The Complete Simon Iff (23 page)

"But what I should like to ask you confidentially," he went on, "is this." He leaned forward, and the Secretary unconsciously followed his example.

But Nagasaki did not speak. Simon Iff leaped on him like a terrier, wrenching his head by the hair.

"Quick, Teake!" he said, in a low intense voice. The Commissioner appeared. The Secretary had risen, intending to attack Simple Simon, whom he took for a madman. Nikko sat absolutely impassive. "Get the ladies away, sir," said Teake. "And have a few men whom you can trust to keep away intruders. Don't disturb the guests!"

"What's all this about?" said the Secretary angrily.

The Commissioner was taken aback. "My God, sir, I don't know!" he stammered at last. "But it's all right. It's a long story."

"Allow me!" said Simon. "Ah - yes! I think I can do it with a penknife." He took one from his pocket and opened it. The point of the thin blade moved gently and tentatively within the lobe of the doctor's nostril. Then Iff, with a smile, and light leverage, produced a small platinum tube.

"Let us try a little experiment," he said pleasantly. "A little of that powder, Mr. Teake, if you please, in the orifice. We then reinsert it, gentlemen, but with the valve opening in the other direction." Neither Nikko nor Nagasaki moved or spoke. "We shall now close the mouth firmly, and the free nostril."

A couple of minutes passed. When Iff perceived that the old man had drawn in his breath he released him entirely.

Nikko spoke calmly. "If this abominable farce is ended, we shall go home."

Simon Iff bowed, and stood aside. "No," said Nagasaki, still more calmly than his compatriot, "the curtain falls in fifteen minutes more. With your permission, gentlemen, let us wait in peace."

Again Simon Iff bowed. The Secretary of the Navy had been standing in annoyed and puzzled silence; now he resumed his chair.

"I have a weakness," said the doctor after a moment, "I have always wanted to know. (Very soon - perhaps - I shall know - many things.) How did you come to know, sir?"

"I did not know much," said Simon humbly and rather deferentially. "But I understood that Miss Wakefield had been murdered, probably as a mere experiment, to convince Rakowsky that you could do what you claimed. I felt that you were in that circle - owing to my analysis of a certain Imperial rescript. I looked for a means of death worthy of your genius. I needed some device sure, subtle, undetectable. I looked for some substance capable of destroying lung tissue in a swift, even a fulminating, manner. Then - I am a little ashamed - I began to imagine things. I imagined an odourless gas, intensely radioactive. Then I looked for a means of administration. That, too, must be without suspicion. Several suggestions came to me. But when I saw you take snuff, I knew the truth. You had a little muzzle-loading gun in your nostril. The warmth of the nose would volatilize the powder; all you had to do was to lean forward and breathe quietly on your victim. I interfered in the interest of Mr. Secretary here; in the interest of science, I made your experiment on yourself."

"You need not be ashamed, sir," said Nagasaki very quietly indeed; "yours is the scientific imagination." He rose and bowed; then, turning to Captain Nikko, he made a gesture of dignified farewell. "You will know," he said, "what must be done, and what report made in what quarter."

He turned to the Secretary. "This gentleman," he said with a smile, "has explained to you the causes; it is for me to demonstrate the effects."

With that he gave a slight cough. Torrents of blood gushed from his mouth; he collapsed upon the carpet.

The Secretary had risen to his feet, his face drawn and white.

"It seems, sir," he said to Simon Iff, "that I owe you my life."

"Not exactly to me, but to my very strong sense of incongruity."

Teake protested. "Mr. Iff is an incorrigible joker, sir, and this is no time for such matters. Mr. Iff has disclosed a plot of gigantic, of incredible proportions. The whole country would have been in flames, and in the hands of a remorseless invader, but for him. But excuse me - I have my duty to do, Captain Nikko. International law or no international law, you are my prisoner." Nikko bowed slightly, and followed the Commissioner.

"How - how - how - can we reward you, sir?" stammered the Secretary."

"By not connecting my name with the affair," answered Simon Iff. "I have saved your life - do you want me pilloried as a Meddlesome Matty in the next number of 'Life'?"

 "All that we are from mind results, on mind is

 founded, built of mind;

 Who acts or speaks with evil thought, him doth pain

 follow sure and blind;

 So the ox plants his foot, and so the car-wheel follows

 hard behind."

