Murder Most Foul Read online

  He stank. The place stank and he was there—a foul sort of thing. He was crawly and slimy and toady. He belched rot, and his voice would give you the willies. But I don’t go for appearances. knew he had to have the stuff to stand up to all those dirty do-gooders and Gospel pounders.

  I told him I wanted to get out of my jam. I wanted my wife back under my control, my daughter where I wanted her, and my partner in hell.

  Satan agreed. He could do the first two things, and while the judgment of my partner would be up to That Other One, maybe he’d get his soul in the end, too. Anyway, he’d die, and what did he want of me?

  My soul, of course. I’d trusted him for that. What good would it do him? I believe in reincarnation, anyway. I struck a hard bargain. I said first I had to have a chance to be reborn again and live a whole new life from the start. Then he could have my soul afterward.

  Because if he got my whole soul but only gave me the last half of my life as I wanted it, that wasn’t fair, was it? No. I drove a hard bargain. He had to give me an entire life from start to finish.

  He whined and he threatened and he bellowed, but he agreed. On my death bed, he said, he’d reappear and give me the word on the whole new life I was going to get to live. There were certain rules he had to go by in that sort of thing. Okay, I said, I trust you. You and me, we think alike, we think right. An iron hand in a velvet glove, that’s the rule.

  He stank, that no-good bum. He gave me his word, and I say he cheated, but he didn’t think so.

  My partner died that same night. His furnace exploded in his house. The place was a seething mass of flames. He tried to get down the stairs, got splashed with flaming oil, was scorched from head to foot, ran out in flames and died in agony. Served him right. The firm’s ledgers were in his house for his auditors, and they burned up, too, putting me entirely in the clear.

  He died in scandal, too, because my wife was caught in his house. She had a room upstairs, and she jumped from the window and the newspapers snapped her picture in her torn nightgown on the lawn coming away from that man’s house. That queered any divorce case for her. She came home, and she had to keep her mouth shut. There’d never be a chance for her to get custody of our runaway daughter or any divorce.

  I’ve never let her forget the scandal, even though she claims there was nothing between them—he was just being hospitable. Ha! I showed her. She’s not allowed out of the house now, and I beat her black and blue whenever I think of it. She hasn’t got a legal leg to stand on, not after those newspaper photos and stories.

  My daughter is still in the padded cell I arranged for her. If she’s going to fake insanity, I’ll make it so hot for her she’ll learn the error of her ways. She’s been there ten years now and the kid is stubborn. But the doc and his strongarms have been well paid. They use the leather mitts on her and the rubber sheets and the shocks. She’ll stop her act or else.

  Unfortunately I won’t live to see it. I’m dying now, and I’ve arranged in my will to see that her cure and treatment continues. I got this cancer of the throat, from inhaling some kind of poison gases or something years ago. I think it was that evening with that stinking cheat. His bad smell burned my throat, it did. I told you he cheats.

  And he’s been back, just now. He’s been back and he gave me the full dope on our deal. I’m to get a full life, from birth to maturity and eventually death. Only he’s cheated.

  He can’t give me a life that hasn’t been lived yet. He can’t reincarnate me in a future year. No, he hasn’t any control over future lives. He has only control over lives that have been lived, he said, the cheat—why couldn’t he have said that when we first made the deal?

  And it seems to be a rule in this kind of transaction that he can’t take life over in the same sex. Something about positive and negative polarity in souls. If you live twice, then you got to see life from first one sex and then the other. Makes the soul rounded, he says, the cheat.

  And it’s also got to be somebody who’s a blood relation, he tells me, the stinking, slimy no-good crook.

  I’m dying, and in a few minutes more I’m going to be dead. And then I’ll open my eyes again, a newborn baby, and start living through all the long, long years of another person’s life. I got to experience everything, every darn, horrible, painful, frustrated, mean minute of it.

  I’m going to be reborn as my own daughter.

  It’s going to be hell.

  Afterword

  We at Mystery Writers of America hope you enjoyed this collection of stories from our great writers. Murder Most Foul, edited by Harold Q. Masur, is the latest in a series of classic crime collections in our new program, Mystery Writers of America Classics.

  Since 1945, MWA has been America’s premiere organization for professional mystery writers, a group dedicated to learning from each other, helping new members, and sharing our successes and good times. One way we celebrate our talent is through the production of original, themed anthologies, published more or less yearly since 1946, in which one remarkable writer invites others to his or her collection.

  Read more about our anthology program, both the new ones and classic re-issues, on our web page: https://mysterywriters.org.

  And watch for future editions of Mystery Writers of America Classics. To receive notifications, please subscribe here: http://mysterywriters.org/mwa-anthologies/classics-newsletter/.

  The Mystery Writers of America Classic Anthology Series

  A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime, edited by Jeffery Deaver

  Woman’s Wiles, edited by Michele Slung

  Blood on Their Hands, edited by Lawrence Block

  The Lethal Sex, edited by John D. MacDonald

  Merchants of Menace, edited by Hilary Waugh

  Tricks and Treats, edited by Joe Gores and Bill Pronzini

  A Choice of Murders, edited by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  The Crime of My Life, edited by Brian Garfield

  Murder Most Foul, edited by Harold Q. Masur

  Copyrights

  Forward copyright © 2019 by Larry D. Sweazy.

  Introduction copyright © 1971 by Harold Q. Masur.

  “Fat Chance” by Robert Bloch. Copyright © 1960 by Winston Publications, Inc. Originally published in Keyhole Mystery Magazine, August 1960. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Backward, Turn Backward” by Dorothy Salisbury Davis. Copyright © 1954 by Dorothy Salisbury Davis. Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 1954. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Day of the Bullet” by Stanley Ellin. Copyright © 1964 by Stanley Ellin. Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, October 1959. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Double Entry” by Robert L. Fish. Copyright © 1968 by Robert L. Fish. Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, January 1969. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Odendahl” by Joe Gores. Copyright © 1967 by Popular Publications, Inc. Originally published in Argosy, December 1967. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “This Is a Watchbird Watching You” by Allen Kim Lang. Copyright © 1959 by H.S.D. Publications, Inc. Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, February 1959. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Gone Girl” by Ross Macdonald. Copyright © 1948 by Kenneth Millar. Originally published in Manhunt, February 1953. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Selena Robs the White House” by Patricia McGerr. Copyright © 1964 by United Newspapers Magazine Corp. Originally published in This Week, May 3, 1964. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Old Willie” by William P. McGivern. Copyright © 1961 by William P. McGivern. Originally published in Manhunt, May 1953. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Dark Encounter” by William F. Nolan. Copyright © 1959 by Great American Publications, Inc. Originally published as “Night Walk” in The Saint Detective Magazine, December 1959. Reprinted by permission of the au
thor.

  “Two Muscovy Ducks” by Charles Norman. Copyright © 1965 by Fiction Publishing Company. Originally published in The Saint Mystery Magazine, October 1965. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Mind Over Matter” by Ellery Queen. Copyright © 1940 by J. B. Lippincott Company, renewed 1968 by Ellery Queen. First published in The Blue Book Magazine, October 1939. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Cautious Man” by Lawrence Treat. Copyright © 1969 by H.S.D. Publications, Inc. Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November 1969. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Nothing But Human Nature” by Hillary Waugh. Copyright © 1969 by H.S.D. Publications, Inc. Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, December 1969. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Give Her Hell” by Donald A. Wollheim. Copyright © 1969 by Donald A. Wollheim. Originally published in Two Dozen Dragon Eggs. Reprinted by permission of the author.