A Puzzle for fools (12 page)

It was a simple matter to slip next door into Geddes' room, unobserved. But it was not so simple to wake him. I had to shake his shoulder violently before I got any response. When I did manage to rouse him, he gave a little alarmed cry and stiffened against the pillow, just as I had done earlier when I heard Laribee's footsteps.

I knew how Geddes' narcolepsy plagued him with nightmares and vague fears of the darkness. I felt rather a brute.

"It's all right," I whispered. "It's just Duluth."

I explained the situation, but he didn't seem to grasp it very well. And I could not blame him. As I outlined it, the whole thing seemed absolutely cockeyed to me, too.

"But Laribee's all worked up," I concluded lamely. "I thought it was the only decent thing to do to help him out."

There was a moment's pause. Then Geddes murmured with that polite English acceptance of the extraordinary.

"Only too glad, I'm sure."

He got out of bed, and together we tiptoed to my room. Laribee was waiting eagerly. As soon as we entered, he hurried toward us, waving the paper.

"You just have to sign here, Geddes. Sign my last will and testament."

With trembling fingers, he lighted a match and handed Geddes the pen. The Englishman yawned; pressed the will against the wall and scrawled his name.

"And now you again, Duluth," exclaimed the old man urgently. "I've just remembered—the two witnesses—they must sign in each other's presence."

Again I went through the formality with Geddes as a very sleepy, confused witness. Laribee snatched the paper and we stood a moment in silence. Then the Englishman muttered:

"If you don't mind, Duluth, I think I'll turn in again. I'm not feeling awfully bright."

He had moved to the door and was groping for the handle when very slowly it started to open inward. Instinctively he stepped back. We all did. We stared stupidly as the crack of light broadened and a thin, rigid figure stepped across the threshold.

I must have been pretty much on edge for I felt a moment of wild alarm. The man with the bare feet and the blue silk pajamas seemed somehow uncanny. He drifted rather than walked, as though he were moving in a trance. I did not realize for some seconds that it was David Fenwick.

He closed the door behind him, stood there absolutely still, and said softly:

"I heard voices—voices."

I was amazed that he had been able to hear us, for his room was some way down the corridor. But I suppose that people whose ears are tuned to the spirits must be unusually sensitive.

There did not seem to be anything to say, so we all stood there in silence. Slowly Fenwick turned to Laribee who was still clutching the will in his hand. The young man's large eyes gleamed even in the obscurity. I had the fleeting impression that he could see in the dark.

"What do you have in your hand, Laribee?" he asked suddenly.

The millionaire seemed in a daze. His arm fell to his side and he mumbled mechanically: "It's… it's my will."

"Your will! So you are preparing for death."

"Death?" Laribee's voice rose and then faded into the deep silence but I still seemed to hear the word echoing in my ears.

Fenwick had turned stiffly to the door. He walked like an automaton, and his voice, too, had a flat, robot quality.

"You know the warning. I passed it on to you all. There is no need for you to die if you would obey the spirits and beware of Miss Brush." He slipped into the corridor and his voice trailed back to us. "Beware of Miss Brush* There will be murder."

The three of us were still standing there in bewildered immobility when there were swift footsteps outside and an angry voice exclaimed:

"Hey, there, you!"

The door was swung open again and the light switched on. In the blinding illumination I saw Warren standing on the threshold, his steel hand clamped onto Fenwick's deli-

cate arm. The sour, suspicious gaze flashed around the room.

"What's all this about?" he snapped.

We reacted like school kids caught out in a midnight prank. Laribee had stuffed the paper and fountain pen into his pajama pocket. I could not tell whether or not the night attendant had noticed them.

"Well, what's all this about?" he was growling again.

Neither Geddes nor Laribee spoke. Someone had to say something, so I shrugged and murmured as casually as I could:

"Just the boys getting together, Warren. Come on and join the fun."

AFTER THE DEPARTURE of my uninvited guests, I had sufficient presence of mind to grope about in the half darkness and retrieve the damning evidence of the match sticks. Having disposed of them down the wash basin, I returned to bed and, oddly enough, slept quite soundly.

