Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 98, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 588 & 589, October 1991

The Moment of Decision by Stanley Ellin

The simple truth, simply said, from Ellery Queen’s introduction to First Prize Winner Number 10 in EQMM’s 13 annual contests is that Stanley Ellin never wrote an undistinguished short story...

Hugh Lozier was the exception to the rule that people who are completely sure of themselves cannot be likable. We have all met the sure ones, of course — those controlled by penetrating voices which cut through all others in a discussion, those hard forefingers jabbing home opinions on your chest, those living Final Words on all issues — and I imagine we all share the same amalgam of dislike and envy for them. Dislike, because no one likes to be shouted down or prodded in the chest, and envy, because everyone wishes he himself were so rich in self-assurance that he could do the shouting down and the prodding.

For myself, since my work took me regularly to certain places in this atomic world where the only state was confusion and the only steady employment that of splitting political hairs, I found absolute judgments harder and harder to come by. Hugh once observed of this that it was a good thing my superiors in the Department were not cut of the same cloth, because God knows what would happen to the country then. I didn’t relish that, but — and there was my curse again — I had to grant him his right to say it.

Despite this, and despite the fact that Hugh was my brother-in-law — a curious relationship when you come to think of it — I liked him immensely, just as everyone else did who knew him. He was a big good-looking man, with clear blue eyes in a ruddy face, and with a quick, outgoing nature eager to appreciate whatever you had to offer. He was overwhelmingly generous, and his generosity was of that rare and excellent kind which makes you feel as if you are doing the donor a favor by accepting it.

I wouldn’t say he had any great sense of humor, but plain good humor can sometimes be an adequate substitute for that, and in Hugh’s case it was. His stormy side was largely reserved for those times when he thought you might have needed his help in something and failed to call on him for it. Which meant that ten minutes after Hugh had met you and liked you, you were expected to ask him for anything he might be able to offer. A month or so after he married my sister Elizabeth, she mentioned to him my avid interest in a fine Copley he had hanging in his gallery at Hilltop, and I can still vividly recall my horror when it suddenly arrived, heavily crated and with his gift card attached, at my barren room-and-a-half. It took considerable effort, but I finally managed to return it to him by foregoing the argument that the picture was undoubtedly worth more than the entire building in which I lived and by complaining that it simply didn’t show to advantage on my wall. I think he suspected I was lying, but being Hugh he would never dream of charging me with that in so many words.

Of course, Hilltop and the two hundred years of Lozier tradition that went into it did much to shape Hugh this way. The first Loziers had carved the estate from the heights overlooking the river, had worked hard and flourished exceedingly; in successive generations had invested their income so wisely that money and position eventually erected a towering wall between Hilltop and the world outside. Truth to tell, Hugh was very much a man of the Eighteenth Century who somehow found himself in the Twentieth and simply made the best of it.

Hilltop itself was almost a replica of the celebrated but long untenanted Dane house nearby and was striking enough to open anybody’s eyes at a glance. The house was weathered stone, graceful despite its bulk, and the vast lawns reaching to the river’s edge were tended with such fanatic devotion over the years that they had become carpets of purest green which magically changed luster under any breeze. Gardens ranged from the other side of the house down to the groves which half hid the stables and outbuildings, and past the far side of the groves ran the narrow road which led to town. The road was a courtesy road, each estate holder along it maintaining his share, and I think it safe to say that for all the crushed rock he laid in it Hugh made less use of it by far than any of his neighbors.

Hugh’s life was bound up in Hilltop; he could be made to leave it only by dire necessity; and if you did meet him away from it you were made acutely aware that he was counting off the minutes until he could return. And if you weren’t wary, you would more than likely find yourself going along with him when he did return, and totally unable to tear yourself away from the place while the precious weeks rolled by. I know. I believe I spent more time at Hilltop than at my own apartment after my sister brought Hugh into the family.

At one time I wondered how Elizabeth took to this marriage, considering that before she met Hugh she had been as restless and flighty as she was pretty. When I put the question to her directly, she said, “It’s wonderful, darling. Just as wonderful as I knew it would be when I first met him.”

It turned out that their first meeting had taken place at an art exhibition, a showing of some ultramodern stuff, and she had been intently studying one of the more bewildering creations on display when she became aware of this tall, good-looking man staring at her. And, as she put it, she had been about to set him properly in his place when he said abruptly, “Are you admiring that?”

This was so unlike what she had expected that she was taken completely aback. “I don’t know,” she said weakly. “Am I supposed to?”

“No,” said the stranger, “it’s damned nonsense. Come along now and I’ll show you something which isn’t a waste of time.”

“And,” Elizabeth said to me, “I came along like a pup at his heels, while he marched up and down and told me what was good and what was bad, and in a good loud voice, too, so that we collected quite a crowd along the way. Can you picture it, darling?”

“Yes,” I said, “I can.” By now I had shared similar occasions with Hugh and learned at first hand that nothing could dent his cast-iron assurance.

“Well,” Elizabeth went on, “I must admit that at first I was a little put off, but then I began to see that he knew exactly what he was talking about, and that he was terribly sincere. Not a bit self-conscious about anything, but just eager for me to understand things the way he did. It’s the same way with everything. Everybody else in the world is always fumbling and bumbling over deciding anything — what to order for dinner, or how to manage his job, or whom to vote for — but Hugh always knows. It’s not knowing that makes for all those nerves and complexes and things you hear about, isn’t that so? Well, I’ll take Hugh, thank you, and leave everyone else to the psychiatrists.”

