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

I’ll say that I was excited, and I almost lost my head. All I wanted to do, all at once, was to start running and keep on running, without ever looking back, until I couldn’t run any farther, and I wished I’d never seen or heard of Felicia Gotlot, or Amanda Swanson, whichever she was, or of Banty either. I was sort of crazy for a minute, that’s what I was, and I did actually jump up and take a couple of steps downhill, almost on my way, when I suddenly stopped and thought better of it.

“Hold on,” I said. “How do I know you weren’t telling the truth before, and telling lies now?”

“So far as that goes,” she said, “you don’t.”

“You’re Felicia Gotlot, all right. You’re just trying to get me to run away so you can walk somewhere and call Kansas City and get Bandy caught.”

“Your concern for Banty is touching. Too bad he wouldn’t feel the same about you. However, you could prevent my going anywhere by tying me in bed again. It wouldn’t matter much to me. The police will be here sometime tonight in my opinion.”

“Banty will be here, that’s who. He’ll be here with half a million dollars, and I’ll be right here to get my share of it. Nothing doing, sister. You’d just as well quit lying, because it won’t do you any good.”

“I was wrong,” she said. “You’re just as dumb as I thought you were at first. You’re simply too dumb to take proper care of yourself.”

“You’d better quit calling me names too. I’m getting tired of it. Come on. Let’s get back down to the house.”

She walked down ahead of me, without saying another word. In the house, she went directly to the bedroom and stayed in there all the rest of the afternoon, until it was time to open some more cans, and afterward she went back and stayed in there alone all evening until I decided it was time to tie her in bed again in case I fell asleep, although I was getting more and more nervous as it got later and later, and didn’t feel like sleeping in spite of being as tired as I can remember ever being.

“So you’re really going to wait for Banty,” she said.

“That’s what I’m going to do.”

“Pleasant waiting,” she said. “Wake me up when the police come.”

“That will be a couple days after Banty and I are gone,” I said. “I hope you don’t get too lonesome in the meanwhile.”

“It will be an interesting speculation for you,” she said. “Maybe it will help to pass the night faster. It ought to be quite exciting as time grows shorter and shorter. Will it be Banty or the police? The police or Banty? A simple thing like that can get into your head and drive you crazy if you don’t get it out soon enough.”

You can see that she’d done it again. Just like she’d done it last night about Banty running off with the money. She’d put it in my head, and I couldn’t get it out. It stayed right there and kept repeating itself over and over again, first one way and then the other, Banty or the police, the police or Banty, and to make matters worse I ran out of cigarettes. I gathered up all the butts I’d left in saucers around the place, and I smoked these, a few drags off each one, but pretty soon they were all gone too, and it was only about ten o’clock with a long, long time still to wait.

I didn’t know exactly how long, of course, and I began trying to guess, and I guessed four hours. There wasn’t any reason for guessing four instead of three or five, but it somehow made me feel better and surer to have a certain time to look forward to. I guessed that Banty would make the contact for the payoff at eleven sharp, which would leave him three hours to get back down here if he hurried, which he sure as hell would, and after eleven I began to try to follow him along the highway in the jalopy, placing him at certain places at certain times. As it turned out I wasn’t far wrong, for he was only about fifty miles away in my head when someone suddenly kicked the front door open, and five cops jumped into the room with their guns out, and every cop was nine feet tall.

Well, that’s the way it ended, and it’s over, and I’m almost glad. As you can see, Banty was bright but had no luck, and I had no luck and was stupid besides.

Not that Felicia Gotlot, though. She was bright and lucky both, besides being the best liar I ever met. It was simply impossible to know when to believe her, because she told the truth like a lie and a lie like the truth. I don’t hold anything against her, though. I liked her, and still do, and I remember that she tried her best to get me out of it before it was too late, which it now is. The prettiest and altogether the most remarkable woman I’ve ever known was Felicia Gotlot — Amanda Swanson, I mean.

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine , June 1967.

She had an intimate little liturgy which she repeated every morning when she wakened, as if it were somehow essential, by the repetition, to orient herself anew to an ancient and confusing world in which, otherwise, she might easily become lost: I am Teresa Standish. I am eight years old, and I live at the Eastland Arms in Apartment 515. Today I am going to...

From there on the liturgy varied, of course, according to what she had planned yesterday to do today. She did not include the tedious details of what had been planned for her, or what, in the nature of things as they were, she would do simply because it had been ordained that she must. She included only the item or items on the day’s agenda which offered the promise of being exceptional and exciting and of saving the day from the burden of expectations that did not. Sometimes the promise was fulfilled and sometimes it wasn’t, for life is loaded with disappointments, but on Saturdays and Sundays it was always fulfilled, and Saturdays and Sundays were, therefore, the very best days of the week.

When she awakened in the morning of those days, the liturgy was invariably completed: Today I am going to see Cousin Kelly .

This particular day to which she wakened was Saturday, and between it and the preceding Sunday there had been six long days of broken promises, of hope and expectations unfulfilled. After repeating the liturgy, which was like an incantation to the shining sun that spilled its golden light through her window and across her bed, she lay quietly for a while in the warm and secure assurance of what the day surely held, and then she got up and began to dress.

Because it was the beginning of a bright and golden day, she put on a pale yellow jumper with a crisp white blouse. She would meet Cousin Kelly, she decided, in the park across the boulevard from the apartment building. Last Sunday had been a gray and sunless day, expiring interminably to the tearful sound of persistent rain, and Cousin Kelly had come to the apartment, right up to her room where she now was, and they had listened to some music on her phonograph and had talked about what had happened during the week and had played a long and delightful game of Monopoly, which she had won. It had been a good day, that part of it in the afternoon when Cousin Kelly was here, but it had not been as good by half as this one would be on the bright green grass of the park under the warm sun. They would sit on a bench and walk along the path under the trees and laugh with delight at their distorted reflections in the pool of clear water around the fountain. Cousin Kelly was actually old, over twenty, but he didn’t look or act old, and he was more fun to be with than anyone else in all the world.

It was odd that Mother didn’t like him. After all, he was really Mother’s cousin, the son of her father’s sister. Of course, lots of people didn’t necessarily like their cousins, because there was no law saying you had to or anything, but Teresa couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t like Cousin Kelly, cousin or not. But Mother didn’t. Neither did Father. Teresa could tell from the way their eyes went blank whenever she, Teresa, happened to mention seeing Cousin Kelly, and from the way, immediately after the mentioning, they deliberately tried to change the subject. Cousin Kelly knew, too. He knew, but he never talked about it. Maybe something had happened once in the family. Maybe something dreadful had happened to change everything from the way everything had been, and to make enemies of people who should have been friends.