Dr. Poggioli: Criminologist (The Lost Classics Book 14)

by T. S. Stribling

  The crowd, for it really was a crowd by this time, jammed into an elevator. Jimmy, with the camera and tripod, created quite a diversion getting inside. At the top Mr. Mordag squeezed out and pointed out the floor matron. He explained that he had paid her three dollars to watch his room, and she had seen nothing. Mr. Tapper was enthusiastic. He directed Jimmy to take a shot of the woman who had watched Mr. Mordag’s apartment all night long and had seen nothing.

  “We have a real mystery here,” he said to the floor matron. “What’s your name and address? Married? Live with you husband? How many children have you got? All right, now, Mr. Mordag, we’ll look at your cat.”

  As Mordag led the way to his room, Poggioli deserted the crowd and went back to the elevator. The docent at least knew when he had enough. He was going back to the laboratory and write a note to Mordag withdrawing from the case. Then he would have Janet up on the carpet and when he was through with her, she would never, so long as she worked in the laboratory, bring him another card.

  He was pushing the elevator button when he heard a single sharp thump in Mordag’s room, and abruptly the chatter of the crowd ceased. After an interval he heard a voice say—

  “Where the hell did that come from?” And Tapper’s voice replied sharply:

  “Don’t touch it! Let it alone! Let the detective see it!”

  The docent turned and walked rapidly back to his client’s apartment. The crowd was grouped around a knife that stuck, still quivering, just inside the entrance of Mordag’s apartment.

  The sandy man had lost completely his access of bravery.

  “For God’s sake!” he chattered, staring at the weapon. “Throw a knife at me—right through the ceiling!”

  The crowd stared up at the ceiling.

  “It couldn’t come through the ceiling,” said somebody.

  Mordag looked at the man with the quivering open mouth of the terror-struck. “Couldn’t throw it through the ceiling! Why, I’ve seen him throw ’em through iron, wood, people—just anything.”

  “And not leave a hole?” cried the skeptic. “My God, no! He don’t leave a hole!”

  Mordag walked feebly over to his bed, sat down on it gingerly as if afraid some knife might launch upward through the floor.

  Mr. Tapper was writing rapidly. His man Jimmy was already training his camera on the knife.

  Somebody said—“Then he must be in the room right over this one.”

  This caused a diversion. Three or four men hurried up to the next floor to see what they could find.

  “What happened?” asked Poggioli, looking at the knife stuck in the carpet. “Just as Mr. Mordag entered his apartment,” said Tapper, reading the words from the paper he had written, “a mysterious knife was thrown at the unfortunate man before the eyes of the whole crowd—” He broke away from his script to say to Poggioli, “If he hadn’t stepped back just when he opened the door to let me in, he’d ’a’ got hurt.”

  “Where did the knife come from?”

  “He says through the ceiling,” said Tapper. “You understand, this is a sleight of-hand man we’re after.” He began scribbling again and repeating aloud, “When interviewed concerning the mysterious assault, Mr. Mordag stated that his enemy, Professor La Plesse was an adept in Rajah Yoga and could throw knives through iron, wood, stone, without leaving any visible—” He broke off to ask, “Is that a regular conjurer’s knife?”

  “It’s the sort he always used,” said Mordag weakly.

  “If he’s in the upper story here, how could he have been in 2714 Johnson Boulevard?” queried Tapper.

  “We were there and now we’re here,” said Mordag. “Yes, but we saw you come in,” said Tapper.

  “Look what a crowd’s in—You don’t know La Plesse.”

  “That’s true,” admitted the reporter.

  Poggioli stooped over the knife without touching it. Then he drew a chair,

  stood on it and examined the top of the door.

  “I have a feeling that La Plesse didn’t go to the trouble of flinging his cutlery through ferro concrete,” he began.

  “Mr. Poggioli, he can,” assured Mordag earnestly. “I’ve seen him throw knives through a steel screen and stick ’em around a woman.”

  “I don’t doubt that he can,” said Poggioli. “But he didn’t take the trouble to do it this time.”

