The five day nightmare, p.1
The Five-Day Nightmare, page 1
The Five-Day Nightmare
Fredric Brown
Chapter One
Sitting there stunned, reading and rereading the kidnaper’s ransom note in my own typewriter, all I could think of at first was, oh God, oh God, why did this have to happen now, now when Ellen and I were in the midst of the worst quarrel we’d had in five years of marriage, now when, if I never saw her again alive I’d never be able to apologize for the horrible things I’d said to her at breakfast. Of course she’d said equivalently horrible things to me. Besides, I still thought I was in the right, but …
That didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered but getting her back, alive.
The note was on a sheet of my own stationery.
It read:
IF YOU WANT TO SEE YOUR WIFE ALIVE AGAIN YOU HAVE FIVE DAYS TO RAISE TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS IN UNMARKED BILLS NOT OVER HUNDREDS. STAY HOME WEDNESDAY NIGHT ALONE AND YOU WILL RECEIVE INSTRUCTIONS ON DELIVERY. IF YOU GO TO THE POLICE YOUR WIFE WILL BE KILLED, IF NOT, SHE WILL BE RETURNED UNHARMED. YOU MAY CHECK WITH ARTHUR J. SEARS ON ONE POINT, RANDOLPH EARLY ON THE OTHER. BOTH IN PHONE BOOK. BUT IMPRESS THEM WITH SECRECY AND TALK TO NO ONE ELSE IF YOU WANT HER BACK ALIVE.
I knew the name Arthur J. Sears; it had been in the newspapers two months back, and big. I didn’t remember the details but his wife had been kidnaped. He’d gone to the police and his wife had been killed—found dead in a cemetery out near Chandler.
I couldn’t place the other name, Randolph Early.
Still, it could mean only one thing. Arthur Sears had gone to the police and his wife had been killed; that was one point. The opposite point would be that Early had not gone to the police and his wife had not been killed. In other words, there’d been two kidnapings and there’d been no publicity on the second.
I stopped pacing and sat down at my desk again. I flipped open the telephone directory and found a listing for a Randolph Early. The address was west on Camelback Road, out near the Grand Canyon College campus. I dialed the number and got an operator who told me the number had been changed to another. I dialed it, got a woman’s voice and asked for Mr. Randolph Early. A minute later a voice said, “Early speaking.”
I said, “You don’t know me, Mr. Early. My name is Lloyd Johnson. I—”
“Lloyd Johnson of Johnson & Sitwell?”
“Yes,” I said. “Your name sounded familiar to me, Mr. Early. Do we know each other then?”
“We met about six months ago in your office. I am—was, rather— a client of yours. I dealt with your partner, Mr. Sitwell. He introduced us once.”
“Oh,” I said. And, although I didn’t remember, I said, “I remember now, Mr. Early. Could I see you now—on a matter of great importance—if I came right over to your place?”
“Why—I’m afraid it would be pretty inconvenient right now. We were just about to eat dinner and after that, we have tickets to a show. Couldn’t it wait until tomorrow evening? I’m free then.”
“It’s—it’s a matter of life and death, Mr. Early.”
There was a change, a sudden tenseness, in his voice. “Whose life or death, Mr. Johnson?”
“My wife’s,” I said. “I have a note which requests me to talk to you about it. May I read it to you?” He didn’t answer and I didn’t wait; I read him the note in the typewriter.
His voice sounded suddenly flat when he spoke again. “All right,” he said. “We’ll stay home. Come right away. Wait!”
“Yes?”
“You’re coming alone, aren’t you?”
“Of course. Why?”
“Just that—well, if he, or they—suggested you check with me, they just might be watching this place to see that you came alone. Understand me?”
“All right,” I said. “When I tried to phone you the first time the number had been changed. Is it still the same address or have you moved?”
“Moved. Glad you thought to ask.” He gave me an address on Indian School Road.
