“Very well,” said Martin, as he poured maple syrup liberally over the toast. “First the corroborative minutiae—that phrase grows on me—and then the Ashwinian solution itself. Damned good French toast, by the way. Use flour? I thought not. Well, Alex, as I said last night, was not killed.…”
CHAPTER X
Truth Does a Strip-Tease
Martin had unwrapped the paper and was staring at it in bewilderment when he was roused by Lupe’s voice.
“I think he is all right,” she was saying. “I cannot find a wound.”
Martin turned and knelt beside Alex. His heart was beating, and he was breathing reassuringly.
“Come on, Kurt. Give me a hand, and we’ll get him down to the hospital.”
The two men propped Alex up between them and, the girls following, started down the trail. After a few minutes of silent walking, they heard groans and unintelligible mutterings from the figure they were supporting.
“He’s coming around,” said Martin. “Let’s stop a minute.”
They lowered Alex into a relatively comfortable position at the foot of a tree, his head in Mona’s lap. Martin, with vague memories of “What To Do in Emergencies,” began chafing his wrists while Mona stroked his forehead. Kurt and Lupe stood apart, Kurt glancing now and then, with a slight shudder, at the Vignard-inscribed paper which Martin had handed to him.
Alex opened his eyes at last and rose unsteadily to a sitting posture. “What the hell …” he muttered.
“God bless you, Alex!” Martin exclaimed. “I was afraid you’d say, ‘Where am I?’”
“Martin!”
“Yes.”
Alex rubbed his aching head with the back of his hand. “I think I know where I am all right. Some place in the hills, isn’t it?”
“Right.”
“But just what in hell’s happened to me? My head feels like a walnut that’s quarreled with a steam roller. And what are you doing here and who are these other people? I can’t see very well, and to be honest, I don’t much care.” His head sank back in Mona’s lap.
“I don’t know myself just what happened. Mona and I were—well, that is, we were—and you came down the path. Suddenly there was a shot from some place a little farther down the path, and you fell. Kurt and Lupe were near there and heard and saw the same thing. Kurt and I each thought that the other was your assailant, and gaily tackled each other. During our mêlée, whoever it was got smoothly away.”
Alex managed to rise a little, his hand still at his head. “Must have grazed me. There’s a place here on my temple that hurts like a lot of words I won’t use at the moment. Did you see who it was?”
“No.”
“Man or a woman?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think,” Lupe interrupted, “I think I saw it when it threw the stone. It was small, and I think—to this I will not swear—it was a woman.”
“Threw the stone? What’s this all about, Martin? It’s bad enough to have people taking pot shots at you in the hills; but if they’re going to throw stones at you to boot—”
“It was a stone with a paper wrapped around it,” Martin explained.
“Paper?” Alex shook his dazed head worriedly. “Is this a gag?” Then a quick look of comprehension came, and with it something approaching terror. “Martin! That paper … It wasn’t …” He choked, and left the sentence unfinished.
“I think it was. Kurt!”
Obediently Kurt advanced. He handed the Seven of Calvary to Alex and struck a match. In the light of the flickering flame, Martin saw on Alex’s face an expression which might have denoted anything from utter fright to complete resignation. Then Alex’s head fell back and he seemed for a moment to lose consciousness again.
Mona looked up at Martin with concern. “Had you not best take him to the hospital?”
“Right. Come on, Kurt.”
But as they bent over Alex to raise him, he roused himself and struggled unaided to his feet. “No!” he cried. “Leave me alone. No hospital for me—thanks all the same. That means they’d recognize the bullet scratch, and that—God bless the laws—would mean the police. And that’s out—out, to you hear?”
“But Alex—”
“I’m all right. Just a scratch. I can settle this.” He wavered a little, and caught Martin’s arm. “If you’ve just got to do something helpful, you can help me back to the House. My legs don’t seem to be quite themselves yet. And if you’ve got any whiskey lying around …”
It was a strange and silent procession that approached the south entrance of International House. The girls went on to the women’s entrance, and Martin and Kurt helped Alex into the elevator and on to his room. There he sat, still a trifle dazed, on the edge of the bed while Martin hurried to his own room for whiskey and Kurt fetched a cold damp towel from the washroom.
