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

by T. S. Stribling

  “That really is odd. I suppose it is a race obsession. You are so obsessed with Chin Lee’s Chineseness, if I may coin a term, that your recognition stops there and doesn’t reach the individual. It is probably based on our Anglo-Saxon superiority complex.”

  The superintendent laughed.

  “I didn’t know I felt that way until you asked me about it.”

  “Oh, well, a man is so accustomed to his own biases and slants that he never knows he has them.”

  Professor Poggioli sat considering the further queer fact that Galloway had decided all Chinese looked alike because the one Chinaman he did know never did quite resemble himself. A droller non-sequitur he had never encountered.

  He was smiling faintly when he saw a negro man hurrying up the garden walk. The black man’s expression caught the scientist’s attention. His dark face was drawn and of a grayish cast. The whites of his eyes circled his black irises. He came to a halt some distance down the path and called in an unsteady tone— “M-Mist’ Jim, kin I see you a m-minute?”

  “Now, Sam, why do you want to come bothering me when I’ve got company?” The negro made a desperate gesture.

  “Mist’ Jim, I jes’ got to see you a minute.”

  The mill man gave a hopeless shrug and explained to Poggioli—

  “Sam’s the night watchman; somebody’s probably been stealing lumber while he was asleep and now he’s all cut up about it.”

  He opened the screen door, went as far down as the third poinciana, put a hand against its bole and asked in a bored tone—

  “Well, what is it?”

  The negro’s answer was in a voice too low for the psychologist to catch, but he nodded toward the mill and the docks with a terrified expression. Presently Galloway ejaculated:

  “What! Chin Lee?”

  Sam explained something more.

  “How did it happen? Is he still there?”

  Here the black man went into a long rigmarole, pointing at Poggioli on the porch. Galloway shook his head.

  “No, no, I wouldn’t bother Professor Poggioli with a little thing like this. Besides, he didn’t come down here to work; he came down to rest up and fish.”

  This reference to himself induced the psychologist to call out— “What is it he wants with me, Mr. Galloway?”

  “Oh, he says he’s heard about you,” deprecated the superintendent, with an apologetic laugh.

  “Is he uneasy because I am a criminologist?” inquired Poggioli, amused. “Oh, no, Sam’s all right. It’s not about himself. He’s begging me to have you take a look at Chin Lee.”

  “What’s happened to Chin Lee?” inquired the psychologist with more interest. “Why, he’s lying over there on the lumber dock, Sam says, with a bullet hole in his head.”

  Poggioli arose quickly and came out into the garden. “When did you find him, Sam?”

  “J-jes’ a li’l while ago.”

  “You were night watchman, I understand. You yourself didn’t have any trouble with Chin Lee—catch him stealing lumber or anything like that?”

  “Lawdy, no, suh; no!” cried the black man in a panic. “Theah you is, Mis’ Jim, jes’ whut I was tellin’ you! He think ’cause I’se night watchman, I mus’

  ’a’ shot Chin Lee. Why, I di’n’ even know he was shot tull I walk up on him.”

  “You must have heard the shooting.”

  “N-no, suh—take mo’n a pistol to wake me up when I’se night watchin’.”

  The criminologist paused a moment, and then said— “Let’s walk over, Mr. Galloway, and see what we can find out.” The superintendent cleared his throat.

  “Well—I suppose we ought to go and take a look around, Professor.” Poggioli was a little surprised at his host’s attitude.

  “You would naturally go, wouldn’t you?”

  “Oh, certainly, I’d have to go!”

  “Well, you—don’t mind my going with you?”

  “Why, no-o—” Galloway cleared his throat again. “But if you don’t object, Professor, may I say here that I hope your interest in this matter will be—uh— purely academic?”

  Poggioli looked at his companion in amazement. “Academic!”

  “Y-yes—if you don’t mind.”

  “What am I to understand by academic?”

  Galloway blinked.

  “Well if you should find out who the murderer is, I—I hope you won’t feel it necessary to—to make a great to-do about it.”

