The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

Fredric Brown (1906–1972) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and attended the University of Cincinnati and Hanover College before becoming an office worker from 1924 to 1936. He then took a job as a proofreader and reporter for the Milwaukee Journal. A chronic respiratory problem caused him to move to Taos, New Mexico, then Tucson, Arizona. While at the Journal, he sold his first short story and went on to publish more than three hundred stories in his lifetime, as well as nearly thirty novels, in both the science fiction and mystery genres.

Equally revered by fans of science and mystery fiction, Brown was one of the most original, creative pulp writers of his time, his stories often having astonishing twists and surprise endings, frequently leavened with humor. His first mystery novel, The Fabulous Clipjoint (1947), won an Edgar Allan Poe Award and introduced the detective team of Ed Hunter and his uncle Am, who appeared in six subsequent novels.

Brown wrote scripts for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and several television dramas and films were made from his books, notably Crack-Up (1946, RKO, starring Pat O’Brien, Claire Trevor, and Herbert Marshall), based on his short story “Madman’s Holiday,” and The Screaming Mimi (1958, Columbia, starring Anita Ekberg, Phil Carey, and Gypsy Rose Lee), based on the novel of the same name.

“Cry Silence” was published in the November 1948 issue.

Would you try to save your wife from a killer? Seems like a simple question, but to Mandy’s husband, it was one to stump the experts.

It was that old silly argument about sound. If a tree falls deep in the forest where there is no ear to hear, is its fall silent? Is there sound where there is no ear to hear it? I’ve heard it argued by college professors and by street sweepers.

This time it was being argued by the agent at the little railroad station and a beefy man in coveralls. It was a warm summer evening at dusk, and the station agent’s window opening onto the back platform of the station was open; his elbows rested on the ledge of it. The beefy man leaned against the red brick of the building. The argument between them went in circles like a droning bumblebee.

I sat on a wooden bench on the platform about ten feet away. I was a stranger in town, waiting for a train that was late. There was one other man present; he sat on the bench beside me, between me and the window. He was a tall, heavy man with a face like granite, an uncompromising kind of face, and huge, rough hands. He looked like a farmer in his town clothes.

I wasn’t interested in either the argument or the man beside me. I was wondering only how late that damned train would be.

I didn’t have my watch; it was being repaired in the city. And from where I sat I couldn’t see the clock inside the station. The tall man beside me was wearing a wristwatch and I asked him what time it was.

He didn’t answer.

You’ve got the picture, haven’t you? Four of us; three on the platform and the agent, leaning out of the window. The argument between the agent and the beefy man. On the bench, the silent man and I.

I got up off the bench and looked into the open door of the station. It was seven forty; the train was twelve minutes overdue. I sighed, and lighted a cigarette. I decided to stick my nose into the argument. It wasn’t any of my business, but I knew the answer and they didn’t.

“Pardon me for butting in,” I said, “but you’re not arguing about sound at all; you’re arguing semantics.”

I expected one of them to ask me what semantics was, but the station agent fooled me. He said: “That’s the study of words, isn’t it? In a way, you’re right, I guess.”

“All the way,” I insisted. “If you look up ‘sound’ in the dictionary, you’ll find two meanings listed. One of them is ‘the vibration of a medium, usually air, within a certain range,’ and the other is ‘the effect of such vibrations on the ear.’ That isn’t the exact wording, but the general idea. Now by one of those definitions, the sound — the vibration — exists whether there’s an ear around to hear it or not. By the other, the vibrations aren’t sound unless there is an ear to hear them. So you’re both right; it’s just a matter of which meaning you use for the word ‘sound.’ ”

The beefy man said: “Maybe you got something there.” He looked back at the agent. “Let’s call it a draw then, Joe. I got to get home. So long.”

He stepped down off the platform and went around the station.

I asked the agent: “Any report on the train?”

“Nope,” he said. He leaned a little farther out the window and looked to his right and I saw a clock in a steeple about a block away that I hadn’t noticed before. “Ought to be along soon though.”

He grinned at me. “Expert on sound, huh?”

“Well,” I said, “I wouldn’t say that. But I did happen to look it up in the dictionary. I know what it means.”

“Uh-huh. Well, let’s take that second definition and say sound is sound only if there’s an ear to hear it. A tree crashes in the forest and there’s only a deaf man there. Is there any sound?”

“I guess not,” I said. “Not if you consider sound as subjective. Not if it’s got to be heard.”

I happened to glance to my right, at the tall man who hadn’t answered my question about the time. He was still staring straight ahead. Lowering my voice a bit, I asked the station agent: “Is he deaf?”

“Him? Bill Meyers?” He chuckled; there was something odd in the sound of that chuckle. “Mister, nobody knows. That’s what I was going to ask you next. If that tree falls down and there’s a man near, but nobody knows if he’s deaf or not, is there any sound?”

His voice had gone up in volume. I stared at him, puzzled, wondering if he was a little crazy, or if he was just trying to keep up the argument by thinking up screwy loopholes.

I said: “Then if nobody knows if he’s deaf, nobody knows if there was any sound.”

He said: “You’re wrong, mister. That man would know whether he heard it or not. Maybe the tree would know, wouldn’t it? And maybe other people would know, too.”

“I don’t get your point,” I told him. “What are you trying to prove?”

“Murder, mister. You just got up from sitting next to a murderer.”

