A Puzzle for fools (5 page)

"I'm sorry," he murmured. Then he showed his splendid teeth in a dazzling smile. "I'm sorry. I guess I kind of lost my temper. Silly of me. Anyone would think I was a nut or something."

He mumbled an awkward apology to Fogarty and then, blushing like a school kid, hurried out of the room.

"It wasn't anything," began Fogarty lamely as soon as the door closed. "Miss Brush just wanted to be taught a couple of wrassling holds."

"Don't bother to explain," cut in Moreno coldly. "You'd better go and change." He glanced at me. "You, too, Mr. Duluth … it's almost lunch time."

Fogarty slouched off, muttering something about being hit below the belt. Moreno and I stood there while Miss Brush patted her blond hair into some semblance of tidiness. Then I hurried away.

I hurried too fast. I had reached my room before I realized that I had left my towel behind. I suppose there was no real need to retrieve it, but it seemed like a pretty good excuse and I was curious to see if there was to be any sequel.

The door of the physio-therapy room was shut when I got back. I was just going to open it when I heard Moreno's voice, high and angry.

"Oh, he's just like me, poor kid. He can't bear to have another man touch you."

To my shame I didn't move, but they had lowered their voices and I could only catch disconnected phrases. I did, however, hear Moreno mention Laribee's name.

And then Miss Brush laughed derisively.

"I rather fancy myself as the she-wolf of Wall Street," she said.

I pushed open the door. They were standing very close together; Moreno with his hands clenched at his sides, Miss Brush serene and angelic, but with a determined set to her jaw.

As soon as they saw me, they relaxed. Moreno's eyes narrowed. Miss Brush smiled the specially-reserved-for-patients smile.

"I'm sorry," I muttered lamely. "I'd forgotten my—er— bedroom slippers—er—I mean my towel."

IT WAS SATURDAY, and I knew there would be the weekly formal dance-cum-bridge party in the main hall that evening. After my little act of the night before, I hadn't expected them to let me go. I was surprised when Moreno said it would be all right; surprised and delighted. I might have another chance of seeing Iris Pattison.

Iris had done something to me. That afternoon I had forgotten to start agonizing around cocktail time and in spite of my shaking fit in the physio-therapy room, I felt pretty good.

I was almost childishly excited when Fogarty brought me my dress clothes, which he had produced from some mysterious place. He had to help me with my tie, but otherwise I managed. A furtive glance in the mirror was fairly satisfactory. I looked almost human with my artificial sun tan and eyes that were no longer yellow or bloodshot.

After dinner Miss Brush appeared, radiant in a slinky white dress, with a red corsage which added an intriguingly diabolic touch to her angelic blondness. The staff always dressed for these Saturday nights. Everything was very correct and none of us was allowed to remember we were in the polite equivalent of a bughouse.

Apparently the good-behavior laws had been modified because all our crowd was dolled up for the dance, even Billy Trent. Miss Brush marshalled us with tranquil determination and conducted us to the main hall. I walked with Geddes and young Billy. The Englishman was bored and a bit depressed. But Billy seemed to have forgotten his Tarzan act and was boiling over with enthusiasm. He was going to dance with Miss Brush, he told me. That was his idea of heaven.

The women were already assembled when we reached the coeducational lounge. The middle of the floor had been cleared for dancing and there were bridge tables and couches grouped around the sides. The radio was playing soft dance music. Immediately I looked for Iris Pattison. I couldn't see her anywhere.

But everyone else was there: nurses, doctors, attendants, patients. Dr. Stevens, cheerful and cherubic, was chatting uproariously with a beautiful, and presumably crazy, red-head. Moreno was being the distinguished psychiatrist with a group of the non-resident medical staff. A gray-haired duchess of a woman was bowing with great dignity to imaginary acquaintances. The place fairly bristled with white shirt fronts and
décolleté
gowns. It was quite impossible to tell the staff from the inmates. The whole thing looked like a fashionable Broadway first night

Miss Brush was shepherding us around, presenting us to the women like a Park Avenue hostess, when I actually saw Iris. She was sitting alone in a corner, wearing a long purple dress. Forgetting the formality of the occasion I clutched Miss Brush's arm and pleaded loudly to be introduced. She gave me one of those knowing smiles and took me over.