So there it was. An Eden with flawless lawns and no awful nerves and complexes, and not even the glimmer of a serpent in the offing. That is, not a glimmer until the day Raymond made his entrance on the scene.

We were out on the terrace that day, Hugh and Elizabeth and I, slowly being melted into a sort of liquid torpor by the August sunshine, and all of us too far gone to make even a pretense at talk. I lay there with a linen cap over my face, listening to the summer noises around me and being perfectly happy.

There was the low steady hiss of the breeze through the aspens nearby, the plash and drip of oars on the river below, and now and then the melancholy tink-tunk of a sheep bell from one of the flock on the lawn. The flock was a fancy of Hugh’s. He swore that nothing was better for a lawn than a few sheep grazing on it, and every summer five or six fat and sleepy ewes were turned out on the grass to serve this purpose and to add a pleasantly pastoral note.

My first warning of something amiss came from the sheep — from the sudden sound of their bells clanging wildly and then a baa-ing which suggested an assault by a whole pack of wolves. I heard Hugh say, “Damn!” loudly and angrily, and I opened my eyes to see something more incongruous than wolves. It was a large black poodle in a full glory of a clownish haircut, a bright-red collar, and an ecstasy of high spirits as he chased the frightened sheep around the lawn. It was clear the poodle had no intention of hurting them — he probably found them the most wonderful playmates imaginable — but it was just as clear that the panicky ewes didn’t understand this and would very likely end up in the river before the fun was over.

In the bare second it took me to see all this, Hugh had already leaped the low terrace wall and was among the sheep, herding them away from the water’s edge and shouting commands at the dog, which had different ideas. “Down, boy!” he yelled. “Down!” And then as he would to one of his own hounds he sternly commanded, “Heel!”

He would have done better, I thought, to have picked up a stick or stone and made a threatening gesture, since the poodle paid no attention whatever to Hugh’s words. Instead, continuing to bark happily, the poodle made for the sheep again, this time with Hugh in futile pursuit. An instant later, the dog was frozen into immobility by a voice from among the aspens near the edge of the lawn.

“Asseyez!” the voice called breathlessly. “Asseyez-vous!”

Then the man appeared, a small dapper figure trotting across the grass. Hugh stood waiting, his face darkening as we watched.

Elizabeth squeezed my arm. “Let’s get down there,” she whispered. “Hugh doesn’t like being made a fool of.”

We got there in time to hear Hugh open his big guns. “Any man,” he was saying, “who doesn’t know how to train an animal to its place shouldn’t own one.”

The man’s face was all polite attention. It was a good face, thin and intelligent, and webbed with tiny lines at the corners of the eyes. There was also something behind those eyes that couldn’t quite be masked. A gentle mockery. A glint of wry perception turned on the world like a camera lens. It was nothing anyone like Hugh would have noticed, but it was there all the same, and I found myself warming to it on the spot.

There was also something tantalizingly familiar about the newcomer’s face, his high forehead, and his thinning grey hair, but much as I dug into my memory during Hugh’s long and solemn lecture I couldn’t come up with an answer. The lecture ended with a few remarks on the best methods of dog training, and by then it was clear that Hugh was working himself into a mood of forgiveness.

“As long as there’s no harm done,” he said, and paused.

The man nodded soberly. “Still, to get off on the wrong foot with one’s new neighbors—”

Hugh looked startled. “Neighbors?” he said almost rudely. “You mean that you live around here?”

The man waved toward the aspens. “On the other side of those woods.”

“The Dane house?” The Dane house was almost as sacred to Hugh as Hilltop, and he had once explained to me that if he were ever offered a chance to buy the place he would snap it up. His tone now was not so much wounded as incredulous. “I don’t believe it!” he exclaimed.

“Oh, yes,” the man assured him, “the Dane house. I performed there at a party many years ago and always hoped that someday I might own it.”

It was the word performed which gave me my clue — that and the accent barely perceptible under the precise English. He had been born and raised in Marseilles — that would explain the accent — and long before my time he had already become a legend.

“You’re Raymond, aren’t you?” I said. “Charles Raymond.”

“I prefer Raymond alone.” He smiled in deprecation of his own small vanity. “And I am flattered that you recognize me.”

I don’t believe he really was. Raymond the Magician, Raymond the Great, would, if anything, expect to be recognized wherever he went. As the master of sleight of hand who had paled Thurston’s star, as the escape artist who had almost outshone Houdini, Raymond would not be inclined to underestimate himself.

He had started with the standard box of tricks which makes up the repertoire of most professional magicians; he had gone far beyond that to those feats of escape which, I suppose, are known to us all by now. The lead casket sealed under a foot of lake ice, the welded-steel straitjackets, the vaults of the Bank of England, the exquisite suicide knot which noosed throat and doubled legs together so that the motion of a leg draws the noose tighter around the throat — all these Raymond had escaped from. And then at the pinnacle of fame he had dropped from sight and his name had become relegated to the past.

When I asked him why, he shrugged.

“A man works for money or for the love of his work,” he said. “If he has all the wealth he needs and has no more love for his work, why go on?”

