Maureen held up the records. “With these,” she said.
“Criminenty!” said Lieutenant Finch. “It’s bad enough that a detective on his vacation should beat the working police to this hide-out. But if a couple of amateurs can find it with phonograph records …!”
So Maureen had to explain, and in the fullest detail, all about the list of numbers.
“So he did leave a clue!” said Jackson. “There the address was if we could only read it. Worth may have been a rat—”
“May have?” said Maureen.
“—but he did have a sporting kind of gag sense. What could be fairer?”
Finch crammed his pipe with concentratedly vicious pokes. “That isn’t what interests me so much. You’ve been with Evans, Miss O’Breen, working on this cockeyed list ever since I left you this noon?”
“Yes.”
“And before that,” Finch recapitulated, turning to Mr. Evans, “Hinkle saw you upstairs and Mrs. Hudson talked to you in the kitchen, which takes us back to around eleven o’clock. Right?”
“Yes, Lieutenant,” the little man admitted. “But why?”
“Why? You’ve got an airtight alibi, that’s why. With Ridgly in bed under guard, that leaves only three of you; and before we have our little conference tonight, I’ll—”
“Lieutenant,” Maureen protested, “you don’t still think it’s one of the Irregulars?”
“I know what I think,” said Lieutenant Finch.
BY TELEPHONE
“Hello. Withers Rest Home.”
“Hello. This is Lieutenant Finch of the Police Department speaking. Is Dr. Rufus Bottomley there?”
“Sorry. Dr. Bottomley has just left.”
“May I speak to Dr. Withers, then?”
“Sorry. Dr. Withers is—”
“This is urgent. Official business.”
“Very well. I’ll see if I can reach him.”
“Hello. Withers speaking.”
“Dr. Withers, this is Lieutenant Finch of the police. Can you tell me when Dr. Bottomley reached your sanitarium today?”
“Why not ask him yourself?”
“He hasn’t got back here yet, and this is urgent. Can you please tell me when he got there?”
“I suppose you know what you’re about, Lieutenant, and I don’t see what harm it can do. He reached here around two.”
“Do you know where he was before then? We’ve checked his movements up to eleven thirty and—”
“Oh. I thought you wanted to know what time he got here. I met him in Hollywood for lunch at about a quarter to twelve. He’s been with me ever since till about ten minutes ago. Anything else I can do for you, Lieutenant?”
“Hello. Mr. Arbuthnot’s secretary speaking.”
“Hello. Is this the Association for the Placement of Refugees in the Professions?”
“Mr. Arbuthnot is the western secretary of the APRP. Did you wish to speak to him?”
“Yes, I did. This is—”
“Sorry, but Mr. Arbuthnot is out at present. Do you care to leave a message?”
“This is Lieutenant Finch of the Los Angeles Police. I—”
“How do you spell that, please?”
“I don’t want to leave any message. I—”
“Very well. I shall tell Mr. Arbuthnot you called.”
“Just a minute, Peaches. Don’t hang up. Do you know a man called Otto Federhut?”
“Whom did you say you were?”
“Whom hell! I’m Lieutenant Finch of the Los Angeles Police Department, and I—”
“Oh, the police! Can I help?”
“Now you’re talking. You sound almost human. Look, Peaches, if you want to, maybe you can help solve a murder.”
“Ooh!”
“Now listen. Do you know a man named Otto Federhut?”
“Yes. He was in here today.”
“What time?”
“Just a minute. I have it here in the schedule. He came at 12:35. Mr. Arbuthnot was just going out to lunch, so they went together. He came back and stayed until—until 2:45.”
“Now one more question. We know he left Hollywood on the 11:32 bus. Does that jibe?”
“I’ll look at our timetable. The 11:32 (that’s from Cahuenga?) gets into Pasadena at 12:25. He must have taken a taxi from the station to get here as soon as he did—we’re some distance south. There! Have I solved your murder?”
“University of California at Los Angeles.”
“Department of English, please.”
“Department of English.”
“Hello. Is the department secretary there?”
“This is Miss Freese speaking.”
“This is Lieutenant Finch of the Los Angeles Police Department. Could you tell me if Professor Furness was in your office today?”
