Michael Gray Novels

by Henry Kuttner

  Gray closed the folder.

  What did it add up to? Surely Eddie Udall was the killer. If it weren’t for the ring, if it weren’t for the ring…

  Gray leaned back and let himself think about the ring. Up to now he had deliberately let that strange little episode with Eddie he fallow at the back of his mind. He had wanted to construct the whole picture completely before he tried to fit in the problem of the ring. It can be so tempting, otherwise, when you stumble across something unusual, to build the facts around the thing that intrigues you and force them to fit the case willy-nilly.

  But now Gray had the whole story in his mind. And still the ring didn’t fit. Except for that one little flaw the case against Eddie seemed air-tight.

  What was the trouble?”

  Gray scowled at the ceiling. He could hear again Eddie’s rough, low voice asking with that appalling innocence if he might have his ring back now.

  It didn’t make sense. If the boy had killed the woman who owned the ring, was it possible that he could have no guilt feelings about it? If Eddie Udall had broken into the Avery apartment and struck Ann Avery through the heart with his switchblade when she had caught him, wouldn’t the ring in his mind be the very synonym of guilt?

  The boy was no fool. Only a very naïve and childlike person, or a psychopathic one, could have asked for the return of the ring in the way Eddie had asked for it—if he knew he had killed its owner. And Eddie was neither childlike nor psychopathic.

  Then what was he? Innocent of the murder?

  Gray shook his head sharply. He couldn’t believe that—entirely. The evidence all leaned one way except for this one thing. Gray shut his eyes and tried to remember if he had ever before encountered a situation of just this kind. He couldn’t. And the fact that he couldn’t had begun to disturb him deeply.

  A little contradiction like this, emerging out of a mass of data that all points in an opposite direction, can sometimes be vitally important in the exploring of a troubled mind. Sometimes it means nothing at all. Sometimes it means the solution of the whole complex problem. But no competent analyst can reach a decision one way or the other without painstaking exploration all around that center of contradiction. To Gray the thing was a bell buoy clanging over a hidden reef. He couldn’t ignore it.

  He would have to explore further.

  And there seemed little point in trying to dig for the truth in the mind of Eddie Udall himself. There wasn’t enough time for that, and Eddie was too hostile. Gray ran over in his mind the other people involved with the boy and the murder. Who among them might throw some light on this obscure little point that might mean nothing at all?

  The case was bad enough in itself. Any murder is. But the Roman holiday the newspapers had been having made the whole situation a very ticklish one. The columnist Sinnott seemed to be the worst offender. He had been taking sidewise swings at the whole profession of psychoanalysis for a number of years. Now he could combine his dislike of it with an attack on something nobody could reasonably defend—terrorism by juvenile gangsters.

  But it made things doubly hard for Eddie Udall. Even if Eddie really had killed Ann Avery, it loaded the dice against his chances of a fair trial if the case went to a jury. And if he hadn’t killed her…

  There had been other things in that interview that nagged disturbingly at Gray’s mind.

  “I never touched her!” Why had Eddie kept insisting on that? Was it simply a childish quibble? Was Eddie trying to convince himself, for instance, that the knife and not the wielder of the knife was the real killer? No, the thing seemed to go deeper than that.

  “I never touched her!” Had the woman been injured in some way other than by the knife? Gray remembered the medical report. No. Had she been having a love affair with the boy? Nobody could know the truth about that now except Eddie himself. But if so, why deny it so strongly? You might better expect the boy to boast of a sexual triumph than deny it with such feeling. Still, Gray would need to know much more about the kind of person Eddie Udall was to say yes or no to that particular question.

  What he would have to do was clear. Eddie was hostile, belligerent, tough. Certainly old enough in his attitudes, as well as in his age, to make him unfit for juvenile-court procedure. Unless something new turned up in the next few days, Gray would undoubtedly have to recommend adult court for the boy. In a way it seemed like throwing him to the wolves. Ross Sinnott would think he had terrified the court officials and the psychiatrists into compliance. Gray scowled. He had made his decision. To get any new facts he would have to talk to other people who knew Eddie and had known Ann Avery.

