The fredric brown collec.., p.96
The Fredric Brown Collection, page 96
Bailey said, “I thought—
“Hell, I don’t know what I thought. I don’t remember yelling—but if Charlie says I did, I guess I did.”
“Lecky,” said Darius Hill. “We’ll have to let Lecky know.”
“He can’t get over here before dawn,” Fillmore pointed out, “unless he wants to run the gauntlet of rattlesnakes. We’d just wake him up.”
Charlie said, “Darius is right. Something else has happened. We ought to let Lecky know. What time is it?”
“Four-thirty,” Hill said.
“Then it’ll be light in less than an hour. I’ll go find those other snakes. But if I don’t find them all right away, I’ll escort Lecky over here—beat trail for him. I can take Fergus too, if he wants to get back home.”
Darius Hill had walked over to the window and looked out. “There’s a light over at Lecky’s house. I’m going to phone now. Let’s all go downstairs to the living room.”
We went down in more or less of a group, Darius going ahead. He went into the room where the house telephone was, and the rest of us herded into the living room. All of us were quiet and subdued; none seemed able or willing to offer much comment on the situation we were in.
Darius would probably have been verbose enough, if he’d been there, but Darius wasn’t there. He was taking an unconscionably long time at the telephone. For some reason, it worried me.
I strolled to the door of the hall without attracting attention and went down the hall and into the room which Darius had entered.
He was at the phone, listening, and I could see from the whiteness of his face that something was wrong.
“…Yes, Mrs. Lecky,” he said. Then a long pause. “You’re sure you don’t want one of us to come over right away? I know it’s almost dawn but—”
He talked a minute longer, then put down the phone and looked at me.
He said, slowly, “Lecky’s dead, Wunderly. Good old Lecky. She found him at his desk just now with a knife in his back.”
Then suddenly the words were tumbling out of him so fast that they were hardly coherent. “Good Lord! I thought I knew something about criminology and detection. What a damn fool I was! This is my fault, Wunderly, for pretending to be so damn smart about something.
“My fault. That book. I don’t know who’s doing these murders—I can’t even guess—but he got the idea out of that damned book of mine. Just to be clever, I started something that—”
I said, “But it isn’t your fault, Hill. What you wrote in that book is true, in a way.”
“I’m going to burn that manuscript, Wunderly. What business has a fat old fool like me to give advice that—that gets people killed? Somebody’s committing murder by the book—and the worst of it is that the book’s right. That’s why I should never have written it…”
There wasn’t any use arguing with him.
“When was Lecky killed?” I asked.
“Just now. Less than fifteen minutes ago. While you were unconscious upstairs, probably.”
“The hell,” I said. “How do you know it was then? You said his wife just found him.”
“She was talking to him fifteen minutes before. He was in his study typing. She’d been in bed but waked up. She told him to come on to bed and he answered.
“Then just now—fifteen minutes after that—she heard the phone ring…my call. And it wasn’t answered, so she came downstairs and—found him dead.”
“Lord,” I said, “and she had wits enough to answer the phone right away and give you the details without getting hysterical?”
“You haven’t met Mrs. Lecky, or you’d understand. Damn! One of us ought to go over there, though. It’s almost light enough. Charlie could put his leggings on and—”
“Wait!” I said. “I’ve got—”
I thought it over a second and the more I thought about it the better it looked. It might work.
“Darius,” I said, “look, if whoever killed Lecky is among the group in the living room—and it must be one of them—then he just got back into this building five or ten minutes ago.”
“Of course. But how—?”
“Murderers aren’t any braver than anyone else. He wouldn’t have crossed an area where there were rattlesnakes loose without taking precautions. See what I mean? Whoever went over there and back would have put on puttees or leggings under his trousers.”
“I—I suppose he would. And—you think he wouldn’t have had a chance to take them off again?”
