The Way I Heard It
They were telling ghost stories. It was an odd assortment of guests; but then, you expected that at Martin’s. There were an actress and a reporter and a young doctor who made amateur films and an elderly professor of English and several just plain people. Martin finished the one about the female medical student, and they were all duly horrified, even though you couldn’t call it a ghost story proper. Somebody threw another log on the fire, and there was a pause for refilling glasses.
Then the actress spoke. “Now I know this one is true,” she said, “because the girl who told it to me heard it from a man who knew the cousin of one of the people it happened to. So there.”
“What you call direct evidence,” the reporter murmured.
The actress didn’t hear him. “It happened in Berkeley,” she went on. “It seems these people were driving up in the hills on a dark, dark night, when all of a sudden they heard—only I ought to tell you about the car first of all. You see, it was a two-door sedan—you know, where you can’t get out of the back without climbing over the people in front.”
A man who worked in a travel office interrupted her. “Sorry, but I know this one. Only it happened in New Orleans. A friend of mine who’s a steward on a boat—”
“That must be something else. I tell you I know this happened in Berkeley.”
“I heard it in San Francisco,” the reporter put in. “A friend of mine tried to run the story down, but he didn’t get anywhere.”
“Don’t quarrel, children,” Martin said. “It is a Berkeley legend; I’ve heard it a dozen times up there. And I don’t know where else it might be current. Let’s go on to a new story.”
The doctor objected. “But I don’t know it. And besides, I’m looking for something for a short supernatural picture. Would this do, do you think?”
“It might at that.”
“Then somebody tell it.”
“Yes,” said the professor of English. “By all means tell it.”
The actress unruffled herself. “All right. Now please be quiet, everybody. These people were driving up in the hills—”
“A doctor and his wife,” the reporter added.
“I’ve heard a clergyman,” Martin said.
“I don’t think that matters. Anyway, they heard these moans, so they stopped the car. And there under a hedge—”
“The way I heard it,” the travel man protested, “she was standing on the curb.”
“But don’t you see, she has to be lying down, because she’s really— But that would spoil the story, wouldn’t it? I’m sorry. So they go over to her and help her into the car . . .”
“Don’t forget the suitcase.”
“What suitcase?”
“But she has to have a suitcase, because—”
“I don’t see why.”
The doctor was getting impatient. “For the Lord’s sake, will somebody tell this story? I don’t give a hang about suitcases. I want to hear what happened.”
Three people started at once. The actress won out and went on. “So they ask her where they can take her, and she says she doesn’t know.”
“She doesn’t know! But that kills the whole—”
“Of course, how can you—”
“Please,” said the professor quietly.
“She doesn’t know then,” the actress continued calmly. “She tells them later. Oh, I should say that they put her in the back seat. You have to know that. Then she tells them where to take her—she’s very pale, of course, and beautiful and sad—and they take her there. And when they drive up to the house—”
“Only first they notice—”
“No, not till they get there.”
“Well, the way I heard it . . .”
“Let’s hear her version first,” Martin suggested. “Then you can argue.”
“So they look around, and she isn’t there anymore. And you see, there isn’t any way she could have got out without their knowing it, because the car was a two-door thing. That’s why I had to tell you about that. And it looks impossible, and they’re worried; but they go up to the house anyway. And a man answers the doorbell, and he asks what the matter—”
“No!” the reporter broke in sharply. “He says, ‘I know why you have come.’ ”
The actress thought. “Yes. I guess you’re right. He says, ‘Don’t tell me why you’ve come.’ Only they tell him anyway, which is just what people always do. And he says, ‘Yes. You’re the tenth people’—that sounds silly, doesn’t it?—you’re the tenth people who’ve brought her here.’ ”
“Only what he really said,” the travel man explained, “is, ‘She’s come here every night for a month now.’ ”
“But why?” the doctor asked. “What’s it all about? You’d have to know the story back of it to do anything with it.”
“Don’t you see? It was his wife that he’d murdered.”
“That’s screwy,” said the reporter. “It was his daughter. She was coming home from school and was killed in an accident at that spot and was trying to finish her journey home. That’s why the suitcase.”
“It was his daughter all right,” the travel man said, “but the way I heard it, she’d taken poison and then changed her mind and tried to get home, only she was dead.”
“Humph,” the doctor said.
“You see,” Martin explained, “you’ve got your choice. Anything will do for your picture. That’s the way with legends.”
“It is indeed a curious legend,” the professor observed, “and one deserving scholarly study. Mr. Woollcott, I believe, dealt with it on the air, and I happen to have given it some further attention myself. I think I might be able to reconcile your variant versions.”
“Ooh,” said the actress. “Go on.”
The fire crackled and shone on the glasses. “It is basically a Berkeley legend,” the professor said, “though it seems to have spread far from there. In the original form, the suitcase is correct, and so is the girl’s lying down. The people in the car are variously described—I think because it occurred to various people.”
The actress gave a stage shudder. “You mean it’s real?’
“He means it may
