Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 104, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 633 & 634, October 1994

“This is a computerized lock,” a new voice said. “Before we can begin to turn the dials in the usual way, we must feed the key number into the computer. Even then the dials do not drop tumblers in the usual way. I couldn’t detect the tumblers dropping into position. My equipment is useless. We’ll have to blast that vault open.”

“But there’s someone in the vault.”

“That’s too bad. We can’t blast. Who has the combination?”

Henry spoke again. “Mr. Clipton, who is in the vault, is the only one who has the combination except for the chairman of the board, and he’s in Frankfurt, Germany.”

“Can you reach him?”

“I can’t, but I can give you his home phone number. Maybe someone there knows where he is staying.”

Clipton nearly collapsed. He didn’t have long to live. The atmosphere in the vault was becoming fetid. He had only minutes left.

“Mr. Clipton’s wife is here. Shall I let her in?”

“Hello, Mrs. Clipton. We’ll have your husband out shortly. Do you know the combination?”

“No, but he does.”

Henry’s voice interrupted. “He can hear us, but the line out of the vault is broken. I’ll tell him you are here.”

“Henry, get away from that microphone.”

“But I’m his only contact with the outside world.”

“Get away! Edward, what’s the first digit of the key number?”

He pounded twice.

“See, he can only answer yes or no.”

“Shut up, Henry. The first digit is two. What’s the second?”

He pounded three times, then twice, then three times.

“The key number is two, three, two, three.”

“Got it.” The locksmith’s voice. “Now get the combination.”

“Is the first number to the right?”

He pounded twice.

“What is the number?”

He hit the door twenty-seven times. The exertion was overcoming him. It was hard even to hold the shoe but he knew that if he dropped it, he could never bend down and get it back.

“Then how many to the left?”

He struck the door eighteen times, fighting to breathe, fighting to retain consciousness, fighting to summon enough strength to wield the shoe.

“How many to the right?”

Somehow he continued. The frantic pounding on the door died down to a slow and heavy swinging of the shoe, hitting the door, and then resting.

“That’s it, Mrs. Clipton. That’s the last number. I’ll open the door.”

At first he thought he was falling unconscious on the floor. He struggled to stay upright. Then he realized that the vault door was moving. A sudden burst of light almost blinded him. Fresh warm air poured over him like a shower. Instinctively, he stumbled toward his wife and wrapped his arms around her.

But his first words were not for her. His first words were, “Henry, you’re fired!”

© 1984 by International Cultural Exchange

To celebrate the upcoming Halloween holiday, we offer a tale that skirts the edges of the supernatural. The story also adds to our pantheon of international figures, for it comes from a native of Uruguay and is translated by Donald Yates, an authority on South American literature who has translated eight EQMM stories...

On the low table in the hallway the telephone has been silent since four in the afternoon. Hebe glances at it and says to Berta, her younger sister, “No one has called.”

Berta gives a little shrug and, glancing in turn at the telephone, notices the wilted roses in the crystal vase on the table. They have been there since Hebe brought them the day before. Berta recalls the details of that moment. It was eight-thirty in the evening and Hebe had been out. She returned with the roses wrapped in waxed tissue. Before kissing her mother, who was reading the paper in the living room, and without saying a word to Berta, she got the vase, went to the kitchen to fill it with water, came back, and began arranging the flowers. It was then that the telephone rang. Hebe answered it. Berta heard her say:

“Yes, Papa. Enjoy your dinner. Have a good time.”

Berta approached her sister.

“Did he say he wouldn’t be coming home to eat?”

“A couple of friends have invited him out. Let Mama know.”

At nine-thirty they sat down at the dinner table, just the three of them. They turned on the radio; they rambled on about vague, trivial matters. It was ten o’clock when their brother Alberto arrived. Displaying his characteristic moodiness, which fluctuated between intensity and indifference, he overrode the maid’s annoyance, saying:

“Amelia, serve me everything all together and don’t bother heating anything up. I don’t have much time because this is going to be the most important night of my life.”

His mother regarded him reproachfully, as if to say: “When will you stop behaving like a child?” But she said nothing, knowing that Hebe and Berta enjoyed indulging his extravagances.

They had just finished their coffee when the telephone rang. Amelia answered it.

“It’s for you,” she said to Alberto.

“Didn’t I tell you?” he exclaimed boastfully. And he strode from the dining room as if the actual physical presence of one of his girlfriends were awaiting him. The four women heard him utter, “But it’s not possible!” Then they could hear nothing more because he lowered his voice. He reappeared, his face looking drawn and tense.

“Alberto!” his mother demanded. “What’s wrong?”

“A friend, Mama. Maybe my best friend. He’s just had a stroke.”

“Who is it?” asked Berta.

“You don’t know him.”

Hebe said nothing. She rose and went to her room, shutting herself away, while her mother, her sister, the maid, and the cook — women joined together, disturbed over Alberto’s secret somewhere out there in the night and the city — guessed at the identity of the victim, speculated on the degree of seriousness, in somber, fearful tones.

It was after eleven when the telephone rang. Berta went to answer. Hebe, who had been lying on her bed, sat up and listened. Her sister’s voice confirmed her suspicions. When she came out of her room, Berta was saying:

“No, Alberto. You’re hiding something from me.”

“What’s he saying? What’s he saying?” her mother called out as Amelia, wakened by the ringing of the telephone, appeared, wrapped in her bathrobe decorated with large red flowers.

Berta hung up the receiver. She turned her eyes away from her mother and met Hebe’s gaze.

“Papa is the sick person.”

“I knew it,” said Hebe.

Afterwards, there was nothing to do but wait. The mother accepted whatever Amelia said in her effort to cheer her up and allay her fears. She herself sought the consolation of describing a night thirty years earlier. Hebe was then an infant. Her husband had gone out, the first time he had done so at night in seven months. She had fallen asleep in a chair next to the child’s cradle. The telephone awakened her. It was a friend calling to tell her not to be worried, that Juan had suffered a dizzy spell and had been taken to a hospital, and that he would be coming home as soon as the spell passed. When the friend hung up, she cried, cried out loud to the point of alarming the neighbors, who knocked in vain on her door. When Juan came home a short while later, he found her unconscious on the floor with scarcely a pulse. Berta, who had heard the story countless times, listened without paying attention. She was tensely waiting for the telephone to ring. Hebe, who had taken refuge in the bathroom, ran water in the sink to cover the sound of her sobbing.