A Puzzle for fools (21 page)

She turned her head away and when she spoke next her voice was perfectly calm. "You'll think this is the maddest thing of all, but somehow I can see everything straight now; see how dumb I've been, worrying over things that really were so unimportant. Something happened to me today. I know there's danger. Maybe the police will take me away, even arrest me, and ..."

"They're not going to," I cut in, feeling absurdly lightheaded. "I'm hardly athletic enough to escape with you down the drain-pipe, but I'm going to move heaven, earth and the sanitarium to see that that man doesn't get to you tonight."

"Let him come," said Iris with a slow smile. "Let them all come. I'm ready to fight back now. I don't know whether Lenz would call it good psychiatry, but what I needed to snap me out of it was a pretty violent shock. Well, I've had the shock, and I'm grateful, whatever the consequences."

We stood there, smiling at each other. I never thought things were going to break that way. It seemed too grand to be true.

"Good girl!" I whispered. "Give'em all you've got. And I'm launching a little attack of my own tonight. Between us, we'll lick them all."

"You and I," said Iris softly. "What could be crazier?"

She was very near. Her lips were warm when they touched mine. That was the first time I had ever really kissed her.

When she drew away, her eyes were still smiling.

"By the way," she said, "I don't think I ever caught your name."

"Peter," I said. "Peter Duluth."

"Peter Duluth!" She looked blank for a moment. "So you really are Peter Duluth and all that you said about the theatre—"

"—was on the level," I cut in. "I told you from the start I wasn't screwy. At least, not that screwy."

She stood there, looking at me. Gradually the smile faded from her lips; and a faint expression of fear crept into her eyes.

"You'll do what you can, won't you, Peter?" she asked pleadingly. "I'm trying to be the ingénue with a stiff upper lip, but it's not going to be any too pleasant if—if they take me away."

That brought me violently back to earth, reminded me that, in spite of the seeming miracle of Iris' recovery, the situation was as serious as it had ever been. I was going to reassure her, tell her that everything would be all right, when the door burst open and Mrs. Dell appeared with a tray of supper.

She scolded me roundly, and she scolded the absent Clarke. She scolded herself, Moreno, and everyone else in the institution. But she didn't scold Iris. In fact, she treated her as kindly as if she had been her own daughter.

I could have kissed her.

I was shockingly late for dinner, but I did manage to whisper my thanks to Clarke when I got back to the dining room.

"Forget it, Mr. Duluth," he muttered, smiling. "I saw you get one tough break two years back. I don't want to see you get another. I thought you'd like to have a minute or two with her before they take her away."

Take her away! Now that I was back in the world of cold facts, eating my rapidly cooling liver and bacon, I realized how horribly near the climax we were. Once the police had Iris to concentrate on, they would slacken their activities and, unless I overestimated our adversary, he would be covering his tracks pretty quickly. It seemed as though the situation would take a distinct turn for the worse unless the lunatic plan conceived by Geddes and myself bore fruit.

As the liver was removed to give way to some artistic contraption of ice cream, I discovered a fundamental fact about myself. If anything happened to Iris now, it would mean the end of me. Clarke would never get those three cases of Scotch. My expensive cure would be utterly wasted. The last stage of Peter Duluth would be infinitely worse than the first.

ONE HAS HEARD often of the bright smile that masks the aching heart, the dainty shoes that hide pinched feet. But these well-worn clichés seemed to have been freshly invented to describe the members of Dr. Lenz’ staff when we all assembled in the main lounge that evening. Jove had nodded and there was to be business as usual. The patients' routine must go on.

It wasn't one of the formal evenings, but Miss Brush's dress was almost indecently gorgeous. It was a sort of tiger color. At least, it made her look like a magnificent, if somewhat tired, tigress. Her smile was as bright and professional as ever, but I noticed that it went on and off at regular intervals, revolving like a lighthouse beacon. Once or twice I saw her smiling at no one at all.