  “One moment,” interrupted Tapper. “How thick were those steel screens, Mr. Mordag?”

  “About an eighth of an inch—I could roll them around on the stage.”

  “You never saw him throw a knife through six inches of concrete?”

  “No, I never did.”

  “Here’s a silk thread glued to the top of the door,” said Poggioli. “It undoubtedly pulled the knife from the transom.”

  The docent handed the thread down in the manner of a pedagogue exhibiting a specimen. Every one passed it gravely from hand to hand.

  “When the door opened it pulled the knife off the transom,” repeated the docent.

  This left the crowd flat. How the knife had got on the transom was a small mystery compared to flinging a steel blade through the ceiling. The thread finally came to Mordag on the bed, and he sat looking at it.

  While every one was still talking the man named Bill came back from the telephone.

  “Tap,” he said, “Ohio 143–734 belongs to the Oldham Drive-It-Yourself Garage.”

  “And who did the floorman say was using 143–734 today?”

  “He said nobody wasn’t using it; he said it was standing there in the garage.”

  “Who did he say had been using it?”

  “Nobody. He said that car was under repair and hadn’t been out of the garage all week.”

  III

  MR. HENRY POGGIOLI did not give the information about the blue limousine having been on the streets and not having been on the streets at one and the same time the consideration that was really due it. He was so disgusted with Tapper, and Bill and Jimmy, the photographer, and especially with Clayman Mordag, for his cheap publicity seeking attitude, that he had decided to have done with the whole affair.

  The docent was in his laboratory feeding his rats. As he went about this chore he thought of the crowd in the Vendig. Why did ordinary human beings wallow and grovel in a mystery of any description? Why did the Vendig aggregation want to believe that La Plesse had thrown a knife at Mordag through six inches of concrete flooring?

  Men always had been like that, and it suddenly occurred to the psychologist that mankind as a whole must have greatly benefited by this attitude of awe and passive acceptance of the miraculous, or the trait would not be so deeply ingrained in the human race. If that were true, then the awful, the mysterious, the unknowable must, on the whole, have bestowed upon the world of men some great and immeasurable good. And that, of course, was religion . . .

  The psychologist was really amazed at his own inference, and he might have followed it heaven knows where, possibly to orthodoxy itself, had not Janet come into the laboratory and ended his train of thought.

  The girl held a damp, newly delivered paper in her hand. She entered rather uncertainly and asked, without much hope for a good reception in her voice, if the docent were busy right then.

  Poggioli said not only was he busy but that he had told her never to bring him another card—never.

  “This isn’t a card,” said the girl. “It’s a paper.”

  “Well, what about a paper?”

  “The men in the office were talking. I—I’ve come to say, Mr. Poggioli, I’m awfully sorry I brought you that man’s card.”

  “Let your repentance point toward the future. Don’t bring me any more.”

  “Oh, I won’t.”

  There was a pause and Poggioli said— “Well?”

  “Why I—I wanted to ask,” stammered Janet, “do you really believe Mr. Mordag’s name brought all this bad luck on him, or did you just tell the reporter that?”

  “What! What!” cried the psychologis
t, reaching for the journal. The girl pointed hastily at a subheading—

  NUMEROLOGIST ASSERTS CLAYMAN MORDAG’S MISFORTUNES PRECIPITATED BY UNHARMONIZED MONIKER

  “What is a moniker?” asked the docent, looking at Janet. “It’s a slang word; it means a person’s name.”

  “Of course I didn’t say such an idiotic—” He searched down the paragraph with his forefinger. “Here, it doesn’t say I said it. It says Professor Wordenbaum, the famous international numerologist, said that.”

  “I didn’t notice the exception,” said Janet. “You said nearly everything else on the front page.”

  The docent stammered, hushed, saw the red streamer printed across the top of the page with a delicate goose flesh running over his skin.

