All next day she found herself praying, although she didn’t much believe in prayer. She visualized that station “on the Rhine not far from Wesel”: and not far either from the Dutch frontier. There must be some method of getting across — with the help of that unknown worker — possibly in a refrigerating van — no idea was too fantastic to be true: others had succeeded before him.
All through the day she tried to keep pace with him — he would have to leave early, and she imagined his cup of ersatz coffee and the slow wartime train taking him south and west: she thought of his fear and of his excitement — he was coming home to her. Ah, when he landed safely, what a day that would be! The papers then would have to eat their words: no more Dr. Funkhole and no more of this place, side by side with his unloving mother.
At midday, she thought, he has arrived: he has his black discs with him to record the men’s voices, he is probably watched, but he will find his chance — and now he is not alone. He has someone with him helping him. In one way or another he will miss his train home. The freight train will draw in — perhaps a signal will stop it outside the station. She saw it all so vividly, as the early winter dark came down and she blacked the windows out, that she found herself thankful he possessed, as she knew, a white mackintosh. He would be less visible waiting there in the snow.
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
It seems that, at the time of this writings 75 copies of every issue of EQMM find their way to a bookstore in Mexico City which specializes in American books and magazines; and that one of these 75 copies is reserved in the name of Antonio Helú. But Antonio Helú is more than a South-of-the-Border fan: he is also a writer of detective stories. Result (of our Good Neighbor policy): Señor Helú selected some of his own stories and mailed them to your Editor. Further result: your Editor forwarded the stories, in their original Spanish, to Anthony Boucher (our favorite translator). Final result: we hereby inaugurate a series of Mexican detective-crime stories — the first series of its kind ever to appear in the English language.
Meet Máximo Roldán, Mexican manhunter. Roldán is that rare type of detective who in addition to being a fluent and ingenious sleuth is also a thief of extraordinary ability. Like Arsène Lupin, Máximo Roldán will solve the most intricate and baffling murder if by so doing he can pick up a pocketful of pesos. In fact, the more you read of Roldán’s audacious adventures, the more you’ll think of him as the Mexican Lupin — a bouquet, not a brickbat, since Roldán has executed some roguish-detectival coups brilliant enough to be ascribed to the immortal Arsène himself.
For one of the most interesting parallels in detective-story plot and counter-plot, compare Antonio Helú’s “The Stickpin” with Maurice Leblanc’s “The Red Silk Scarf.” The Lupin story first appeared in 1912, the Roldán story in 1928. Alike in basic Conception, they are continents apart in execution; alike in spirit, they are nevertheless wholly individual. As Sherlock Holmes drew on Dupin, so Roldán derives from Lupin; but like Holmes, Roldán (especially when you get to know him better) achieves a stature all his own.
And now, blaze a trail with the first great detective-thief out of Mexico.
It was, of course, those two details that gave Máximo Roldán the key to the whole affair: the garter that belonged to the nephew and the stickpin that didn’t belong to anyone. But, as he so often asked himself afterwards, if it hadn’t been for those 10,000 pesos in jewels, would he ever have paid any attention to either garter or stickpin?
If the reader has ever passed along the Calle de los Millones, the Street of Millions, in that district of Mexico City known as the Colonia Roma, he may have observed that it is composed of no less than twenty houses all nearly identical. He may have seen the gardens that surround each of them on all four sides. And he may have noticed that only one of these homes violates the uniformity of gardens and façades — one house which has, instead of the railings that surround the others, a very high and thick wall which hides it almost completely from the street. He may have been astonished, not so much because this house is protected by such a wall but because the others, all belonging to millionaires, are surrounded only by easily climbed railings. And most of all he may have been startled to learn that the house with the wall is perhaps the only one on the Calle de los Millones which is not inhabited by a millionaire.