A Dog's Ransom Read Free

dread through him.
    “No word about your dog, Mr. Reynolds?” Mark asked.
    “No, not yet,” Ed said.
    “We’re certainly keeping a lookout down here. I even told the delicatessen fellow and his wife this morning.”
    “Good. Thanks,” Ed said. He wanted to get to the safety of his apartment before he opened the letter, but on the other hand Greta was there—and he wanted to spare her. He opened the letter in the moving elevator.
    DEAR SIR:
    I HAVE YOUR DOG LISA. SHE IS WELL AND HAPPY. BUT IF YOU WANT HER BACK LEAVE $1,000 (ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS) BETWEEN ELEVENTH AND TWELFT PIKES OF FENCE EAST SIDE OF YORK AVENUE BETWEEN 61 & 62 ST. FRIDAY NITE AT 11 P.M. IN NEWSPAPER WRAPPING IN BILLS OF NOT BIGGER THAN TEN DOLLARS. IF YOU DON’T LEAVE THIS MONEY THE DOG WILL BE KILLED. I GATHER THE DOG IS IMPORTANT TO YOU? WE’LL SEE! A NICE LITTLE DOG. MAYBE NICER THAN YOU.
    ANON
    LISA WILL BE TIED TO SAME PIKE ABOUT ONE HOUR LATER. NO COPS PLEASE—OR ELSE.
    So there it was. The nightmare had come true, Ed thought—a phrase that reminded him of clichés in the not very good books he sometimes had to read. He let himself into the apartment.
    “Eddie—”
    Ed supposed he was white in the face. “Well, I know where Lisa is. My dear, I could use a neat scotch—despite the hour.”
    “What’s happened? Where is she?”
    “The poison-pen guy has her.” Ed went to the kitchen, bent over the sink and with his free hand splashed water on his face.
    “He wrote another letter?” Greta brought a scotch in a tumbler.
    “Yes. He wants a ransom by tonight. A thousand dollars.”
    “A thousand dollars !” Greta said in a tone of astonishment, but Ed knew it wasn’t the sum so much as the crazy situation that shocked her. “Should we do it? Where is she?—Who is he?”
    Ed sipped the scotch and held on to the sink. The crumpled letter was now on the drainboard. “I’ll have to think.”
    “A thousand dollars. It’s insane.”
    “This guy’s insane,” Ed said.
    “Eddie, we’ve got to tell the police.”
    “That’s sometimes the way to lose something—something kidnapped,” Ed said. “If the fellow gets scared—I mean if he sees police waiting for him—” But a plainclothesman, Ed thought, with a gun, might be different. Telling the police might not be a bad idea.
    “I want to see the letter.” Greta took it and read it. “Oh, my God,” she said softly.
    Ed had a vision of Lisa breaking away from the leash or whatever Anon was holding her with, running to him on the dark sidewalk of York Avenue at 61st Street tonight at midnight. What made sense? Should he get the money? The returning of the dog one hour later, written at the bottom of the letter, seemed an aftermath, something Anon might not mean.
    “Darling you should get the police to watch that spot and don’t fool around with the money,” Greta said earnestly.
    “If we get Lisa back, isn’t it worth a thousand dollars?”
    “Of course she’s worth it! That isn’t the point! I’m not trying to save a thousand dollars!”
    “I’ve got to think about it. I’d better get to the office.” He was thinking, if he got the cash, he would have to go to the bank before 3 p.m. He felt he would go to the bank. He could always decide about the police after he got the money. Ed wished, not for the first time, that he was a type who became angry quickly, made a decision quickly, based on the right, as he saw it. Even if such a person were occasionally wrong, he had at least acted, decided, because of what he thought right. I hesitate, without any of the eloquence of Hamlet , Ed thought with a faint amusement, but he did not smile.
    “Will you telephone me this morning?” Greta asked, following him to the door.
    Ed realized she was physically afraid here in the apartment. And what was more logical, because Anon probably knew Greta by sight as well as himself. Ed had an impulse to stay home. He said with difficulty. “Don’t go out, darling. And don’t open