Seven Seats to the Moon

By Charlotte Armstrong

A government secret about the end of the world will change what’s left of a man’s suburban life in this thriller by an Edgar Award–winning author.

California businessman J. Middleton Little is on company assignment in Chicago when he’s caught eavesdropping on a top-secret confab between high-level government officials. J. knows he isn’t just hearing things; they actually referred to the coming Armageddon. To ensure his silence, J.’s been offered the chance of a lifetime: seven seats on an “ark” scheduled to carry the last vestiges of the human race from Earth before the apocalypse. In a matter of minutes, J. has gone from a self-described “middle-class, middle-income, middlebrow man-of-the-street” to one of the most privileged men in the universe. The only stipulation: He can’t tell a single soul until the proper time.
 
For now, it’s back to life in Burbank with his dutiful, intuitive wife; an underhanded and scheming son; his impossibly spoiled daughter; his unhinged father; and a mother-in-law whose religious fanaticism is making J. think twice about his role as savior—especially when he finds himself shadowed by an insidious pack of secret agents, counterspies, and a lone madman on a terrifying mission.
 
Soon enough, J.’s once-ordinary world will be ripped apart by threats, deceit, cover-ups, secrets, and shifting family loyalties. It will also leave J. wondering what he really does know, what he doesn’t, what he’s been led to believe, and above all, why. J. Middleton Little has a lot to learn before the end.
 
This smart, inventive thriller by “the American queen of suspense novelists” is impossible to put down (New York Telegraph).

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: Feb 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781504042772

Charlotte Armstrong

Edgar Award–winning Charlotte Armstrong (1905–1969) was one of the finest American authors of classic mystery and suspense. The daughter of an inventor, Armstrong was born in Vulcan, Michigan, and attended Barnard College, in New York City. After college she worked at the New York Times and the magazine Breath of the Avenue, before marrying and turning to literature in 1928. For a decade she wrote plays and poetry, with work produced on Broadway and published in the New Yorker. In the early 1940s, she began writing suspense. Success came quickly. Her first novel, Lay On, MacDuff! (1942) was well received, spawning a three-book series. Over the next two decades, she wrote more than two dozen novels, winning critical acclaim and a dedicated fan base. The Unsuspected (1945) and Mischief (1950) were both made into films, and A Dram of Poison (1956) won the Edgar Award for best novel. She died in California in 1969.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Saturday Afternoon

The pink curtain hung within inches of his cheek. J could imagine sly little fox ears, sharpening, the other side of the flimsy cloth where another human being could, if he chose, listen to every word. There was no help for it. J didn’t find it appropriate to whisper all the way from Chicago to southern California.

Sophia? (He tried to sound like himself in spite of his sense of an eavesdropper.) Listen, don’t meet the plane. I’m not going to be on it.

His wife began to wail, and he interrupted. I’m in the damn hospital.

Sophia’s voice changed immediately. What’s the matter? she demanded.

Not a darned thing. Ridiculous! But I’m kinda trapped. They won’t let me out til tomorrow.

"J, what happened to you?" Sophia’s concern sounded like anger. It often did.

All it was, he told her, "I almost got hit by a car, and I do mean almost. Skinned my knee. Big deal! Seems the old biddy who was driving the car is pretty much in the chips, and she’s got me hemmed in by her doctors and her lawyers. She doesn’t want to get sued. So here I …"

J, shall I come? He could hear Sophia’s mind checking off her chores. Empty the refrigerator. Call off the Neebys.

No, no, he said. They’ve already gone over me, up and down and sideways. I’d have one heck of a time developing a nice expensive injury now. I’m supposed to settle. Listen, I’m having the hotel change my reservation to the same flight tomorrow.

J, are you sure?

Sure I’m sure. J relaxed because he could tell that she was relaxing. Now, they insist they’ve got to take pictures of every bone in my head, and it’s a damned nuisance, but it’s anyhow for free. Thing is, I can’t get out of here til the doctors say so.

He considered explaining that he didn’t know where they had hidden his torn trousers, but he felt too classically helpless, sitting on the edge of the high bed with his bare, furry legs dangling. Nobody had to see this picture in her mind’s eye.