“But to give up a great career—” I protested.

“It was enough to know that the house was waiting here.”

“You mean,” Elizabeth said, “that you never intended to live anyplace but here?”

“Never — not once in all these years.” He laid a finger along his nose and winked broadly at us. “Of course, I made no secret of this to the Dane estate, and when the time came for them to sell I was the first and only one approached.”

“You don’t give up an idea easily,” Hugh said in an edged voice.

Raymond laughed. “Idea? It became an obsession, really. Over the years I traveled to many parts of the world, but no matter how fine the place, I knew it couldn’t be as fine as that house on the edge of the woods there, with the river at its feet and the hills beyond. Someday, I would tell myself, when my travels are done, I will come here and, like Candide, cultivate my garden.”

He ran his hand abstractedly over the poodle’s head and looked around with an air of great satisfaction. “And now,” he said, “here I am...”

Here he was, indeed, and it quickly became clear that his arrival was working a change on Hilltop. Or, since Hilltop was so completely a reflection of Hugh, it was clear that a change was being worked on Hugh. He became irritable and restless, and more aggressively sure of himself than ever. The warmth and good nature were still there — they were as much part of him as his arrogance — but he now had to work a little harder at them. He reminded me of a man who is bothered by a speck in the eye, but can’t find it and must get along with it as best he can.

Raymond, of course, was the speck, and I got the impression at times that he rather enjoyed the role. It would have been easy enough for him to stay close to his own house and cultivate his garden, or paste up his album, or whatever retired performers do, but he evidently found that impossible. He had a way of drifting over to Hilltop at odd times, just as Hugh was led to find his way to the Dane house and spend long and troublesome sessions there.

Both of them must have known that they were so badly suited to each other that the easy and logical solution would have been to stay apart. But they had the affinity of negative and positive forces, and when they were in a room together the crackling of the antagonistic current between them was so strong you could almost see it in the air.

Any subject became a point of contention for them, and they would duel over it bitterly: Hugh armored and weaponed with his massive assurance, Raymond flicking away with a rapier, trying to find a chink in the armor. I think that what annoyed Raymond most was the discovery that there was no chink in Hugh’s armor. As someone with an obvious passion for searching out all sides to all questions, and for going deep into motives and causes, Raymond was continually being outraged by Hugh’s single-minded way of laying down the law.

He didn’t hesitate to let Hugh know that. “You are positively medieval,” he said. “And of all things men should have learned since that time, the biggest is that there are no easy answers, no solutions one can give with a snap of the fingers. I can only hope for you that someday you may be faced with the perfect dilemma, the unanswerable question. You would find that a revelation. You would learn more in that minute than you dreamed possible.”

And Hugh did not make matters any better when he coldly answered, “And I say that for any man with a brain and the courage to use it there is no such thing as a perfect dilemma.”

It may be that this was the sort of episode that led to the trouble that followed, or it may be that Raymond acted out of the most innocent and aesthetic motives possible. But, whatever the motives, the results were inevitable and dangerous.

They grew from the project Raymond outlined for us in great detail one afternoon. Now that he was living in the Dane house, he had discovered that it was too big, too overwhelming. “Like a museum,” he explained. “I find myself wandering through it like a lost soul through endless galleries.”

The grounds also needed landscaping. The ancient trees were handsome but, as Raymond put it, there were just too many of them. “Literally,” he said, “I cannot see the river for the trees, and I am one devoted to the sight of running water.”

Altogether there would be drastic changes. Two wings of the house would come down, the trees would be cleared away to make a broad aisle to the water, the whole place would be enlivened. It would no longer be a museum, but the perfect home he had envisioned over the years.

At the start of this recitative Hugh was slouched comfortably in his chair. Then, as Raymond drew the vivid picture of what was to be, Hugh sat up straighter and straighter until he was as rigid as a trooper in the saddle. His lips compressed. His face became blood-red. His hands clenched and unclenched in a slow, deadly rhythm. Only a miracle was restraining him from an open outburst, but it was not the kind of miracle to last. I saw from Elizabeth’s expression that she understood this, too, but was as helpless as I to do anything about it. And when Raymond, after painting the last glowing strokes of his description, said complacently, “Well, now, what do you think?” there was no holding Hugh.

He leaned forward with deliberation and said, “Do you really want to know what I think?”

“Now, Hugh,” Elizabeth said in alarm. “Please, Hugh—”

He brushed that aside.

“Do you really want to know?”

Raymond frowned. “Of course.”

“Then I’ll tell you,” Hugh said. He took a deep breath. “I think that nobody but a damned iconoclast could even conceive the atrocity you’re proposing. I think you’re one of those people who takes pleasure in smashing apart anything that’s stamped with tradition or stability. You’d kick the props from under the whole world if you could!”

“I beg your pardon,” Raymond said. He was very pale and angry. “But I think you are confusing change with destruction. Surely you must comprehend that I don’t intend to destroy anything but only wish to make some necessary changes.”

“Necessary?” Hugh gibed. “Rooting up a fine stand of trees that’s been there for centuries? Ripping apart a house that’s as solid as a rock? I call it wanton destruction.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand. To refresh a scene, to reshape it—”

“I have no intention of arguing,” Hugh cut in. “I’m telling you straight out that you don’t have the right to tamper with that property!”

