Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 104, No. 4, August 22, 1936

Regardless of what your feelings are toward me at the moment, if you have half the sense I give you credit for, you will keep the presence of this phone to yourself. If you must tell him, at least wait till tomorrow, let it stay in overnight. You have a silver dress, metallic cloth. Well, put it on tonight, even if you don’t go out. I’m your brother, I’m only trying to help, not hurt you.

R.

This only kindled my anger all over again, even if only temporarily. I crumpled it up and threw it away. This persecution had to stop! If it didn’t, I really would tell Frank the whole story, and then the breach would never be healed. I hadn’t, so far, breathed a word to him, not even that Ritchie was down here and that I’d run into him. My better judgment warned me not to. It was no augury for a happy marriage, to create bad blood between my husband and brother right at the very beginning. This spat between Ritchie and myself would be forgotten eventually, but Frank would never forgive him for holding such a barbarous, mistaken opinion about him. In the end, I’d be the chief sufferer. Women usually are.

I cooled down again gradually, and then it dawned on me that phone could serve a very useful purpose after all, apart from that hallucination of Ritchie’s. I picked it up — you could hardly see it there at the bottom of that dark closet — and gave it its baptism by calling the grocer and butcher and ordering some things sent over. I’d surprise Frank by cooking my first meal for him, and see how he liked it! The house was furnished, even down to silverware and dishes. I set the table, slipped a nice juicy tenderloin in the oven, and then beat it in the bedroom to doll up for him. He’d be back any minute now.

That silver dress idea of Ritchie’s wasn’t so bad at that, I had to admit. I got it out and tried it on. It looked swell, burnished all over just as though it was really made of metal instead of only silver-cloth. I kept it on. Then I turned around and I noticed that I hadn’t finished hanging up his suits in the bedroom-closet. I’d been at it when that phone-man came. Several of them were still lying spread out on the bed. I picked each one up, smoothed it out, and put it on a hanger.

The little notebook dropped out of the last one. He must have forgotten he’d left it in the breast-pocket. It was just a tiny little address-book, two by four, the kind you can pick up at any five-and-ten. As a matter of fact, it didn’t even have anything written in it, except just on one page, near the back. He must have forgotten to use it after buying it. But it was because he had pressed that one page down in writing on it, opened it more widely than the others, that it fell open right there in dropping tent-shaped to the floor. And when my eye, in picking it up, came to rest upon a woman’s name, I stopped and looked more closely. I’m only human after all; some former sweetheart, possibly?

There were seven, not just one.

Barbara Newton

Rose Lawton

Sylvia King

Bertha Heilman

Esther Miller

Linda Regan

Betty Dokes

And every one but the last one, my own, was crossed off by a red line! Horrible mists from nowhere suddenly seemed to swirl around me, blotting out the room. I couldn’t see a thing. But I could hear — I could hear Ritchie’s voice coming through them! Vibrant, remorseless, inexorable: “The name of the last one was Linda Regan. Linda Regan. Linda Regan.” Booming like a fog-horn.

It was only when I was struggling to my feet again, picking myself up from the floor, that I realized I must have fallen to it without knowing it. But the mists were gone now, there was a diamond-like clarity to the air, that had invaded my faculties too. The faint, if it was a faint, had refreshed me; nature is kind that way. Not a shadow of a doubt remained. I knew the one, the only thing there was for me to do — and I knew how quickly it had to be done! I was whimpering aloud, “I’ve got to get out of here! Oh, let me out of here!” but that was only the nervous reaction to the shock, not helplessness. I knew enough not to waste a moment, a precious fraction of a second. Even though it meant tramping the sand-dunes in a silver evening-dress and high heels, even though the steak was already filling the kitchen with black smoke. No time, no time, no time! I had to get out of this house of death, back to where life was.