Sophia was demanding the whole story.

Well, I was crossing the street around nine o’clock this morning, and with the light, too. She just didn’t happen to stop, that’s all. So I did some pret-ty fast footwork. Put my hand on her hood and kinda vaulted. All that happened was—she didn’t hit me, and neither did anybody else, but—I fell. So right away there was a traffic jam you wouldn’t believe and cops and the whole uproar. How about meeting the plane tomorrow?

I will, said Sophia. Or somebody will. All the kids are coming for Sunday night supper. Now, J, don’t you get on any airplane if you’re feeling the slightest bit … How do you feel? Were you knocked out or what?

No, no, he said. Skinned my knee and tore the pants to my blue suit. Well, I was shook up, naturally. But I feel fine now. They’ve put every antibiotic known to man in my bloodstream. So don’t worry about infection. It wouldn’t dare!

Are you going to settle? Sophia was believing him now. He could hear some slight mischief creeping into her voice. He had a feeling that she could see him—not pitiably languishing, but perched, half-naked, with his thinning hair on end.

Right now I’d settle for getting out of here, he growled and looked behind him. The hospital gown didn’t quite meet in the back, and he could feel eye-beams like a draft on his skin. Two women had come into the room, one a nurse, the other an aide. They had a wheelchair.

Listen, Sophia, he said, across two-thirds of the continent, I think they’re after me for some damn thing. If it’s too much trouble, I can take the bus as far as Hollywood.

No, no, said his wife. Don’t you do that. Where are you? What hospital? He told her. I’ll call you back tonight, she announced firmly.

Hey …

What?

Don’t forget to call off the Neebys.

I won’t, J. Take care, dear.

J hung up and looked sourly at the wheelchair. Boy, he said, you people must need customers pretty bad.

Mr. Little, said the nurse in a stern fashion, you are wanted for X rays. As a matter of fact, she added grimly, "this hospital is full to absolute capacity, and we could use your bed, you know."

J took this kindly. It was rather reassuring.

When they brought him back to the room, the pink curtain had been pushed into a column against the wall, and J met his room-mate, who turned out to be a man about his own vintage with a salt-sprinkled, red head and a plump, discontented face. He was an old hand at hospitals.

They put you in the hospital, he proclaimed. "This is great, for them. Best of care and hang the expense, although there’s insurance, but this they don’t mention. Oh, they’re doing the right thing, they are. Now, they got visiting hours to protect them. Oh, you bet, that’s what visiting hours are for, in case you don’t realize. Now, all they got to do is show up once a day. Once is enough. See, I might get tired."

J guessed the man was promised no visitors today and felt miffed.

"Meantime, who gets to lie here and take the wholesale treatment? They run us like an assembly line. Wake us up, feed us, wash us, according to their convenience. The rest of the time we get to wait. Routine is not for us, you realize that? It’s for them. Oh, they don’t call us patients for nothing."

J knew at once that this last had been said at least a thousand times. Too lazy to sort out all those pronouns and not disposed to entangle himself in a conversation, J advised the man that he intended to doze. So the man turned on the television set that hung high on the opposite wall and wrapped himself in the earphones.

While the pictured people capered and mouthed, J contemplated his situation, which he had to admit was ludicrous. He simply was not the kind of man who could have said to all those authorities, I’m all right. Just let me be. The fact was he had thought he was a goner, down on the pavement among the screaming wheels, and afterward he had been easily persuaded to be wise. He had even thought, in his innocence, that people were being very good to him. Oh, well, he could always clown it up, make a funny story. Dine out on it was the phrase his father used. He might work up a little imitation of the old dowager with her diamonds flashing and her bosoms heaving.

Nevertheless, he was in for a dismal siege. The hospital food was too bland, the sheet was so tight it burned, the blanket was not cozy. He wasn’t going to get his cocktail before dinner. He felt very sorry for himself, incarcerated thus and cruelly kept from home.

