Michael Gray Novels

by Henry Kuttner

  “Who with?”

  “Eileen Herrick.” Zucker watched Gray closely, grinning.

  Gray whistled soundlessly between his teeth.

  “Okay,” he said. “What happened? What was the fight about?”

  “I don’t know yet. Ask your millionaire friends, why don’t you? You may find out more than I do. You’ve got an in with the Herricks.”

  “I’ll try,” Gray said.

  They gazed at each other thoughtfully.

  “I’ll tell you something else,” Zucker said, almost hesitantly. “Funny thing. Beverly Bond had a sister, Melissa Lowe. Looked like her. Lived the same way—a high-priced party girl. Well, damned if Melissa didn’t end up the same way as Beverly. Six months ago an ex-con robbed Melissa’s apartment. She caught him at it and he slugged her with a sap. She died about an hour later.”

  “For God’s sake,” Gray said, looking at Zucker with startled eyes. “So that’s what they meant by two murders.” He sat there waiting.

  “That’s all there is,” Zucker told him. “Just coincidence, I guess. Both girls lived high when they had money. Threw it around. Probably kept big wads of it on hand when they had any. Somebody decided to help himself to Melissa’s.”

  “It’s too much of a coincidence, Harry. There’s got to be some connection.”

  “Couldn’t be. We got the guy who did it—caught him red-handed. Melissa started yelling as he slugged her. He ran out of the apartment right in front of a cruising squad car. He was killed resisting arrest. The sap was still in his pocket with her blood and hair on it. He had a hundred bucks in his hip pocket, probably loot from the apartment. His prints were all over the place. It was open and shut.”

  “Who was he?” Gray asked.

  “Name of Yates. Ex-con. A professional burglar.”

  The intercom on Zucker’s desk buzzed. Zucker flipped a switch and a tinny voice said, “All ready for you on McCreery, Captain.”

  “Be right with you,” Zucker said. He turned to Gray.

  “Here’s a weird one,” he said. “Ought to be right up your alley. Ever hear of the McCreery brothers?”

  Gray thought. “McCreery? I don’t think I—oh, wait a minute. One of the old shipping families? Used to have a lot of money? And a big show place near Nob Hill?”

  Zucker laughed. “Show place is right. If you could see what’s in it now, you wouldn’t believe it. The two McCreery brothers are real odd-balls. Hermits. One of ’em never goes out at all. The other rummages in trash cans at night. I guess families can get too old. This one’s got a bad streak. Like the Herricks, maybe.”

  “Maybe,” Gray said noncommittally. He got up as Zucker rose. “Wasn’t there some kind of financial scandal in the McCreery family not long ago?”

  “I don’t remember,” Zucker said, not interested. He turned to the door. “About three o’clock this morning we picked up one of the McCreerys rummaging around in the Beverly Bond apartment.”

  Gray, in the act of saying good-by, paused suddenly to stare.

  “Rummaging?” he echoed. “Wasn’t the place under guard?”

  “It sure was. How do you think we caught him? He got in through the burned wall in back.”

  “What was he after?”

  “I’m on my way to find out.”

  “Mind if I come along?”

  Zucker gave him a cautious glance. “Why?”

  “I’m just interested. Everybody seems to be hunting something in connection with those two sisters. I’d like to know what.”

  “Well, okay,” Zucker said. “Come on.”

  The little man jumped up nervously from his chair as Zucker and Gray came into the room. The officer standing beside him laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “Relax,” he said. “Sit down.”

  “Okay, McCreery,” Zucker said brusquely. “You know me, don’t you?”

  McCreery looked like a tramp. His patched and ragged clothes were dirty, his hair shaggy, and a three-day bristle of white beard covered most of his sallow face.

  “Yes, indeed, Captain,” he said. “I do indeed know you. Certainly I do.” He was a stooped man who held himself defensively, and his voice just now was a placating whine, but his diction was faultless. He was blinking rapidly as if the unaccustomed light hurt his eyes, and he didn’t once look up at Zucker, even when he spoke.

  Zucker said, “Why were you picked up today, McCreery?”

  The shoulders sketched a huddling shrug. “It was terrible about Beverly, Captain,” McCreery answered obliquely. “We heard about it from a neighbor. Bulwer and I knew her well, you see. We were so shocked by—”

  “Knew her, did you?” Zucker sounded skeptical. “What were you doing in Beverly Bond’s apartment this morning?”

  “Well…you see…there were a few little things we’d lent her. Small things. Bric-a-brac—several pictures and a lamp—and Bulwer and I are nearly paupers, Captain. I merely wanted to take them back—”

  “Why didn’t you ask for them?”

  “I…didn’t want any trouble, Captain. I didn’t want to bother anybody. I happened to be passing, and when I saw how the fire had burned out the wall so the fire escape led right up to Beverly’s kitchen, well, I…” The anxious voice died away by degrees.

  “How did you happen to know Beverly?” Zucker asked.

