Fletcher Flora - The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK™ - 26 Stories by Fletcher Flora

She came in quickly, and he could see at once that the excitement was still burning inside her. Its heat was high in her cheeks and in her eyes.

“Darling,” she said, “here we are, aren’t we?”

“Yes. Here we are, and there it is. In the little bag on the floor.”

“One hundred thousand dollars in that little bag? It seems incredible.”

“It’s in big bills.”

“Do you mind if I just look at it and feel it? Darling, it would be such a comfort and give me such pleasure.”

“Comforted and pleased are how I want to keep you. Help yourself.” He handed her the key to the bag, and she went over and lifted it onto the bed and opened it. The brown paper wrapping had been removed, the large bills loose in packets in the bag, and she stood there for more than a minute, caressing a packet with her fingers, her eyes bright and her breathing deep. Then she turned to face him, and she was for the first time standing frilly on his side of discretion, her own position abandoned somewhere behind her and them.

“Will Hugo find us, darling?”

“He never will.”

“Aren’t you afraid at all?”

“Not at all.”

“Neither am I. I’m only terribly excited.” She sat down on the edge of the bed beside the small bag containing the money. “Darling, please come here.”

He went over and sat down beside her, and they were all there on the bed together, he and she and all the beautiful money that made it possible, and in the meanwhile the hot, white light diminished in the street outside, and it grew dark in the room.

“Darling,” she said, “whatever time is it?”

Looking at his wrist watch, he was surprised to see that he couldn’t read it. He got up and lowered the blinds at the windows and turned on a light beside the bed. “It’s almost eight,” he said. “We’d better leave here about nine. It’s a long way to Miami.”

“Is that where we’re going? To Miami?”

“Miami and points south.”

“I suppose I had better go back to my room and get ready.”

“I suppose. My car is parked in the lot beside the hotel. There’s a door leading out at the foot of the stairs. You won’t have to go through the lobby. I’ll meet you at the car at nine. Can you manage your own bags?”

“I can manage. Darling, I hate to leave you, even until nine. It will seem like forever.”

“Forever is what comes after,” he said.

When she was gone, he lit a cigarette and smoked it. Then he went over to the telephone and put through a long distance call, charges reversed, to a number he had been given. The voice that answered, after a while, was flat and hard, committed to speaking directly and being done with it.

“Is that you, Steve? How’s everything?”

“Everything’s fine, Mr. Archer. Going according to plan.”

“Good. I can go home tomorrow.”

“I want to thank you again for giving me this break.”

“Forget it. You’ve done a job for a price, that’s all. The first time I saw her look at you, I knew you were the one to do it. It would have cost twice as much for a divorce and five times as much to keep her on the side. I hope you’re making it realistic.”

“Don’t worry about that. She thinks it’s for real. She’s giving up something in the long run for a bonus now.”

“Have fun. Don’t think that hundred grand is going to last you and Hannah forever, though. It won’t.”

“Well,” Steve said, “it will probably last as long as we will.”

He hung up and looked at his watch again. Eight exactly. One hour to wait. He took a tiny gold penknife from a pocket and began to pare his fingernails.

Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine , July 1963.

After what had been done last night, it was mostly a day of waiting for something to happen. Waiting, however, can be a great excitement. If one possesses the quality of character to sustain composure, the excitement all inside and growing, waiting can be the most exhilarating experience imaginable.

The day began consciously for Mrs. Dearly at exactly nine o’clock, when she wakened. She had left her windows open and the drapes drawn back before going to bed, and her room was now, at nine o’clock in the morning, full of warm and golden light. It was clearly going to be one of those andante days expiring through minutes and hours to slumberous summer sounds.

Mrs. Dearly loved that kind of day, so softly sensuous and replete with drowsy dreams, and she was aware of this one instantly in her flesh and bones. She yawned and stretched, lifting golden arms into the golden light. Looking down the length of her body, its senses astir in a sheer mist of blue nylon, she felt a kind of innocent narcissistic delight. Holding herself in child-like affection, quite uncorrupted by vanity, she was truly grateful for being what she was — so perfectly made for love and lovely things; but her gratitude was unformed and undirected, and she hadn’t the faintest notion to whom it was owed, or how it might be acknowledged.

She lay in bed for perhaps another half hour, absorbing and transforming all the subtle manifestations of the day, and then she stretched again and got up and shed the blue mist on the way to the bathroom. It lay on the floor like something conjured out of her dreams, a giant handful of the bubble bath foam in which she soaked until ten. Returning then to the bedroom, she began to remove the bright enamel from her fingernails, and when this was accomplished she began, with equally meticulous attention, to put on another coat of enamel.

Inasmuch as the new coat was the same color and shade as the old, the effect, when she was finished, was identical with the one it replaced; but in the meanwhile she had measured the heightening of her anticipation and excitement by the precise performance of a small task that occupied her pleasantly and brought her so much closer to where the day was taking her.

It was almost noon when she was finally dressed in a tan sleeveless dress, tan stockings and shoes, and a tiny hat of deeper shade. She inspected herself in her full-length mirror with the same child-like innocence and delight with which she had looked at herself earlier in the blue mist, turning slowly now for the effect from all sides; and then, carrying her purse and a pair of white gloves, she went downstairs prepared to leave the house, going out the back way to a terrace where she expected her husband to be — and there he was, sure enough, reclining in a blue and yellow sling chair.

Mrs. Dearly crossed the terrace and kissed him lightly over one eye, patting his head at the same time with a display of that kind of affection one generally bestows on small boys and dogs.

“Good morning, dear,” she said.

“Morning? In case you don’t realize it, it’s noon.”

The words alone, unqualified by inflection, had a carping connotation; but his voice was, in fact, amused and indulgent — as if it were understood and agreed that she should be immune to the imposition and demands of time, and that it would, really, be rather absurd if she were otherwise.

“Oh, I’ve been up for hours,” she said. “Honestly I have.”

“You’re dressed for the street,” he said. “Where are you going?”

“I have some shopping to do downtown. Do you mind?”

“Not in the least. But don’t you want some lunch before you go? I suppose it’s too late for breakfast.”

“I hardly ever eat breakfast, as you know, and I’ll have lunch downtown. What will you do?”

“There’s plenty to do in the flower beds, and I’m going to mow the grass.”

“I knew it. I was looking out at the lawn last evening, and I said to myself that the grass was getting high. Cal will mow the grass tomorrow, I said.”