They were on their feet now, facing each other truculently, and the only thing that kept me from being really frightened was the conviction that Hugh would not become violent, and that Raymond was far too level-headed to lose his temper. Then the threatening moment was magically past. Raymond’s lips suddenly quirked in amusement and he studied Hugh with courteous interest.

“I see,” he said. “I was quite stupid not to have understood at once. This property which I remarked was a little too much like a museum is to remain that way, and I am to be its custodian. A caretaker of the past, one might say, a curator of its relics.”

He shook his head, smiling. “But I’m afraid I’m not quite suited to that role. I lift my hat to the past, it is true, but I prefer to court the present. For that reason I will go ahead with my plans, and hope they do not make an obstacle to our friendship.”

I remember thinking, when I left next day for the city and a long hot week at my desk, that Raymond had carried off the affair very nicely and that, thank God, it had gone no further than it did. So I was completely unprepared for Elizabeth’s call at the end of the week.

It was awful, she said. It was the business of Hugh and Raymond and the Dane house, but worse than ever. She was counting on my coming down to Hilltop the next day; there couldn’t be any question about that. She had planned a way of clearing up the whole thing, but I simply had to be there to back her up. After all, I was one of the few people Hugh would listen to and she was depending on me.

“Depending on me for what?” I said. I didn’t like the sound of it. “And as for Hugh’s listening to me, Elizabeth, isn’t that stretching it a good deal? I can’t see him wanting my advice on his personal affairs.”

“If you’re going to be touchy about it—”

“I’m not touchy about it,” I retorted. “I just don’t like getting mixed up in this thing. Hugh’s quite capable of taking care of himself.”

“Maybe too capable.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Oh, I can’t explain now,” she wailed. “I’ll tell you everything tomorrow. And, darling, if you have any brotherly feelings you’ll be here on the morning train. Believe me, it’s serious.”

I arrived on the morning train in a bad state. My imagination is one of the overactive kind that can build a cosmic disaster out of very little material, and by the time I arrived at the house I was prepared for almost anything.

But, on the surface at least, all was serene. Hugh greeted me warmly, Elizabeth was her cheerful self, and we had an amiable lunch and a long talk which never came near the subject of Raymond or the Dane house. I said nothing about Elizabeth’s phone call, but thought of it with a steadily growing sense of outrage until I was alone with her.

“Now,” I said, “I’d like an explanation of all this mystery. The Lord knows what I expected to find out here, but it certainly wasn’t anything I’ve seen so far. And I’d like some accounting for the bad time you’ve given me since that call.”

“All right,” she said grimly, “and that’s what you’ll get. Come along.”

She led the way on a long walk through the gardens and past the stables and outbuildings. Near the private road which lay beyond the last grove of trees she suddenly said, “When the car drove you up to the house, didn’t you notice anything strange about this road?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I suppose not. The driveway to the house turns off too far away from here. But now you’ll have a chance to see for yourself.”

I did see for myself. A chair was set squarely in the middle of the road and on the chair sat a stout man placidly reading a magazine. I recognized the man at once: he was one of Hugh’s stablehands, and he had the patient look of someone who has been sitting for a long time and expects to sit a good deal longer. It took me only a second to realize what he was there for, but Elizabeth wasn’t leaving anything to my deductive powers. When we walked over to him the man stood up and grinned at us.

“William,” Elizabeth said, “would you mind telling my brother what instructions Mr. Lozier gave you?”

“Sure,” the man said cheerfully. “Mr. Lozier told us there was always supposed to be one of us sitting right here, and any truck we saw that might be carrying construction stuff or suchlike for the Dane house was to be stopped and turned back. All we had to do is tell them it’s private property and they were trespassing. If they laid a finger on us we just call in the police. That’s the whole thing.”

“Have you turned back any trucks?” Elizabeth asked for my benefit.

The man looked surprised. “Why, you know that, Mrs. Lozier,” he said. “There was a couple of them the first day we were out here, and that was all. There wasn’t any fuss, either,” he explained to me. “None of those drivers wants to monkey with trespass.”

When we were away from the road again, I clapped my hand to my forehead. “It’s incredible!” I said. “Hugh must know he can’t get away with this. That road is the only one to the Dane place and it’s been in public use so long that it isn’t private any more!”

Elizabeth nodded. “And that’s exactly what Raymond told Hugh a few days back. He came over here in a fury and they had quite an argument about it. And when Raymond said something about hauling Hugh off to court, Hugh answered that he’d be glad to spend the rest of his life in litigation over this business. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The last thing Raymond said was that Hugh ought to know that force only invites force, and ever since then I’ve been expecting a war to break out here any minute. Don’t you see? That man blocking the road is a constant provocation, and it scares me.”

I could understand that. And the more I considered the matter, the more dangerous it looked.

“But I have a plan,” Elizabeth said eagerly, “and that’s why I wanted you here. I’m having a dinner party tonight, a very small, informal dinner party. It’s to be a sort of peace conference. You’ll be there, and Dr. Wynant — Hugh likes you both a great deal — and,” she hesitated, “Raymond.”

“No!” I said. “You mean he’s actually coming?”

“I went over to see him yesterday and we had a long talk. I explained everything to him — about neighbors being able to sit down and come to an understanding, and about brotherly love and... oh, it must have sounded dreadfully inspirational and sticky, but it worked. He said he would be here.”