  “We knew them both. Melissa and Beverly were sisters. They used to live near us. Very sweet girls, Captain. Good-natured and friendly. They liked us. That’s why we were happy to lend Beverly a few things when she moved to her new place. We—”

  “You broke into that apartment to pick up whatever was lying around loose, isn’t that it?” Zucker demanded.

  “Certainly not, Captain.” McCreery blinked frantically.

  “I—I don’t like being out of the house by day, this way. I haven’t done anything wrong. Bulwer will be worried about me. Please let me go. I don’t want the pictures or the lamp now. If I’d known there would be any trouble…” Again his voice died away.

  Zucker stood scowling at him. “You’ll wait until we check up on you. If anything’s missing from the Bond apartment, God help you,” he said. He looked at McCreery menacingly for a moment longer, then jerked his head at Gray and went heavily out into the hall.

  Gray followed him. They halted a dozen feet down the corridor outside.

  “What do you think?” Zucker asked.

  “He was trying to put something over. Notice how the only time he met your eyes was when he claimed he’d lent the pictures and the lamp? My guess is he was watching to see if you’d swallow his story.”

  “What’s he up to, then?”

  “I haven’t any idea. He’s an interesting case, though. You going to hold him?”

  “Long enough to throw a scare into him. I think he was just prowling to see what he could pick up. He probably never even met Beverly Bond.”

  “Maybe,” Gray said. He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to get to my office. Harry, will you let me know if anything breaks on Eileen Herrick?”

  Zucker’s seamed face was impassive.

  “Will you?” he asked.

  5

  There is a ghostly feeling to an office building on a Sunday. Gray’s own office looked strange to him as he went in. Everything was in impersonal order for tomorrow’s patients. He felt like an intruder as he got Eileen’s file out of its locked cabinet and sat down in the quiet to look it over.

  Six months can be a very long time, or a very short one, in therapy. Gray knew a great deal about Eileen Herrick by now. He knew some of her unconscious conflicts, the violent storms that raged beneath the surface of her mind. Had the furies exploded at last? Gray didn’t know. Digging into Eileen’s submerged problems had been a slow and painful process, unusually slow. She fought so fiercely to hide from herself the sources of her own grief and trouble. There was much violence in her. Had it discharged itself last night, out of control, in a volcanic outburst of destruction? He turned the pages slowly, wishing he c
ould find an answer.

  About half an hour after he had sat down, the telephone rang sharply in the stillness. Gray picked it up and said, “Hello?”

  No one answered.

  “Hello?” Gray said again.

  At the other end of the line someone coughed and suddenly the line was dead; the hard, relentless humming of a broken connection buzzed in his ear. Gray laid the instrument slowly back in place.

  Afterward he sat and waited.

  A long time later the outer door opened and a light footstep sounded on the floor.

  “Eileen?” Gray called softly. “Come in.”

  She looked younger than she was. Her short black hair was a cap of skillfully cut curls, and her eyes were gray and deep-lashed. She had been pretty the last time Gray saw her, but this morning misery and despair had blurred all her features, smudged dark circles under her eyes, tightened her mouth to a thin line.

  Gray stood up. “Come in,” he said again.

  She came warily, watching him. He pulled out a chair for her, closed the door quietly behind her. Then he returned to his own chair and waited.

  Eileen ran an unsteady palm over the clasp of her handbag. She opened it, reached in. Her hand stayed motionless, hidden from sight. Then, slowly, she pulled out an earring shaped like a dolphin, gold with brilliants encrusting it. Nervously she rubbed it between thumb and finger. A muscle kept twitching at the corner of her mouth. She looked at Gray expectantly.

  “Well?” she said.

  “I’m glad you came,” Gray told her calmly.

  “Did you know it was me on the phone?”

  “I hoped it was. That’s why I waited.”

  She smoothed her badly wrinkled skirt. She said, “It was funny. I went to a hotel last night. I didn’t sleep any. Not at all. But about an hour ago I started thinking about you…Oh, I don’t know why I did come up here. It doesn’t matter, anyway.” She gave a sudden, violent shudder, not seeming to realize it “This is the last time, anyway.”

  “Why?” Gray asked.

  “Because it doesn’t help any! It’s no good. I’m no good. I don’t know why. Maybe I was born that way. But I’m…rotten. It’s no use. I’ll never be any better. I’ll never change.”

  Gray said, “You used to feel that way a lot, remember? But lately you’ve been liking yourself better. We’ve been finding out some of the reasons behind these feelings of yours—”

  Eileen shook her head. The muscle twitched at the corner of her mouth. “No. I—I can’t be helped. Nobody can help me. You know the things I’ve done, the things I’ve thought…Oh—I must make you sick!”

  Gray thought quickly. This was no time for careful therapy techniques. He said in a calm voice, “Last night I came as soon as I got your call. But I couldn’t find you. I was very much worried. I don’t want anything to go wrong for you. This whole business looks like serious trouble. I think we ought to talk about it now.”