“I doubt it,” I told him. “He must have been just getting into the building when Paul Bailey let out that yell. And everybody converged on Bailey’s room. He’d have to go along to avoid suspicion; he’d be the last one to want to give himself away by being late getting there!
“And since then, he certainly hasn’t had a chance to be alone.”
Darius’ eyes gleamed. He said, “Wunderly, it’s a chance! A good chance.”
He grabbed my arm, but I held back.
“Wait,” I said, “this has got to be your idea—not mine.”
“Why?”
“Your position here, your seniority. Your work. Look some people may figure as you did just now—blame that book of yours for a share of what happened. But if you solve the murders, you’ll be exonerated. The credit for that idea doesn’t mean anything to me. I’d rather you took it.”
He stared at me hopefully but almost unbelievingly. “You mean, knowing I’m a bag of wind, you’d—”
“You’re not,” I said. “You’re one of the best astronomers living. And it was that phobia of yours—not your fault—that led you to write what you did. I agree you should never have it published. But in writing it—you stuck your neck out, as far as your colleagues are concerned. It means everything to you to solve the murders. It means nothing to me.”
His hand gripped my upper arm and squeezed hard. “I—I don’t know how to thank—”
“Don’t try,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We went into the other room and I walked over and stood beside Annabel while Hill announced the death of the director. He told them, quite simply, quite unemotionally, what had happened.
And then while they were still shocked by the news, he sprang the suggestion that each man in the group immediately prove he was not wearing protection of any sort on his lower legs.
“I’ll lead off,” he said.
He lifted the cuffs of his trousers up as high as the bottom of the lounging robe he was wearing over them, exposing neatly-clocked black socks.
Paul Bailey chuckled nervously. He had seated himself cross-legged in the morris chair, and his rather short pajama trousers were already twisted halfway up the calves of his bare legs. He said, “I believe I can join the white sheep without even moving.”
Chapter 8
The Last Battle
NONE OF us quite knew what had happened, at first. The sound of a shot, unexpected in the confined space of a room, can be paralyzing as well as deafening.
We heard the thud of the falling body before any of us—unless it was Darius—knew who had been shot. For Darius was the only one who had been facing Fergus Fillmore, who had been standing at the back of the group in a corner of the room.
Charlie Lightfoot and I were the first ones to reach him. The revolver—a small pearl-handled one—was still in his right hand, and the shot had been fired with its muzzle pressed to his temple.
Charlie’s gesture of feeling for the beat of Fillmore’s heart was perfunctory. He said wonderingly, “I suppose this means that he— But in heaven’s name, why?”
I nodded toward Fillmore’s ankles, exposed where his fall had hiked up the cuffs of his trouser-legs above the tops of his high shoes. Under the trousers a pair of heavy leggings were laced on.
“Mine,” said Charlie.
Hill said, “Isn’t—isn’t that the corner of an envelope sticking just past the lapel of his coat?”
Surprised, I looked up at Darius Hill. He was standing very rigidly, his hands clenched. But he was looking at the corpse; he had, to that extent at least, overcome his necrophobia.
Charlie took the envelope from Fillmore’s inside coat pocket. It was addressed to Darius.
And Hill, his face pale and waxen, but his voice steady, read to us the letter it contained:
“Dear Darius: Are you really a criminologist, or are you a monumental bluff? I have a hunch it’s hot air, my dear Darius, but if you ever read this letter, I apologize. It will mean that you were more clever than I—or perhaps I should say you are more clever than the book you wrote. To meet that contingency, I carry a pistol—for a purpose you have already discovered. It would be quite absurd for a man of my position to stand trial for murder. You will understand that.
“I am writing this at the desk in the hallway. As soon as I finish writing, I shall join you for coffee and a sandwich in the kitchen. Then I shall carry out the third step in the program which has been forced upon me by the necessity of keeping my neck out of a noose.