I reached to pull the note out of the typewriter and then stopped myself. There wouldn’t be any fingerprints on it, or on the type-writer keys; he or they would be too smart for that. But even so, on the off chance, I wasn’t going to touch either the note or the typewriter, not until Ellen was back and safe. Then the police could have it and if it led them to the kidnaper I hoped they would lead him to the gas chamber. And from there to frying in hell, if there is a hell.
Chapter Two
For what good it did me, I thought I knew the time Ellen had been kidnaped, within half an hour.
That afternoon, a Friday afternoon, I had finally come to the conclusion that it was going to be up to me to make the first pass at ending our quarrel. I still didn’t think that I was any more in the wrong than she had been—but maybe I was as much so, and one of us had to take the first step toward appeasement and it might as well be me. I still loved her, damn it. And I was over the worst of my anger. So, why not be big about it? Maybe she’d cooled by now too and if I called her she’d agree to bury the hatchet in a couple of steaks at The Flame or The Embers (I’m not kidding; those are both good Phoenix restaurants) for dinner. And it was half past two and I realized that if I was going to ask her I’d better call now before she might make plans for dinner at home—women always want lots of advance notice on dinner-out invitations.
So I asked Marjorie for a private line—so there’d be no chance of her listening in—and dialed my home number. It was busy, and since it’s a private line that meant that she was home.
I was going to dial again in a few minutes, but in popped one of the most annoying clients of Johnson & Sitwell, investment counselors and brokers.
Mrs. Van Vries is a middle-aged widow of three years’ standing whose husband was smart enough to leave her the bulk of his modest estate in the form of an annuity that paid her about nine thousand dollars a year, enough to live on comfortably. And since she wasn’t extravagant she did live on it comfortably and had no financial worries. Unfortunately there had also been some cash, about fifteen thousand dollars to begin with, and Mrs. Van Vries had decided that if Hetty Green could make a killing on the stock market and get rich, so could she. She was constantly buying and selling small blocks of stock. Her choice of stocks was determined by how cheap they were because if she bought low and the stock went up, she’d have so many more shares of it on which to make a profit. Penny stocks particularly fascinated her. To be able to buy several thousand shares of something for less than a thousand dollars was to her a bargain to end all bargains and she couldn’t or wouldn’t understand that such stocks were low-priced because they were next to worthless and they almost always went down instead of up. I almost always had to buy for her over my protests, and her capital was considerably down from what she’d had when she’d started. I usually managed to steer her off the worst dogs, but that was all I could do.
And that was all I could do this afternoon. Finally, wearily, 1 agreed to sell certain things for her and buy certain others, as of when the exchange opened on Monday, got her signature on the accessary orders, and walked with her to the door of the office.
I stood there in the doorway to the outer office watching while she left. No one was in the outer office except Marjorie, our receptionist-steno-bookkeeper, who was making the electric typewriter sound like a machine gun. Marjorie is a cute little number for an efficient gal, genuinely blonde and filling out a dark blue dress just the right amount in just the right places. I’m a married man myself, but I’d often wondered why my bachelor partner Joe Sitwell didn’t date her. But that was his business and I guess he had plenty of girls on the string without having to date office help.
I called out to her and asked her if she’d give me that private line again and went back to my desk. Again I dialed my own number but this time got no answer. It was three o’clock, I noticed; Mrs. Van Vries had wasted a full half hour of my time.
Ellen had probably gone shopping, I decided. Since we live right near a supermarket it wouldn’t take her long; I’d try again in half an hour or so. I started on some paper work.
My phone rang and it was Joe Sitwell calling from his own office. He asked if I was free and could he drop in for a minute; I said sure.
Despite the fact that our firm name is Johnson & Sitwell, I’m not the senior partner; neither of us is. We’re the same age within a year and when we started business together we each put in an equal amount of money and just about an equal amount of experience so we flipped a coin to see whether it would be Johnson & Sitwell or Sitwell & Johnson. It came up Johnson & Sitwell.