I had a foreboding. “Does Hugh know about this?”

“About the dinner? Yes.”

“I mean, about Raymond’s being here.”

“No, he doesn’t.” And then when she saw me looking hard at her she burst out defiantly with, “Well, something had to be done and I did it, that’s all! Isn’t it better than just sitting and waiting for God knows what?”

Until we were all seated around the dining-room table that evening I might have conceded the point. Hugh had been visibly shocked by Raymond’s arrival, but then, apart from a sidelong glance at Elizabeth which had volumes written in it, he managed to conceal his feelings well enough. He had made the introductions gracefully, kept up his end of the conversation, and, all in all, did a credible job of playing host.

Ironically, it was the presence of Dr. Wynant which made even this much of a triumph possible for Elizabeth, and which then turned it into disaster. The doctor was an eminent surgeon, stocky and grey-haired, with an abrupt, positive way about him. Despite his own position in the world, he seemed pleased as a schoolboy to meet Raymond, and in no time at all they were as thick as thieves.

It was when Hugh discovered during dinner that nearly all attention was fixed on Raymond and very little on himself that the mantle of good host started to slip and the fatal flaws in Elizabeth’s plan showed through. There are people who enjoy entertaining lions and who take pleasure in reflected glory, but Hugh was not one of them. Besides, he regarded the doctor as one of his closest friends, and I have noticed that it is the most assured of men who can be the most jealous of their friendships. And when a prized friendship is being encroached on by the man one loathes more than anyone else in the world—! All in all, by simply imagining myself in Hugh’s place and looking across the table at Raymond, who was gaily and unconcernedly holding forth, I was prepared for the worst.

The opportunity for it came to Hugh when Raymond was deep in a discussion of the devices used in effecting escapes. They were innumerable, he said. Almost anything one could seize on would serve as such a device. A wire, a scrap of metal, even a bit of paper — at one time or another, he had used them all.

“But of them all,” he said with a sudden solemnity, “there is only one I would stake my life on. Strange, it is one you cannot see, cannot hold in your hand — in fact, for many people it doesn’t even exist. Yet it is the one I have used most often and which has never failed me.”

The doctor leaned forward, his eyes bright with interest. “And it is—?”

“It is a knowledge of people, my friend. Or, as it may be put, a knowledge of human nature. To me it is as vital an instrument as the scalpel is to you.”

“Oh?” said Hugh, and his voice was so sharp that all eyes were instantly turned on him. “You make sleight of hand sound like a department of psychology.”

“Perhaps,” Raymond said, and I saw he was watching Hugh now, gauging him. “You see, there is no great mystery in the matter. My profession — my art, as I like to think of it — is no more than the art of misdirection, and I am but one of its many practitioners.”

“I wouldn’t say there were many escape artists around nowadays,” the doctor remarked.

“True,” Raymond said, “but you will observe I referred to the art of misdirection. The escape artist, the master of legerdemain — these are a handful who practice the most exotic form of that art. But what of those who engage in the work of politics, of advertising, of salesmanship?” He laid his finger along his nose in the familiar gesture and winked. “I’m afraid they have all made my art their business.”

The doctor smiled. “Since you haven’t dragged medicine into it, I’m willing to go along with you,” he said. “But what I want to know is, exactly how does this knowledge of human nature work in your profession?”

“In this way,” Raymond said. “One must judge a person carefully. Then, if he finds in that person certain weaknesses, he can state a false premise and it will be accepted without question. Once the false premise is swallowed, the rest is easy. The victim will then see only what the magician wants him to see, or will give his vote to that politician, or will buy merchandise because of that advertising.” He shrugged. “And that’s all there is to it.”

“Is it?” Hugh said. “But what happens when you’re with people who have some intelligence and won’t swallow your false premise? How do you do your tricks then? Or do you keep them on the same level as selling beads to the savages?”

“Now, that’s uncalled for, Hugh,” the doctor said. “That man’s expressing his ideas. No reason to make an issue of them.”

“Maybe there is,” Hugh said, his eyes fixed on Raymond. “I have found he’s full of interesting ideas. I was wondering how far he’d want to go in backing them up.”

Raymond touched the napkin to his lips with a precise little flick, and then laid it carefully on the table before him. “In short,” he said, addressing himself to Hugh, “you want a small demonstration of my art.”

“It depends,” Hugh said. “I don’t want any trick cigarette cases or rabbits out of hats or any damn nonsense like that. I’d like to see something good.”

“Something good,” echoed Raymond reflectively. He looked around the room, studied it, and then turned to Hugh, pointing toward the huge oak door which was closed between the dining room and the living room, where we had gathered before dinner.

“That door is not locked, is it?”

“No,” Hugh said, “it isn’t. It hasn’t been locked for years.”

“But there is a key to it?”

Hugh pulled out his key chain and with an effort detached a heavy, old-fashioned key. “Yes, it’s the same one we use for the butler’s pantry.” He was becoming interested despite himself.

“Good. No, don’t give it to me. Give it to the doctor. You have faith in the doctor’s honor, I am sure?”

“Yes,” said Hugh drily, “I have.”

“Very well. Now, Doctor, will you please go to that door and lock it.”