Moreno was very smartly dressed and he had obviously determined to be affable if it killed him. The women patients seemed thrilled by his unusual attentions, and I heard my little schoolmistress say he looked exactly like George Raft. He smelled like an excellent brand of Scotch when he came near me. Apparently he had been working on the interesting bottle I had seen the night before in his office.

Warren had put on a clean white coat and pomaded his hair down to a festive flatness. His smile seemed a little more genuine than the facial contortions of the others. Perhaps he felt that Laribee's death freed him once and for all from any suspicions with regard to Fogarty's "accident."

Even poor Mrs. Fogarty had turned up trumps. Like Queen Elizabeth, she had donned her best in the hour of deepest need. Her best was a rather faded mauve, which suited neither her face nor figure; and the blobs of rouge on her high cheek bones only threw into relief the dark lines beneath her eyes. Though so recently a widow, she knew her duty. The patients’ routine must go on.

And for the patients, things were going on very happily. They seemed surprisingly cheerful and normal. The fire-alarm had given them something to talk about, had been an exciting incident in their uneventful lives. None of them, I felt sure, knew that Laribee's dead body was lying somewhere not fifty yards away, and that the place was still full of policemen. And none of them seemed to care that Iris was up there alone in her room. None of them except myself.

The thought of Iris brought me back to the business in hand. And my business was with Miss Powell. She was the first link in the chain, and without her nothing could be accomplished. Our plan could not even begin until I found out the whereabouts of the musical place.

The Boston spinster was dressed rather daringly in red and yellow. A tribute, perhaps, to the flames which might have destroyed us all. She was easy enough to see, but hard to get alone, for she flitted from group to group, discussing fire insurance and the enormous premiums one had to pay on the houses in Commonwealth Avenue. She was as fickle and frivolous as her costume. I was beginning to be seriously alarmed lest the shock of the afternoon had cured her kleptomania and made her as normal as the others seemed.

"The danger of fire in Boston slums—" I began enticingly when finally I had her cornered between the victrola and a radiator.

That got her. There was no more difficulty now in luring her away to the couch where we had first sat together. She came like a lamb and treated me to a brilliant discourse on slum clearance, housing problems and social reform in general.

I had one bad moment when I heard Miss Brush suggesting a bridge game and saw her looking expectantly m our direction. No one showed interest, luckily, and I was able to concentrate on Miss Powell.

Not once did she appear to look at the ring on my finger, although I twiddled it invitingly, and even pulled it over the knuckle so as to make her work more simple. At last I became so carried away by the torrents of her garrulity that I found myself staring at her in a kind of horrified fascination. I had tried to hypnotize her, but she had succeeded in hypnotizing me. The well-bred voice flowed smoothly on. Her eyes, I swear, never left my face.

"So you see, Mr. Duluth, the overwhelming problems which the new administration will have to face."

I saw them only too well. I saw also to my astonished relief that at last my ring was gone Her gaze had not faltered. I had not felt so much as the touch of a butterfly wing on my finger. But the ring was gone. I swore that if ever I got back to a world of sanity, I would promote this woman, make her a limited company, and her fortune and mine would be assured. She was a genius.

"... Bostonians gibe at their obligations to society."

And I was gibing at mine. She had the ring. Now I would have to make her hide it in the musical place. I knew her predilection for cushions as a means of concealment. I am afraid I was ungentlemanly enough to put my feet up on the couch so that it would be impossible for her to slip the ring underneath. She was far too much of a lady to comment upon my rudeness.

And then I started to work on her, trying somehow to throw a message from my mind to hers.

"The musical place," urged my brain. "Put it in the musical place."

Apparently I was neither psychic nor hypnotic. Her loquacity went on unabated. It was something about teachers' salaries being disproportionate to their responsibilities.

At length I realized that I would have to resort to something more crude. I turned my head away from her.

"The musical place," I mumbled.

Then deliberately I looked down at my denuded finger.

At last! An expression of alarm had crept into her eyes. She did not stop talking, but her hands shifted uneasily toward the cushions. I pressed my foot more firmly against them.

