Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 6, May 1961

Sleep No More by Mann Rubin

He was afraid to sleep... for death stalked his dreams.

When Richard Mott opened his eyes the morning after, he found the drab, cheerless face of Emma hovering over him, pin-curls and all. Every year, he thought, his wife looked more and more like the M-G-M lion.

“Good morning,” he mumbled, turning his head away.

“Who is Linda Rhodes?” she roared.

The words hit him like a bucket of ice-water. He sat bolt upright, tingling.

“Who?”

“You heard me, you cheat. Only save your lies. I already know. She’s the new secretary that started in your office two months ago, isn’t she?”

“What about her?” asked Richard, his mouth dry, a sinking, nauseous feeling rumbling across his stomach.

“I’ve got news for you. Her name’s mud in this town. Before I’m finished she’ll wish she never laid eyes on you.”

Richard cringed inwardly at the threat. He thought of Linda — sweet, luscious Linda with hair like spun gold and the softest, warmest lips. The ache in his stomach tightened into a fist.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He reached for his robe, telling himself he’d have to keep calm and play it casual. But it wasn’t going to be easy.

“Don’t you?” cried Emma sarcastically. “And I suppose you never heard of Cabin Number Twenty-two at the Seaview Motel in Santa Monica, where you made love to her for three hours last night while I thought you were at a Kiwanis meeting?”

“How did...?”

“Fortunately, dear husband, you still have one habit I find most revealing and rewarding, even after fourteen years of marriage.”

“I talked in my sleep again.”

“Raved is more like it. Thanks to you and your dreams I had a blow-by-blow description of your charming little rendezvous. You supplied everything from the name of her French perfume to the number of times she called you her Tutti-Frutti Lover-Man’. Want any more?”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Richard weakly. “If you’ll excuse me I’ll go shave.”

“Well, hurry it up. Because when you drive to work this morning I’m going along. And I’m staying right with you until everyone in your office knows what a cheap, home-wrecking hussy they have working for them.” Emma’s voice droned on like a broken air-raid siren.

Grimly, Richard studied her, silently comparing the chewed-up expression of her harsh-featured face to the scented, fragile memory of Linda Rhodes. It was like weighing an iron frying pan against the moon. Something had to be done quickly.

All during his shave the dull, knotted feeling he’d experienced when Emma had first mentioned Linda’s name stayed with him. Damn his sleep-talking! What a fool he’d been to forget this malady, this albatros that had hung around his neck ever since he could remember. Even as a child, whenever he experienced some unusual, stimulating event such as having a birthday, seeing a circus or engaging in a fight with another kid, he was sure to relive it in his sleep the following night.

Always the pattern was the same. Detail for detail, no matter if it were an act of pain or pleasure, he would broadcast to the world every sensation and thought that had swept through his mind during the actual episode. He was cursed with total recall. On the following morning he could usually count on a member of his family — or a college roommate in later years — to describe verbatim the experience that haunted his dreams.

Marriage had not changed this idiosyncrasy. At first Emma thought it cute to recite to him over breakfast one of his nocturnal adventures, describing with relish some current business problem he had kept from her or a golf-score he was ashamed to acknowledge.

But as his life with her became more routine, more colorless he had stopped conversing in his sleep and she no longer teased him with the dreary exposures of his dreams.

Until Linda, and his most disastrous babblings so far.

He dried his face with a towel, then almost automatically applied shaving lotion, the kind which Linda had romantically assured him made him smell like a swashbuckling sea-captain instead of a stock broker. He smiled in anticipation of the many sweet voyages that lay ahead for both of them.

“Where are you?” screeched Emma from downstairs.

Richard ignored her, his mind refusing to give up its cargo of cozy Linda images. They had been so careful in their meetings, so wary of prying eyes that even after two months no one in his office had any suspicion that they were having an affair.

At first Linda had been frightened, cold, indifferent, but his wooing had been so ardently unswerving that finally, last night, had come the triumph he had hoped for. She had consented to spend the night with him. For Richard, it was the purest, most perfect victory of his life. So perfect that he had been betrayed into reassembling each priceless moment in his dreams.

