miss Riley shrugged when she heard it.

She rarely thought of them. Until one afternoon in late January when it was dark and cold and she was glad to be home reading.

She did not hear them come in and they stood in the doorway until she noticed them. Larry, with the dark, brooding face, lit a cigarette with one swift motion, before she was able to speak. He smiled at her.

She spat at them in her thin, New England voice: “How dare you come into my home! How dare you! You’re hoodlums, rotten hoodlums, and you’re a disgrace!” Her anger... she trembled with rage. “What kind of parents do you have who let you walk the streets this way?”

Jeffrey White grinned slowly and yet there was pain in his eyes. “Don’t you talk about my mother that way,” he said. And he laughed. They all laughed, and then they walked out, slowly, through her open door.

They called her all the time after that. She knew who it was; the phone would ring and she would answer and say “Hello? hello?” and then a louder “Hello?” and then she would hear the click on the other end, and that low, dismal buzz. For a while she tried not answering the phone, but as she sat in her darkness and the phone sang out louder and more insistent, it was almost a relief to answer it and hear the silence beyond.

In school they noticed that she looked tired. They said she was getting old. Her eyes were rimmed and her mouth was lined and weary. She sat on the chair that she had never sat upon, for in her 32 years she had stood behind the desk and had scoffed at those who sat. “It’s good exercise,” she had said. Now she said nothing. Now the lines deepened.

The boys did not come to school any longer. Somebody told her that they had quit. She sighed. She felt tired and lost.

Once they called at 4 o’clock in the morning. She had the call traced to a phone booth in an all-night restaurant and the proprietor said that there had been some kids in but they had left. He was sorry, he said. He didn’t want any trouble, he said. If he saw them again, he’d get a cop.

She did not call the police. Although, she was frightened, she was a New England Yankee, and she was self-sufficient. She told herself just that, every time the phone rang and she frantically called “Hello?” into the receiver. She told herself that, every time her fingers reached, involuntarily for the phone, to call for help, for company. She was a New England Yankee, and self-sufficient.

One night in February, they called again. There was an ice storm. It was wildly ravaging the city, and Miss Riley sat alone in her kitchenette, drinking coffee. She tapped on the table with her fingertips. She drummed out a marching song that she had learned in school many years ago. Then her phone rang.

She let it ring twice and then she moved to answer it. She knew what it would be; yet something made her reach for the phone. She whispered into it in a cracked voice that she did not recognize as her own, “Leave me alone. Please leave me alone.” At the other end she heard a door slam. Then nothing. She clicked the receiver and silence greeted her heavily. They had left the receiver off the hook, and now her phone was useless to her. She stood holding it in her hand, then quietly replaced it.

She went into the kitchen. She thought of going downstairs to the janitor, and she almost did, but then she sat down at the table, and after a while she dropped her head into her hands and let the storm whirl around her...

There was no school because all the teachers went to the funeral. Somebody told somebody that the three boys were down in the park. A group went to see them.

“What have they got on ’em?” asked one. “What can they do to ’em?”

“Not a thing,” said a tall boy. “Her heart gave out. What does anybody care why?”

Somebody frowned. Somebody shrugged.

Three boys came by. They did not smile. They walked in the sunlight with their heads up, looking defiantly about them, but Henry Voking’s eyes were red-rimmed. They walked close to each other by the crowd of boys.

The three boys moved slowly down the street and the watchers waited silently until they were gone. One turned to the others.

“Well?” he said.

A Man Like His Daddy by Brian O’Sullivan

The second contributor to our Children’s Hour is a nine-year-old Irish boy. Apparently he had read the first Children s Hour, in our July 1954 issue, and found the challenge irresistible. In the letter accompanying his story, young Brian O’Sullivan wrote: “Dear Ellery Queen, The storeys in your Childrens hour were marvellous and I thinly your magazine is the best in the world.” Now, none of your blarney, lad — but what editor could resist so grand an opening sentence?

Brian s father is a mystery-story writer (DON’T HANG ME TOO HIGH and SOMEONE WALKED OVER MY GRAVE, among others) — so the son comes by it naturally. His mother does the typing for her author-men — that is, when she has spare time which (to quote from Brian’s first letter) “she hasent much of becase she has 3 children to look after.”

Mr. O’Sullivan was seventeen when he had his first story published, so he has warned Master O’Sullivan not to let his nine-year-old family record go to his head!

While it was a “real thrill” for young Brian to have his story accepted, he went on to state: “I must say I am looking forward to receiving the money.” But the lad had good reasons for thinking in terms of cash: he wanted to get a doll’s house and dolls furniture for sister Barbara — “her heart is set on them and she’s had a hard time this year, with chicken pox, measles, and getting her tonsils out”; and some toy lorries for brother Jim — “he’s 2½ — we call him the Red-Headed Terror — he’s impossible”; and an electric train set for the author himself; and a wire recorder for Daddy — “but I think have to wait until I write a few more stories!” And gifts for Mammy — “including a new typewriter ribbon!”

And now, Brian O’Sullivan’s story...

We live in a very nice place called Clondalkin, in County Dublin. My favorite friend is Michael Maher who lives near us. He was not always my favorite friend. I am nine and he is only seven and he was always hanging around the gang I played with. We used to tell him he was too young and to run home to his mama.

Then his mama went to the hospital for an operation and she never came back. My mama gave Michael his meals, sent him off to school, and looked after him during the day while his daddy was working. His daddy was a policeman and Michael said he wanted to be a man like his daddy when he grew up. He wanted to direct traffic and arrest burglars and bring them to jail.

His mama was a very nice lady. I heard my daddy say one day that she was almost as pretty as my own mama. My mama slapped him with a dishcloth and said: “Plámás won’t get you anywhere.”

When Michael’s mama went to the hospital and didn’t come back, Mr. Maher got very sick. He used to come home late from work and stagger from side to side up our path to get Michael to bring him home to bed. He looked very sick and never laughed any more like he used to. My daddy always said: “Take it easy, Tom.”

And Mr. Maher said: “What do you know about it?”

My daddy said: “Think of the kid, Tom.”

Mr. Maher looked very angry and said: “If he’s a nuisance, I’ll take him away.”

My daddy said: “I didn’t mean that.”

Michael used to ask us why his mama wasn’t coming back. My mama used to look at my daddy but they did not seem to know what to say. Then one day Michael stopped asking and he never asked again. He said his daddy was sending him to a boarding school in September. He didn’t want to go.

One day after tea at our house Michael and I met the gang and we played games in his back garden. The gang wanted to play rocket ships but Michael wanted to play cowboys and Indians. So we played cowboys and Indians. We were tired of playing rocket ships, anyway.

Michael threw a rope over a branch of a tree and tied a noose round his neck. Then he sat on his rocking horse and said: “I must be the good man and you must be the rustlers. Brian is the bad man who pretends I am the king of the rustlers and they’re going to lynch me. The bad man slaps my horse to make it run away but it won’t budge. I seen it in the cinema. They put the good man on another horse but just then his pal comes along.”

I didn’t want to play.

I said it was a dangerous game. Michael might get choked and die.

One of the gang named Liam said: “My daddy read in the papers about kids getting strangled putting ropes round their necks and doing cowboy tricks.”

Michael said: “That’s silly! I saw my daddy doing it in the bedroom after tea.”