We always got along fine, even though were somewhat related by marriage. Cousins-in-law. When I’d married Ellen about five years ago I’d been a junior executive and customer’s man with a biggish brokerage firm, Graydon & Co., here in Phoenix, Arizona. And while we were engaged Ellen had told me that she had a first cousin about my age, who held a job almost exactly like mine with a Chicago brokerage outfit.
They—Ellen and Joe—weren’t at all close and didn’t correspond except for Christmas cards to keep in touch, but she sent him a wedding announcement and got a present back, and the following summer Joe took a vacation trip to Phoenix, checked in at the Westward Ho, and looked us up. He and I hit it off right away—in fact, I always got along better with him than Ellen did; I think she figured that as a gay young bachelor he was a bad influence on me.
During his two weeks with us, Joe fell in love with Phoenix. He kept asking questions about it and about his chances of getting a job in his line, our line, and he sounded serious about it. I told him Phoenix was already half a million and growing like crazy, and that there were plenty of people interested in investing in anything from uranium stocks to blue chips.
The next spring he landed a job by mail here and quit his Chicago one. And the year after that, three years ago, we’d decided that we had enough money, just enough, between us, and enough experience and enough contacts to start our own small firm, and we’d done it. We weren’t getting rich by any means, but we were out of the red and it looked as though, in another few years, we’d be getting places.
Joe came in and sat down on a corner of my desk. He’s tall and lanky—I’m medium height and heavy-set—and has sandy hair that won’t stay in place.
“Hi, boy,” he said. “Want to proposition you.” He held out a pack of cigarettes and I took one and picked up my desk lighter to light it and his.
“Proposition ahead,” I told him.
“It’s spring and I’m restless. Got a sudden yen to run up to Las Vegas for the weekend. And tomorrow’s Saturday, a half day. I’ve got no appointments. Mind if I take it off?”
“Hell, no,” I said. “You’ve got vacation time coming anyway.” We allowed ourselves two weeks a year vacation time; I generally took most of mine all at once and took a trip somewhere with Ellen. Joe usually took his a day or a few days at a time, to make long weekends, usually to go and play golf somewhere besides the Phoenix courses. He’s a pretty good golfer, I understand; I don’t play myself, although he’d tried to talk me into it. As a matter of fact, his clubs were at my house right then.
“Since it’s after three o’clock, could I take off now? Will you hold the fort the last couple of hours?”
“Sure. Driving up?”
“No, there’s a six o’clock plane and if I take off now I’ll have time to pack and to make it.”
“Okay by me,” I said.
“Swell. I dictated some letters to Marjorie, but she can sign ’em for me. Say, Lloyd, you can waste twenty minutes; how’s about having a stirrup cup with me downstairs? Then I can go on and you can come back. Have a drink to wish me luck.”
I said I would. Not that he needed luck. Joe won more often than he lost. And he never lost heavily because he never took more than a couple of hundred with him.
“Sure,” I said. “Just had a session with Mrs. Van Vries. I can use a drink. But only one, if I’m coming back here.”
We told Marjorie what the score was and went downstairs to the bar in our building and ordered Martinis.
“You’re looking a little down, Lloyd,” Joe said. “Something worrying you?”
I shook my head, because I didn’t want to tell him about the quarrel with Ellen. It was none of his business. Then I added, “A little tired, maybe.”
“Listen, I’ve got a thought,” he said. “If I postpone my trip till tomorrow afternoon—there’s a plane at somewhere around two— will you come with me? What you need is a change, a vacation, even if it’s only a day and a half. My good coz ought to let you off the hook for that long. You ought to get away from each other once in a while. Good for both of you.”
I shook my head again. “Not in the mood, Joe. Besides, this would be a bad time. Had a little squabble with Ellen last night and this morning and I don’t think she’d take kindly to the idea this weekend in particular.”
“Nothing serious, I hope? I mean the squabble with your squab.”
“It’ll blow over.”
Our Martinis came and at my suggestion we drank a toast to his luck. And then, at his, a toast to Ellen and everything being right between us again.