Thus, in recalling the heights of his ecstasy, he had unwittingly jeopardized all of their plans for the future. Worse, Linda’s whole reputation stood on the brink of humiliation.

“I’m warning you,” threatened Emma from below. “If you’re not down here in five minutes, I’m going to your office by myself.”

He increased the speed of his dressing, knowing full well that unless he stopped Emma before she put a foot out the door everything worthwhile and fresh in his life would be trampled into dust within an hour. Nothing mattered but Linda and himself. Their beautiful, new love had to be preserved at all costs.

Descending the stairs a minute later, he got his answer. The phone began to ring in the living room and he heard Emma hurrying to answer it, all set to play the poor, martyred wife before her bridge-playing, gossipy friends. Richard held his breath.

“Hello. Who? No, he’s not here. He left about twenty minutes ago... How should I know if he’s at his office or not... What’s that? He owes you the money. Why don’t you ask him yourself!” She slammed the receiver down, angry at being cheated out of her gossip and self-pity, and waddled back to the kitchen.

When Richard came in, she was bent over the stove waiting for the coffee to percolate. She was dressed in street clothes, ready for departure.

“Who was that on the phone?” he asked, striving to sound casual.

“The Acme Finance Company,” she barked without turning. “Seems you’re two weeks behind in a loan payment. I was wondering where you got the money for that gold bracelet you gave her last night.”

“Did I mention that too?”

“You talked a blue streak. I have enough on Miss Linda Rhodes to disgrace her from here to China. And that’s just what I intend to do.”

Richard didn’t budge from his position near the pot-rack. He tried to keep his voice steady. “Where did you tell the Acme people I was?”

“You heard me. I couldn’t be bothered. I told them you left twenty minutes ago, and they had my permission to try you at the office.”

Richard checked with the kitchen clock. “Twenty minutes. That means I left here supposedly at five minutes to nine. And if I take the short-cut I’ll arrive at my office at my usual time. What a perfect alibi.”

“Huh?” said Emma. She was pouring out a cup of coffee that looked very weak. “How much sugar do you want in this?” she asked.

It was the last dull question she was ever to ask in a life filled with dull questions. For at that moment her husband came up behind her with a waffle-iron and struck her a savage blow across the skull.

“One lump, I think, will be quite sufficient,” said Richard softly, gazing down at her sprawled, silent body.

She stopped breathing even before he’d wiped his fingerprints from the murder weapon and laid it carefully on the floor at her side. Eight minutes later he had taken the few bills from her purse, scattered the rest of the contents around the kitchen, broken the latch on the back door to make it appear that the thief had had an easy time entering, and sped away in his car without being spotted by any of the neighbors. He arrived at his brokerage office with an air of confident elation, as if he had no doubt at all that the market would climb a hundred points in the course of the day.

The morning went well. The Acme Finance office called him a few minutes after he was settled at his desk. They mentioned their conversation with his wife, apologized for annoying him in the midst of work and asked when they could expect their payments. He promised to get a check off immediately.

Next a deal he’d been negotiating for several months was concluded in the most satisfactory imaginable fashion, giving him a larger commission than he had originally estimated. And to make the morning even more special, he was able to get Linda alone in his office for a long, delicious three minutes.

“How daring you’ve gotten, Mr. Mott,” she whispered breathlessly, pulling away reluctantly from his embrace.

“You haven’t seen anything yet.”

“Oh, darling, I’m happy. Are you?”

“This has been the happiest morning of my life,” he assured her.

They kissed again, and then she was gone, her green eyes twinkling with promise and desire.

Afterwards he sat and planned his strategy for when the police arrived. He never felt more in control of a situation. Only the slight prickling across his stomach, which he first experienced during his early morning encounter with Emma, marred his otherwise perfect day.

He attributed the pain to no breakfast, and decided it might prove helpful when the police came. Like an accomplished actor he would use his distress as a prop to make his first shock of grief seem wholly natural and convincing.

He was completely confident that he could handle the police. His friends and business associates would present no problem. It was only himself he feared — himself asleep, dreaming, talking, confessing. The first twenty-four hours would be the most dangerous. Tonight it was imperative that he sleep alone, isolated, with no one close enough to eavesdrop on his telltale dreams.