But J set himself to improve his own attitude. After all, what was he missing? One Saturday night bridge game with the usual neighborhood couple. He would be in his office on Monday according to schedule, and this adventure wasn’t costing him anything in money. He would have to sign a release of some kind, he realized. The lawyers had already made that clear in their oblique but firm fashion. Well, he might put up a bit of a fight for some nuisance money, but he wasn’t going to fight so hard that he couldn’t get out of here tomorrow. He was not a greedy man.

He was a lucky man—not to have been killed! What? Stone-dead in Chicago, aged forty-nine? An obituary composed itself in his head, and J said aloud, Oh, God!

After a while he realized that it was late for J Middleton Little to be setting up a dialogue with God. Oh, he had pondered the big questions when young, but in latter years he had been going about his mundane business pretty sure that there must be Something, but not so sure He wanted J to be good, or if so, what He meant by that. If J had been dispatched this Saturday morning to be judged (some say) by Truth itself, he would have had to go just as he was. J reflected that, on the whole, he had probably been neither a good man nor a bad man, but somewhere in the middle. How true!

When his room-mate turned off the TV, J left off brooding, braced himself, and was glad to see his suitcase arriving in the moment. The hotel had sent it around with a note that confirmed J’s plane seat for tomorrow at 2 P.M. Chicago time. He hopped out of bed, fished in his wallet for a tip, slung his suitcase on the bed, and opened it. The sight of his own things was comforting.

Say, said his room-mate feebly, "as long as you’re up, d’you mind going and hollering for a nurse? Slobs, never answer my light."

So J got quickly into his own pajamas and his own robe and soft foldable slippers, placed his own toilet kit within the tiny lavatory, and then he left the room. After he had given the message, which was received stoically at the nurses’ post, J found himself continuing to stroll. Why not? He was okay. And damned if he was going to sit still in that bed all afternoon, all evening, and all night, too. His knee might stiffen. At all costs, he kidded himself, peering about him with mild interest, we must not stiffen!

In Burbank, California, Sophia Thomas Little called off the Neebys, letting Susie Neeby make do with the bare facts that J couldn’t make his plane. Sophia didn’t feel like going into J’s story. It had disconcerted her somewhat. Besides, it was J’s to tell.

But she had called her son’s house and told his wife, Marion, who said all the right things. What a shame! But don’t worry, Mother. I’m sure Dad’s all right if he says so. Marion then offered Win’s services to meet the plane tomorrow. But Sophia said quickly that she would do that herself. But could you pick up my mother, do you think, dear? Marietta’s back at the Wimple.

Oh, is she? said Marion sympathetically. Well, of course. We’ll call for her.

Marion then told Sophia how the Little grandkids were and, again, not to worry.

Sophia hung up and sighed deeply. She wasn’t exactly worrying. She didn’t like having her anticipations canceled. She liked to make a plan and operate within it. She didn’t fancy a lonely evening for which she had not been prepared. Her youngest daughter, Nancy Jo, who at the age of sixteen would have thought herself disgraced not to have a date on a Saturday night, couldn’t be asked to cancel that and stay home with her mother. This was unthinkable. Besides, it wasn’t Nanjo that Sophia wanted around.

She just wished that J were coming home.

In Chicago her husband, J Middleton Little, feeling a whole lot better in his own garments, wandered the corridors. He winced now and then to see through an open door a sight that really should not have been exposed to a stranger’s eyes. Unclothed, disheveled people, lying down and suffering pain—J couldn’t help feeling that it would have been more decent if he had not been able to peer in upon them in their helplessness, since he was humanly unable to refrain. What, persons! Stripped of their own garments, unable to project any images! (Which was a human right of sorts, after all.)

He spent quite a while mooning through some glass doors to watch those who were inspecting the new babies, and finally, having worn out the better part of the afternoon and knowing that supper would be gruesomely early, J made his way back to Room 817. The door was closed, and he opened it very gently. He didn’t know what ailed his room-mate. He would probably find out, he thought with resignation.

In the far bed, near the window, the man was lying flat, well covered up, seemingly asleep. So J hushed even his breathing and tiptoed in his soft footgear to the lavatory and managed the door soundlessly. Inside the tiny cubicle he felt along the doorjamb for the light switch. His own face leaped to his eye in the mirror. Wait a minute!