The doctor marched to the door with his firm, decisive tread, thrust the key into the lock, and turned it. The click of the bolt snapping into place was loud in the silence of the room. The doctor returned to the table holding the key, but Raymond motioned it away. “It must not leave your hand or everything is lost,” he warned.

“Now,” he said, “for the finale I approach the door, I flick my handkerchief at it” — the handkerchief barely brushed the keyhole — “and, presto, the door is unlocked!”

The doctor went to it. He seized the doorknob, twisted it dubiously, and then watched with genuine astonishment as the door swung silently open.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.

“Somehow,” Elizabeth laughed, “a false premise went down easy as an oyster.”

Only Hugh reflected a sense of personal outrage. “All right,” he demanded, “how was it done? How did you work it?”

“I?” Raymond said reproachfully and smiled at all of us with obvious enjoyment. “It was you who did it. I used only my knowledge of human nature to help you along the way.”

I said, “I can guess part of it. That door was set in advance, and when the doctor thought he was locking it, he wasn’t. He was really unlocking it. Isn’t that the answer?”

Raymond nodded. “Very much the answer. The door was locked in advance. I made sure of that, because with a little forethought I suspected there would be such a challenge during the evening, and this was the simplest way of preparing for it. I merely made certain that I was the last one to enter this room, and when I did I used this.” He held up his hand so that we could see the sliver of metal in it. “An ordinary skeleton key, of course, but sufficient for an old and primitive lock.”

For a moment, Raymond looked grave, then he continued brightly. “It was our host himself who stated the false premise when he said the door was unlocked. He was so sure of himself that he wouldn’t think to test anything so obvious. The doctor is also a man who is sure, and he fell into the same trap. It is, as you now see, a little dangerous always to be so sure.”

“I’ll go along with that,” the doctor said ruefully, “even though it’s heresy to admit it in my line of work.” He playfully tossed the key he’d been holding across the table to Hugh, who let it fall in front of him and made no gesture toward it. “Well, Hugh, like it or not, you must admit the man has proved his point.”

“Do I?” said Hugh softly. He sat there smiling a little now, and it was easy to see he was turning some thought over and over in his head.

“Oh, come on, man,” the doctor said with some impatience. “You were taken in as much as we were. You know that.”

“Of course you were, darling,” Elizabeth agreed.

I think that she suddenly saw her opportunity to turn the proceedings into the peace conference she had aimed at, but I could have told her she was choosing her time badly. There was a look in Hugh’s eye I didn’t like — a veiled look not natural to him. Ordinarily when he was really angered, he would blow up a violent storm, and once the thunder and lightning had passed he would be honestly apologetic. But this present mood of his was different. There was a slumberous quality in it which alarmed me.

He hooked one arm over the back of his chair and rested the other on the table, sitting halfway around to fix his eyes on Raymond. “I seem to be a minority of one,” he remarked, “but I’m sorry to say I found your little trick disappointing. Not that it wasn’t cleverly done — I’ll grant that, all right — but because it wasn’t any more than you’d expect from a competent blacksmith.”

“Now there’s a large helping of sour grapes,” the doctor jeered.

Hugh shook his head. “No, I’m simply saying that where there’s a lock on a door and the key to it in your hand, it’s no great trick to open it. Considering our friend’s reputation, I thought we’d see more from him than that.”

Raymond grimaced. “Since I had hoped to entertain,” he said, “I must apologize for disappointing.”

“Oh, as far as entertainment goes I have no complaints. But for a real test—”

“A real test?”

“Yes, something a little different. Let’s say, a door without any locks or keys to tamper with. A closed door which can be opened with a fingertip, but which is nevertheless impossible to open. How does that sound to you?”

Raymond narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, as if he were considering the picture being presented to him. “It sounds most interesting,” he said at last. “Tell me more about it.”

“No,” Hugh said, and from the sudden eagerness in his voice I felt that this was the exact moment he had been looking for. “I’ll do better than that. I’ll show it to you.”

He stood up brusquely and the rest of us followed suit — except Elizabeth, who remained in her seat. When I asked her if she wanted to come along, she only shook her head and sat there watching us hopelessly as we left the room.

We were bound for the cellars, I realized when Hugh picked up a flashlight along the way, but for a part of the cellars I had never seen before. On a few occasions, I had gone downstairs to help select a bottle of wine from the racks there, but now we walked past the wine vault and into a long, dimly lit chamber behind it. Our feet scraped loudly on the rough stone, the walls around us showed the stains of seepage, and, warm as the night was outside, I could feel the chill of dampness turning my chest to gooseflesh.

When the doctor shuddered and said hollowly, “These are the very tombs of Atlantis,” I knew I wasn’t alone in my feeling, and felt some relief at that.

We stopped at the very end of the chamber, before what I can best describe as a stone closet built from floor to ceiling in the farthest angle of the walls. It was about four feet wide and not quite twice that in length, and its open doorway showed impenetrable blackness inside. Hugh reached into the blackness and pulled a heavy door into place.

“That’s it,” he said abruptly. “Plain solid wood, four inches thick, fitted flush into the frame so that it’s almost airtight. It’s a beautiful piece of carpentry, too, the kind they practiced two hundred years ago. And no locks or bolts. Just a ring set into each side to use as a handle.” He pushed the door gently and it swung open noiselessly at his touch. “See that? The whole thing is balanced so perfectly on the hinges that it moves like a feather.”

