Obelists Fly High

by C. Daly King

  So. It was a long message and Lord found considerable food for thought in it. He remembered, especially, Tinkham’s voice, strained with passion when he had spoken about the scientific value of the vivisection technique. The march of knowledge onward from Galileo. There had been a crusading fanaticism about that passage; he wished he could recall more of it. The Englishman’s notion that priests and scientists were identical at heart had an obvious bearing. When one considered scholasticism and the heated controversies over abstract, purely theoretical matters; and the merging of the scholastic tradition into the violence of the Inquisition, again a violence over no more than intellectual acceptances; when one considered these things, it was plain enough that a mere difference of theory, let alone practice, was capable of arousing very destructive emotions. Those times were happily over for the Church, but that was only because the Church was now, all but a very few exceptions, like Bellowes, a broad-minded enfeeblement of religion hardly distinguishable from Ethical Culture. Science, however, was young and vigorous; science, now that it had no longer to fight religion directly, might well be taking over the intense kind of intellectual combats that the Church had abandoned. At all events there could be no doubt that this vivisection cause was just the sort of crusade that had always brought up furious passions, and men were certainly no better now than when they had tortured each other about the Virgin Birth. Whether they did it in the name of a religion of love or in that of scientific benefit to mankind, scarcely altered the question. In both these names they were prepared to kill their fellows.

  It appeared that Tinkham might well have had a motive worthy of serious consideration.

  Lord continued to think about the surgeon’s assistant. There were a number of suspicious circumstances. Of course, he had had access to the weapon, but that was not a very telling point. Fonda could not remember when she had lost the clip, nor even where it might have dropped off. It could just as well have fallen near Isa or Craven and have been picked up by them as by Tinkham. The matter of Cutter’s missing address was much more to the point. Whatever Cutter may have thought of it, Lord now had little doubt that his co-worker had stolen and either destroyed it or handed it over for study to the other camp. Perhaps he had concealed from the surgeon the full extent of his interest in vivisection; but with Lord, the bars had been inadvertently lowered and a fighting zeal had been behind them.

  Still, theft was one thing and murder another. It was certainly easier to see the man as a thief than a killer. Would he advance from the one to the other, if circumstances necessitated? But this was entirely theoretical, such questions as these. What other points were actually against him? The alibi that he lacked, of course. That, however, might have a perfectly natural explanation, for Tinkham wasn’t the only one whose time was unaccounted for on Medicine Bow field. All the unsupported stories, except one, were true.

  That brought Lord back abruptly to Isa, and the very curious situation in which the field keeper’s testimony had left her. He looked for his chart and didn’t find it. Well, that was funny! Where could it have gone? He looked under the seat, but it had not slipped out and fallen there. Maybe Dr Pons had kept it when he, Lord, had come to his present seat to decode his message. He got up and prodded the doctor gently with a finger. Pons woke up with a sudden start from his doze and said, ‘Hah!’ sharply.

  ‘I think I left my time chart with you. Didn’t I? I want to finish looking into that business about Isa Mann that we had begun when the pilot interrupted us.’

  ‘Yes – ugh,’ Pons reassured him. ‘You left it with me and I put it in my pocket when you took that seat. Didn’t want to disturb you; it’s safe enough in my inside pocket.’ He rubbed his eyes sleepily and reached within his coat.

  ‘Now let’s see where I was.’ Lord drew his stool up close to the other’s, so that they could both follow his reasoning on the paper. ‘I had been over this once in my own mind and it was a damaging situation. I have been thinking of other things now; I’ll have to try to reconstruct it.

  ‘The first thing is obvious enough. Isa said she left the cabin at 8.30 and was on the field at 8.31 and that is entirely out of the question. You see,’ he indicated the column next to Isa’s, ‘we have now established that Fonda did not leave until 8.33 and, at the time she left, Isa was still in the rear of the cabin taking some digestive tablets or something of the kind. The stewardess is not very clear about the detailed movements here, but she is clear enough to confirm that; and both Fonda and Isa confirm it, too . . . Any way you look at it, that’s a queer beginning.’