The whiskey braced Alex no end, and the cold towel helped in the transformation. In a few moments he looked almost normal again.
“Have you got a cigarette, Martin?” he asked. “That’s the worst of this whole damned episode—I lost a pack of cigarettes some place on the trail up there.”
Martin handed over his pack. For himself, he took a large swig from the bottle—he felt he needed it almost as much as Alex—and passed it on to Kurt.
“Thanks. That smoke feels good.” Alex leaned back on the bed. “And my head’s better now.”
“But Alex,” Martin insisted, “this must come to the police eventually.”
“And why?”
“Damn it all, Alex, how can you ask why? That paper—this isn’t something that involves just you. It concerns Dr. Schaedel and Paul Lennox. If we can check on the person who shot at you—”
“—you won’t find out one damned thing.”
“Martin is right, Alex,” Kurt put in.
“Martin is wrong, Kurt.” Alex sat up vigorously and reached again for the whiskey. “Martin is so damned wrong he’ll never even know how wrong he is. And meanwhile both of you are going to promise me here and now that you’ll never mention a word of this to anyone. Do you promise?”
But both hesitated.
“Come on! After all, it’s my cause, isn’t it? I’m the injured party. And if I know—as I do know—that I can settle it, just what the hell is it to you?”
“Alex,” said Martin, “I’m going to be frank with you. I’ll promise not to say a word to the police or to anyone else, but I make one exception.”
“Yes?”
“Dr. Ashwin.”
“The loyal Watson. My compliments, Martin, for your fidelity. All right. If your great Sanskrit amateur detective wants to know about this, let him. After all, I owe him a good turn. And much good may it do him. Now how about you, Kurt?”
“I shall be as the grave.”
“Not a very cheery comparison, but let it pass. All right, gentlemen. You give me your word not to whisper this to anyone at all—with Martin’s exception?”
“I give you my word,” said Martin, and Kurt echoed him.
It was the battlements of Elsinore Castle. “This not to do, swear, so grace and mercy at your most need help you.” Martin as Horatio, Kurt as Marcellus, Alex as an oddly colloquial Hamlet … all that was lacking was the Ghost in the cellarage. And Martin was not so sure that he was indeed lacking.
“That’s that.” Alex passed the whiskey back to his friends. “Now let’s be cheerful. We can’t go to sleep at once after that gay little scene. We’ll kill that bottle and tell stories.”
Reluctantly, Martin drank. Kurt hesitated. Martin knew what was in his mind. He was thinking of the night he had seen his uncle killed, and of how they had all sat in Martin’s room drinking and rollicking while the police carried off what had been a man of love and peace.
It had been a night just like this. The Seven had struck in the hills, and the blow had been followed by stag carousing in a room of International House. Martin and Alex and Kurt—but the group was smaller by one now. Paul Lennox was not t
here, to abandon his pipe for cigarettes and deliver the great saga of Anthony Claire.
There was a ghost in the cellarage.
Martin rose early the next morning and hurried down Channing Way to the rooming house where Dr. Ashwin lived, only to learn that his master had left for the week end, presumably to stay in San Rafael with Elizabeth and her mother. He would be back some time Sunday.
It proved an intolerable week end for Martin. He wanted to bring this newest factor of the case to Dr. Ashwin’s attention immediately, and he was helpless. He did not even know Elizabeth’s last name nor where to reach Ashwin in Marin County. Moreover, Mona had left, with Remigio, to spend the week end with friends in San Francisco—attachés of the Bolivian consulate or some such thing. Lupe had departed for Los Angeles early Saturday morning, and Kurt, as a result, proved a moping and dull companion. And Martin felt an odd disinclination to see Alex.