  “You mean not tell it—keep it quiet?”

  “Well, baldly, I’d rather you would—keep it quiet.” Poggioli stood looking at his host for several moments.

  “That is the most unusual request I have ever had made of me.” The superintendent moistened his lips.

  “I suppose it is. But I have a good reason. These killings happen every now and then around the mill here. If the newspapers get wind of this one, they’ll feature it because you’re on the case. Then they’ll get busy and dig up all the other killings and feature them, too. That will go all over the United States, and it will be damn rotten publicity for Everglades. It will prejudice investors against the place. So I do hope you’ll keep quiet anything you find out. It’s business with me.”

  The scientist listened in surprise to this odd reasoning. “I had never thought of murder as adverse advertising.”

  “Well, if you had promoted as many boom towns as I have,” said Galloway earnestly, “you’d know enough to hush up any little killing like this. Now if it were a big killing—like a banker or a preacher or a millionaire sportsman—I’d say go to it. A big murder trial would draw a lot of people to Everglades, and we’d sell ’em homes or business sites or something of the kind; but a dinky little killing like this—

  ” Galloway shook his head. “It would do more harm than good.” Poggioli smiled dryly.

  “Well, that’s a Florida viewpoint. Come on, let’s walk over for our private curiosities.”

  Here a discussion came up as to whether the three men should walk or ride to the lumber dock. The superintendent wanted to ride, because Everglades was laid out on the gigantic scale of a Florida boom town, and the houses in it which were actually built were so far apart that a neighborly call between any two residences was impossible without the aid of a motor car or a passing bus. The superintendent was about to send Sam for his automobile, but Poggioli said the walk would do them good, so the three set forth afoot.

  After a long hike they reached the dock full of racks of lumber with the planks standing on end in order to season in the hot sun without warping. As they entered the vast lumber yard, Sam walked more and more slowly. Finally he stopped altogether and said the dead man was right around the next rack. It was clear that Sam did not mean to walk around the rack himself.

  “When did you find him?” asked Poggioli. “’Bout a hour ago, suh.”

  “Did you move or touch the body?”

  “No, I can tell you he didn’t,” interposed Galloway, walking on around the rack. “Sam, do you know of anybody around here who had a grudge against Chin Lee?”

  Just then he heard Galloway, from the other side, call out in annoyance— “Sam, where in the hell is the thing?”

  “Why, right theah befo’ yo’ eyes, Mist’ Jim, layin’ wid his face down an’ a hole in his haid.”

  “Well, I don’t see him.”

  “’Fo’ Gawd, I ain’t gwi’ have to come aroun’ an’ point out a daid Chinaman undah yo’ nose, is I?”

  “If I’m going to do anything about him, Sam, I’ve got to see him. I don’t see what the hell you wanted to walk off and leave him like this for, anyway.”

  “Wh—whut you speck me to do wid him?”

  “Well, there was the edge of the dock, wasn’t it? Just what do you imagine the duties of a night watchman are?”

  Poggioli came around the rack. “Is it gone?”

  Galloway drew a long breath of relief, got out and lighted a cigaret.

  “It certainly is gone, and thank heaven tha
t ends our problem. Got a match?” Poggioli supplied a cigar lighter.

  “I don’t see how that ends the problem; it strikes me that it makes it more complicated.”

  “Oh, no—you don’t know what problem I was talking about.”

  “Well, just what were you talking about?”

  “Why, how to avoid an inquest and keep the mill from being held up half a day. You know every man jack in our plant would have to be questioned. Why, it would cost the company ten or twelve hundred dollars—just for a dead chink.” Galloway stood looking up and down the dock. “I imagine the man who killed him came back and rolled him in the water.”

  Poggioli looked more carefully at the planking.

  “I suppose he was lying here on this stained place?”

  “Yes, suh, yes suh.” The negro nodded.

  “Then he hasn’t been rolled off the dock,” said the psychologist. “Why do you say that?” inquired Galloway antagonistically.

  “Because there are no stains on the boards or trail in the dirt where he was dragged.”

