“I’m listening.” There was a thoughtful look in the sergeant’s eyes.
“There’s broken glass inside the incubator. The killer heaved in a bottle containing the stuff and slammed the door shut and locked it. The man inside was killed inside of a minute.”
“Wait a minute. The glass is there all right, but how d’you know it contained cyanogen? There’s no smell in there.”
“No, because the killer opened the ventilator hole and turned on the electric fans inside the incubator. All that can be done from the outside. The fans cleared out the fumes. Simple.”
“Not so simple. You still haven’t said how you know it was cyanogen.”
“Because he’s got all the symptoms. Look at the body—pupils dilated, eyes wide, froth on the mouth, face livid, body twisted and stiff. That means he had convulsions. Well, if those symptoms don’t mean cyanogen, I don’t know what it’s all about.”
“Mister,” said the detective. “Who did you say you were?”
“Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia. I know everything.”
“You know, I’m beginning to believe you. Well, then, who did the killing?”
“That’s against the union rules. I told you how the man was killed. Finding who did it is your job.”
“All right, but tell me one thing more. If this cyanogen has prussic acid in it, it’s a deadly poison. Folks can’t usually buy it.”
“City folks, you mean. Cyanogen is the base for several insecticides. I don’t think this was pure cyanogen. I’m inclined to believe it was a diluted form, probably a gas used to kill rats on poultry farms. Any poultry raiser could buy that.”
“Here comes the coroner’s man,” announced Detective Dickinson. “Now, we’ll get a check on you, Mr. Quade.”
Dr. Bogle, the coroner’s physician, made a rapid, but thorough, examination of the body. His announcement coincided startlingly with Quade’s diagnosis.
“Prussic acid or cyanide. He inhaled it. Died inside of five minutes. About three and a half hours ago.”
Quade’s face was twisted in a queer smile. He walked off from the group. Charlie Boston and Anne Martin, the girl, followed.
“Do you mind my saying that you just performed some remarkable work?” the girl said admiringly.
“No, I don’t mind your saying so,” Quade grinned. “I was rather colossal.”
“He pulls those things out of a hat,” groused Boston. “He’s a very smart man. Only one thing he can’t do.”
“What’s that?”
Boston started to reply, but Quade’s fierce look silenced him. Quade coughed. “Well, look—a hot dog stand. Reminds me, it’s about lunch time. Feel like a hot dog and orangeade, Anne?”
The girl smiled at his familiarity. “I don’t mind. I’m rather hungry.”
Boston sidled up to Quade. “Hey, you forgot!” he whispered. “You haven’t got any money.”
Quade said, “Three dogs and orangeades!”
A minute later they were munching hot dogs. Quade finished his orangeade and half-way through the sandwich suddenly snapped his fingers.
“That reminds me, I forgot something. Excuse me a moment …” He started off suddenly toward the group around the incubator, ignoring Charlie Boston’s startled protest.
Boston suddenly had no appetite. He chewed the food in his mouth as long as he could. The girl finished her sandwich and smiled at him.
“That went pretty good. Guess I’ll have another. How about you?”
Boston almost choked. “Uh, no, I ain’t hungry.”
The girl ordered another hot dog and orangeade and finished them while Boston still fooled with the tail end of his first sandwich.
The concessionaire mopped up the counter all around Boston and Anne Martin and finally said, “That’s eighty cents, Mister!”
Boston put the last of the sandwich in his mouth and began going through his pockets. The girl watched him curiously. Boston went through his pockets a second time. “That’s funny,” he finally said. “I must have left my wallet in the hotel. Quade …”
“Let me pay for it,” said the girl, snapping open her purse.
Boston’s face was as red as a Harvard beet. Such things weren’t embarrassing to Quade, but they were to Boston.
“There’s Mr. Quade,” said Anne Martin. “Shall we join him?”
Boston was glad to get away from the hot dog stand.