There was only one thing left to do—work. And heaven knows it was necessary. Seminar papers had been piling up right and left while Martin had labored on Don Juan Returns or held conferences with Ashwin. So, for this last week end before the dénouement of the Schaedel case, Martin slaved alternately at Caspar Wilhelm von Borcke and at the influence of Saint-Simonianism on the Jung Deutschland movement, and heard or spoke scarcely a word upon the Seven of Calvary.
The one exception occurred after dinner on Saturday when he encountered Paul Boritsin in the Great Hall. It was too soon after food to settle down anew to the letters of Georg Büchner, and a chat with the Russian, Martin thought, might effectively drive him to industry.
After desultory remarks on the Tchernavins, Carveth Wells, and Mr. Hearst’s latest starvation statistics, Martin could not resist a mild bit of ribbing. “You remember your extremely acute theory concerning the murder of Dr. Schaedel?” he asked. “Just how do you square that up with later developments?”
“Later developments, Mr. Lamb?”
“The poisoning of Paul Lennox. Why should the dirty Reds want to polish him off?”
“Mr. Lamb!” Boritsin smiled a smile of aristocratic superiority. “But it is of a simplicity which amazes me you do not comprehend.”
Martin struggled his way through the sentence and finally prompted, “So?”
“But of course. It is notorious that Mr. Lennox was a Communist.”
Martin gulped. “Paul a Communist?”
“Have I not seen him to emerge from a theatre at which was showing Peasants? Have I not heard him to whistle an air by Hanns Eisler while that he was shaving? Above all, have I not heard him to praise highly what is called the ‘music’ of Shostakovich? Mr. Lamb, I ask you, could anyone not a Communist do these things?”
Martin gulped doubly and said nothing.
“I see you doubt. Mr. Lamb, I will now contribute the clinching nail to my argument. I happen to know—mind you, Mr. Lamb, this is no vagrom calumny—I happen to know that Mr. Lennox was subscriber to The Nation!” Boritsin leaned back, blew out a great puff of smoke (which had been intended as a ring), and beamed complacently. “The rest follows of itself. He knew something of the assassination. Perhaps he was not all bad, and threatened to make a revelation. So,” the aristocrat concluded, adding a nice Nazi touch to his scheme, “he was purged.”
Martin rose. “Today, Boritsin,” he said sternly, “I bought a copy of The Daily Worker.”
He walked off quietly. It may be added that Boritsin never spoke to him again.
Martin, nervously watching Dr. Ashwin’s rooming house, saw him return about eight-thirty Sunday evening. Allowing a decent pause, he hurried up the stairs and knocked on the doctor’s door.
Ashwin welcomed him with a broad smile which ill accorded with Martin’s eager impatience. “Why are you so amused?” Martin could not help asking.
Ashwin settled himself comfortably and laughed. “Over the week end,” he explained, “I have learned a profound secret. I have learned the invaluable quality of an inflatable rubber duck.”
Without waiting for Martin’s prompting, he continued his narrative. “Elizabeth’s mother, as I believe I have told you, is a still young, attractive, and quite remarriagable woman. In fact, a sturdy young man is at present courting her. But he was not present at dinner last night; there were only Elizabeth, her mother, and I. A silence fell briefly in the midst of the dinnertable conversation; and of a sudden Elizabeth remarked, ‘Dr. Ashwin, Mother thinks you’re an awfully nice man. Why don’t you marry her?’”
The remembrance of the painful situation brought renewed laughter to Dr. Ashwin, laughter in which Martin could not help joining as he pictured Elizabeth looking alternately at her mother and at her patron and wondering why so logical a question should affect them both so strangely.
“What on earth did you do?” Martin asked at last.
“In my pocket,” Dr. Ashwin replied, “there reposed a rubber duck which I had bought that afternoon for Elizabeth. I had found it in a drugstore on the counter next the whiskey. While Elizabeth’s mother blushed into her napkin, I extracted the rubber duck and gravely inflated it. So delighted was Elizabeth with this exhibition that the awkward subject was quite forgotten. I must remember never to travel again in perilous mixed company without an inflatable rubber duck.”