“Why, yes. He was here from about eleven to two thirty.”
“Was he in the office all that time?”
“No, not exactly. He went to the library for a half-hour and he went out to lunch. The rest of the time he was reading here or dictating letters to me.”
“Thank you, Miss Freese.”
“Oh, Lieutenant. There isn’t anything the matter, is there? He seemed such a nice young man, I’m sure he couldn’t be in any real trouble.”
“No, nothing much. There—ah, there was an accident involving his car. We’re checking to see that he wasn’t mixed up in it.”
“Oh. That’s good, And Lieutenant—”
“Yes?”
“When you see Professor Furness, please remind him that he forgot to sign those letters he dictated.”
Lieutenant Finch looked at his notes:
WORTH DIED 11:30–2:30
Irregular
Alibi
HARRISON RIDGLY
11:30–2:30
Hinkle, nurse
JONADAB EVANS
11:30–12:30
12:30–2:30
Hinkle, Hudson, me O’Breen
RUFUS BOTTOMLEY
11:45–2:30
Withers
OTTO FEDERHUT
11:30
12:35–2:30
gets on Pasadena bus (Bottomley)
APRP
DREW FURNESS
11:30–2:30 (with short gaps)
English Dept., U.C.L.A.
“And all of them,” he muttered, “so damned far away from Main Street that what gaps there are are no help at all. Well, we’ll see what happens tonight.”
BY ASMODEUS
The conference that night was scheduled for 8:30. At 7:30:
Dr. Rufus Bottomley was brushing his rich imperial and thinking with bitter tenderness of the girl in Dr. Withers’ office.
Drew Furness was trying to select a tie and wondering if his clothes really seemed overconservative to Miss O’Breen.
Jonadab Evans was writing a letter to his publishers and meditating if the splendid flavor of Mrs. Hudson’s soup had been due to a pinch of saffron.
Herr Otto Federhut was in the shower, a bright-green bath cap over his white mane, asking himself if his visit to APRP would actually accomplish anything.
Harrison Ridgly was in bed, wishing that the nurse would go away and let him finish the plan he had started.
Maureen O’Breen was deciding, in view of the nature of the meeting, that a high neck would be better.
F. X. Weinberg was protesting to A. K. that they’d start shooting tomorrow positively.
Mrs. Hudson was deciding that no matter what the conference was for they’d want something to eat afterwards.
Lieutenant A. Jackson was just having a bright idea, which could be most appropriately symbolized by the cartoonist’s conventional light bulb.
Lieutenant Herman Finch, who was not a markedly religious man, thanked his wife for a good dinner, kissed her good-by, and asked her to pray for him.
Vernon Crews, ribber extraordinary, sat behind the black whiskers of Commissar V. N. Plotnikov at the banquet of the Friends of Soviet Democracy, pondering his
speech on the defense of capitalism and wondering also why he hadn’t received that check yet.
Sergeant Watson, on his way to duty, stopped to play a game of pinball. He knew the druggist wouldn’t pay off to a cop; but he liked to watch the balls go round. He was thinking of nothing at all.
Even Asmodeus, that limping devil who looked through rooftops at men’s most secret actions, could not have told which of these thoughts masked an undercurrent of joy—the joy of the man who knows that he has killed wisely and well.
Chapter 22
“It appears,” Jonadab Evans began timorously, “that I am to take the chair tonight. Dr. Bottomley, after last night’s disturbance, is still unwilling, Herr Federhut pleads discomfort in the language, Mr. Ridgly is physically unable, and Professor Furness finds the chair too reminiscent of the classroom. I fear, therefore, that you must indulge my own poor fumbling with the situation.”
The living room of 221B, which had seen so much happen in the past forty-eight hours, was again filled with an intent group. The other four Irregulars (even Harrison Ridgly, who had insisted upon being moved downstairs at whatever risk), the two police Lieutenants, Maureen (as representative of Metropolis), and the faithful door-watching Sergeant Watson—all sat in patient silence, all waited eagerly on the outcome of this session. Only Mrs. Hudson had declined to attend the gathering; there was enough going on around here, she said, without her meddling in it, and besides if they wanted some refreshments later they’d better leave her alone now.
