Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination

by EDOGAWA RAMPO

  "This seeming innocence of yours," Dr. Akechi continued, "just did not strike me as being truly genuine. So I thought up the idea of asking you about the gold screen. Of course, the answer you gave was exactly the one I anticipated."

  Dr. Akechi suddenly turned to the district attorney. "Now, I want to ask you a simple question, Mr. District Attorney. Just when was the screen brought into the house of the old woman?"

  "The day before the crime, on the fourth of last month," Kasamori replied.

  "The day before the crime, did you say?" Dr. Akechi repeated loudly. "But that's very strange. Mr. Fukiya just stated a moment ago that he saw it two days before the crime was committed, which was the third of last month. Furthermore, he was very positive as to where he had seen it—in the very room where the old woman was murdered! Now, this is all very contradictory. Surely, one of you two must be mistaken!"

  "Mr. Fukiya must be the one who has made the miscalculation," observed the district attorney with a sly grin. "Until the afternoon of the fourth the screen was at the house of the owner. There is no question about it!"

  Dr. Akechi watched Fukiya's face with rapt interest, for the expression that the latter now wore was akin to that of a little girl on the verge of tears.

  Suddenly Dr. Akechi pointed an accusing finger at the student, and demanded sharply. "Why did you say you saw something which you could not have seen? It's really too bad that you had to remember the classical painting, because by doing so you have betrayed yourself! In your anxiety to pretend to tell the truth, you even tried to elaborate on the details. Isn't this so, Fukiya? Could you have noticed that there was no folding screen in the room when you entered it two days before the crime? No, you certainly would not have paid any attention to such a detail, because it had nothing to do with your plans. Furthermore, I think that even if it had been there, it would not have attracted your attention, because the room was elaborately decorated with various other paintings and antiques of a similar nature. So it was quite natural for you to assume that the screen which you saw on the day of the crime must have been there two days previously. My questions bewildered you, so you accepted their implications. Now, had you been an ordinary criminal, you would not have answered as you did. You would have tried to deny knowing anything about anything. But I had you sized up from the very beginning as being a real intellectual, and as such, I knew you would try to be as outspoken as possible so long as you did not touch upon anything dangerous. But I anticipated your moves, and played my hand accordingly."

  Dr. Akechi then broke out into loud, boisterous laughter. "Too bad," he said sarcastically to the crestfallen Fukiya, "that you had to be trapped by a humble lawyer like myself."

  Fukiya remained silent, knowing that it would be useless to try and talk his way out. Clever as he was, he realized that any attempt to correct the fatal slip he had made would only drag him deeper and deeper into the pit of doom.

  After a long silence, Dr. Akechi spoke again. "Can you hear the scratching of pen against paper, Fukiya? A police stenographer in the next room has been recording everything we've said here."

  He called out to someone in the adjoining room, and a moment later a young stenographer entered the study, carrying a sheaf of papers.

  "Please read your notes," Dr. Akechi requested.

  The stenographer read the complete record, taken down word for word.

  "Now, Mr. Fukiya," Dr. Akechi said, "I would appreciate it if you will kindly sign the document, and seal it with your fingerprint. Certainly you can have no objection, for you promised to testify regarding the screen at any time."

  Meekly, Fukiya signed the record and sealed it with an imprint of his thumb. A few moments later, several detectives from police headquarters, summoned by the district attorney, led the confessed slayer away.

  The show now over, Dr. Akechi turned to the district attorney. "As I have remarked before," he said, "Muensterberg was right when he said that the true merit of a psychological test lies in the discovery of whether or not a suspected person noticed any other person, or thing, at a certain place. In Fukiya's case, everything hinged on whether or not he had seen the screen. Apart from establishing that fact, no psychological test that you might have given Fukiya would have brought any remarkable results. Being the intellectual scoundrel he is, his mind was too well prepared to be defeated by any routine psychological questions."

  Rising from his seat with the air of a professor leaving his class following a lengthy lecture, Dr. Akechi put on his hat, then paused briefly for a final statement.