  The mill official glanced about in his turn.

  “There are no stains or trail in any other direction, either.”

  Poggioli stood pulling at his chin, looking up and down the dock’s edge. After several moments he replied absently to Galloway: “Yes, yes, so I had observed . . . How big a man was Chin Lee—about what did he weigh?”

  Both white man and negro began pondering this odd question.

  “I figgahs ’bout a hun’erd an’ fifty or sixty,” hazarded Sam. “But I don’ see whut diff’unce dat makes now, seein’ as he’s daid.”

  The professor continued musing over the situation.

  “Did Chin Lee go with any women here in Everglades?” he inquired. Here Galloway caught the drift.

  “Oh, no, Chin Lee hasn’t been seen with a woman since he came here . . . Would you say he had, Sam?”

  “No, suh,” corroborated Sam.

  “Not being seen with a woman is not identical with never being with one,” pointed out the psychologist. “Could you give me a list of the women here in Everglades, either white or colored, who are large and strong enough to lift a hundred and sixty-pound man clear of the dock and carry him away without so much as a heel dragging?”

  “Whut you gwi’ do wid any sich list as dat?” asked Sam, thrusting out his head and dropping his mouth half an inch.

  “I thought we might take such a list and just walk around among the more powerful women here in Everglades, and tell them that Chin Lee had been shot. We could watch how they take it.”

  “Just why do you think it was a woman who killed him in the first place?”

  inquired the mill official.

  “Because whoever killed Chin Lee did it for a sentimental reason.”

  “How do you get that?”

  “Because she didn’t throw the body over the dock to the sharks. I can easily understand how in the excitement of homicide, any person, man or woman, could run away and forget to dispose of his or her victim; but here is the revelatory circumstance: This murderer escapes, but returns, not simply to destroy the evidence of her crime, but to pick it up and take it away with her.

  “She could not endure the thought of her lover’s body being thrown to the sharks or given over to any stranger who found it, or to the callousness of a coroner’s jury. She even bound up the wound her own pistol shot had made. On this point I am undecided.

  “Did she tie a piece of cloth around his head out of a useless tenderness, or was it merely to keep from leaving a trail of drops to betray her direction? Of course, that has nothing to do with finding the person, but it is an interesting point in criminal psychology.”

  Both men were amazed at such detailed deductions from the mere fact that the body had been removed without leaving a trail. Still both remained equally sure that Chin Lee had never gone with a woman in Everglades.

  Poggioli spread his hands.

  “If what you say be true, this becomes one of the most puzzling murders in my experience. If he were not spirited away from this dock for a sentimental reason, I am forced to doubt that Chin Lee was ever killed at all.”

  “Why couldn’t he have been killed by crap shooters, or cock fighters?”

  demanded Galloway impatiently. “He gambled heavily on both sports.”

  “Because such a murderer would have tossed him over the dock automatically. It would be the most natural reaction in the world. You even reprimanded Sam for not doing it himself, and getting rid of the whole unpleasantness at a stroke.”

  “M-m, yes, that is a fact, I did,” admitted the superintendent. “But, of course, I didn’t exactly mean it.”

  “So my thoughts keep coming back to a woman,” concluded the psychologist. “Now while you and Sam think up that list, suppose we go to the dining hall and look through Chin Lee’s things. We might find a letter or a woman’s picture— something to throw light on who shot him.”

  The scientist’s theory had a logical solidity which the superintendent was unable to shake, so he contented himself with saying rather emptily that he didn’t believe it was a woman, and the three set out back for the kitchen.

  The January sun was higher now and beat down with a sticky heat. Galloway complained again that he had not brought his car. Once, as the men trudged through the sunshine, Poggioli said—

  “If there were any bloodhounds near here, this would be settled in an hour or so.”

  “No, no,” repeated Galloway. “The sheriff and his dogs would be too much publicity—sorry.”