“Lieutenant Finch,” Mr. Evans went on with growing confidence, “has asked us to help him. He confesses that the police are nowhere near a solution to this case, and he asks us to apply to its complexities such deductive faculties as we have acquired through our study of the Master.”
“Herman,” Jackson whispered to his fellow Lieutenant, “have you gone nuts?”
“Shh,” Finch cautioned him. “This is the best way on earth to pit them against each other. They’ll be trying so damned hard to produce brilliant solutions that they won’t care what they say. Keep your ears open—no telling what we might learn from this.”
“With your permission,” said the chair, “I shall sum up what we know before we take up the conclusions to be drawn therefrom. It is now evident that the ‘murder’ which started this whole investigation was a hoax planned by Stephen Worth himself to expose us as incompetent amateurs—all the more reason, I may add, why we should now seek to display our real ability.”
“But Mr. Evans—”
“I know, Miss O’Breen. You are about to protest that you did see Worth killed night before last. How he effected that illusion I still do not know, though I hope someone may provide an explanation this evening; but we have the positive medical evidence that Worth died some time between eleven thirty and two thirty today. There is no question about that.
“It is clear, then, that someone saw through this hoax, tracked Worth to his Main Street hide-out, and there turned the jest into murderous reality. It is our purpose to discover who that someone was. The police doubtless would not have entrusted that task to us were they not convinced that this murderer, brilliant though he was, could not have been one of the Irregulars. Allow me to recapitulate our alibis:
“I myself was with Miss O’Breen at the time of the killing. Herr Federhut was either on the 11:32 bus to Pasadena, which Dr. Bottomley saw him enter, or at the APRP office in Pasadena. Dr. Bottomley was with the eminently reliable Dr. Withers, and Professor Furness is vouched for by the secretary of the English department at U.C.L.A. Mr. Ridgly, of course, has the most perfect alibi of all, the presence of a police nurse in his room.”
Ridgly twisted his mouth into a sort of a grin. “There’s your case, Lieutenant,” he said. “Look for the man with the perfect alibi. Would somebody mind passing me that bottle?”
“The doctor says no,” declared Lieutenant Finch with conclusive sterness.
Ridgly grimaced. “Do I have to make dazzling deductions cold sober?”
“If you don’t mind, Mr. Ridgly,” said Mr. Evans stiffly, “we shall get on with the discussion. Our murderer, you will all agree, must fulfill two conditions. He must have a sufficiently ingenious mind to solve Stephen Worth’s hoax, and he must have been at Second and Main within the specified time limits.”
“I might also suggest,” Dr. Bottomley offered, “that he have a motive for killing, Mr. Worth. Though from what we know of that individual’s character, or lack thereof, a motive should be reasonably simple to find for almost anyone. Mrmfk. Particularly if we consider Mr. Evans’ masculine pronoun as a mere convention.”
“It was intended as such, Dr. Bottomley. But before we go on, I should like to consider another question of identity. I am sure that each of us recalls, with fascinated horror, the singular adventure in which he was involved yesterday. There can be no doubt that the mind behind those adventures was that of Stephen Worth. Their purpose was to confuse us with Holmesian byplay while carefully casting a doubt upon the reputation of each of us, with the possible further intent of sowing among us mutual distrust and suspicion. But surely Worth himself was not an actor in these macabre little farces. Even he could not have been so incredibly self-confident as to believe that not one of us could recognize him.
“The more I consider those adventures, the more I am convinced of this: that the five character leads, if I may use a theatrical expression, of those episodes—the terrible spy Grossmann, the weary Captain Fairdale Agar, the absurd Colonel Warburton, the villainous Dr. Royal Farncroft, and my own Russian Orthodox priest—were all one person, and that that one person was the most protean impersonator in Hollywood, known to us to have aided Worth in previous hoaxes—in other words, Vernon Crews, assisted, of course, by a small troupe of actors for such minor parts as Anna Trepovna, Larry Gargan, and the German chess players. Does that seem plausible to you, Miss O’Breen?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. Crews can get away with anything, and he’d love a setup like that.”