  "Just one more thing I would like to mention," he said with a smile. "In conducting a psychological test, there is no need for strange charts, machines, or word games. As discovered by the famous Judge Ooka, in the colorful days of eighteenth-century Tokyo, who frequently applied psychological tests based on mere questions and answers, it's not too difficult to catch criminals in psychological traps. But of course, you have to ask the right questions. Well, good night, Mr. District Attorney. And thanks for the refreshments."

  CATERPILLAR

  T OKIKO SAID GOOD-BU, LEFT THE main house, and went into the twilight through the wide, utterly neglected garden overgrown with weeds, toward the detached cottage where she and her husband lived. While walking, she recalled the conventional words of praise which had been again bestowed upon her a few moments ago by the retired major general who was the master of the main house.

  Somehow she felt very queer, and a bitter taste much akin to that of broiled eggplant, which she positively detested, remained in her mouth.

  "The loyalty and meritorious services of Lieutenant Sunaga are of course the boast of our Army," he had stated. (The old general was ludicrous enough to continue to dignify her disabled soldier husband with his old title.)

  "As for you, however, your continued faithfulness has deprived you of all your former pleasures and desires. For three long years you have sacrificed everything for that poor crippled man, without emitting the faintest breath of complaint. You always contend that this is but the natural duty of a soldiers wife, and so it is. But I sometimes cannot help feeling that it's a cruel fate for a woman to endure, especially for a woman so very attractive and charming as you, and so young, too. I am quite struck with admiration. I honestly believe it to be one of the most stirring human-interest stories of the day. The question which still remains is: How long will it last? Remember, you still have quite a long future ahead of you. For your husband's sake, I pray that you will never change."

  Old Major General Washio always liked to sing the praises of the disabled Lieutenant Sunaga (who had once been on his staff and was now his guest tenant) and his wife, so much so that it had become a well-rehearsed line of conversation whenever he saw her. But this was all extremely distasteful to Tokiko, and she tried to avoid the general as much as possible. Occasionally, when the tedium of life with her silent, crippled husband became unbearable, she would seek the company of the general's wife and daughter, but usually only after first making sure that the general was absent.

  Secretly, she felt that her self-sacrificing spirit and rare faithfulness well deserved the old man's lavish praise, and at first this had tickled her vanity. But in those early days the whole arrangement had been a novelty. Then it had even been fun, in a way, to care for one so completely helpless as her husband.

  Gradually, however, her self-satisfaction had begun to change into boredom, and then into fear. Now she shuddered whenever she was highly praised. She imagined she could see an accusing finger pointing at her, while in her ear she heard a sarcastic voice rasping: "Under the cloak of faithfulness you are leading a life of sin and treachery!"

  Day by day the unconscious changes which took place in her way of thinking surprised even herself. In fact, she often wondered at the fickleness of human feelings.

  In the beginning she had been only a humble and faithful wife, ignorant of the world, naive and bashful in the extreme. But now, although her outward appearance showed little c
hange, horrible passions dwelt in her heart, passions awakened by the constant sight of her pitiful, crippled husband—he was so crippled that the word was utterly inappropriate to describe his condition—he who had once been so proud, and of such a noble bearing.

  Like a beast of prey, or as if possessed by the devil, she had begun to feel an insane urge to gratify her lust! Yes, she had changed—so completely! From where did this maddening impulse spring, she asked herself. Could it be attributed to the mysterious charm of that lump of flesh? As a matter of fact, that is all her husband was-just a lump of flesh! Or was it the work of some uncanny, supernatural power which could not be defined?

  Whenever General Washio spoke to her, Tokiko could not help feeling conscious of this inexplicable sense of guilt. Furthermore, she became more and more conscious of her own large and fat body.

  "An alarming situation," she kept repeating. "Why do I continue to grow so fat like some lazy fool?" In sharp contrast, however, her countenance was very pale, and she often seemed to sense that the general looked upon her body dubiously while uttering his usual words of praise. Perhaps this was why she detested him.