  PSYCHOLOGIST POGGIOLI SAVES CLAYMAN MORDAG FROM MURDERER’S VENGEANCE

  Then followed a whole column of decks which read as if the public to which the paper catered were incapable of understanding an English sentence with the ordinary connectives and articles:

  Celebrated Criminologist Pursues Poison Bug Along Johnson Boulevard. Runs Miscreant to Earth in Deserted House. Explains Theory of Crime to Police at Back Door While Criminal Escapes Out Front.

  Necromancer La Plesse Makes Second Attempt on Mordag’s Life. Flings Knife Through Six Inches Concrete at Wife’s Paramour.

  Notes from Unseen Husband Found Daily in Mordag’s Pockets.

  Police Now Searching for La Plesse After Letting Him Slip Through Fingers Yesterday.

  Last Seen Driving a Car on Johnson Boulevard While at Same Moment Car Was in Drive-It-Yourself Garage Undergoing Repairs. La Plesse an Adept in Art of Hindu Magic.

  Psychologist Poggioli of Ohio State Pits Western Science Against Eastern Occultism.

  The second page of the paper was devoted to the elucidation of these multiple decks.

  Mr. Poggioli laid the paper on a rat cage and swore with sincerity of sentiment and variety of diction. He reached a conclusion finally with—

  “Janet, don’t you ever again, so long as you live—” And the girl interrupted to say:

  “Goodness, Mr. Poggioli, I wouldn’t again for the world. Why they say in the office this has put off your professorship ten years, if it doesn’t lose you your job!”

  “It isn’t my job I mind losing, it’s my decency. Look—look at that page—” he flapped it with his hand—“it’s full of me. And I told that lying rat of a Tapper—”

  “Well, you don’t have to take a commission like that any more.”

  “No, I don’t. Nothing will ever move me again into such a quagmire of indecent sensationalism; money—love—ambition—Well, what in hell do you want?” This last was not addressed to Janet, but to a blue capped telegraph messenger.

  “I have a telegram for Professor Henry Poggioli. They told me in the office that he—”

  “Well, I don’t want it,” snapped the docent, “if it’s anything about this damned affair.”

  “I don’t know what it’s about,” said the messenger. “I haven’t read it, sir.”

  “Well I know; it’s about this affair!”

  Poggioli shook the paper at him. The boy opened his eyes.

  “Oh, are you that Mr. Poggioli?”

  “Yes,” said the docent. “I am even worse than that Mr. Poggioli; you might say, I am the Mr. Poggioli.”

  This went over the telegraph boy’s head. He stood for a moment. “Won’t you sign for it, sir?”

  “No, I tell you.”

  The boy blinked his eyes and scratched an ear.

  “If you won’t, sir, I’ll have to keep on bringing it back every two hours until you do.”

  Poggioli looked at Janet.

  “The Pilgrims came to this country to win freedom; now look what we’ve come to.”

  The boy took this to be a serious thrust at himself.

  “The boss says I must make every effort to deliver them the first trip out to pep up the service,” he explained apologetically.

  “Hand it here,” said Poggioli. “I never before heard of a telegraph messenger trying to pep up the service. Janet, I’m beginning to think the comic strips misrepresent these young men.” He signed for the telegram and tore it in two.

  The messenger caught his breath at this unusual reception of a telegram, but continued standing where he was. “Well, do you want me to pay you anything?” asked the docent.

  “Oh, no, sir; it was prepaid.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  The boy blinked again at the torn envelope on the floor.

  “Er—the regulations say, I’m to stand here, sir, till you read it and see if you want to answer it, sir.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned . . . Janet, the American people are the slaves of system. System has elevated the message far above either the receiver or the sender. As far as the telegraph companies are concerned, the human race are merely points of origin and destination of the great central fact of telegrams. The obscure source from which telegrams spring, their equally nebulous recipients, the question of whether telegrams have a meaning, or are simply a fortuitous concourse of letters; these are probably points of acrid debate among telegraphic metaphysicians.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Janet vaguely.

  “Or take the point of free will. Since the receiver has no free will, has the sender any free will? Do telegrams hurtle over the wires in blind obedience to a

  mechanical necessity . . .”

  “I never before heard of a gentleman not wanting to read his telegram, sir,”

  said the boy.