“Good. I simply wished to make that point clear, since I may desire to refer to it later. Now, when we have realized that everything that took place in this fantastic case up to eleven o’clock this morning was part of a weird plot contrived by Stephen Worth and executed by Vernon Crews and assistants, the picture becomes clearer. Unnumbered confusions may be stricken out of the record as irrelevant—though I confess that I should still like to know how Worth learned of my young collaborator, Larry Gargan. I think we may assume, however, that his malice had inspired and his detective associations enabled him to collect, for some time, any derogatory information relating to the members of our organization, which information he turned to good account in the concocting of certain of these adventures. I should dearly like,” Mr. Evans added thoughtfully, “to see his file on Alec Woollcott.
“But now, setting all these reflections to one side, it is high time that we fulfill the Lieutenant’s request. Professor Furness, you look as though you were struggling with an inspiration. Will you confide its nature to us?”
Drew Furness hemmed and tugged gingerly at his shirt collar. “I was merely thinking—That is—But it was nothing of importance.”
“Come on, Furness,” Finch said encouragingly. “Try it on us.”
“I—Really I would rather wait.”
Maureen smiled. “Go on, Drew. Show Worth’s ghost you’re not the dope he thought you were.”
“Very well. But remember that you asked me to. Mr. Chairman, Miss O’Breen, gentlemen!” He halted.
Voices throughout the room urged him on. He gave his collar a stronger tug, distorting it in a manner to affront Ridgly’s Sirrah-accustomed eyes, and began. “I think,” he said, “that we have been neglecting a suspect. To my mind, Dr. Bottomley was right when he insisted on motive. It’s all very well to say that Worth was the sort of man that anybody would want to kill, but it’s much more convincing if you can show a real motive in black and white, instead of simply saying, ‘Oh, Worth was s
uch a terrible fellow.’ And that’s why I think—mind you, I’m not trying to offer a solution or anything like that—but it seems to me—Oh, I know I should build this up dramatically and surprise you all but what I’m trying to say is—well, maybe it was F. X. Weinberg.”
“Mr. Furness!” Maureen sounded shocked.
Finch seemed exceedingly interested. “That’s what you think, is it, Professor? Now that’s an idea, that is. Quite an idea. In fact, if you could disprove the evidence of his secretary and his superior producer and the gateman at Metropolis that he never left the studio between ten and five today, that would be a brilliant idea.”
Furness seemed too downcast to reply. The chair hastily cleared its throat and went on. “Dr. Bottomley, have you anything to contribute?”
Bottomley rose, stocky, vigorous, and imperialed. “By the Lord Harry, sir,” he exclaimed, “I have. And no fumbling guess like Furness’, either. Your aunt, young man, may be hovering on the verge of madness, but she has more spunk in her little finger than—”
“You hush up!” said Maureen. “I’d like to know what you’d have done if instead of having a crazy old woman lock you up in a closet you’d been shut up in a den of what you thought were Nazi spies.”
“I have no doubt,” Dr. Bottomley replied acidly, “that I should have done just as Mr. Furness claims to have done.” There was only the slightest possible stress on claims. “But enough of this stupid bickering. If one of Worth’s aims was to sow dissension among us, I can only say that he has done that part of his work too damned well. We are, in fact, so wrapped up in what Mr. Evans has termed mutual mistrust that we tend to be all too trustful of the others outside of our little group.
“Now the outstandingly hateful characteristic of Stephen Worth, as I now know definitely, was his incurable satyriasis. No one had more motive to kill him than a woman whom he had outraged. I have been morally certain from the first, even in the days of our innocence when we were still deceived by the hoax, that Worth’s death was caused, directly or indirectly, by a woman. Now, gentlemen, let us forget our mistrust for a moment. Let us hunt for a woman; and may I rot forever if I utter that banal phrase in my bad French. Let us hunt for a woman who has been with us throughout this affair, a woman who is shrewd and intelligent enough to pierce through Mr. Worth’s phonograph riddle, a woman who is brave enough to track down the man who assulted her and to avenge herself in cold blood. Is there such a woman?”
The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars Page 24