“I remembered your book, Darius, as soon as I discovered, early this evening, that Elsie was dead. She walked into Paul Bailey’s room early this evening while I was searching that room to get back the letter which Paul had held as a threat over my head—”
Darius Hill looked up from the letter and said to Bailey, “What letter is that, Paul?”
The bewilderment on Bailey’s face seemed genuine enough.
Then, suddenly, “That letter! Good grief, he thought I still had it. Why, I’d destroyed it months ago.”
“What was it?”
“One Fergus wrote me about ten months ago, while he was trying to get me to take the job here. He talked too freely—or rather—wrote too freely, in that letter.”
“What do you mean, Paul?” Darius demanded.
“He criticized Dr. Lecky—pretty viciously. And said some things Lecky would never have forgiven, if he’d ever seen the letter. And he took some swipes at the regents in Los Angeles, too. From what I’ve learned since about how touchy Lecky was, I have a hunch that letter would have cost Fillmore his job—if either Lecky or the regents had ever seen it. But I didn’t keep it. I threw it away before I packed my stuff to come here.”
“But you threatened Fillmore with it, later?”
Bailey shifted uneasily in his chair. “Well—not exactly, no. But when Zoe broke our engagement—and it was Zoe who broke it—Fillmore had the crust to tell me that unless I managed to patch things up between Zoe and me, he’d see that I lost my job. We had some words and I told him his own job wasn’t any too secure if Lecky and the regents knew what he’d written about them. I didn’t threaten him with the letter but he may have got the impression I still had it.”
Darius turned back to the letter and resumed reading:
“I happened to be to the left of the door, and Elsie walked in without seeing me. But in a moment, I knew, she would turn. I acted involuntarily, although I swear my intention was merely to stun her so I could leave the room without being identified.
“I was standing beside the bureau and I picked up the first convenient object—a hairbrush. I struck with the back of it.
“Then I found—as I caught her and lowered her to the floor so there would be no sound of a fall—that I was a murderer. A man after your own heart, Darius.
“And it was then that I recalled those lessons in your book, about how to get away with murder. Recalled them after I was already, inadvertently, a murderer. And some of the things in your manuscript make sense, Darius. As you say, a killer of several suffers no worse penalty than a killer of one.
“I forced myself, very deliberately, to sit down for a few minutes and think out a course of action. First, an alibi. I could not prove I was elsewhere when Elsie was killed but I could make her seem to be killed when I was elsewhere—playing bridge.
“A DeWar flask was the answer to that. I went downstairs, found Bailey and set him a task with the blink-mike which would keep him busy for an hour. Then I went to the lab and liquefied some air, taking it upstairs in the flask.
“Extreme cold applied to the leg joints of the body froze them, and I propped the corpse erect in a corner. By the time the flesh thawed and she fell, I was playing bridge downstairs with several of you. Was that not simple, Darius? Is this news to you, or had you solved the method?
“Even the coroner’s examination of the body will not show what happened, because I’ll see to it there is a leak in the tubing of the makeshift refrigerator we rigged up to preserve the body.”
Rex Parker’s voice cut in. “I’d better check that right away, Mr. Hill.”
Hill nodded and read on, as Parker left the room. “But Otto Schley saw me leaving Bailey’s room. It meant nothing to him then and he mentioned it to no one. But he will be a source of danger if the police ferret out—or you ferret out—the fact that Elsie’s death did not occur during the bridge game but at about the time Otto saw me.
“So I remembered your book, Darius. And my method of dealing with Otto needs no explaining.
“A fortunate accident added to the confusion. I refer to the rattlesnake with the missing rattle—or the rattle from the missing rattlesnake. I had nothing to do with that. Wunderly says he slammed the door on a snake, and it is probable that the closing of the door knocked off or pinched off the rattle.”
I said, “Damn,” softly to myself.
“But now all is quiet again,” Darius Hill continued reading. “Bailey is asleep under a mild drug. After coffee, I shall go to complete my search of his room. I am almost convinced, by now, that he does not have the letter any longer and that his tacit threat was a bluff.