Next morning I was wakened by the new attendant. In my sleep-bleary state, I thought for a moment that he was Fogarty. It gave me quite a shock. I had another mild shock when I saw the man's face. It was a perfectly ordinary face, youngish and pleasant. But it was exasperatingly familiar.

I tried to place him as we went down to the gymnasium for my pre-breakfast workout. He said his name was John Clarke, but that didn't mean anything. At last I got so mad at myself that I asked:

"Haven't I seen you somewhere before?"

He smiled and said: "No, Mr. Duluth."

And the conversation ended there.

After breakfast I paid my daily visit to the surgery. Dr. Stevens seemed to have regretted his impulsive frankness of the day before. He was short with me and rather embarrassed. He would have been even more embarrassed if he had learned the disastrous results of his suggested psycho-analytical experiment.

The sight of the surgical knives glinting in their glass cabinet almost moved me to warn him of Miss Powell's peculiar monologue in the central hall. But in the light of what had followed, that incident seemed almost too trivial to mention. Besides, ever since I had found out his connection with Fenwick, I had lost my whole-hearted confidence in him. I ended up by telling him nothing except that physically I was bearing up remarkably well under the shock of the past twenty-four hours.

Unlike his colleague, Dr. Moreno was as impeccably impersonal as ever when I underwent my official pep-talk in his office. For a while he discussed my condition as though there were no more pressing business in the world than the mental and neural state of an ex-drunk. His masterly self-control intimidated me, and I was taken completely off my guard when suddenly he said:

"With regard to the other matter, Mr. Duluth, I have questioned all the patients as carefully as I could. Of course, I made no direct inquiries. But none of them seem to have seen or heard anything to worry them. From what I can gather no one knows anything concerning Fogarty's death."

"Even if they don't know anything," I said, "I only hope someone's doing something about it."

Moreno looked annoyed. "If it is any comfort to you, Mr. Duluth, all the members of the staff have spent most of their spare time either being questioned by the police or trying to help them. You can rest assured that there has been no negligence."

I accepted this as a sarcastic dismissal and was about to take my leave when he added curtly:

"What were Laribee, Geddes and Fenwick doing in your room last night?"

It was now my turn to be annoyed. After all, Moreno was probably younger than myself, and I felt he had no right to adopt this dictatorial attitude. Certainly there seemed no reason for me to confide in him.

"I guess they couldn't sleep," I said, "and were bored. They came in for a chat."

I almost reminded him that we paid a hundred a week and ought to be able to do what we liked with our nights. But his studied dignity made such a remark seem merely juvenile. He looked at his antiseptic hands and asked slowly:

"And what was there so fascinating to talk about that all of you should have been breaking the regulations, Mr. Duluth?"

"There was something that fascinated Laribee," I retorted promptly.

"And it was?"

"He was raving about Miss Brush." I deliberately returned Moreno's stare. "It's none of my business, of course, but it strikes me she's been leading him pretty far up the garden path, hasn't she?"

His eyes narrowed suddenly and I saw in them that dangerous gleam which I had noticed several times before. Despite his cold suavity, he was pretty bad at concealing his anger. I expected him to snap out at me, but when he spoke, his voice was very quiet.

"You are my personal patient, Mr. Duluth. As the authorities have seen fit to give you some of their confidence against my advice, I feel there are several things about this institution which you should know."

I nodded, admiring the man's control. He obviously thought I was a low-down son of a gun for meddling around in other people's business, but there was no sign of it in his manner.

"One of the things you should realize, Mr. Duluth, concerns Miss Brush. She is an extremely efficient young woman and she has by far the most difficult work in the sanitarium. You are an intelligent man, and, as such, you will understand that it is practically impossible for an attractive nurse to look after men who are mentally off balance without certain complications arising."

"I'm over thirty," I said, smiling. "You needn't begin with the birds and the flowers."