Once that first troubled sleep was behind him, the memory of Emma’s death would be far less likely to break through the walls of his sleeping mind.

He spotted the two detectives precisely at five o’clock. One small and chinless, the other large and rumpled. They crossed toward his office like two pallbearers carrying an invisible coffin. This is it, he thought, feeling the knot inside him explode into a hundred smaller knots.

“Mr. Mott? Mr. Richard Mott?” They were standing just inside his doorway.

“Yes?” His expression was innocent, guileless. “Can I help you?”

“I’m afraid we’ve got bad news for you, sir. It’s your wife. She’s been murdered. She was found by a neighbor just before noon.”

He let a pencil fall dramatically from his fingers, his stomach somersaulting on cue, the blood draining from his face. What a performance! He tried to rise, startled by his limplessness, the burning sensations in his stomach suddenly recurred, running pell mell through him.

“God God! I—”

He staggered, swayed, and would have fallen if one of the detectives hadn’t reached out to support him. “The poor guy. You can’t blame him. A shock like that can—”

The next few minutes were blurred, unfocused, a rollercoaster of sounds and movements. His ability to feign such deep, searing agony, amazed him. His whole body seemed on fire. Several times he felt himself to be on the verge of fainting.

After a time he opened his eyes. The first dizziness had passed. A dozen office faces peered at him from the doorway. He was lying flat on his back and a doctor from across the hall was examining him.

“Emma...”

“Shhh,” said the chinless detective. He and the doctor stepped to a corner of the room and conferred. A moment later the detective picked up the phone, and dialed a number.

Richard tried to sit up but the doctor’s hand gently restrained him. He felt numbed, light-headed.

“But it’s Emma. She’s dead. I want to know what happened.”

“Easy, Mr. Mott. You’ll get all the information in a couple of days.”

“But I want to know now,” he pleaded. “I have every right to know.”

“Sorry, you’re in no condition to talk. Just lie quiet until the ambulance gets here.”

“What ambulance? What are you talking about? I want to go home.”

“You can’t,” said the doctor, exerting a slight but firm pressure on his shoulders. “You’re a very sick man.”

Richard struggled frantically. More arms gripped him, held him securely. Were they crazy? Had he overplayed the part of a stricken husband? What had gone wrong?

“I have to be alone tonight. Don’t you understand? She’s dead. My wife’s dead. I feel awful.”

“You should. With that fever you’re running I don’t know how you ever managed to come to your office. I’m afraid we’ll have to operate immediately.”

“Operate?”

“Your appendix. I imagine your stomach’s been like a blast furnace all day.” The doctor nodded sympathetically and picked up his medical bag.

“No, you’re wrong,” protested Richard, aware suddenly that the heavy dull throbbing he had so carefully nurtured and fed upon all day was now something white-hot and knifelike against his stomach wall. Why hadn’t he noticed before? The jabs of pain were excruciating.

“I tell you I’m in the best of health,” he shouted. “It’s the shock, that’s all. All I need is a good night’s sleep. Alone, by myself. In the morning... I’ll be quite all right.”

He felt the needle stab his arm, and the words froze on his lips.

“A sedative to relieve the pain, and help you sleep,” the doctor whispered soothingly.

Richard pulled away, struggling fiercely. “But I don’t want to sleep. I can’t sleep! Emma...”

“What a brave, suffering man,” someone whispered.

“What a loyal husband,” said someone else.

Richard looked up wildly. They were all staring, all sympathizing. He had won. No one doubted his innocence. Victory was in his grasp. Linda was in his grasp. He was free.

“Mustn’t sleep... Mustn’t sleep...”

He saw Linda’s slender form framed in the doorway. She was biting her lip, concerned, worried. She had never seemed more beautiful. He blinked.

The two detectives were leading him back to the couch. Linda’s face never left him. How different she was from Emma... Emma... Why was he thinking of poor dead Emma? He blinked again to shut out her image. She stayed, grew larger.

He closed his eyes tighter. For awhile there was only blackeness, chill, impenetrable.

Then he began to dream...