I stared at him again, but he didn’t look crazy. Far off, a train whistled, faintly. I said: “I don’t understand you.”

“The guy sitting on the bench,” he said. “Bill Meyers. He murdered his wife. Her and his hired man.”

His voice was quite loud. I felt uncomfortable; I wished that far train was a lot nearer. I didn’t know what went on here, but I knew I’d rather be on the train. Out of the corner of my eye I looked at the tall man with the granite face and the big hands. He was still staring out across the tracks. Not a muscle in his face had moved.

The station agent said: “I’ll tell you about it, mister. I like to tell people about it. His wife was a cousin of mine, a fine woman. Mandy Eppert, her name was, before she married that skunk. He was mean to her, dirt mean. Know how mean a man can be to a woman who’s helpless?

“She was seventeen when she was fool enough to marry him seven years ago. She was twenty-four when she died last spring. She’d done more work than most women do in a lifetime, out on that farm of his. He worked her like a horse and treated her like a slave. And her religion wouldn’t let her divorce him or even leave him. See what I mean, mister?”

I cleared my throat, but there didn’t seem to be anything to say. He didn’t need prodding or comment. He went on.

“So how can you blame her, mister, for loving a decent guy, a clean, young fellow her own age, when he fell in love with her? Just loving him, that’s all. I’d bet my life on that, because I knew Mandy. Oh, they talked, and they looked at each other — I wouldn’t gamble too much there wasn’t a stolen kiss now and then. But nothing to kill them for, mister.”

I felt uneasy; I wished the train would come and get me out of this. I had to say something, though; the agent was waiting. I said: “Even if there had been, the unwritten law is out of date.”

“Right, mister.” I’d said the right thing. “But you know what that bastard sitting over there did? He went deaf.”

“Huh?” I said.

“He went deaf. He came in town to see the doc and said he’d been having earaches and couldn’t hear any more. Was afraid he was going deaf. Doc gave him some stuff to try, and you know where he went from the doc’s office?”

I didn’t try to guess.

“Sheriff’s office,” he said. “Told the sheriff he wanted to report his wife and his hired man were missing, see? Smart of him. Wasn’t it? Swore out a complaint and said he’d prosecute if they were found. But he had an awful lot of trouble getting any of the questions the sheriff asked. Sheriff got tired of yelling and wrote ’em down on paper. Smart. See what I mean?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “Hadn’t his wife run away?”

“He’d murdered her. And him. Or rather, he was murdering them. Must have taken a couple of weeks, about. Found ’em a month later.”

He glowered, his face black with anger.

“In the smokehouse,” he said. “A new smokehouse made out of concrete and not used yet. With a padlock on the outside of the door. He’d walked through the farmyard one day about a month before — he said after their bodies were found — and noticed the padlock wasn’t locked, just hanging in the hook and not even through the hasp.

“See? Just to keep the padlock from being lost or swiped, he slips it through the hasp and snaps it.”

“My God,” I said. “And they were in there? They starved to death?”

“Thirst kills you quicker, if you haven’t either water or food. Oh, they’d tried hard to get out, all right. Scraped halfway through the door with a piece of concrete he’d worked loose. It was a thick door. I figure they yelled, after a while. I figure they hammered on that door plenty. Was there sound, mister, with only a deaf man living near that door, passing it twenty times a day?”

Again he chuckled humorlessly. He said: “Your train’ll be along soon. That was it you heard whistle. It stops up by the water tower. It’ll be here in ten minutes.” And without changing his tone of voice, except that his tone got louder again, he said: “It was a bad way to die. Even if he was right in killing them, only a black-hearted son of a gun would have done it that way. Don’t you think so?”

I said: “But are you sure he is—”

“Deaf? Sure, he’s deaf. Can’t you picture him standing there in front of that padlocked door, listening with his deaf ears to the hammering inside? And the yelling?

“Sure, he’s deaf. That’s why I can say all this to him, yell it in his ear. If I’m wrong, he can’t hear me. But he can hear me. He comes here to hear me.”

I had to ask it. “Why? Why would he — if you’re right.”

“I’m helping him, that’s why. I’m helping him to make up his black mind to hang a rope from the grating in the top of that smokehouse, and dangle from it. He hasn’t got the guts to, yet. So every time he’s in town, he sits on the platform a while to rest. And I tell him what a murdering son of a gun he is.”

He spat toward the tracks. He said: “There are a few of us know the score. Not the sheriff; he wouldn’t believe us, said it would be too hard to prove.”

The scrape of feet behind me made me turn. The tall man with the huge hands and the granite face was standing up now. He didn’t look toward us. He started for the steps.

The agent said: “He’ll hang himself, pretty soon now. He wouldn’t come here and sit like that for any other reason, would he, mister?”

“Unless,” I said, “he is deaf.”

“Sure. He could be. See what I meant? If a tree falls and the only man there to hear it is maybe deaf and maybe not, is it silent or isn’t it? Well, I got to get the mail pouch ready.”

I turned and looked at the tall figure walking away from the station. He walked slowly and his shoulders, big as they were, seemed a little stooped.

The clock in the steeple a block away began to strike for eight o’clock.

The tall man lifted his wrist to look at the watch on it.

I shuddered a little. It could have been coincidence, sure, and yet a little chill went down my spine.

The train pulled in, and I got aboard.