  5

  The evening paper lay face-up on his doorstep as Gray put the key in the lock of his second-floor apartment. His own name gazed up at him out of the Ross Sinnott box on the front page.

  The first reaction Gray had was amusement.

  “That looks just like Michael Gray,” he thought, stooping. And then he thought, “Good God,” and snatched the paper up.

  Psychoanalyst Michael Gray [the Sinnott column announced] was closeted for over an hour with teen-age delinquent Eddie Udall today. [It had been more like fifteen minutes, Gray reflected silently, reading on.] A reliable source of information at Juvenile Hall [the column continued, and Gray remembered the man in the lobby] says Udall was smiling confidently as he left the expensively furnished office where he and Gray chatted for a comfortable hour or so.

  This is the third psychiatrist in six months whose high-priced time the public has paid for on behalf of Eddie Udall. Would any of my readers care to lay a small bet on what Eddie and the Wise Man talked about?

  Would anyone care to wager that Eddie will turn out to be a helpless child, more sinned against than sinning, a juvenile incapable of crime?

  This columnist wouldn’t bet on it. This columnist can predict right now whether Eddie will stand up in court before a jury of taxpayers and answer questions about that switchblade knife he can’t find any longer—

  Or whether Eddie is a harmless juvenile whose hearing before Judge Angus Sheffield will be held in strict privacy, just before Eddie is shipped off to school for four more years of living at public expense, before they turn him loose, free and twenty-one, to prey on society again.

  Meanwhile, if you have to go out tonight, stay on the lighted streets, folks. The rat packs are using the other kind. We hope you get home safely.

  If you don’t, maybe Judge Angus Sheffield and Mr. Michael Gray, psychoanalyst, will explain to you how a juvenile can’t commit a crime. You’re just imagining things, folks. Just imagining things.

  Gray swore savagely. He kicked the door the rest of the way open and threw the newspaper down on the living-room sofa with a noisy impact.

  A plump gray cat who had come hurriedly in from the kitchen at the sound of the key gave him one horrified look and skidded sharply under a chair. She crouched there, looking up with large, terrified eyes.

  “Okay, don’t make a production of it, Julia,” Gray said.

  Julia gave the newspaper a cautious glance, paused briefly, and then surged out from under the chair and began to clamor for her supper. Gray, feeling a little foolish at his own lost temper, hung up his coat and followed Julia into the kitchen.

  Something very unusual woke Gray out of deep sleep. He lay stunned with drowsiness, wondering what it was. After what seemed a long while he discovered that small, rather heavy feet were trampling uneasily on his stomach.

  “Damn you, Julia,” he said thickly, “what’s the matter?”

  Julia made worried noises. She ran down his extended leg, ran halfway back again, made more worried sounds, and then jumped briskly off onto the floor and disappeared from view. A moment later something crashed in the living room. An ash tray, Gray told himself. Then, remembering the bowl of flowers his cleaning woman had left on the coffee table, he had a firm conviction that Julia had upset this onto the carpet. Still half asleep, he sat up and pawed blindly for his slippers. Dazedly he stumbled
toward the living-room door.

  Julia shot past him in a dark blur, scrambled through the open window beside the bed, and vanished into the night. Gray blinked into the darkness. A current of air was moving unaccountably toward him out of the living room. He had the indefinable feeling that something was wrong. It might have been sleep and imagination, but it was enough to make Gray take a quick sidewise step and flick the wall switch beside the door.

  The living room sprang into vivid detail. On the carpet was an overturned ash tray. The flower bowl was intact. Grunting with satisfaction, Gray started forward to pick up the glass tray.

  Behind him a voice said, “Hold it right there!”

  Gray stopped. He turned his head slightly toward the sound.

  “Don’t move,” the voice commanded sharply.

  Gray said quietly, “All right. I’m not moving.”

