Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 5, No. 19, November 1944

Her imagination took wings, and by dinnertime she felt sure that he was already on the way to the frontier. That night there was no broadcast from Dr. Funkhole, and she sang as she bathed and old Mrs. Bishop beat furiously on her bedroom floor above.

In bed she could almost feel herself vibrating with the heavy movement of his train. She saw the landscape going by outside — there must be a crack in any van in which he lay hid, so that he could mark the distances. It was very much the landscape of Crow-borough — spruces powdered with snow, the wide dreary waste they called a forest, dark avenues — she fell asleep.

When she woke she was still happy. Perhaps before night she would receive a cable from Holland, but if it didn’t come she would not be anxious because so many things in war-time might delay it. It didn’t come.

That night she made no attempt to turn on the radio, so old Mrs. Bishop changed her tactics again. “Well,” she said, “aren’t you going to listen to your husband?”

“He won’t be broadcasting.” Very soon now she could turn on his mother in triumph and say — there, I knew it all the time, my husband’s a hero.

“That was last night.”

“He won’t be broadcasting again.”

“What do you mean? Turn it on and let me hear.”

There was no harm in proving that she knew — she turned it on.

A voice was talking in German — something about an accident and English lies, she didn’t bother to listen. She felt too happy. “There,” she said, “I told you. It’s not David.”

And then David spoke.

He said, “You have been listening to the actual voices of the men your English broadcasters have told you were shot by the German police. Perhaps now you will be less inclined to believe the exaggerated stories you hear of life inside Germany to-day.”

“There,” old Mrs. Bishop said, “I told you.”

And all the world, she thought, will go on telling me now, for ever... Dr. Funkhole. He never got those messages. He’s there for keeps. David’s voice said with curious haste and harshness: “The fact of the matter is—”

He spoke rapidly for about two minutes as if he were afraid they would fade him at any moment, and yet it sounded harmless enough — the old stories about plentiful food and how much you could buy for an English pound — figures. But some of the examples this time, she thought with dread, are surely so fantastic that even the German brain will realize something is wrong. How had he ever dared to show up this copy to his chiefs?

She could hardly keep pace with her pencil, so rapidly did he speak. The words grouped themselves on her pad: “Five U’s refuelling hodie noon 53.23 by 10.5. News reliable source Wesel so returned. Talk unauthorized. The end.”

“This order. Many young wives I feel enjoy giving one” — he hesitated — “one day’s butter in every dozen...” the voice faded, gave out altogether. She saw on her pad: “To my wife, goodbie d...”

The end, good-bye, the end... the words rang on like funeral bells. She began to cry, sitting as she had done before, close up against the radio set. Old Mrs. Bishop said with a kind of delight: “He ought never to have been born. I never wanted him. The coward,” and now Mary Bishop could stand no more of it.

“Oh,” she cried to her mother-in-law across the little over-heated, over-furnished Crowborough room, “if only he were a coward, if only he were. But he’s a hero, a damned hero, a hero, a hero...” she cried hopelessly on, feeling the room reel round her, and dimly supposing behind all the pain and horror that one day she would have to feel, like other women, pride.

The Stickpin by Antonio Helú