  Pons said, ‘What’s so queer about it? Suppose she was off a bit in the time she said she left. She was only guessing, in all probability.’

  ‘It’s not as if she were wrong by a minute or so; she’s four or five minutes, maybe more, out of the way. The point is, she said she left as soon as the ’plane came down, practically, and she did nothing of the sort. She didn’t leave until long after it came down, until seven of us, at least, had preceded her. So we find out now. At the time she gave me her evidence, it was impossible to check it at all and she may have thought that in the confused circumstances a false statement would be able to stand by default.’

  ‘Oh, come now,’ the doctor protested. ‘Even granting all you say as to the actual facts, you are going out of your way to put them in the worst possible light in your deductions.’

  ‘Let us put the worst face on it that we can, and see where we come out.’

  ‘Really, Michael, that’s not the way you viewed the case against Fonda, is it?’

  ‘Fonda and Isa are two different people,’ Lord assured his friend, and Pons grinned openly, remarking as if to a banal child, ‘I’m sure that is true. So abrupt a change of tactics, however, would lead me to think that they did not even belong to the same species of animal, let alone the same family of humans. Is it possible that this alteration has more to do with you than with them, by any chance?’

  The detective could not prevent the slight flush that spread over his face. He knew well enough that the accusation was just and that he had had no thought or purpose concerning Fonda Mann except to clear her, honestly or dishonestly. But with her out of the way, his accustomed part had returned; his only interest now was to discover which of the three remaining suspects was guilty and then to jail the juilty one. All this, of course, he could not confide, even to Pons. He had to content himself with the feeble retort that ‘You yourself said they were almost opposites.’

  ‘It’s a bad way to do,’ Pons insisted. ‘It’s unscientific. You ought to look at these people objectively; you ought to be neither for them nor against them, until you get some proof . . . You act as if you had something against Isa. What is it?’

  ‘What I have against her is just what we are going over now. I am interested, so far, mainly in two things. First, in what I suspect was the deliberate falsification of her story right at the beginning, in view of how far wrong it has turned out to be. It’s not so much the few minutes, even, as the fact that she must have meant to be misleading. And second, I am impressed with the notion that, if one is setting out to be confusing about a train of movements, the clever place to do it is at the commencement of the train. If it begins wrongly and that much can be put over, everything subsequent will be thrown out of focus. We shall be looking for Isa, to put it explicitly, at times and places where it will naturally be impossible to find her ... I think Isa is a clever person.’

  Lord paused as an earlier thought recurred to him. ‘We shall be expecting Isa to turn up where she wasn’t, and we may even mistake some one else for Isa at such a point.’

  ‘She couldn’t have planned anything like that. She couldn’t have known where any one else would be.’

  ‘Possibly she didn’t plan it; maybe it was luck. All I’m saying is that she put herself in a position where such lucky breaks could easily occur; and I think she did that on purpose. It’s not foolish; after all, holding a lottery ticket does at least expose one to l
uck. You’ll see what I mean in a minute.

  ‘This brings us to Isa’s trip to the house. She said she didn’t know the way and was confused by the snow; she admitted that she might have taken a rather longer time to get there than most of the others. Originally I gave her four minutes for it, putting her arrival down at 8.34, and then the keeper’s evidence of a woman’s approach at 8.36 made me change it to that. It was two minutes later, but it seemed just possible when I was talking to her and I was looking pretty desperately for some sort of check on the stories at that time.’

  ‘But that is six minutes,’ Pons remarked slowly. ‘Six minutes for an average walk of three minutes, even allowing for the snow-storm. I agree that that is stretching it a bit.’