“But what’s it for?” I asked. “It must have been made for a reason.”

Hugh laughed shortly. “It was. Back in the bad old days, when a servant committed a crime — and I don’t suppose it had to be more of a crime than talking back to one of the ancient Loziers — he was put in here to repent. And since the air inside was good for only a few hours at the most, he either repented damn soon or not at all.”

“And that door?” the doctor said cautiously. “That impressive door of yours which opens at a touch to provide all the air needed — what prevented the servant from opening it?”

“Look,” Hugh said. He flashed his light inside the cell and we crowded behind him to peer in. The circle of light reached across the cell to its far wall and picked out a short heavy chain hanging a little above the head level with a U-shaped collar dangling from its bottom link.

“I see,” Raymond said, and they were the first words I had heard him speak since we had left the dining room. “It is truly ingenious. The man stands with his back against the wall, facing the door. The collar is placed around his neck, and then — since it is cleverly not made for a lock — it is clamped there, hammered around his neck. The door is closed, and the man spends the next few hours like someone on an invisible rack, reaching out with his feet to catch the ring on the door which is just out of reach. If he’s lucky, he may not strangle himself in his iron collar but may live until someone chooses to open the door for him.”

“My God,” the doctor said. “You make me feel as if I were living through it.”

Raymond smiled faintly. “I have lived through many such experiences, and, believe me, the reality is always a little worse than the worst imaginings. There is always the ultimate moment of terror, of panic, when the heart pounds so madly you think it will burst through your ribs and the cold sweat soaks clear through you in the space of one breath. That is when you must take yourself in hand, must dispel all weakness, and remember all the lessons you have ever learned. If not—!”

He whisked the edge of his hand across his lean throat. “Unfortunately for the usual victim of such a device,” he concluded sadly, “since he lacks the essential courage and knowledge to help himself, he succumbs.”

“But you wouldn’t,” Hugh said.

“I have no reason to think so.”

“You mean—” and the eagerness was creeping back into Hugh’s voice, stronger than ever “—that under the very same conditions as someone chained in there two hundred years ago, you could get this door open?”

The challenging note was too strong to be brushed aside lightly. Raymond stood silent for a long minute, face strained with concentration, before he answered.

“Yes,” he said. “It wouldn’t be easy — the problem is made formidable by its very simplicity — but it could be solved.”

“How long do you think it would take you?”

“An hour at the most.”

Hugh had come a long way around to get to this point. He asked the question slowly, savoring it. “Would you want to bet on that?”

“Now, wait a minute,” the doctor said. “I don’t like any part of this.”

“And I vote we adjourn for a drink,” I put in. “Fun’s fun, but we’ll all wind up with pneumonia playing games down here.”

Neither Hugh nor Raymond appeared to hear a word of this. They stood staring at each other — Hugh waiting on pins and needles, Raymond deliberating — until Raymond said, “What is this bet you offer?”

“This. If you lose, you get out of the Dane house inside of a month, and sell it to me.”

“And if I win?”

It wasn’t easy for Hugh to say it, but he finally got it out. “Then I’ll be the one to get out. And if you don’t want to buy Hilltop, I’ll arrange to sell it to the first corner.”

For anyone who knew Hugh, it was so fantastic, so staggering a statement to hear from him, that none of us could find words at first. It was the doctor who recovered most quickly.

“You’re not speaking for yourself, Hugh,” he warned. “You’re a married man. Elizabeth’s feelings have to be considered.”

“Is it a bet?” Hugh demanded of Raymond. “Do you want to go through with it?”

“I think, before I answer that, there’s something to be explained.” Raymond paused, then went on slowly, “I’m afraid I gave the impression — out of false pride, perhaps — that when I retired from my work it was because of a boredom, a lack of interest in it. That was not altogether the truth. In reality, I was required to go to a doctor some years ago, the doctor listened to the heart, and suddenly my heart became the most important thing in the world. I tell you this because while your challenge strikes me as being a most unusual and interesting way of settling differences between neighbors, I must reject it for reasons of health.”

“You were healthy enough a minute ago,” Hugh said.

“Perhaps not as much as you would want to think, my friend.”

“In other words,” Hugh said bitterly, “there’s no accomplice handy, no keys in your pocket to help out, and no way of tricking anyone into seeing what isn’t there! So you have to admit you’re beaten.”

Raymond stiffened. “I admit no such thing. All the tools I would need even for such a test as this I have with me. Believe me, they would be enough.”

Hugh laughed aloud, and the sound of it broke into small echoes all down the corridors behind us. It was that sound, I am sure — the living contempt in it rebounding from wall to wall around us — which sent Raymond into the cell.

Hugh wielded the hammer, short-handled but heavy sledge, which tightened the collar into a circlet around Raymond’s neck, hitting with hard, even strokes at the iron which was braced against the wall. When he was finished, I saw the pale glow of the radium-painted numbers on a watch as Raymond studied it in his pitch darkness.

“It is now eleven,” he said calmly. “The wager is that by midnight this door must be opened, and it doesn’t matter what means are used. Those are the conditions, and you gentlemen are the witnesses to them.”

Then the door was closed — and the walking began.

Back and forth we walked, the three of us, as if we were being compelled to trace every possible geometric figure on that stony floor, the doctor with his quick, impatient step and I matching Hugh’s long, nervous strides. A foolish, meaningless march, back and forth across our own shadows, each of us marking the time by counting off the passing seconds and each ashamed to be the first to look at his watch.