As the look of alarm in her eyes grew more intense, I felt thoroughly ashamed of myself. It was a vile thing to exploit the frailties of this poor bewildered creature, to capitalize the weakness of my fellow patients. But the murderer had done so, and had forced me to imitate him. That was another score I had against him.

I glanced anxiously at the clock. It was eight We had only two hours before that State alienist arrived.

"The musical place," I muttered again desperately. Miss Powell had risen to her feet, and, though her voice went mechanically on, the sentences were halting, jumpy.

"Our—only—Republican—hope—is—"

She had turned and was almost running across the room. Once again I noticed that haunted look in her eyes as she saw me following.

She made straight for the piano. I couldn't catch the movement of her hands, but I knew instinctively when she had disposed of the ring. Her face brightened and she even continued her sentence where it had broken off. I was afraid I was in for another discourse, but luckily she decided upon solitaire and left me.

The identity of the musical place, this mysterious cache where Miss Powell must have concealed, first the knife, and now my ring, was absurdly simple. And yet it was exactly the kind of place where no one would think of looking—underneath the ornamental cloth which covered the back part of the piano. It could have been used only for thin objects. Even my ring betrayed its presence by a slight bulge. There was another bulge, too, and I thought for a moment that I might be on the brink of an important discovery.

I looked cautiously around the room, but no one was watching me. Then I slipped my hand under the piano cloth and brought out both objects. My ring was one of them, all right The other thing was a silver pencil—my own pencil. She had gotten that too, though how she managed to snitch it from my breast pocket will always be a mystery. But I said that woman was a genius!

I turned my back on the piano and with a stealth and cunning that even Miss Powell might have envied, I took Laribee's will from my pocket and slid it under the cover. The first part of our scheme had been accomplished now. The will was in the musical place and no one, I was sure, had seen me put it there.

Geddes was alone when I sauntered over and whispered the news.

"Good," he said. "Now, I'll work on Fenwick while you take the staff. Nod to me when it's okay and I'll go to sleep by the piano. If anyone takes that will, I'll nod three times, and then the fourth nod will be in the direction of the person who took it."

Despite the desperate issues at stake, there was something childishly exhilarating about this little plot. In fact, its very importance made it that much more exciting. It seemed like a parlor game, yet it was being played with a real murderer, and the forfeit might be the electric chair.

I was rather apprehensive about my job of tackling the staff. But Miss Brush and Moreno were talking together, so I had a chance of killing off my first two birds with one stone.

Miss Brush forgot to smile when I approached. I had the distinct impression that she, as well as Moreno, had fortified herself alcoholically for a difficult evening.

"I've just remembered something," I said jauntily. "Something about Laribee."

"S-sh—" Dr. Moreno looked quickly around to see if any of the patients were within hearing.

"It's probably not important," I continued, "but when we went in to the movies this afternoon, I thought I saw Miss Powell take a paper out of Laribee's pocket." I gave a gulp at my own mendacity. It all sounded so very thin. "And I believe I heard her murmuring something about a—a musical place."

Moreno's face was impassive.

"I thought it might mean something to a psychiatrist," I continued. "I don't profess to understand it myself."

"You said it was a piece of paper?" Miss Brush's voice was tense and jerky.

"Yes." I stared boldly into her dark blue eyes. "Perhaps it was the paper Laribee wrote when you lent him your fountain pen."

"That was a letter to his daughter."

Miss Brush turned her head away and I could not see her expression.

Moreno made some pompous remark about informing the authorities and gave me an icy dismissal.

My next attack was upon Stevens. He was standing alone in a corner watching his half-brother with anxious eyes. I asked casually whether he had arranged Fenwick's departure and he went very red.

"Owing—er—to what has just happened, Duluth, the— er—authorities seem to feel that no one—"

"By the way," I broke in, "just before the movies Miss Powell..."

Dr. Stevens did not seem to pay a great deal of attention to my implausible history of the spinster and the will. He shook his head vaguely and was muttering something inaudible when Geddes came up. The Englishman said he felt a bit drowsy. He did not think it would be a bad attack and he asked Stevens’ permission to stay in the lounge even if he should go to sleep.