Ashwin finally broke off his laughter to fetch out the whiskey. As he poured it, he asked, “And what has happened in Berkeley during my absence? My landlady tells me that you called yesterday at an hour surprisingly early for you, and seemed very anxious to see me.”
So Martin told the detailed story of Friday night. “And it leaves me,” he concluded, “more confused than ever. Even with a Vignard theory, you can’t account for anyone wanting to kill Alex. And don’t get any wild ideas of its being a plant to ward off suspicion. If that were it, he certainly wouldn’t have sworn Kurt and me to secrecy; and besides, that bullet was meant to kill. No one’s a good enough shot to graze the head like that on purpose; it’s mere accident that Alex is alive.”
“True. But continue, Mr. Lamb. I want to see what other ideas this attack suggests to you.”
“Well … It eliminates the Leshins pretty thoroughly, I should say, even aside from Mrs. Leshin’s being in Marin County. Alex has only the slightest acquaintance with either of them. Unless he saw something backstage that night—but Alex in the rôle of secret blackmailer just doesn’t make sense.”
“And what else?”
“He quarreled violently with Cynthia that night. She might … But then she is the one person with a completely sound alibi for the murder of Dr. Schaedel.”
“True.”
“That lets out … Well, among them, the three killings—I count the attack on Alex as one because it certainly was so in intent—the three killings let out everyone. The first one lets out Cynthia; the second eliminates Paul, all too literally; and this third disposes of Alex, the Leshins, and the Vignards—even if your beloved notebook hadn’t done that already. What we need, Dr. Ashwin, is a whole new set of suspects.”
“Yes?”
“For God’s sake don’t be so omnisciently monosyllabic. Tell me what you think.”
“I do not think, Mr. Lamb. Now I know.”
“What?” Martin reached swiftly for the bottle.
“Yes, Mr. Lamb, I know. This attack on Mr. Bruce was the one thing needed to make the pattern complete, the one touch to render the whole series of crimes obvious.”
“Then you know who the murderer is?”
“I might logically answer your question with another, but I shall not.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“I need one or two facts before I can do anything. To be exact, I need three facts. One I expect to receive tomorrow from the University of Chicago library. Since I wrote via airmail special delivery and enclosed an envelope for an answer of similar speed, I should hear from them tomorrow. The second fact you shall secure for me in San Francisco either tomorrow or Tuesday, if you will be so good as to perform an errand for me.”
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“Gladly. Tuesday would be better.”
“Fine. And the third fact I shall learn from Mr. Bruce himself at the little conference which I propose to hold here on Wednesday evening.”
“A conference?”
“Yes. I should like to expound my ideas to those interested before I make definite use of them. Not that I doubt myself; I think that, in my heart of hearts, it is simply a desire for an appreciative audience.”
“Who is to be there?”
“Yourself, of course; you need not fear being cheated. Mr. Ross, as representing the interests of the first victim—his discretion can be trusted, can it not?”
“Of course.”
“You may be considered as representing Mr. Lennox, and the third victim, Mr. Bruce, can of course represent himself. I shall also invite Dr. Griswold. His mind shows the most admirable combination of scholarship and intellect that I have ever encountered; he should be the ideal critical audience. You will doubtless remember the Panchatantra:
“‘Scholarship is less than sense;
Therefore seek intelligence.’”
“But why won’t you tell me what you know?”
Dr. Ashwin smiled. “Griswold observed very justly that you have corrupted me. I have now developed such a taste for the theatrical that my lips are sealed until Wednesday night.”
Martin swore under his breath and consoled himself with another drink.
“You will of course see to inviting Mr. Ross and Mr. Bruce. I shall myself speak with Dr. Griswold. Now as to your errand on Tuesday …”
Martin jotted down his instructions and slipped them into his pocket. “I’m afraid I must go now,” he said rising. “I’ve got to finish off Gutzkow tonight.”
“You look quite ludicrous, Mr. Lamb, in your sheepish disappointment—your pardon, yours was a name born to create bad accidental puns. It is, I grant you, cruel, the manner in which we detectives treat our Watsons.”
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