"Miss Pattison—Mr. Duluth."

The girl looked up indifferently. It was an amazing shade of purple she was wearing; soft, subtle, like an iris, like her name. Her eyes met mine and dropped away. I sat down hopefully.

As I did so, they started to dance. I noticed Billy Trent hurry up to Miss Brush with an eager smile. She smiled back, but, as he moved toward her, she turned and stepped onto the dance floor with old Laribee. I saw the crushed disappointment on the kid's face, and for an instant my opinion of Isabel Brush dropped like Laribee's imaginary stock market.

I tried to talk to Iris. I tried everything I could think of, but it was no use. Sometimes she answered in that quiet, expressionless voice. But there was no spark. It was like talking to a dead woman. And yet she was so young. One felt she could be so vibrantly alive.

I asked her to dance and she said: "Thank you very much," like a little girl.

She danced perfectly, but there was a strange aloofness in her movements, as though she were doing it in a trance.

"You're very kind to me," she said once, softly, humbly.

I couldn’t answer. The words just wouldn't come.

Meanwhile the party glittered around us with unruffled respectability. The nearest approach to unconventionality came paradoxically from Moreno. He stood in a corner, talking with Fogarty and Geddes, but his gaze was fixed on Laribee and Miss Brush. Suddenly when Miss Brush's head was rather too near the millionaire's shoulder, he strode through the dancers and cut in. It was all done politely, but there was an unbridled gleam in his eyes.

The music stopped. As I took Iris back to the couch, Mrs. Fogarty rustled toward us. The night nurse had made an heroic attempt at an evening dress, but it bulged in the wrong places, as though she still wore her uniform underneath. She brought with her a faint whiff of antiseptic and a gray-haired woman with one those streamlined, aristocratic faces that suggested old brownstone houses and Back Bay.

Mrs. Fogarty arranged her expression to register the sentiment: "I feel you two would have a lot in common," and then, reluctantly permitted herself to speak.

"Mr. Duluth, this is Miss Powell. She has seen several of your plays in Boston and she wants to talk about them."

I didn't. I only wanted to be alone with Iris. But Miss Powell sat down with determination on the extreme edge of the couch and started to talk condescendingly and volubly about culture and the stage. I took it for granted she was some visiting psychiatrist or philanthropist who

knew how to humor us unfortunate inmates. I reacted accordingly, being bright and humored; but my eyes were on Iris most of the time.

I was looking at her when old Laribee came up. I had my back to him and couldn't see who it was. But his presence was mirrored plainly on Iris' face. Her pale cheeks flushed with a sudden expression of distaste. She rose to her feet, and, after an instant, moved hurriedly away.

I wanted to go after her, to tell her that I'd sock old Laribee on the jaw, that I'd do anything if it would make her feel better. But Miss Powell was too quick for me. Before I had time to move, she had laid a strong, rather masculine hand on my arm and was drawing me back into the endless stream of her discourse.

Laribee lingered at our side and eventually I managed to shift her onto him. He knew and probably cared less about culture than I did, but that didn't seem to matter to Miss Powell. All she needed was an audience.

I was about to slip furtively away from them, when I noticed something curious. Miss Powell's alert eyes never met the financier's. They remained fixed with strange intensity upon the platinum watch chain which stretched across his broad vest.

"Small cultural groups, Mr. Laribee— H

The deep voice flowed tirelessly on. Then with infinite stealth, her right hand began to move forward.

"As our dear Emerson might have said—"

I stared in utter astonishment. Her fingers were almost touching the chain now. And then, without the slightest diminution of dignity or the least break in her monologue, Miss Powell had flicked the watch out of his pocket and was slipping it with ladylike delicacy under one of the pillows of the couch.

Laribee had noticed nothing. It had all been done in one elegant split second—a superb demonstration in pickpocketing, worthy of the Artful Dodger himself. Miss Powell had soared in my estimation.

"It is a very worth-while endeavor, Mr. Laribee. I'm sure you would be interested."