“And then, whether or not I find it, a third and final murder.
“You see, Darius, I have taken your lessons to heart. No one will suspect that I would kill Lecky merely because—whether you or I receive the directorship—I shall be freer to concentrate on lunar and planetary observations and no longer will take orders from a doddering fool.
“No, I would not kill him if I had a stronger motive than that. I shall not kill Bailey, for that very reason. If I succeed to the directorship, however, he would be taken care of. Of course, I would not kill Lecky for so slight a motive, as motives go, save that the doing of two murders has made a third a matter of slight moment.
“Adieu, then, Darius. Coffee, then Bailey’s room, then I shall steal Charlie Lightfoot’s leather leggings from the closet, lace them on, and visit friend Lecky. Then—but if you ever read this, you’ll know the rest.”
Darius looked up. He said, in a curiously flat voice, “That’s all.”
* * * *
A month later, Annabel and I were married at the observatory. Darius Hill, the director, had insisted on giving the bride away. Charlie Lightfoot was my best man.
Darius spoke, copiously, at the dinner afterwards. He’d been at it for what seemed like hours.
“… and it is most fitting that Einar should be the setting for this sacred ceremony,” said Darius, “wherein are joined the most beautiful woman who ever graced a problem in differential calculus, and a young man who, although he came to us in an hour of tribulation, has proved…”
“Ugh,” said Charlie Lightfoot. “Paleface talk too much.”
He reached for his glass—and I reached, under the table, for Annabel’s hand.
1
THE DOOR was that of an office in an old building on State Street near Chicago Avenue, on the near north side, and the lettering on it read HUNTER & HUNTER DETECTIVE AGENCY. I opened it and went in. Why not? I’m one of the Hunters; my name is Ed. The other Hunter is my uncle, Ambrose Hunter.
The door to the inner office was open and I could see Uncle Am playing solitaire at his desk in there. He’s shortish, fattish and smartish, with a straggly brown mustache. I waved at him and headed for my desk in the outer office. I’d had my lunch—we take turns—and he’d be leaving now.
Except that he wasn’t. He swept the cards together and stacked them but he said, “Come on in, Ed. Something to talk over with you.”
I went in and pulled up a chair. It was a hot day and two big flies were droning in circles around the room. I reached for the fly swatter and held it, waiting for one or both of them to light somewhere. “We ought to get a bomb,” I said.
“Huh? Who do we want to blow up?”
“A bug bomb,” I said. “One of these aerosol deals, so we can get flies on the wing.”
“Not sporting, kid. Like shooting a sitting duck, only the opposite. Got to give the flies a chance.”
“All right,” I said, swatting one of them as it landed on a corner of the desk. “What did you want to talk about?”
“A case, maybe. A client, or a potential one, came in while you were feeding your face. Offered us a job, but I’m not sure about taking it. Anyway, it’s one you’d have to handle, and I wanted to talk it over with you first.”
The other fly landed and died, and the wind of the swat that killed it blew a small rectangular paper off the desk onto the floor. I picked it up and saw that it was a check made out to Hunter & Hunter and signed Oliver R. Bookman—a name I didn’t recognize. It was for five hundred dollars.
We could use it. Business had been slow for a month or so. I said, “Looks like you took the job already. Not that I blame you.” I put the check back on the desk. “That’s a pretty strong argument.”
“No, I didn’t take it. Ollie Bookman had the check already made out when he came, and put it down while we were talking. But I told him we weren’t taking the case till I’d talked to you.”
“Ollie? Do you know him, Uncle Am?”
“No, but he told me to call him that, and it comes natural. He’s that kind of guy. Nice, I mean.”
I took his word for it. My uncle is a nice guy himself, but he’s a sharp judge of character and can spot a phony a mile off.
He said, “He thinks his wife is trying to kill him or maybe planning to.”
“Interesting,” I said. “But what could we do about it—unless she does? And then it’s cop business.”