  It was a remote district where they lived, and the distance from the main house to the cottage was almost half a city block. Between the houses there was a grassy field with no regular paths, where striped snakes often crawled out with rustling noises. Also, if one took a false step, he was immediately in danger of falling into an old abandoned well covered with weeds. An uneven apology for a hedge surrounded the large mansion, with fields sprawling beyond it.

  From the darkness where she stood Tokiko eyed the gaunt, two-storied cottage, their abode, with its back towards the far grove of a small Buddhist shrine. In the sky a couple of stars seemed to twinkle a little more brightly than the others. The room where her husband lay was dark. He was naturally unable to light the lamp, and so the "lump of flesh" must be blinking his eyes helplessly, leaning back in his squat chair, or slipping off the seat to lie on the mats in the gloom.

  What a pity! When she thought of it, chills of disgust, misery, and sorrow seemed to run down her spine.

  Entering the house, she noticed that the door of the room upstairs was ajar, gaping like a wide black mouth, and she heard the familiar low sound of tapping on the mats.

  "Oh, he is at it again," she said to herself, and she suddenly felt so sorry for him that tears sprang to her eyes. These sounds meant that her disabled husband was lying on his back, calling impatiently for his only companion by beating his head against the matted floor instead of clapping hands like any ordinary Japanese husband would.

  "I'm coming now. You must be hungry." She spoke softly in her usual manner, even though she knew that she could not be heard. Then she climbed the ladder-like stairs to the small room on the second floor.

  In the room there was an alcove, with an old-fashioned lamp in one corner. Beside it there was a box of matches, but he was unable to strike a light.

  In the tone of a mother speaking to her baby, she said: "I've kept you waiting a long time, haven't I? I'm so sorry." Then she added: "Be patient now for just a moment. I can do nothing in this darkness. I'm going to light the lamp."

  Although she kept muttering thus, she knew her husband could hear nothing. After lighting the lamp, she brought it to the desk in another corner of the room. In front of the desk was a low chair, to which was fastened a printed-muslin cushion. The chair was vacant, and its erstwhile occupant was now on the matted floor—a strange, gruesome creature. It was dressed—"was wrapped" might be more appropriate—in old silken robes.

  Yes, there "it" was, a large, living parcel wrapped in silken kimono, looking like a parcel which someone had discarded, a queer bundle indeed!

  From one part of the parcel protruded the head of a man, which kept tapping against the mat like a spring-beetle or some strange automatic machine. As it tapped, the large bundle moved bit by bit. . .like a crawling worm.

  "You mustn't lose your temper like that. What do you want? This?" She made the gesture of taking food. "No? Then this?"

  She tried another gesture, but her mute husband shook his head every time and continued to knock his head desperately against the matting.

  His whole face had been so badly shattered by the splinters of a shell that it was just like a mass of putty. Only upon close observation could one recognize it as once having been a human face.

  The left ear was entirely gone, and only a small black hole showed where it had once been. From the left side of his mouth across his cheek to beneath his eyes there was a pronounced twitch like a suture, while an ugly scar also crept across his right temple up to the top of his head. His throat caved in as if the flesh there had been scooped out, while his nose and mouth retained nothing of their original shapes.

  In this monstrous face, however, there were still set two bright, round eyes like those of an innocent child, contrasting sharply with the ugliness around them. Just now they were gleaming with irritation.

  "Ah! You want to say something to me, don't you? Wait a minute."

  She took a notebook and pencil out of the drawer of the desk, put the pencil in his deformed mouth and held the opened notebook against it. Her husband could neither speak nor hold a pen, for as he had no vocal organs, he likewise had no arms or legs.

  "Tired of me?" These were the words the cripple scrawled with his mouth.

  "Ho, ho, ho! You're jealous again, aren't you?" she laughed. "Don't be a little fool."

  But the cripple again began to strike his head impatiently against the mat floor. Tokiko understood what he meant and again pressed the notebook against the point of the pencil held between his teeth.

  Once more the pencil moved unsteadily and wrote: "Where go?"

  As soon as she looked at it, Tokiko roughly snatched the pencil away from the man's mouth, wrote: "To the Washios'," and almost pushed the written reply against his eyes.