  He waited, hearing a rustle behind him and the soft thump of feet coming closer on the carpet. The voice was tight with emotion, and its tone was not quite that of a man.

  “Put up your hands.”

  Gray obeyed. A hand touched his back, an unsteady hand cold through the pajama cloth.

  Gray said, “I don’t carry a gun in my pajamas. You can see that”

  “Shut up!”

  But the hand withdrew.

  The voice said unexpectedly, “What time is it?”

  “There’s a clock on that table to my right. I can’t see it from here.”

  “Yeah…Okay. Turn around. Easy.”

  Gray turned slowly and carefully. Facing him from a safe distance across the room was a figure whose head came no higher than Gray’s shoulder, though the intruder was broader than he. A handkerchief masked the lower part of the face. Above it, shallow blue eyes looked into Gray’s with nervous intentness under pale eyebrows and light hair, almost white in the lamplight. The man wore dungarees and a checked lumberjacket almost too dirty for the checks to be distinguished.

  The man? Gray looked closer. Now he knew what was wrong with the voice. It wasn’t a man—yet. Not quite. The boy might be eighteen, perhaps a year off on one side or the other.

  Gray said, “Suppose we—”

  “Keep those hands up!” The boy moved his arm jerkily, and Gray saw the revolver. It looked like a .38. Which meant that this kid had graduated—in his own mind, at least.

  “I’m keeping them up,” Gray said, watching the boy.

  The boy glanced at the clock. So did Gray. It was a quarter to two.

  “Anybody else here?”

  Gray shook his head. The boy, still keeping the revolver aimed at Gray, sidled to the bedroom door and reached inside to click the lights on. He glanced quickly around the empty room. Then he sidled to the kitchen and bathroom doors and repeated the process, never taking his eyes from Gray for more than a second or two. The whole performance had a certain flavor of movie gangsterism about it. Gray felt as if he must still be asleep.

  The boy came back into the living room and kicked a small chair toward Gray. It fell over with a thud.

  “Pick it up and sit down,” the boy ordered.

  Carefully lowering his hands, Gray obeyed.

  “Now put your hands behind your head.” As Gray did so, the boy let out a long sigh. He sat down on the edge of the sofa, rested his revolver on one knee, and seemed to slump in exhaustion.

  Gray could see the outer door now. It stood open a little, a clammy breeze moving through it. The wood around the lock was splintered. Gray thought how heavily he must have been asleep, not to hear that happening.

  The boy was watching the telephone on the table by the sofa. Catching Gray’s eye, he scowled and raised the revolver slightly, so Gray could look down its dark, hollow eye.

  “What is it you’re after?” Gray asked. “Money?”

  The boy said, “Shut up.” He looked at the clock again. Then, deliberately, he reached for the bowl of flowers on the coffee table. The container was made of heavy glass. The boy tipped it sidewise until flowers and water spilled out together over the carpet. He weighed the bowl in his hand and then hurled it, left-handed, across the room past Gray.

  It crashed squarely into the screen of the television set in the far corner. There was a loud, sharp explosion, and glass fragments hissed through the air. Gray jerked his head away. The boy laughed.

  Gray said, “What the hell are you up to?”

  “Shut up,” the boy said again. He hefted the revolver, carefully leveling it at Gray. “Maybe I’ll kill you,” he said.

  “You’re really asking for trouble, aren’t you?” Gray said. “The neighbors won’t have slept through that.” He nodded toward the ruined television set. “You fire that revolver and they’ll know something’s wrong.”

  The boy slowly lowered the gun, turning it in his hand. Then he raked the sights sharply across the sofa’s upholstery. There was a thin, ripping sound. A puff of down stuffing bulged through the torn slit.

  “Having fun?” Gray asked.

  Unexpectedly the boy yawned. His eyes squeezed shut above the handkerchief. On the exhale the cloth puffed out strongly over his mouth. He yawned again and then rubbed irritably at his nose through the handkerchief.

