“Where did you fly?”
“Along the coast. I didn’t get down this far. I landed at Alameda at five-thirty, and I can prove it.”
“Who’s your friend?” I pointed through the open door to the other officer, who was standing on the beach looking out to sea.
“Lieutenant Harris. I’m going to fly up to Alameda with him. I warn you, don’t make any ridiculous accusations in his presence, or you’ll suffer for it.”
“I want to ask him a question,” I said. “What sort of plane were you flying?”
“FM-3.”
I went out of the house and down the slope to Lieutenant Harris. He turned towards me and I saw the wings on his blouse.
“Good morning, Lieutenant,” I said. “You’ve done a good deal of flying, I suppose?”
“Thirty-two months. Why?”
“I want to settle a bet. Could a plane land on this beach and take off again?”
“I think maybe a Piper Cub could. I’d try it anyway.”
“It was a fighter I had in mind. An FM-3.”
“Not an FM-3,” he said. “Not possibly. It might just conceivably be able to land but it’d never get off again. Not enough room, and very poor surface. Ask Jack, he’ll tell you the same.”
I went back to the house and said to Jack: “I was wrong. I’m sorry. As you said, I guess I’m all washed up with this case.”
“Goodbye, Millicent,” Jack said and kissed her cheek. “If I’m not back tonight I’ll be back first thing in the morning. Keep a stiff upper lip.”
“You do, too, Jack.”
He went away without looking at me again. So the case ended as it had begun, with me and Mrs. Dreen alone in a room wondering what had happened to her daughter.
“You shouldn’t have said what you did to him,” she said. “He’s had enough to bear.”
My mind was working very fast. I wondered whether it was producing anything. “I suppose Lieutenant Harris knows what he’s talking about. He says a fighter couldn’t land and take off from this beach. There’s no other place around here he could have landed without being seen. So he didn’t land.
“But I still don’t believe that he wasn’t here. No young husband flying along the coast within range of the house where his wife was... well, he’d fly low and dip his wings to her, wouldn’t he? Terry Neville saw the plane come down.”
“Terry Neville?”
“I talked to him last night. He was with Una before she died. The two of them were out on the raft together when Jack’s plane came down. Jack saw them, and saw what they were doing. They saw him. Terry Neville went away. Then what?”
“You’re making this up,” Mrs. Dreen said, but her green eyes were intent on my face.
“I’m making it up, of course. I wasn’t here. After Terry Neville ran away, there was no one here but Una, and Jack in a plane circling over her head. I’m trying to figure out why Una died. I have to make it up. But I think she died of fright. I think Jack dived at her and forced her into the water. I think he kept on diving at her until she was gone. Then he flew back to Alameda and chalked up his flying time.”
“Fantasy,” she said. “And very ugly. I don’t believe it.”
“You should. You’ve got that cable haven’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Jack sent Una a cable from Pearl, telling her what day he was arriving. Una mentioned it to Hilda Karp. Hilda Karp mentioned it to me. It’s funny you didn’t say anything about it.”
“I didn’t know about it,” Millicent Dreen said. Her eyes were blank.
I went on, paying no attention to her deniaclass="underline" “My guess is that the cable said not only that Jack’s ship was coming in on the seventh, but that he’d fly over the beach-house that afternoon. Fortunately, I don’t have to depend on guesswork. The cable will be on file at Western Union, and the police will be able to look at it. I’m going into town now.”
“Wait,” she said. “Don’t go to the police about it. You’ll only get Jack in trouble. I destroyed the cable to protect him, but I’ll tell you what was in it. Your guess was right. He said he’d fly over on the seventh.”
“When did you destroy it?”
“Yesterday, before I came to you. I was afraid it would implicate Jack.”
“Why did you come to me at all, if you wanted to protect Jack? It seems that you knew what happened.”
“I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know what had happened to her, and until I found out I didn’t know what to do.”
“You’re still not sure,” I said. “But I’m beginning to be. For one thing, it’s certain that Una never got her cable, at least not as it was sent. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been doing what she was doing on the afternoon that her husband was going to fly over and say hello. You changed the date on it, perhaps? So that Una expected Jack a day later? Then you arranged to be in Hollywood on the seventh, so that Una could spend a final afternoon with Terry Neville.”
“Perhaps.” Her face was complexly alive, controlled but full of dangerous energy, like a cobra listening to music.
“Perhaps you wanted Jack for yourself,” I said. “Perhaps you had another reason, I don’t know. I think even a psychoanalyst would have a hard time working through your motivations, Mrs. Dreen, and I’m not one. All I know is that you precipitated a murder. Your plan worked even better than you expected.”
“It was accidental death,” she said hoarsely. “If you go to the police you’ll only make a fool of yourself, and cause trouble for Jack.”
“You care about Jack, don’t you?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” she said. “He was mine before he ever saw Una. She took him away from me.”
“And now you think you’ve got him back.” I got up to go. “I hope for your sake he doesn’t figure out for himself what I’ve just figured out.”
“Do you think he will?” There was sudden terror in her eyes.
“I don’t know,” I said from the door, and went out.
Round Trip
by Whitfield Cook
There is a pocket-size magazine now being published which takes up where “The Golden Book” of old left off; and it can be shouted from the housetops that this new Golden Book carries on all the noble traditions of its glorious predecessor. In this heyday of multitudinous reprints, in this anthological age, it shines like an eternal beacon of belles lettres; for the traveller weary of “popular” best-sellers, it is an oasis in the desert, the answer to a-man-on-a-desert-island’s prayer — in a phrase, an indispensable literary refresher.
Naturally, so literary a magazine does not go in heavily for detective-crime stories — but it does use some. For example, in the five issues dated September 1945 through January 1946, it offered its readers 28 short stories and only 6 of these 28 stories belong properly to the detective-crime genre. (On second thought, 21.4 % is not too small at that!) Since it is primarily a reprint magazine, it should be interesting to mystery fans to know what sources the editors use for their selection of detective and crime short stories. Here is a list of the 6 tales in question:
Cornell Woolrich’s “The Fingernail”
James M. Cain’s “The Baby in the Icebox”
Ben Hecht’s “Crime Without Passion”
Lord Dunsany’s “The Two Bottles of Relish”
M.P. Shiel’s “The S. S”
Phyllis Bottome’s “The Liqueur Glass”