Moreno's tone became a trifle more stiff and pompous. "For purely psychiatric reasons it may be necessary for Miss Brush to take certain attitudes with certain patients. But whatever attitude she adopts, it is always one which has been suggested and approved by the authorities at our staff conferences."

I might have asked him whether the authorities had approved of her lending Laribee a fountain pen to make a will in her favor. I might also have asked him why, as a doctor, he approved of certain aspects of Isabel Brush's behavior, when he so obviously disapproved of them as a man. But I did not want to suggest things to him. I wanted him to suggest them to me.

"So Miss Brush is just part of Laribee's treatment," I inquired naively.

Moreno drew in a swift breath. "I suppose that is one way of putting it, Mr. Duluth. But rather a theatrical one. And I must ask you once more to leave the worrying in this matter to those who are directly concerned."

His lips moved in a brief, professional smile, then he said he would expect me at the same time the next day.

When I was out in the passage, I saw John Clarke again. The new attendant was standing with his back to me, taking towels from a closet. Although he wore the official white coat of the institution, he did not seem to wear it as to the manner born. I noticed, too, that he was dealing very inefficiently with the towels. It was that which gave me the clue. Suddenly everything came flooding back to me.

It had been two years since I had last seen John Clarke. But now that the link had been forged in my mind, I could remember him distinctly. We had met in those ghastly days after the theatre had burned down during rehearsals for my
Romeo and Juliet
production—those days when my mind was still dazed by the memory of Magdalene in her
Juliet
robes, trapped and helpless in that sudden, inexplicable blaze.

They had suspected pyromania and the police had been brought in. Clarke had been one of those policemen. And I remembered him because there had been something solid and real about him. At that time he was one of the few human beings I could bear to have around me. I strolled up to him and said: "It was pretty dumb of me not to recognize you, wasn't it? "

He glanced at me blankly over the pile of towels and then, seeing who I was, grinned cheerfully.

"I thought you wouldn't forget, Mr. Duluth, but I was told not to let on. Incidentally I was talking to Dr. Lenz about you. He said you'd be out in a couple of weeks. That's swell."

"Meanwhile you've been put in here to keep an eye on us nuts, I suppose."

He gave me a broad wink. "I'm just the new attendant."

"I get you," I said. "Who else is in on it?"

"Only Moreno and Dr. Lenz. It was Captain Green's idea."

"If you feel like talking out of school," I suggested, "I'd be very much interested."

"I'm afraid I'm only a dumb cop," he replied cagily. "There's not much to tell except that they're working high-pressure and we expect something to break soon."

"You expect something to break?" I echoed.

"That's what we always tell the press, Mr. Duluth."

He took a firmer grip on the towels and moved away, grinning over his shoulder.

That grin gave me a slight sense of reassurance. Clarke was one of those dependable people who manage to make the ground feel firmer beneath your feet. And it might be useful to have a friend at court. Even so, I thought, it was going to take more than a John Clarke to straighten out this muddle.

And a muddle it undoubtedly was. With every moment I seemed to be becoming more and more involved while I had less and less idea of what it was all about. But, through the most divergent channels, I seemed to have acquired a great amount of information which for the most divergent reasons I was compelled to keep to myself. It seemed only logical that I should try and do something about it. As I have already said, the detective instinct is a very fundamental one, even in ex-drunks. And, after all, I was still in possession of my faculties.

With this resolve fresh in my mind, I seized the opportunity of cross-examining Miss Brush when we were out in the snow for our morning walk.

Although she wasn't a nut, I felt that she would be the hardest of them to crack. She had completely lost yesterday's pallor and uneasiness. The blond brightness was as polished and hygienic as ever. Nothing, I felt, short of shock tactics could have any chance of success with her.

We were a little behind the others when I began my attack.

"Can I ask you an indelicate question, Miss Brush?" I said.

"Certainly, Mr. Duluth." She tightened the blue scarf around her neck and switched on the famous smile. "That " 1 is, if you don't mind an indelicate answer."

"There's a rumor floating around that you're engaged to Laribee. Is that true?"