 -The Dhammapada.

A Persian philosopher once remarked, on being questioned about the climate of Bushir, that if he had one house in Bushir and another in hell, he'd rent the one in Bushir. Anglebosk, New Jersey, would have been congenial, one may suppose, to that philosopher, on the night when Simon Iff's car broke down in the main street, for the thermometer stood at seven degrees below zero, and a blizzard was blowing at a rate of over seventy-five miles an hour.

The car had been forcing its way gallantly into the teeth of the gale, possibly encouraged by a feeling that it was only a few miles more to its warm garage in New York; but the short steep hill of Main Street, sheeted in ice, broke its brave heart. Less poetically, there is no doubt that something broke, and broke with a grinding shriek that for one second 'outchid the North Wind.'

The car immediately yielded to the fury of the blast, and slid down the hill. It was too fantastic to assume a homing instinct in its machinery, but it certainly brought up with a bang against the door of Anglebosk's solitary hotel, kept by one Silas Hooper.

"Very thoughtful," said Simon, stepping out, and entering the hotel. "Come in!" he cried aloud to his chauffeur with an imperative gesture, "leave her right there! We can do nothing till the day breaks."

The two men were hungry, and Iff ordered the very scanty meal that proved to be available. As was his custom, he chatted genially to the inkeeper, a jolly-faced, burly individual with a humorous smile and twinkling eyes; but it did not escape his observation that mine host's merriment was singularly forced. He sent the chauffeur to bed, and asked the man to sit and drink.

"Indeed I will, sir!" he replied, heartily. But Iff suddenly dropped his end of the conversation. The innkeeper's embarrassment and preoccupation became immediately obvious.

"My friend," said Iff, with his third glass of brandy, "I'm not Buttinsky (isn't it?) but I'm a bit of a doctor of souls, and I know your symptoms. Like to tell me?"

"Why, sir, it's nothing," said Hooper, "but it's hell."

"Naturally, naturally," returned the sympathetic magician.

"The fact is - I may be arrested any minute."

"So may any one, in America."

Oh no, sir, that's only in New York State. This is New Jersey," said Hooper, with more enthusiasm then he had yet shown. "But this is murder."

"Oh well, you didn't do it. Why worry?"

The man was immensely reassured by the confidence of Iff's tone. He did not even trouble to confirm the denial. "I was probably the last person - but one - who saw Mrs. Craddock alive."

"Tell me the whole story. I haven't heard about it. To me Mrs. Craddock is a name possessing all the Fascination of the Unknown."

"It's in all the evening papers. It happened last night."

"I never read the papers; I value my mind, such as it is. Go on."

"It's hard to say one thing, though the reporters - blast their impudence, I hope every mother's son of 'em's out in the blizzard! - get it all down in six inch lettering. My father was a decent man, sir, and he told me when to keep my mouth shut. Well, better tell you myself than show you what they said about the poor girl. She was what we call a good sport, sir. Plenty of money, fond of cards and a drink, may be, and perhaps a kiss on the sly. Anyhow, I went around there a heap. I've no wife, if that's any excuse."

"I see no need for any excuse," said Simon simply. "I'm an old-fashioned philosopher. I think cows were made to give us milk and beef - and women for kisses." He could always adapt his thought and expression to his audience - and this man was a coarse type.

Hooper brightened up considerably. "Last night I was there from nine till about half-past eleven, perhaps later. Then I came back home. We were both pretty drunk, I guess. Of course the kid had been in bed for hours."

"The kid?"

"She has a little boy of ten, sir, Jack, the dead spit of his poor mother. See here!" He pulled out his pocket-book and extracted a photograph, a modern Isis and Horus. It showed a charming woman of a well-built, voluptuous type, a little loose and coarse about the mouth and jaw, and with eyes full of glad excitement. As Hooper had said, the boy was her image. No one but would be struck instantly by the astonishing resemblance!

Tears gathered in the eyes of the good innkeeper. He kissed the picture reverently before he returned it to its resting-place.

"Go on with your story," said Iff, very gently.

"You don't know what a woman of that sort means to a man, in a place where there's no other amusement."

"Oh yes, I do!"

"This morning poor Grace was found dead in bed, her throat cut, with a razor, they say. God help me, I shave with a straight razor!"