  Then he picked up a cushion and held it in his left hand. “If I fire through this,” he said, “I bet it wouldn’t make no noise.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” Gray said with as much casualness as he could force into his voice. “Even a silencer makes some noise. That cushion’s no silencer.”

  The boy looked at the clock again. He fought to repress another yawn.

  “You sure your clock’s right, fella?” he demanded.

  “Yes, it’s right.”

  The boy got up suddenly and began to pace around the room with quick, nervous steps.

  Gray said, “There might be an easier way.”

  “To do what?”

  “That’s up to you.” Gray eased his arms a little. They were beginning to ache. “Depends on what you’re after. You didn’t come just to watch the clock. What do you want, anyway?”

  The boy didn’t answer. He had paused by a window. Now he fingered a drapery, closed his hand hard on the cloth, and with a sudden yank pulled the whole assembly down, drapery, rod, and all. He wiped his feet on it ostentatiously and came back to a spot where he could watch both Gray and the clock. He scratched his nose again.

  “What’s the matter?” Gray said, watching him closely. “Need a fix?”

  The boy sniffed loudly and then said with some violence, “Your friggin’ clock’s wrong. I bet it’s stopped.” He picked it up and shook it.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I say it’s stopped!”

  “You can tell by watching the second hand,” Gray suggested. The boy concentrated on the clock face. Gray moved his feet imperceptibly back, hoping for a chance, but hoping, too, that he wouldn’t have to take the risk. The boy was too jumpy.

  The telephone rang, a sharp, peremptory noise in the stillness. The boy dropped the clock with a crash. He stepped quickly sidewise, still covering Gray, and picked up the telephone. He listened.

  “Yeah,” he said impatiently. “Sure it’s Whitey. I told you I’d be—”

  His voice broke off. The pale eyes above the mask stared into Gray’s. Gray knew that death was within an inch of him.

  The boy was obviously thinking: I gave myself away. Like a damn fool, I told him what my name was…

  The telephone spoke in a thin, sharp voice. Gray could make out a word or two. The boy’s eyes wavered. Now he might be thinking: It wasn’t my name, just what they call me. Lots of guys are called Whitey. Maybe—

  He sniffed again.

  The voice on the telephone spoke insistently. Gray thought he heard it say something about a deck and the corner of Geary and some street he couldn’t catch. The boy said with sudden eagerness, forgetting Gray entirely for a moment,

  “Where? Where? You sure?…Right now?…Well, don’t cross me up. Okay…Yeah.” He glanced
at Gray. “Okay, he’s here. Wait a minute.”

  He laid the telephone down on the table and began backing away in a wide circle toward the door.

  “Somebody wants to talk to you, mister,” he said. “Go on, stand up. You can put your arms down now. Hurry up! Don’t keep me waiting.”

  Gray stood up, his legs feeling unsteady under him. He walked over to the telephone, took it up. He started to face around toward the boy.

  “No,” the voice said behind him. “Just keep looking straight ahead. You turn around, you’ll get it, fella. I’m not taking no more chances.”

  Gray stood motionless, the telephone against his cheek. He waited. It seemed to him he could hear harsh breathing over the wire. He felt very cold in his pajamas. Behind him the door creaked. The boy said, “All right, say something! Let them know you’re here.”

  Gray said into the telephone, “Who is this?”

  A whisper came out of the black earpiece to him, sexless, strangely unpleasant.

  “You the psychoanalyst?”

  “Yes. My name’s Gray.”

  The whisperer said, “I’ve been reading the papers. It looks like you’re mixed up in the Udall case. Maybe you don’t know much about kids like this, mister.”

  Gray said, “Maybe I don’t.”

  The whisperer laughed.

  “Well, tonight you start learning. If you don’t play along with what I say, you’ll go on learning. This is just a sample of what kids like Udall are really like.”

  “Who are you?” Gray asked futilely.

  The voice laughed again, an unpleasant sound muted to a whisper. “Just call me a public-spirited citizen. I want these little bastards to get what they deserve. It looks to me like it’s your say-so whether Udall gets a jury trial or not. That right?”