The investigation was still going on. Sergeant Dickinson was on his hands and knees inside the incubator. A policeman stood at the door of it and a couple more were going over the exterior.
Quade saluted them with a piece of wire. “They’re looking for clues,” he said.
The girl shivered. “I’d like it much better if they’d take away Exhibit A.”
“Can’t. Not until they take pictures. I hear the photographers and the fingerprint boys are coming down. It’s not really necessary either. Because I know who the murderer is.”
The girl gasped: “Who?”
Quade did not reply. He looked at the piece of wire in his hands. It was evidently a spoke from a wire poultry coop, but it had been twisted into an elongated question mark. He tapped Dickinson’s shoulder with the wire.
The sergeant looked up and scowled. “Huh?”
“Want this?” Quade asked.
“What the hell is it?”
“Just a piece of wire I picked up.”
“What’re you trying to do, rib me?”
Quade shrugged. “No, but I saw you on your hands and knees and thought you were looking for something. Thought this might be it.”
Dickinson snorted. “What the hell, if you’re not going to tell me who did the killing, let me alone.”
“O.K.” Quade flipped the piece of wire over a row of chicken coops. “Come,” he said to Boston and Anne Martin. “Let’s go look at the turkeys at the other end of the building.”
Boston shuffled up beside Quade as the three walked through an aisle. “Who did it, Ollie?”
“Can’t tell now, because I couldn’t prove it. In a little while, perhaps.”
Boston let out his pent-up breath. “If you ain’t the damnedest guy ever!”
Anne Martin said, “You mean you’re not going to tell Sergeant Dickinson?”
“Oh yes, but I’m going to wait a while. Maybe he’ll tumble himself and I’d hate to deprive him of that pleasure … What time is it?”
“I don’t know,” Boston said. “I lost my watch in Kansas City. You remember that, don’t you, Ollie?”
Quade winced. Boston had “lost” his watch in Uncle Ben’s Three Gold Ball Shop. Quade’s had gone to Uncle Moe in St. Louis.
“It’s twelve-thirty,” the girl said, looking at her wrist watch.
Quade nodded. “That’s fine. The early afternoon editions of the papers will have accounts of the murder and a lot of morbid folk will flock around here later on. That means I can put on a good pitch and sell some of my books.”
“I wanted to ask you about that,” said Anne Martin. “You answered some really remarkable questions this morning. I don’t for the life of me see how you do it.”
“Forsaking modesty for the moment, I do it because I really know all the answers.”
“All?”
“Uh-huh. You see, I’ve read an entire encyclopedia from cover to cover four times.”
Anne looked at him in astonishment. “An entire encyclopedia?”
“Twenty-four volumes … Well, let’s go back now. Charlie, keep your eyes open.”
“Ah!” Charlie Boston said.
Dr. Bogle’s men were just taking away the body of the murdered man. Sergeant Dickinson, a disgusted look on his face, had rounded up his men and was on the verge of leaving.
“Not going, Captain Dickinson?” Quade asked.
“What good will it do me to hang around?” snorted the sergeant. “Everyone and his brother has some phony alibi.”
“But your clues, man?”
“What clues?”
Quade shook his head in exasperation. “I told you how the murder was committed, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, sure, the guy locked the bloke in the incubator and tossed in the bottle of poison gas, then opened the ventilator and turned on the fans. But there were more than a dozen guys around and almost any one of them could have done it, without any of the others even noticing what he was doing.”
“No, you’re wrong. Only one person could have done it.”
A hush suddenly fell upon the crowd. Charlie Boston, tensed and crouching, was breathing heavily. The police sergeant’s face became bleak. Quade had demonstrated his remarkable deductive ability a while ago and Dickinson was willing to believe anything of him, now.
Quade stepped lazily to a poultry coop, took hold of a wire bar and with a sudden twist tore it off. Then he stepped to the side of the incubator.
“Look at this ventilator,” he said. “Notice that I can reach it easily enough. So could you, Lieutenant. We’re about the same height—five feet ten. But a man only five-two couldn’t reach it even by standing on his toes. Do you follow me?”