Had he misremembered the number and come sneaking into the wrong room? No, there was his own toilet kit on the shelf. But the head on the pillow in the far bed had, in the course of the afternoon, somehow turned pure white.

J frowned at himself and leaned closer to the glass to examine what just might be a small bruise on his cheekbone, thinking on two levels at once. Hah, if all those sophisticated tests had missed an obvious surface injury—phooey on modern science! And it was a trick of the light, of course. Hair didn’t turn white in an hour or two, in spite of old wives’ tales.

Then he heard a man’s voice say, Close the door.

Another man’s voice said, How are you feeling, sir?

Lousy, said the first voice, from here on out. You know that.

Bad luck, sir. I don’t mind saying …

Crank me up, will you? We’re alone. That’s lucky.

J could hear the creaking of the bed’s mechanism. He was feeling pretty foolish. They didn’t know he was in here! He had better flush the toilet. He hadn’t intended to become an eavesdropper.

Any questions? Quickly, said the first voice.

Before J could move, the visitor began to ask the doggonedest questions J had ever heard in his life. He couldn’t make head nor tail of whatever jargon was being spoken. It seemed to be English, but J didn’t seem to know a whole lot of these words. He began to catch a few clues. Oh, well, science. And damn it, here he was eavesdropping. Maybe he could sneak out later on. J felt hideously embarrassed.

The visitor spoke suddenly in the clear. That checks, then. I also wanted to say I’m honored to be your replacement. Sorry you can’t make it yourself, sir. Of all people, you deserve to go.

One of the elite, eh? said the patient. Top, so they say. Don’t cry for me, Bryce. I’m sorry enough for myself, to be just missing what may be the very top. Poonacootamoowa. He spoke the strange sounds in a lingering way.

If it turns out to be so, said the visitor, the human race is going to have a fine string of syllables to get used to. Poonacootamoowa.

If the race survives, said the patient in a voice that had edges.

Pain, sir? the visitor was quick.

You bet, snapped the patient.

Can’t they do something to ease that?

I won’t have it, said the patient. A week is only seven days. And what’s a day?

Can’t they at least give you a private room, sir? said the visitor in some distress.

This is it, said the patient. My friend, whoever he is, leaves tomorrow. Then they’ll batten down the hatches, and I can scream all I want. No, he added, as if the visitor had grimaced disagreement, I will not have drugs. Too damned dangerous.

Oh, I don’t think …

"I think. And I will not be the one to blow it. A fine crown to my career that would be. Now, now, don’t think of me as any heroic martyr. It’s a form of vanity, like everything else. What a piece of work is man, eh?"

He’ll survive, said the visitor softly.

You must have a seat to the moon, said the patient savagely, to be so sure of that. He moaned, and then he seemed to rally. You should remember, he said, that antique mankind had to put up with any and all pain. No anesthesia, no dainty white pills, no kindly needles, no blessed sleep to knit up the raveled sleeve.…

Oh, I don’t know, said his visitor. Ingenious little creature, man. Could be he has always scrounged around for a drop of something to ease the way.

It may be so, said the patient with good humor.

Well, I’ll get along, sir. Do my best.

Naturally, said the patient, suddenly cross again. But it’s a mean thing when a man comes as close as this … Get out of here, Bryce. Give my regards to ‘Mr. Smith.’ His voice drawled on the name, putting it in quotation marks.

I’ll do that, Doctor.

And tell him … No, never mind.

Anything you say, said the visitor lightly.

Tell him that if I can’t take it, I’ll shuffle off this mortal coil by the nearest exit. The visitor made a hissing sound. You’re going to argue? said the patient. Don’t you realize that I may be especially watched? And don’t meowl about the moral of it, either. When the better part of at least one continent is swarming with children gone mad, it behooves grown men with brains in their heads to use them. I hope I’m smart enough to know that when my brain goes, there go I. So get along.

Well, good-bye, said the visitor after a moment.

I expect He will be, said the patient, no less and no more than He ever was.

If you could rest.…

On my laurels, eh? said the patient. Mind, now. Mind, now. There’s danger. I’ve said so. Take care.