He took off for the parking lot and I went back upstairs. It was almost half past three and I tried phoning Ellen again, with still no answer. I decided to try once more at four.
At four I was busy, but I was less busy fifteen minutes later and this time had Marjorie try to reach her. Still no answer.
And then at a quarter of five, almost quitting time, Marjorie came into my office looking a little scared.
“Mr. Johnson,” she said, “I just remembered when I got to it that one of those letters Mr. Sitwell dictated to me has a paper with it—some kind of a personal quitclaim—that’s supposed to be notarized. I can sign the letters for him, but I can’t sign that. What can we do?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it’s something that can wait over the weekend.” I looked at my watch. “Maybe he’s still home packing. Will you ring him? And put him on the phone to me if you get him? Otherwise, I’ll try him later, have him paged at the airport.”
She went back to her desk and a minute later rang my phone and I picked it up and it was Joe. I explained what had happened and asked what he wanted me to do.
“Oh, Lord!” he said, “That damned thing should go out. And there isn’t time for me to get back to the office and then to the airport. Lloyd, is it asking too damn much for you to meet me at the airport with it—and bring your little notary seal with you?”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll see you there around five-thirty. In the airport bar.”
“Thanks. I hope you forget something sometime so that I can return the favor. And listen—just thought of something else, if you don’t mind.”
“What?”
“My golf clubs. You said you weren’t going to use them and I might. Vegas has got a beautiful course and I’ll be there two full days and I can’t spend all that time at the tables. Would you bring them?”
I said sure, and when I hung up, picked up the phone again and got a private line from Marjorie. This time to make a last stab at inviting Ellen out for dinner, also to tell her in case she’d started one, that I’d be home at the usual time but would have to take off again and not be back for keeps until six. But what I was going to tell her didn’t matter, since I still didn’t get an answer.
It was ten minutes later when Marjorie brought in the letter and the enclosure that had to be notarized, both in an unsealed envelope. I put it in my pocket and took off, leaving her to close up, got my car and drove home. Ellen still wasn’t there; I had to let myself in with my key. I called her name and got no answer, so I got the clubs out of the hall closet, put them in the car and drove to the airport.
Joe was waiting at the airport bar; he’d just got there and hadn’t ordered yet. He put down a bill to pay for the drinks and told me to order while he checked his suitcase and the golf clubs I’d brought through to Las Vegas.
Our Martinis were there when he came back and sat down. We got the business of his signing and my notarizing the quitclaim over with and sealed it and I promised to mail it for him. We finished our drinks and he checked his watch and said his plane wouldn’t be called for ten minutes and he’d like to buy another round. The first one was for bringing out the quitclaim and the second would be for bringing the clubs.
I said okay if I could make a phone call while he ordered, and went to a booth and tried my own number again. If I could catch Ellen just as she got in and before she started anything, the steak-out deal could still work. But again no answer.
I went back to the bar and our second round of Martinis was there. We talked a bit, about nothing in particular, while we drank. Joe remembered to tell me that, in case I needed to reach him, I could find him at the Paragon Hotel, on the strip, where he usually stayed.
At about ten minutes of six they called the plane and I strolled to the gate with him and then back into the airport where I mailed the notarized document and then called Ellen once more. Still no answer.
When I got home, there was still no one there. Cheetah, our Siamese cat, whom I hadn’t seen when I’d dropped in for the golf clubs, came to me miaouwing her I’m-hungry miaouw. Ellen usually fed her around five o’clock, so I went to the kitchen, opened a can of cat food, and made sure there was water in her dish. “Kitty,” I said, “your mother must be really mad at us to stay out this late. Did you have a quarrel with her, too?”
She didn’t answer.
It was then that I remembered that the few times Ellen had known she was going to be late or something and hadn’t reached me by phone she’d left a note for me in the carriage of the portable typewriter on the desk in my den.
I went into the den and found the note. Not a note from Ellen because she didn’t type; she wrote her notes by hand and stuck them loosely in the carriage, not down under the roller, as this one was, at the last line of the typing a third of the way down the page.
