“Okay, Ma’am. I was just making sure units were ready and ordered others to create roadblocks just in case. You were explaining to me—”
“Yes, after the demonstration I’d forgotten to—”
“Hang on, Ma’am. Gotta get on the horn again.”
“Hello?... Hello?... Hello?...”
“Okay, Ma’am, I’m back. We got ’em! Redhanded! In the act!”
“Oh, good! But I’ve been wondering, Sergeant. I didn’t hear any shots, screaming, sirens.”
“Don’t believe everything your nephew watches on TV, Ma’am. And now, will you please get my curiosity off the hook about how you were able to tip us off. You were alone in the store...”
“Yes, it was Arnold’s turn, he’s the manager, to go to lunch early and—”
“I know, I know. Just getting my facts straight. One little step at a time. You were alone. You didn’t go out of the store, nowhere near the man in the car outside, nowhere hear the bank to possibly spot his waiting pals. Yet you got the low-down on their plans to hit the bank in ten minutes—”
“Yes, I’d been giving a demonstration and—”
“Ma’am, please, let’s just stick to the question of the attempted bank hold-up.”
“But that’s what I’m trying to explain to you, Sergeant.”
“Okay, okay, do it your way. I’ll try to stay with you.”
“As I’ve been telling you, I gave a demonstration of the new Lowry electric organ, and also a Hammond, a Thomas and—”
“Huh-huh! That would be before you overheard about the bank.”
“Of course. I couldn’t conscientiously do something else if I were aware a Crime was about to be committed and I could possibly prevent it.”
“Right on, Ma’am. Continue.”
“Well, after the customer left... I think he was just killing time, wasn’t really interested in possibly buying an organ, well, then I came back here to the office and a few minutes later I began overhearing the man in the car out front as he—”
“Hold on, Ma’am. You were way at the back of the store, the door was closed, you had no radio on, yet you claim to have overheard him speaking into the walkie-talkie. Now just how the devil—”
“But I told you, I’d forgotten to turn off the Lowry.”
“Huh? The organ?”
“Yes. Maybe you’re not familiar with electric organs. But they’re all, the newer ones, transistorized, with a main speaker and Leslie, stereo hook-up, tape recording. It’s an amazing maze of electronics. I’m just a music teacher and it’s all way over my head.”
“You got company, Ma’am. Am I right in thinking you’re trying to tell me that the electric organ picked up his walkie-talkie?”
“Of course. His voice came out of the speakers right here in the store because I’d forgotten to shut it off. It isn’t the first time it’s happened when Arnold, he’s the manager, or I have forgotten to turn an organ off. Arnold could probably explain it to you, but I can’t. Anyway, we’ve been startled when, when waves or something are just right, and an electric organ that isn’t being played has picked up radio telephone calls from passing cars or trucks. Sometimes we’ve even heard officers talking in a passing police car.”
“Well, I’ll be damned, Ma’am. I understand now how you overheard the guy on his walkie-talkie. There’ll be officers in soon to complete their report with you. But let me thank you in advance for calling, Ma’am. If there were more citizens like you, there would be sweet music in police ears, though I’ll admit that at first I thought your call was a lot of... what was that word again?”
“Cacaphony.”
“Yeah. That’s a honey. Maybe I’ll drag my boy down sometime and you can get him off that stuff.”
“I’ll be glad to, try, Sergeant. It’s been a pleasure talking to you. Goodbye.”
The Dog in the Night
by Edward Wellen
All the houses were alike except for one — and, soon it would be the same, too.
Curiously detached: that was how Stanley Hofer seemed to himself to feel about the thing that had been driving him up the wall.
He lay awake at three a.m. as usual, full of helpless and hopeless rage as usual, staring at the Venetian blind shadows striping the walls as usual. But this night he found himself going suddenly calm.
Terribly calm and curiously detached as he listened to the howling dog.
It must have been some invisible and weightless last straw that did it. Whatever it was, it made him say inside himself, Enough. It has to stop right now, before I go mad.
Maybe it was too late. Was he already mad? He did not behave madly. He simply watched himself get up out of bed and with an almost peaceful and absentminded look frozen on his face walk to the dresser and open the bottom drawer.
He had to shake the drawer first to the left and then to the right a couple of times before it came loose, working it out in half inches, but then it came freely, too freely, fell out on the floor. He left it so and took out from under his winter woollies an oilskin-wrapped packet.
The effort had not shaken him out of his calmness. He carefully unrolled the oilskin and uncovered his revolver.
He made sure that it held a full load of cartridges and that the cylinder spun smoothly. He had kept up his license to own and carry it, though he had retired as a jeweler more than a year back. Now the solid weight of metal gave him additional will and strength and pleasant guilt — Martha had never liked having it in the house.
He stepped into his slippers and put on his robe over his pajamas. It was a night mild enough for pajamas alone but the robe had a pocket stout enough to hold the revolver. Some unconscious center of cunning was looking out for him; it did not want him to have to stop and answer questions if a cruising patrol car happened by. He went out into the night.
Stanley Hofer lived on Third Avenue and the house he wanted stood directly behind his on Second Avenue. In his free and easy dreamy state he felt he could have floated over the backyard fence. But he did not try to vault the fence. He went out the front door and kept to the sidewalk, along the row of mass-produced tract houses.
The dog’s howling faded as he walked away. He looked up at the moon. He smiled. Dogs howled at the moon but man had walked on it. It walked along with him. He turned right at the corner and then right again at the next corner. Second Avenue showed its rows of mass-produced tract houses. The dog’s howling grew louder.
Stanley Hofer’s hand tightened on the gun in his pocket. Was it a month ago, after long debate with himself, that he had nerved himself to complain to the police that the howling dog belonging to one Lyman Strafuss was disturbing him? The desk sergeant had taken his call but nothing had happened. He had waited and called again, waited and called again. Still nothing had happened. If anything, during the past week, the howling had seemed worse.
He had asked around and found out why nothing had happened. Even in a group of owners of lookalike homes some have more pull than others. This was a one-company town and Lyman Strafuss was the brother-in-law of a company big shot.
Having reinforced himself with the cumulative past, Stanley Hofer pulled himself back to the climactic present. He had lost count of the houses, but the howling told him which was Lyman Strafuss’s. There was no mistaking it, nor any doubting where it came from.
Here, painfully close, was the bark worse than any bite, the howl that ate nerves raw. Heedless of dew soaking his slippers, Stanley Hofer cut across the grass. He stubbed his toe on the lawn sprinkler. That did not bring him out of his dreamy mood of almost merry doom. He bared his teeth in a slow smile.
The stoop had the same number of steps as his own: he felt quite at home. He glued his finger to the bell push.