So help us God, eh? said the visitor awkwardly.

Good-bye, said the patient gently.

Then J could hear feet walking, and he seemed to hear the sigh of the door. There came a slapping sound, as if some palm caught the door’s swing. A woman’s voice said, Are you comfortable, Mr. Barkis?

Not at all, said the patient wearily.

J flashed around where he was and flushed the toilet. Quickly he opened the door of the lavatory and stepped into the room, already wishing that he had not flushed the toilet because, with luck, the patient might not have noticed from whence he had come.

Oh, there you are, Mr. Little, said the nurse brightly. Hop in, now. You fellows had better get yourselves ready for your supper trays. The rumor is the food’s not bad tonight. She fussed a few moments, making adjustments of the bed machinery and motherly smoothings of the coverings.

When she had gone, J, sitting high, turned his face to his new room-mate and put on a smile. Hi. My name is J Middleton Little, he said politely. Glad to know you, sir.

The new room-mate, who was perhaps in his late sixties, had a lean old face, very clean. His skin was drawn, shallowing the wrinkles. He had dark eyes, and they were fierce. He said nothing. J felt like an idiot. That’s just the initial J, he babbled. My family didn’t bother … Say, what happened to the other man? Did he vanish?

Maybe he died, said the man in the other bed bitterly, and he looked away.

Well, said J in a moment, all I can say is I wish to the Lord I had a double martini. He stared straight ahead.

He heard a throaty sound. I’m sorry, Mr. Little, his roommate said. My name is John Barkis, and the fact is, so do I.

J looked, and the man was smiling at him. J couldn’t help feeling an impact. For some reason there was power here. And it had charm.

CHAPTER 2

Saturday Night

The trays came, the meal was eaten, the trays went away. All the while J bore in mind the idea that this man was in a desperate state of health and had seemed to have been in pain. But J had no chance to arrange or even affirm any other recollections of the peculiar conversation he had overheard. His room-mate was betraying no sign of pain and no sign of suspicion, either. On the contrary, he kept asking the usual kindly questions, and J found himself delivering his autobiography in the usual sketchy manner. He did so gladly. It took him off the hook.

What I do is, I manage an office, he told this Barkis. That is, I’m the assistant, but it is a very, very big firm of CPA’s, and second banana there is bigger than a lot of top bananas elsewhere—as bigness goes.

"Oh, sure, I find the job interesting."

Well … I had four years of liberal arts and then graduate work. School of Business. That was after the service.

You bet. Fought the war at my desk in San Francisco. Never flinched, J clowned. But the other man’s smile was fleeting. He asked another question.

No, in Southern California. I’m only here since Thursday. I was supposed to fly home today, but the darnedest thing.…

J went into the tale of his near-accident and warmed up to the task of making it amusing. His audience gave him perfect attention, but J could not make the man laugh aloud. Instead, his room-mate asked where in Southern California J lived.

Burbank. Suburban Los Angeles, you could say. Nice place to raise a family.

You have a family, then?

I sure do. Three kids, boy and two girls. Our youngest daughter is still in high school. The others are married. Three grandchildren, now. Girl and two boys. Makes a nice balance, so far.

Indeed. And your wife is … with you?

You bet. Same old wife I started with.

You have not—seen much of the world, I take it?

Every once in a while, said J solemnly, I go half a mile over the border to Mexico and drink a glass of beer. No, I never got around to travel, he continued as this fell flat. I just keep slogging along in the same old rut. Nice place, my rut, you know. All the comforts of home. Who needs foreign intrigue?

J reflected that he would be hard put to dig up anything bizarre or exciting in that sense that had ever happened to him. You know, he burst out, I was thinking to myself this morning that I may be smack dab in the middle of this whole society. You tend to stop and think when you’ve nearly got yourself …

He was going to say dead, but J caught the word before it fell out of his mouth. Well, I’ll tell you, he recovered smoothly. "Turn over in your mind the name I’ve had all my life. Middleton was my mother’s family name. So here I am, J Middleton Little. And, by golly, it suits me. I’m middle-class. Middle-income. (Of course, I like to think it’s high middle.) And middlebrow, for sure. I just might be the Average Reasonable Man in the Street, for all I know."