For a while there was a counterpoint to this scraping of feet from inside the cell. It was a barely perceptible clinking of chain coming at brief, regular intervals. Then there would be a long silence, followed by a renewal of the sound. When it stopped again, I couldn’t restrain myself any longer. I held up my watch toward the dim yellowish light of the bulb overhead and saw with dismay that barely twenty minutes had passed.

After that there was no hesitancy in the others about looking at the time, and, if anything, this made it harder to bear than just wondering. I caught the doctor winding his watch with small brisk turns and then a few minutes later try to wind it again and suddenly drop his hand with disgust as he realized he had already done it. Hugh walked with his watch held up near his eyes, as if by concentration on it he could drag that crawling minute-hand faster around the dial.

Thirty minutes had passed.

Forty.

Forty-five.

I remember that when I looked at my watch and saw there were less than fifteen minutes to go I wondered if I could last out even that short time. The chill had sunk so deep into me that I ached with it. I was shocked when I saw that Hugh’s face was dripping with sweat and that beads of it gathered while I watched.

It was while I was looking at him in fascination that it happened. The sound broke through the walls of the cell like a wail of agony heard from far away, and shivered over us as if it were spelling out the words.

“Doctor!” it cried. “The air!”

It was Raymond’s voice, but the thickness of the wall blocking it off turned it into a high thin sound. What was clearest in it was the note of pure terror, the plea growing out of that terror.

“Air!” it screamed, the word bubbling and dissolving into a long-drawn sound which made no sense at all.

And then it was silent.

We leaped for the door together, but Hugh was there first, his back against it, barring the way. In his upraised hand was the hammer which had clinched Raymond’s collar. “Keep back!” he cried. “Don’t come any nearer, I warn you!”

The fury in him, brought home by the menace of the weapon, stopped us in our tracks.

“Hugh,” the doctor pleaded, “I know what you’re thinking, but you can forget that now. The bet’s off and I’m opening the door on my own responsibility. You have my word for that.”

“Do I? But do you remember the terms of the bet, Doctor? This door must be opened within an hour — and it doesn’t matter what means are used! Do you understand now? He’s fooling both of you. He’s faking a death scene so that you’ll push open the door and win his bet for him. But it’s my bet, not yours, and I have the last word on it!”

I saw from the way he talked, despite the shaking tension in his voice, that he was in perfect command of himself, and it made everything seem that much worse.

“How do you know he’s faking?” I demanded. “The man said he had a heart condition. He said there was always a time in a spot like this when he had to fight panic and could feel the strain of it. What right do you have to gamble with his life?”

“Damn it, don’t you see he never mentioned any heart condition until he smelled a bet in the wind? Don’t you see he set his trap that way, just as he locked the door behind him when he came to dinner! But this time nobody will spring it for him — nobody!”

“Listen to me,” the doctor said, and his voice cracked like a whip. “Do you concede that there’s one slim possibility of that man being dead in there, or dying?”

“Yes, it is possible — anything is possible.”

“I’m not trying to split hairs with you! I’m telling you that if that man is in trouble, every second counts, and you’re stealing that time from him! And if that’s the case, by God, I’ll sit in the witness chair at your trial and swear you murdered him! Is that what you want?”

Hugh’s head sank forward on his chest, but his hand still tightly gripped the hammer. I could hear the breath drawing heavily in his throat, and when he raised his head his face was grey and haggard. The torment of indecision was written in every pale sweating line of it.

And then I suddenly understood what Raymond had meant that day when he told Hugh about the revelation he might find in the face of a perfect dilemma. It was the revelation of what a man may learn about himself when he is forced to look into his own depths, and Hugh had found it at last.

In that shadowy cellar, while the relentless seconds thundered louder and louder in our ears, we waited to see what he would do.

Editorial Note: Now that you have finished Mr. Ellin’s story, you realize that it belongs in the great tradition of “challenge” tales — in the literary stream of Mark Twain’s Awful, Terrible Medieval Romance (1871), Frank R. Stockton’s The Lady or the Tiger? (1884), and W. W. Jacobs’ The Lost Ship (1898). You also realize that Mr. Ellin’s story does not merely recreate a riddle of the past, or simply offer a new variation. Actually, it is an extension of the great tradition — a 1954 version which, years later, still reveals the most serious dilemma of our time.

Mr. Ellin’s story calls for more than the usual “reader participation.” Entirely apart from the question of whether Raymond did or did not have a heart condition, we are left with this speculation: What did Hugh decide to do? To win his bet — at any cost, possibly of his very soul? Or to lose the bet — and thus become a man of heart and conscience as well as of brain?

In the sense of posing a problem and giving no solution in the story itself, Mr. Ellin follows in the footsteps of Mark Twain and Frank R. Stockton. But The Moment of Decision is not a pure riddle like Awful, Terrible Medieval Romance or The Lady, or the Tiger? Those earlier classics presented the reader with unanswerable questions: Mr. Ellin’s riddle is answerable. Readers have but to look into their own hearts: for it is really your dilemma, too — the dilemma of people everywhere — the dilemma of nations, even of civilizations, in this new atomic, men-walking-on-the-moon age.

Ellery Queen