“Of course, I couldn’t let it happen. I remember how heartbroken I was when Mr. Sutherland died in an accident, only he wasn’t killed by a foreign car. I was so miserable, I nearly died. So what was I supposed to do? I knew what would happen if something weren’t done, and I couldn’t just sit quiet and let it happen. I had to do something. But what?
“Then, today, an amazing coincidence brought me the answer. I came into the city to shop on Fifth Avenue for my nephew’s birthday, and I stopped into a restaurant on Forty-Seventh Street. Not too far away from Radio City and Rockefeller Center, you know the area? And who was in the restaurant but young Harrington!
“I went up to him, and I said, ‘Mr. Furth?’ He smiled. I’ll say that for him, he had a nice smile. ‘Mr. Furth,’ I said, ‘I want to talk to you.’ He stood up, a little woozy from all the liquor he’d been drinking, and offered me a seat, which I accepted. ‘Mr. Furth,’ I said, ‘I’m going to speak plainly. I know what’s going to happen.’ ‘What’s going to happen?’ he said, still smiling. ‘I know you’re going to kill Cora Franklin with that fancy foreign car,’ I answered.
“ ‘How did you find out?’ he asked, obviously surprised. ‘Never you mind how I found out,’ I said. ‘What I’m saying is so, isn’t it? You’re going to kill her with your sports car, aren’t you?’
“ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s so.’
“He admitted it! With a smile! There wasn’t a trace of regret anywhere on his devilish face. He actually seemed happy about it! I knew I was in the presence of great evil.
“He excused himself and went to the men’s room. I suddenly knew what I had to do. I opened my handbag and took out the sleeping pills I had got from Dr. Sumroy, and I dropped something like two dozen of them into his coffee. I left, waited until I was sure it was all over, then came here to turn myself in. And that, Lieutenant, is my confession.”
“I see.”
“Do you believe me?”
“Yes, I believe you, Mrs. Sutherland.”
“One thing you have to know — I did this for them, Lieutenant. For Jim and Cora and the baby. You have to realize that it was the only way. You do understand, don’t you?”
“Yes, Mrs. Sutherland, I think I do.”
A few minutes later, after Mrs. Sutherland had been led away. Lieutenant Foley turned to Sergeant Warren, who was standing a few feet away. “Well, that settles that,” he said.
“Lieutenant, maybe I’m some kind of an idiot,” said the sergeant, “but I don’t see that it settles anything. Her story about the overdose in Maxwell’s coffee jibes, and she matches the waiter’s description, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out why she kept calling Taylor Maxwell by the name Harrington Furth.”
“Sergeant, Taylor Maxwell was an actor.”
“I still don’t get it, sir.”
“I’ve just been looking at his resume. For the past few years he’s been a regular on an afternoon TV soap opera called The Will To Live,” explained the lieutenant. “The name of the character he played was Harrington Furth.”
It Could Happen to You
by John Lutz
I never dreamed something like this could happen; or rather, I’d always thought something like this could happen only in a dream. But looking back on it piece by piece, it’s easy to understand how it did happen. It was just a chance combination of circumstances, none of those circumstances so unbelievable by itself. It’s the sort of thing that could happen to anybody; to you.
There’d been some mix-up in the flight schedule, so here I was with a six-hour layover in a city a thousand miles from home. It was a big city, and a nice summer night, so I decided to take a little walk around the downtown area, just to look things over.
That was at eleven o’clock, maybe too late for that kind of walk on a week night. And there wasn’t much happening downtown, only a few night spots here and there open; or maybe I’d just picked the wrong part of town.
I strolled innocently along, my light raincoat slung over my arm against any threat of rain. I’d stopped in a few places that looked fairly respectable, staying in each for only one drink and a few words of conversation before going back outside and resuming my wandering. Walking around and sort of taking in the atmosphere of strange cities is a habit of mine. My job keeps me traveling just enough not to get bored with it, so I’m usually interested in new places. And I knew I’d probably never get back to this city.
It was almost one o’clock when I noticed my wallet was missing. I was on Nineteenth Street at the time, idly walking along and looking in the windows of the closed shops.
A lost wallet. Nothing so unusual about that. You’ve probably lost your wallet at some time and felt that sudden rush of helplessness. Well, that feeling’s even stronger in a strange city, in case you’ve never had the experience. Everything that gave me a sense of identity or security was in that wallet — my driver’s license, my folding money, my credit cards...
For a moment I stood in bewilderment, checking my other pockets, but of course the wallet wasn’t in any of them. A wallet’s the sort of thing you automatically return to the right pocket. I hurried back along the almost-deserted streets toward the Posh Parrot on Twelfth Avenue, the last cocktail lounge I’d been in, all the time keeping my eyes to the ground on the off-chance I might see the wallet where it had fallen from my pocket.
The Posh Parrot was closed, the neon sign in its window dull and lifeless, the window itself throwing back a pale reflection of my worried self.
I told myself it didn’t matter. If I had lost the wallet in the lounge and someone had picked it up, he’d probably taken it with him. But I distinctly remembered sliding the wallet back into my hip pocket after paying for my drink; I even remembered folding the corner of a fifty-dollar bill to mark it from the smaller denominations. I began retracing my route back to Nineteenth Street, figuring the wallet must have slipped out of my pocket somewhere along the way.
No luck. What was I going to do? What would you do?
Even the ticket for the last leg of my trip home was in that wallet. I felt suddenly like a vagrant, a trespasser. I realized what a difference a dozen credit cards and a few hundred dollars’ cash make in our society.
The only thing I could do was phone Laurie, my wife, and get her to wire me some money. I felt in my other pockets, and among keys, comb, and ballpoint pen, could muster only a nickel and two pennies. So much for that inspiration.
To make me feel worse, a light drizzle began to fall. I hurriedly slipped on my raincoat and turned up the collar.
I was walking forlornly, head down, hands jammed in my coat pockets, so I didn’t see the man walking the poodle toward me until we were only about a hundred feet from each other.
My awkwardness and embarrassment about trying to borrow money from a stranger, combined with the short period of time I had to come up with what I was going to say, made my throat suddenly dry. You’d feel the same way.
I stopped directly in front of the man, a little guy with wire-framed glasses and a droopy mustache, and he stood staring at me with alarm.
“Would it be possible for you to lend a stranger some money?” is what I meant to say, and then I was going to explain the reason to him. I was ill at ease, as nervous as the little man appeared, and my voice croaked so I guess he only heard the last part of my sentence, the word “money.” He backed up a step, and his poodle sensed his fear and my nervousness and began to growl.