  ‘Well, of course the whole thing was wrong. It wasn’t Isa that the keeper saw at all, but that’s what I meant; that’s how her mis-statement at the beginning made me jump to a false identification. I was expecting that Isa would show up at the house about the time that Ginty actually saw a woman through the window. For a while it led me so far astray that I not only put down her arrival for 8.36, but considered it as one of the few points on the whole chart that could be relied upon, since it was confirmed by independent testimony that could not be questioned. Naturally Isa wasn’t anywhere near the house at that time, but I think she wanted me to believe she was.’

  ‘Yes, I see your point now. You mean that by making you think that she had left the ’plane at a time other than she did, you would not only be looking for her at mistaken times and places, but that, in the haphazard state of affairs, she might easily be confused with her sister who might have been noticed at such places. Hm . . . well ... it wasn’t a very nice trick on the sister.’

  ‘You’re damn right it wasn’t,’ said Lord, and felt his animosity rising. ‘This Isa isn’t a very nice girl. Did you know she had a fight down in Greenwich Village last year and injured some other girl badly?’

  ‘Rather along Amos’ lines, eh? I’m not greatly surprised. No doubt they were both fighting over a third girl . . . But all this about the false times would have been fairly complicated to have figured out ahead of time.’

  ‘Not when you’re thinking of nothing else. Oh, lots of them are clever enough for that sort of thing, and it worked temporarily, at least. You see, as long as I thought I had Isa identified near the house at 8.36, that let her out of any complicity in the crime, just as it let out Fonda later, when I discovered it was she who had actually been seen there. 8.36 at the house means innocence so far as concerns the crucial period at the ’plane.

  ‘Incidentally we know now that Isa didn’t reach the house close to 8.36 from further evidence. She wasn’t there at 8.37 when the keeper returned to the front room and when Bellowes entered. She wasn’t there at 8.39 when Didenot arrived; and finally, you went in at 8.40 and she wasn’t there then, either.’

  ‘When did she arrive, anyhow? I wish I could remember her there, but it’s too bad; I just can’t.’

  ‘Yes, and I don’t know either,’ the detective added. ‘She seems to have flitted about as if she didn’t want to be seen. There were eight people in that room, at least, when she finally came in – three pilots, the keeper, yourself, Craven, Didenot and Bellowes. She must have sneaked in like a ghost. Absent one minute, there the next. It’s a small point, perhaps, but her entrance must have been unobtrusive, to say the least of it.’

  ‘Did I tell you she wasn’t in the room when I got there? I certainly don’t remember now whether she was or not.’ Dr Pons wrinkled his broad face in unsuccessful recollection, while Lord consulted his notes on the testimony taken in Ginty’s bedroom.

  ‘No,’ he said presently, ‘you didn’t. Nor did Bellowes, as it turns out. Didenot is the source of the evidence. He stated positively that when he entered the house at 8.39, no one was there except the pilots, the keeper and Bellowes, but he was sure of it. I think that settles the point.’

  ‘Maybe she was in one of the other rooms. That might have been why no one noticed her come in the front door later. If she came in through one of the other doors to the main room, I mean.’

  ‘If Isa was in any other than the main room of the keeper’s house, then she was hiding there,’ the detective surmised. ‘What legitimate purpose could she have had in wandering about his house? If that’s the case, it’s more suspicious than ever.’

  Dr Pons asserted in a definite tone, ‘We’re just guessing, Michael. This sort of thing won’t get you anywhere. It’s no good your trying to imagine all kinds of incriminating items against Isa Mann. Even if you were guessing right by some remote chance, you would still have to prove it. What’s the use?’

  ‘You’re right, doctor. All I know now is that she misled me badly about her movements, but I haven’t the slightest idea what her movements really were. I shall simply have to try to find that out. She can’t just have vanished, after all. Some one must have caught a glimpse of her somewhere, and that is what I shall have to uncover. I’ll do it, if I have to wake up every one on the ’plane.’ Lord rose from the camp stool, folded his notebook and put it into his pocket with an air of determination.