  The grub shack of the Everglades Mill & Manufacturing Company was a great wooden structure whose walls were made up mainly of screened windows and doors. The only solid things about the place were a big electrical refrigerator run by current from the mill’s dynamo, and the kitchen stove, which was an old ship’s range that the New York manager of the company had bought at a marine auction in Brooklyn.

  In the kitchen the two white men found Erb Skaggs directing two negro helpers in picking chickens. They had twenty or thirty fryers piled in a tub for the noon meal. A tin pan held the livers and gizzards.

  “I was just wonderin’,” said Erb, meeting his visitors, “if Mr. Poggioli likes livers. Thought I’d fry him a chicken and stuff it full of livers.”

  Galloway nodded.

  “There you are, Professor. When Erb decides to do you proud he does you proud . . . By the way, Erb, where does Chin Lee bunk around here?”

  The cook changed his expression completely.

  “Where does Chin Lee bunk?”

  “Yes, I’m checking up on the men to see how they are billeted. I’ve got to send in a report.”

  The cook frowned and stood looking at the superintendent. “Is that why Mr. Poggioli come down here?”

  Galloway laughed shortly.

  “No, it doesn’t require the help of a psychologist to describe what a lot of mill hands’ bunks look like.”

  “Well, my bunk’s in that little screened off space yonder in the corner of the kitchen. And you can tell the comp’ny when too many other things git in it with me, I take to a hammock that I got strung up outside.”

  “Yes, I know where yours is. Now where is Chin Lee’s?”

  “Mr. Galloway,” cried the cook, “I be doggone if it ain’t a shame for you to have to poke around lookin’ at the dirty stinkin’ bunks of these mill hands. Say so, an’ I’ll do it for you.”

  “No, just show me—”

  “I’ll go with you—I’ll take you to it.”

  “We can get there all right if you’ll just point it out.”

  The cook jiggled about, moved a skillet on the range, but finally complied. “Well, Chin Lee bunks right yonder in that little shack yonder—” He followed them irresistibly for a few steps. “You didn’t want to see anything about Chin Lee hisse’f, did you—whether he had any complaints to make or not?”

  “I don’t imagine he has any complaints to make,” said Galloway.

&
nbsp; Skaggs dropped behind.

  “Well, n-o, I reckon not . . . That little shack, right there.”

  The shack in question was a trifle more than a large goods box. It had in it three shelves. The bottom shelf was spread with a dirty mill blanket, the middle one contained two bags.

  “Now you want to look into those for a picture or a letter or something?” questioned Galloway. “If you please.”

  “Sam, swing ’em down.”

  The black man lifted one gingerly to the dirty floor.

  It was an ordinary pigskin bag, rather worn from travel. When the valise was open, a variety of odds and ends lay spread before them: Chinese shirts and trousers, a set of eight ivory chopsticks, a Chinese print in a silk folder, a carved opium pipe and some tiny porcelain teacups, without handles, nested together. The psychologist squatted on his haunches in the chairless shack, turning through the collection. Presently he opened a small ivory box filled with tiny gold trinkets. He held it up to the superintendent. “Know what these are, Mr. Galloway?”

  The mill official picked one up.

  “Look like gold gyves for a game rooster to me, but they are too blunt.” The psychologist squatted, looking at them with a puzzled expression. “They’re too much for me.”

  “Don’t you know what they are?”

  “Oh, yes, they’re fingernail guards. They protect the fingernails so they’ll grow long.”

  “What’s the idea in that?”

  “Why, it’s a Chinese mark of high caste—it proves the owner doesn’t do any manual labor.”

  “Then what are you puzzled about?”

  “Why a kitchen helper here in Everglades should own a set of gold nail protectors. What would a coolie want with nail guards?” Galloway considered this proposition.

  “Chin Lee might have brought them over as curios.” The psychologist shook his head slowly.

  “If an American had brought them to this country, yes; a Chinaman, no. They are no more of a curio to a Chinese than a cigar clipper would be to you.”

  Galloway agreed to this.

  “Then I would say at some time or other Chin Lee had been a man of leisure.”

  “Then what’s he doing here in your kitchen, surrendering his caste?”