Obviously, Laribee was not interested in worth-while endeavors. He seemed to want to follow Miss Brush onto the dance floor. And the only means of doing so was to ask Miss Powell to dance. She accepted with surprising alacrity, and they sailed away like any ordinary, unhappily married couple. But that predatory look was still in the Bostonian spinster's eye. I wondered whether she was planning to start work on his diamond shirt studs.

After they had gone, I felt under the pillow. The watch was there. But it wasn't alone. It lay in a little nest of other treasures. I found a bandage, a pair of scissors, a half empty bottle of iodine, and a clinical thermometer. Miss Powell, like a health-conscious squirrel, must have been storing up medical supplies for the winter.

I slipped the watch into my pocket, meaning to return it to old Laribee myself. But I had no idea what to do with the rest of the things. I glanced helplessly around the room and Mrs. Fogarty caught my eye.

"Take a look at this," I said as she hurried over.

The night nurse pulled at the sleeves of her evening dress as though it were a uniform.

"Poor Miss Powell," she clucked agitatedly. "She was so much better and now she's started taking things again. Such a good mind as she has, too."

"I don't know about the mind," I said. "But she's got million dollar fingers. It's kleptomania, I suppose?"

Mrs. Fogarty nodded absently but didn't give me a verbal reply. This little incident seemed to worry her more than I had expected. She gathered up the treasure-trove and carried it to Dr. Stevens who was standing nearby. I heard her say:

"Here are some of the things that were missing from the surgery, doctor. There's nothing else except two bandages and the stop watch."

Stevens' cherubic face had gone grave. Muttering something about being a doctor and not a detective, he hurried out of the room.

A few minutes later Laribee came back from the dance floor alone. I congratulated him on disposing of Miss Powell, but he seemed jumpy, nervous. As he sat down at my side, I noticed that his face was unusually pale. Suddenly, as though with an effort, he said in a low, earnest voice:

"Mr. Duluth, if I ask you a question, you won't think I'm mad, will you?"

By tacit consent we inmates made a point of accepting each other's sanity. I asked politely what he meant and, thinking he referred to his watch, was about to produce it when he added:

"Do you or do you not hear a low, fast ticking like a—?"

He broke off. I knew he meant a tape-ticker and that he couldn't bring himself to say the word. For a moment I imagined it was just one of his delusions. Then I realized that it was nothing of the sort. Distinctly I could hear a rapid ticking—far faster than a watch. It seemed to come from the neighborhood of Laribee's left coat pocket.

"Yes, I can hear it," I said, feeling almost as surprised as he looked. "Try your left-hand pocket."

Dazedly and with trembling fingers, old Laribee thrust his hand into his pocket. It came out clutching a round metal object, which I recognized immediately as one of those gadgets Stevens used in the surgery to take pulse tests, blood pressure rates, and what-nots. It was obviously the clinical stop watch which Mrs. Fogarty had referred to as missing.

It was ticking very fast and somehow its sound took even me back to the panic days of 1929.

"A stop watch," Laribee was murmuring softly. "It's only a stop watch." Then he turned to me and added sharply: "But how on earth did it get there?"

"Perhaps someone traded it for this," I said, handing him back his watch.

He stared in astonishment and then took it from me with a pitying smile. Obviously he felt that it was I rather than he who was on the shady side of the fringe. As he fingered the cold platinum of the watch, I noticed an almost beatific expression pass across his face.

"So you see," he said to himself, "they're trying to frighten me. That's all it is. I'm not mad, of course I'm not mad." He nodded his head savagely. "I've got to tell Miss Brush."

He rose and lumbered away through the dancers.

After he left me, I felt a strange sensation of threatening danger. I had thought that Miss Powell was merely comic relief. But now, even she seemed to have become tied up in the development of this strange drama which was acting itself out so deviously in Doctor Lenz' sanitarium.

The Boston spinster had stolen the stop watch. I felt pretty sure of that. But had she just slipped it into Laribee's pocket when they were dancing together? Or was it responsible for the ticking I had heard in the financier's room the night before? And if it had been, how on earth could it have gotten into the men's wing? I knew enough about stop watches to realize that they could not run for many hours continuously. Someone must have wound it up again. But who? Miss Powell? Someone else who, for some reason, wanted to frighten Laribee? Or could it be the millionaire himself, working out some crazy, intricate plan of his own?