J Middleton Little, the other man murmured, and J seemed to hear a note of pity.

J wasn’t asking for pity. He said, I enjoy it, Mr. Barkis. Neither the top nor the bottom, that’s for me. (Whoops! Top was a word he had overheard.)

What you say is very interesting, said his room-mate dreamily.

No, it’s not, thought J, trying to corner another wisp of memory. Hadn’t that visitor called this man Doctor? J didn’t want to ask. He wasn’t going to turn the tables and start a series of questions now, however polite that might be. If his room-mate didn’t know about the eavesdropping or, knowing, was choosing to ignore it, J was more than willing to skip the whole thing himself.

After all, Barkis was saying, the economy, at least, bases on you, does it not? On your conscientious industry day in and day out, on you and all the others like you, who go your rounds and pay your bills and ask for nothing more.

The phone rang, and J was glad of it. (Nuts to this turn of the talk. His sense of self had begun to bristle at that nothing more!) He picked up the phone. Excuse me. This will be my wife.

Long suffering … in quiet desperation … gallant enough to say that you enjoy … Perhaps you do, the old man kept mumbling.

Sophia said into J’s ear in her accusing way, How are you now?

Just fine. A-okay. How’s everything there?

Sophia began to tell him that everything there was fine, but J watched (out of his eye corner, with some surprise) his roommate begin to struggle out of the other bed and totter to his feet. (Should he be doing that? J wondered.)

He began to give Sophia a list of the kinds of tests he had undergone, but at the same time he kept ready to spring to assist while the thin old body, arrayed in rather elegant pajamas, staggered perilously across to the lavatory door. When that door closed, J sighed into the phone.

What? said Sophia at once.

Nothing, honey. I guess I don’t like it much being stuck here another night.

I don’t like it, either, she said promptly. Are you surely getting home tomorrow?

That I am. All I’ve got to do is get past the lawyers. I’m getting out of this bed as early in the morning as I can. Believe me, I’d rather be sitting in the airport.

Oh, J, it must be miserable!

I don’t know, he said. It’s been interesting in a way. Tell you all about it when I get there.

Well, you be sure and get here, she said in her scolding voice. But you do feel perfectly all right?

Not only that, I’ve got the word of modern science on it. Only things wrong with me come from hanging around for darned near fifty years.

Sophia laughed. They said goodnight.

J settled back. His room-mate came out of the lavatory. He went to his bed rather more briskly than he had left it. He lay, breathing fast, for a moment. Then he said, I am trying to remember exactly what you must have heard.

Why the old fox! J thought. He dragged himself in there just to test it out!

Listen, I never meant to hide in there. I’m very sorry. It just got too embarrassing. I’d like to apologize. I honestly …

His room-mate said quietly, Are you a lover of mankind, Mr. Little?

J was jolted. "I gather there was some top secret stuff being mentioned, but you don’t have to worry about me, Mr. Barkis." He was going to add that he hadn’t understood a thing, but Barkis interrupted.

I wonder, Mr. Little, if you would mind getting out of bed and closing the door very firmly? Please?

J got out of bed and closed the door to the corridor. He firmed it with exaggerated care. He got back under his covers, feeling frightened for some reason. I don’t want you to tell me anything I’m not supposed to know, he said. I promise you that I won’t mention a word that was said. Listen, I never took a science course in my life without kicking and screaming all the way. All I know is right out of science fiction. That’s about the extent.…

J subsided. His room-mate was rigid. He seemed to be screaming silently. Was he in pain?

In a while Barkis turned his face. I’ll ask you not only to make that promise, he said, giving J a cold lick of his eye, but promise not even to mention me. Let it be assumed that your original companion lasted out the night.

All right, said J uncomfortably.

But it won’t be easy, will it? For you to refrain from telling your wife and your grown children something of this very strange adventure?

There it was again, that pitying distance. J began to say that even if he told, his people were trustworthy, but he didn’t get beyond two words into his sentence.

I am asking you to promise not to speak of this to one living soul.