  “Certainly you don’t hear of it, because the receiver’s desires in the matter are what Huxley calls epiphenomenal.”

  And Poggioli stooped and picked up the torn halves of his telegram. The docent read:

  TAPPER READ FRENCH NOTES STOP WILL BE MURDERED TOMORROW NIGHT STOP EXPECTED YOU ALL MORNING STOP AFRAID TO LEAVE VENDIG STOP GOD’S SAKE COME —MORDAG

  The docent read it again.

  “Who’s it from?” asked Janet curiously.

  “Him—” Poggioli nodded cityward. “He wants you to come to him?” Poggioli gave a long sigh.

  “Yes, he’s frightened nearly to death. He really thinks he’s going to be killed tomorrow night.”

  “Poor man—and he looked so thin and bad, too, Mr. Poggioli, when he came here to see you.”

  “Any answer, sir?” asked the boy.

  “Tell him I’m coming. Just say, ‘Will arrive in thirty minutes—Poggioli.’ ” The docent started for the cloakroom out front. He turned to the girl who followed him—

  “And now you see, Janet, the sort of thing your damned cards get me into . . .” At the Vendig Poggioli found a crowd collected before the hotel, and in the lobby. As the docent went up to the clerk’s desk he caught bits of conversation.

  A voice was saying—

  “What good will it do to change his name?” And another answered, “Why, that may be like faith healing; you just think it’s going to do some good.”

  Near a marble column an oldish man was saying to a youngish man—

  “He deserves what he gets—running off with the fellow’s wife.” And the youngish man, who probably was not married, said, “If a wife gets tired of her husband I say she’s got a right to run off. She’s not his property, is she?”

  At the desk Poggioli had to wait a couple of minutes while the clerk finished telephoning. He was saying—

  “The Vendig roof is a hundred feet long by fifty wide; an airplane never has been landed up there.”

  He glanced around and saw Poggioli, and ended his conversation. He came forward, offering a key to the docent.

  “Mr. Mordag is expecting you. In fact, he has been telephoning down every two minutes to know if you had arrived.”

  “What’s the key for?”

  “To let you in his room; he doesn’t open his door to anybody.” At the expression on the docent’s face the clerk ejaculated—

  “You can’t blame him with a man like La
Plesse floating around somewhere in the hotel!”

  “You don’t mean La Plesse—”

  “Yes, Mr. Mordag saw him going into a room.”

  “What room?”

  “1728. He saw him from the elevator.”

  “Isn’t that the room under Mordag’s room?” queried Poggioli in surprise.

  “Yes; everybody was expecting him to be over Mordag’s room.”

  “He wasn’t registered under his proper name?”

  “Oh, he wasn’t registered at all. He wouldn’t be, you know.”

  “Probably not,” agreed the docent.

  The clerk leaned across the counter and said in a low voice—

  “It’s my opinion La Plesse showed himself and raised all this publicity for a purpose.”

  “What purpose?”

  “Why, to get the crowds milling in here so he can come in with ’em and go out with ’em, and never be noticed. He can go upstairs or come downstairs with the crowd, and how’re you going to pick him out? Our house man has spoken to three or four gents who answer the description. One was from Pocatello, one from Ripon, California, one—”

  “How did he get a key to 1728?”

  “From what Mr. Mordag says he doesn’t need any key.”

  “After Mordag saw the fellow, did someone go at once to 1728?”

  “Certainly; quite a bunch. But the room was empty. It was mussed up; it had been occupied, but it was empty.”

  “You don’t know who mussed it?”

  “No, I don’t know whether it was La Plesse or my last registered guest. You see, with twenty-two hundred rooms to be kept in order, and chamber maids soldiering or getting sick on you, you can’t be sure a room is ready because it’s checked ready.”

  Poggioli nodded understandingly.

  “But may I ask you to go on up as quick as you can,” suggested the clerk. “Mr. Mordag is in a bad way, Professor. He’s on the edge of a breakdown. You know he thinks he’s going to be murdered tomorrow night.”