Small Felonies - Fifty Mystery Short Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

somewhere?"
    "Don't be silly. I had no money, you know that. Where would we of gone?"
    "I don't know."
    "No, course you don't."
    "If only Tom hadn't been so jealous," Ellen said. "I could have asked him for a divorce. Things would've been so simple, then; we wouldn't have done what we did."
    "Well, he was jealous," George said. "He was a jealous fool. I'm not sorry for what we done."
    "I wasn't either, at the time. But now . . ."
    "What's the matter with you tonight, Ellen? You're acting damned peculiar, you ask me."
    "T'was a night just like this one," she said for the third time. "The honeysuckle, the wood smoke, the crickets and tree frogs. It could've been this night."
    "Don't talk silly."
    Ellen sighed in the darkness. "Why'd we kill him, George? Why did we do it?"
    "Chrissake. Because he caught us together, that's why."
    "At the time we said it was because we were in love."
    "Well, there was that too."
    "That too," Ellen repeated. "At the time that was everything. It was what made it all right, what we did."
    "Why in hell are you talking this way?" George said in exasperation. "We committed the perfect crime—you said so yourself, then and just a couple of minutes ago. Nobody ever suspected. They all thought it was an accident."
    "Yes. An accident."
    "Well then? What's the matter with you?"
    Ellen said, "Was it worth it, George?"
    "What?"
    "What we did. Was it worth it?"
    "Sure it was worth it. We got married, didn't we?"
    "Yes."
    "We been happy together, ain't we?"
    "I suppose we have."
    "You always said you weren't sorry."
    "So did you. Did you really mean it?"
    "Sure I did. Didn't you?"
    Ellen was quiet. From somewhere down the block, a dog bayed mournfully at the pale moon—or maybe at something in the dark. The crickets created a symphony all around them.
    At length she said, "I wish we hadn't done it. Before God, I wish we hadn't done it."
    "Ellen, it was the perfect crime!"
    "Was it? Was it really?"
    "You know it was."
    "I don't know it. Not anymore."
    "Damn you, woman, stop talking that way."
    "I can't help it," she said. "I'm afraid. I been afraid for a long time."
    "Of what?" George said. "We weren't caught, were we? Won't never be caught now."
    "Not by the law."
    "Now what's that supposed to mean?"
    "There's no such thing as the perfect crime, George," she said. "I know that and so do you."
    "I don't know any such thing."
    "Yes you do. Down deep, we've both known it all along. We haven't gone unpunished for what we did—but we haven't paid the full price, either. Won't be long now before we do. Not much longer at all."
    They sat once more in silence, with nothing left to say, with the cloying fragrance of the honeysuckle in their nostrils and the songs of the crickets and tree frogs swelling in their ears. Sat without touching, without looking at each other on the deep-shadowed porch . . . remembering . . . waiting.
     
    Ellen and George Granger, seventy-nine and eighty-one years of age, who had committed the perfect crime in the year 1931 .

SHELL GAME
     
    (With Jeffrey M. Wallmann)
     
    G loved hands thrust into the pockets of his heavy tweed overcoat, Steve Blanchard entered the Midwestern National Exchange Bank a few minutes before three P.M. on a snowy Thursday in December. A uniformed guard stood near the main entrance doors with a ring of keys in his hand, his eyes cast upward to the clock on the side wall. Blanchard's steps echoed hollowly as he crossed the almost-deserted lobby to the teller at window four, the only one open at this late hour. He waited until a stout, gray-haired man had finished his transaction, then moved up to the window.
    A small nameplate indicated that the teller's name was James Cox. He was a thin young man with dark eyes and sand-colored hair. He smiled at Blanchard, said, "Yes, sir, may I help you?"
    Blanchard took the folded piece of paper from his coat pocket and slid it across the counter. The second hand on the wall clock made two full sweeps, half of a third, and