“Go on,” said Sergeant Dickinson.
Quade twisted the piece of wire into an elongated question mark. “To move a box or chair up here and climb up on it would be to attract attention,” he went on, “so the killer used a piece of wire to open the ventilator. Like this!” Quade caught the hook in the ventilator and pulled it open easily.
“That’s good enough for me!” said Sergeant Dickinson. “You practically forced that wire on me a while ago and I couldn’t see it. Well—Judge Stone, you’re under arrest!”
“He’s a liar!” roared the bantam poultry judge. “He can’t prove anything like that on me. He just tore that piece of wire from that coop!”
“That’s right,” said Quade. “You saw me pick up the original piece of wire and when I threw it away after trying to give it to the sergeant you got it and disposed of it.”
“You didn’t see me!”
“No, I purposely walked away to give you a chance to get rid of the wire. But I laid a trap for you. While I had that wire I smeared some ink on it to prove you handled it. Look at your hands, Judge Stone!”
Judge Stone raised both palms upward. His right thumb and fingers were smeared with a black stain.
Sergeant Dickinson started toward the little poultry judge. But the bantam uttered a cry of fright and darted away.
“Ha!” cried Charlie Boston and lunged for him. He wrapped his thick arms around the little man and tried to hold on to him. But the judge was suddenly fighting for his life. He clawed at Boston’s face and kicked his shins furiously. Boston howled and released his grip to defend himself with his fists.
The poultry judge promptly butted Boston in the stomach and darted under his flailing arms.
It was Anne Martin who stopped him. As the judge scrambled around Boston she stepped forward and thrust out her right foot. The little man tripped over it and plunged headlong to the concrete floor of the auditorium. Before he could get up Charlie Boston was on him. Sergeant Dickinson swooped down, a Police Positive in one hand and a pair of handcuffs in the other. The killer was secured.
Stone quit then. “Yes, I killed him, the damned lousy blackmailer. For years I judged his chickens at the shows and always gave him the edge. Then he double-crossed me, got me fired.”
“What job?” asked Dickinson.
“My job as district manager for the Sibley Feed Company,” replied Stone.
“Why’d he have you fired?” asked Quade. “Because you were short-weighing him on his feed? Is that it?”
“I gave him prizes his lousy chickens should never have had,” snapped the killer. “What if I did short-weigh him twenty or thirty percent? I more than made up for it.”
“Twenty or thirty percent,” said Quade, “would amount to quite a bit of money in the course of a year. In his advertising in the poultry papers Tupper claimed he raised over eight thousand chickens a year.”
“I don’t need any more,” said Sergeant Dickinson. “Well, Mr. Quade, you certainly delivered the goods.”
“Not me, I only told you who the murderer was. If it hadn’t been for Miss Martin he’d have got away.”
Quade turned away. “Anne,” he said, “Charlie and I are flat broke. But this afternoon a flock of rubbernecks are going to storm this place and I’m going to take quite a chunk of money from them. But in the meantime … That hot dog wasn’t very filling and I wonder if you’d stake us to a lunch?”
Anne Martin’s eyes twinkled. “Listen, Mr. Quade, if you asked me for every cent I’ve got I’d give it to you right away—because you’d get it from me anyway, if you really wanted it. You’re the world’s greatest salesman. You even sold Judge Stone into confessing.”
Quade grinned. “Yes? How?”
She pointed at Quade’s hands. “You handled that first wire hook with your bare hands. How come your hands didn’t get black?”
Quade chuckled. “Smart girl. Even the sergeant didn’t notice that. Well, I’ll confess. I saw the smudge on Judge Stone’s hands away back when I was putting on my pitch. He must have used a leaky fountain pen or something.”
“Then you didn’t put anything on it?”
“No. But I knew he was the murderer and he knew it … only he didn’t know his hands were dirty. So …”
The girl drew a deep breath. “Oliver Quade, the lunches are on me.”