  As he read the curt note, she added: "You should know! What other place have I to go?"

  The cripple again called for the notebook and wrote: "3 hours?"

  A surge of sympathy again swept over her. "I didn't realize I was away so long," she wrote back. "I'm sorry."

  She expressed her pity, bowed, and waved her hand, saying: "I won't go again. I won't ever go again. I promise."

  Lieutenant Sunaga, or rather "the bundle," still seemed far from satisfied, but perhaps he became tired of the performance of writing with his mouth, for his head lay limp on the floor and moved no more. After a brief spell, he looked hard at her, putting every meaning into his large eyes.

  Tokiko knew just one way to soothe her husband's temper. As words and excuses were of no avail, whenever they had their strange "lovers' quarrels," she resorted to this more expedient act.

  Suddenly bending over her husband, she smothered his twisted mouth with kisses. Soon, a look of deep contentment and pleasure crept into his eyes, followed by an ugly smile. She continued to kiss him—closing her eyes in order to forget his ugliness—and, gradually, she felt a strong urge to tease this poor cripple, who was so utterly helpless.

  The cripple, kissed with such passion, writhed in the agony of being unable to breathe and distorted his face oddly. As always, this sight excited Tokiko strangely.

  In the medical world the case of Lieutenant Sunaga had created quite a stir. His arms and legs had been amputated and his face skilfully patched up by the surgeons. As for the newspapers, they had also played up the story, and one journal had even spoken of him as "the pathetic broken doll whose precious limbs were cruelly torn off by the playful gods of war."

  Lieutenant Sunaga was all the more pitiful in that, although he was a fourfold amputee, his torso was extremely well developed. Possibly because of his keen appetite—eating was his only diversion—Sunaga's belly was glossy and bulging. In fact, the man was just like a large yellow caterpillar.

  His arms and legs had been amputated so closely that not even stumps remained, but only four lumps of flesh to
mark where his limbs had been. Often he would lie on his great belly and, using these lumps to propel himself, manage to spin round and round—a top made of living flesh.

  After a time Tokiko began to strip him naked. He offered no resistance, but just lay looking expectantly into those strangely narrowed eyes of hers, like the eyes with which an animal watches its prey.

  Tokiko well understood what her crippled husband wanted to say with his amorous eyes. Lieutenant Sunaga had lost every sensory organ except those of sight, feeling, and taste. He had never had much liking for books, and furthermore, his wits had been dulled by the shock of the explosion to which he had fallen victim. So now even the pastime of reading had been given up, and physical pleasures were his only diversion.

  As for Tokiko, although hers was a timid heart, she had always entertained a strange liking for bullying the weak. Moreover, watching the agony of this poor cripple aroused many of her hidden impulses.

  Still leaning over him, she continued her aberrant caresses, stirring the crippled man's feeling to ever higher frenzies of passion. . . .

  Tokiko shrieked and woke up. She had had a terrible nightmare, and now she found herself sitting up in a cold sweat. The lamp at her bedside was blackened with smoke, the wick burned down to its base.

  The interior of the room, the ceilings, the walls. . . all seemed to be stretching like rubber, and then contracting into strange shapes. The face of her husband beside her was of a glossy orange hue.

  She reminded herself that he positively could not have heard her shriek, but she noticed with uneasiness that he was gazing at the ceiling, his bright eyes wide open. She looked at the clock on the desk and noted that it was a little past one.

  Now that she was wide awake she tried to erase all thoughts of the horrors of the nightmare that had assailed her mind, but the more she tried to forget, the more persistent became the images. First a mist seemed to rise before her eyes, and when this cleared, she could distinctly see a large lump of flesh, floating in mid-air, spinning and spinning like a top. Suddenly a stout, ugly woman's body seemed to appear from nowhere, and the two figures became interlocked in a mad embrace. The weirdly erotic scene reminded Tokiko of a picture postcard portraying a section of Dante's Inferno; and yet, as her mind drifted, the very disgust and ugliness of the embracing pair seemed to excite all her pent-up passions and to paralyze her nerves. With a shudder she asked herself if she were sexually perverted.