"There's something else the matter - not plain scare," said Simon.

"Yes," replied Hooper, frankly. "According to the papers, I wasn't the only lover. Curse them, they've run down half the village! They say there were three other men with her last night."

"Do you blame her very much?" asked Simon. "You keep a hotel, don't you? Shouldn't God's blessings be free to all? and shouldn't we honour most those who are most generous with them?"

"I never heard any one talk like that before. Every one knows it's wrong."

"In 1850 every one knew it was wrong to protest against negro slavery. In Germany it's wrong to question the divine right of kings. In Turkey it's wrong to eat pork. In Hindustan it's wrong to eat beef.

"In 1500 it was wrong to say that the earth moved. In 1900 it was wrong to say it didn't.

"Time and space, my friend, time and space, the illusions, breeders of all other illusions!

"Right and wrong are fashions, like women's hats."

Hooper, dumfounded, could only scratch his head.

"Who lives in the house besides the boy?"

"Her old nurse, Maddie. And a coon girl comes in every day to do the chores and the cooking."

"What time was the murder done?"

"I don't know, sir. They say about two in the morning."

"And haven't you an alibi?"

"No one saw me leave, or on the way home. And I slipped up to bed without waking the others."

"A little awkward. They're so stupid, at times, about psychology. Tell you what: I'll send Dobson into the city in the morning for spare parts to that motor of mine, and we'll walk up to the house together, and see what happens to be visible. I'm Simon Iff, a bit of a crank, perhaps; but I'm in good - isn't it? - with the bulls (I think) just now. New theories about crime, don't you know, and lately they've been panning out rather well."

"That's awfully good of you," said Hooper.

"Tush!" replied Simple Simon. "Let me rather behold a bed!"

He was particularly pleased with himself in the morning when he learnt that Hooper had slept like a child.

II

The day had broken windless and cloudless. It was in a brisk and joyous air that Hooper walked over to Mrs. Craddock's with the old mystic.

They found one Jonas Black, a detective inspector, in charge of the house. Jack Craddock was on his knee, learning a new form of "Patience."

"Run away, Jacky boy" said he, on learning Simon Iff's name. "I've some business with these gentlemen."

The boy, however, insisted on a proper presentation. He took to Simple Simon with utter cordiality of glee, and made him promise to stay and play for a while after the interview was over. Black signed to Hooper to take the boy off.

"We've heard of you, Mr. Iff," said Black, with a chuckle, "and I've got you beat right here!"

"A hard case, eh?"

The inspector roared with laughter. "Caught!" he cried. "Psychology at fault at last! You didn't get me at all; no, not one little bit!" He leant across the table and whispered mysteriously. "What was I doing with these cards?"

"Canfield, isn't it?"

"Ha! Ha! Ha! No, sir, I was investigating the murder upstairs!" Simon Iff was interested at once.

"Yes, sir, believe me! Simple as a Supreme Court Ruling, and clear as Mississippi mud! Fifty-two cards - fifty-two men, all equally likely to have done it. I think four of them have medium good alibis, though. Shall we play some more? Ha! Ha! Ha! I caught you fairly, sir, admit it!"

Iff laughed heartily at the other's wit.

"You've certainly got the dramatic way of putting things," he said; "and that's a long way towards their solution, since all the world's a stage. Seriously, though, is it as wide open as all that?"

"Sure," said Black, suddenly surly, as his sense of humour gave way to a realization of the fact that there was not much glory coming his way.

"Say, would you come up, and talk it over? I'd be real glad, honest I would."

"Right you are!" agreed Iff. "Everything as it was?"

"Yep. I'm waiting for Briscoe, from headquarters. A born sucker, by Gum!"

They went up one flight of stairs. The dead woman's bedroom stood open. A police officer was lounging in a chair, chewing a cigar. He sprang to attention as Black entered. The body of Mrs. Craddock lay on the bed, dressed in a flaming yellow kimono with black embroidery. Her dyed yellow hair was loose, but the blood from her throat had clotted it.

Simon Iff bent over her closely.

"Mr. Black," said he, after a moment, "do you see anything peculiar here?"

"Well, the guy that did this job was no barber."

"Good!" smiled Simon. "Carry on the thought!"