  The psychologist got up too. He said, ‘If you are going to interview them, you’ll want this seat I’m using, I suppose. A nap for me in any case. Mind you, I don’t believe you’re on the right track with this case you are trying to build up against Isa, but you’ll have to go further with it now, if only to satisfy yourself. Well, luck.’

  Dr Pons lumbered forward cumbersomely on the none too firm footing of the narrow aisle, steadying himself tentatively against the chairs on which the passengers slept.

  Michael Lord stood thinking. Where to begin? The whole series of the girl’s actions on Medicine Bow field was blank, no indication even for a starting point. For no reason that notation he had about Tinkham’s bag occurred to him, the man’s statement about dropping it on the field as he came across. He had said it had come open and that he had picked it up and looked in it to see whether anything had fallen out.

  It kept the detective motionless in thought at the rear of the cabin for more than a minute.

  For, you see, Tinkham could not have looked in his bag.

  7900 FEET

  Between the two lines of restless figures Lord made his way quietly to the cockpit door. It struck him that a transport ’plane at night, with the lights out and the stewardess dozing in a rear seat, might offer more opportunities for an attack by a criminal than would have appeared likely in view of the confined space and the proximity of the passengers to each other. The one who had planned Amos Cutter’s murder would not have been hampered, in the ordinary course of events, by an unduly difficult setting for the crime. Previously he had supposed that the contemplated assault was to be made in spite of the air trip, that some urgent requirement of time might possibly lie beneath the fact that April 13th had been chosen as the day.

  Now it seemed possible that the plan had been made to coincide with Cutter’s flight by choice. The threatening note had specified noon, of course, instead of night; and at noon the conditions in the ’plane would much more closely resemble the publicity and difficulty one would expect to encounter in a transport cabin. It wouldn’t do, though, to take everything about the note too seriously. The hour it named had always been viewed more dubiously by Lord; it was far too specific. More likely all around that it had merely been meant, with the harmless passing of time named, to lure the victim into a false feeling of security. The inclusion of the words ‘Central Time,’ was an added factor; it had seemed to indicate almost a straining for exactitude, a deliberate calling of attention to that very hour and thus to no other hour. The night would have been chosen for the actual attempt, without doubt; he was still surprised to see what a difference it made, now that he had noticed it. The forward part of the cabin was in nearly complete darkness.

  The detective looked behind him, down the dim lines of chairs. He would wager that in the morning not one of the passengers – except possi
bly Pons, who might not have dozed off as yet – would be able to say he had passed up and down the aisle. He mounted the two small steps and put his hand on the knob of the cockpit door.

  Both pilots looked around quickly and Lovett’s hand slid toward his holster. Evidently the junior pilot was alert to further possibilities within the cabin. With his eyes accustomed to the dark, however, he recognised Lord immediately and asked, ‘Message garbled?’

  The detective shook his head. ‘No. It came out very nicely, considering. We won’t have to repeat it. I’m looking for another, though. Hasn’t anything come in for me?’

  ‘Not a thing,’ Lannings assured him. ‘I’ve just taken over the ship; I’ve been running the ‘phones for the last trick. There hasn’t been anything at all except the usual routine reports.’

  Unconsciously they were speaking in low voices. From the cabin behind Lord’s back, as he stood in the doorway, came a few slight sounds, as of some one moving about quietly, but the motors drowned it out effectually from all three pairs of ears in the cockpit.

  ‘That’s too bad. If it doesn’t come in within the next hour, I wish you would call Salt Lake City and ask about it. It should come through the police department to the field. Can you do that?’

  ‘Sure. Glad to. I don’t think it will be delayed, though, once it gets to the field.’

  The detective looked around the cockpit with interest. Most of it was lost in obscurity, for the lights on its rear wall were out. Directly in front, the instrument panel glowed with its indirect, green lighting illuminating the dials and pointers on its crowded surface. Behind its glass the little ’plane in the Sperry instrument hovered dimly above its artificial horizon, evidencing a slight climb. The pilots, he thought, must be so familiar with their levers and controls, that any other lighting was unnecessary.