“And the dinner and show tonight are on me,” grinned Oliver Quade.
Rain, the Killer
Rain padded on the roof with sodden, maddening intensity; it swished on the leaf-barren trees outside the window and pelted the water-gorged earth with deadly monotony. It had rained for three days. Inside the bedroom it had seeped into the soul of the schizophrenic, the man with the dual personality; had filled him with sadistic despair until there was only one outlet for him.
Murder.
The schizophrenic rose from the bed on which he had been lying, went to the desk beside the rain-swept window and took from a drawer a long, pointed paper-knife. This was later to be called The Murder Weapon.
At the door of his room he halted. He had never killed a human being before and the all but vanquished normal half of his split personality made one last struggle. It screamed to the soul of the schizophrenic not to pass through this door, for once it did, it was damned forever.
The face of the man twisted from the struggle within him; a sob was torn from his racked body … and then he opened the door. The victory, temporarily at least, was won by the destructive personality that had been nurtured to full strength by the three-day downpour from the heavens.
The man with the paper-knife walked to another door in the corridor, opened it and stepped into the room.
A man lay on the bed, his form a darker shadow in the semi-dark of the room. The schizophrenic moved to the side of the bed. He stood there looking down at the sleeping man.
The intensity of his thoughts may have transmitted themselves to the subconscious brain of the sleeper, for suddenly he stirred and his eyes opened.
“Hello,” he said, startled. “What is it?”
“I am going to kill you,” said the standing man and raised his right hand over his head.
The man in the bed, shocked awake, saw death in the killer’s eyes. He gasped:
“Don’t! Don’t! Please, I’ll—”
The slender paper-knife came down with terrific force. It struck the throat of the man on the bed, went clear through as if it had been soft butter.
The man on the bed choked horribly and his body thrashed about for a moment. It made a wrestler’s arch and the killer
stepped back in alarm. Then the body collapsed.
The killer came forward again. In the semi-gloom he groped for the knife handle, found it and pulled it out of the dead man’s throat. The blood, rushing out, made a soft, gurgling sound.
Methodically, the murderer took hold of the edge of the bedspread. He wrapped the knife in it and wiped it thoroughly, removing from it blood as well as finger prints. Then he let the knife drop to the floor and walked out of the room. He went to his own room, closed the door and entered the bathroom.
He switched on the light above the wash-bowl and washed his hands. He dried them on a towel, hung the towel up neatly on the rack, then looked at his reflection in the mirror over the medicine chest.
The face that looked back at him did not look like the face of a killer.
Rain splashed against the bathroom window. Slowly the monotonous wet sound of it penetrated the consciousness of the killer. A frown creased his forehead. He spoke to the face in the mirror; a half whisper with a trace of returning doubt in it:
“You are a murderer.”
Schizophrenics are unhappy persons. Their dual personalities are constantly at war with one another. In moments of depression, stress or mental anguish, the element without inhibitions gains the ascendancy and the schizophrenic will do things for which he will later suffer untold remorse. But having won once, the uninhibited element wins again … and again … and in time will rule.
Remorse was already wrapping its cold fingers around the heart of the man in the bathroom. The merciless rain beat against the window.
The rain was the real murderer.
Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia, had debated with himself about taking the detour and after he’d gone a mile on it he wished he’d decided against it. The only thing that kept him on the narrow, winding road now was that the road shoulders were too soft and muddy for him to risk turning around.
The road was graveled, but wherever there was a depression in the gravel there was a muddy pond. The ditches on each side of the road were miniature torrents. And the rain still came down in sheets. Jupiter Pluvius had a real mad against the world.
It was six o’clock in the afternoon and dark as the inside of an inkwell. Quade cursed dispassionately and wished he’d been content to remain in drowsy idleness back there in the city. He’d come too far, though, to turn back; it would be easier to continue to the next town. There had to be one soon, despite the detour.
Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia Page 5