  “What is there to talk about?” she asked. Then she drew a deep breath and raised her eyes to look straight into Gray’s.

  “I killed her,” she said. “I killed Beverly Bond.”

  It was very still in the office. Gray didn’t move or speak. The drone of a distant plane going by was loud in the quiet Somewhere far off a cable car clanged through a crossing.

  Eileen said in a rising voice, “Well? Can’t you say anything? I tell you I killed her!”

  “Yes,” Gray said. His voice didn’t sound quite even and he sat silent a moment longer, struggling to control it. He knew what Eileen expected, what she had expected from him all along: the harsh parental controls that had helped to create her own internal conflicts. Very slowly Gray had succeeded in winning her over to the belief that he himself would make no judgments on her, that she was free to speak as she liked without criticism from him.

  Now, he thought, she was testing him anew. Now she was forcing him into a spot in which he would have to speak harshly if he spoke at all. He sensed the triumph in her.

  “Yes,” he said again, listening carefully to the evenness of his own voice. “I heard you, Eileen.” He paused. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  ‘Tell you about it!” There was rage in her voice as she echoed his words. “Do I want to tell you about it! Stop sitting there like God Almighty! I killed Beverly Bond, do you hear? I took that knife and stabbed her! She’s dead! Doesn’t that mean anything to you at all?”

  “It means a great deal. I’m very glad you came here to tell me. Have you told anyone else yet?”

  “No.” Now her voice was sullen. “I called the—” She checked herself, and another of the violent shudders went over her. “I came to you first because I—because—Oh, don’t look so damned smug! Because I’ve fooled you! I wanted you to know how I’ve been laughing at you all along and you never knew it. You thought I was so wonderful! Talking about guilt feelings and not—not blaming me and…” Her voice wavered and stopped. She snuffled miserably.

  “How have you been fooling me, Eileen?” Gray asked.

  “Lots of ways. Lots of things.” She struggled for a moment with tears, then blinked them back and looked at him defiantly. “You thought you were God Himself and you’re really so damned dumb, letting me fool you! I could tell you things—I remember things—” She broke off sharply, and a look of startled wonder crossed her face.

  Gray watched her intently. He thought there was more in this moment than Eileen guessed. What she said was childish bravado, but out of the unconscious mind perhaps memories were rising she hadn’t guessed were there. For the first time since her analysis had started, he felt that some deep-buried core conflict was struggling to the surface. Had it taken the act of murder to release it?

  “What is it you remember, Eileen?” he asked very softly.

  She sat still for a long moment. Then she shivered all over and sighed a deep sigh.

  “Nothing. I don’t know.”

  The moment had passed. Gray waited. Presently she looked up.

  “I suppose I—I’ll have to go to the police now, won’t I?” she said in almost a normal voice.

  “I suppose you will, if you’re really sure you want to say you killed Beverly Bond.”

  “Of course I’m sure! I know what I’ve done.”

  Gray leaned forward, folding his arms on the desk.

  “I wish you’d tell me about it. The police will want to know some of the same things I do.”

  “What things?”

  “Why you did whatever you did. How you did it. When—”

  “I saw her at the club last night,” Eileen said rapidly. She had clenched her hand and now she was drumming it on the chair arm, slowly at first and then faster and faster. “I knew who she was. I hated her. I had some drinks and I hated her more with every drink. So I went over finally and told her she had to leave—to stop—Never mind. We had a quarrel. A fight. And then—” Eileen made a brushing-away gesture with the hand that had been drumming on the chair arm.

  “I went to her apartment. When I left the Silver Slipper, I went to her place. She let me in. We had another fight and I—grabbed up a knife and stabbed her. She fell back on the sofa and—” Eileen drew a shuddering breath. “That was all,” she said.

  Gray asked quietly, after a pause, “Why did you hate her?”

  She wouldn’t look at him. With her gaze on the floor she said, “I was—jealous of her. I knew. Everybody thought I didn’t, but I knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “That she was sleeping with Neil,” Eileen said very quickly, running the words together. “Oh, I knew, all right. Just because I never told you doesn’t mean I didn’t know. There were lots of things I couldn’t tell you…” She flashed him a look of sudden anger. “If you’d been any good you’d have found out anyhow!”

  “She was trying to come between you and Neil Pollard?”

  Eileen nodded jerkily. “So I killed her.” Her voice was flat. “And then I—I set the fire. To try to destroy any evidence that I’d b
een there, you see. I thought a fire would…” She let her voice die away. The drumming fist had begun to beat again.

  Gray said, “Why were you knocking at the door, then, from the outsider

  She looked at the window quickly. She looked at the corner of the ceiling. She shifted her weight rapidly in the chair.

  “Because somebody came by in the hall. Just as I was going out. I think they knew me. A man and a woman, it was. So I pretended to be trying to get in instead of just leaving. I didn’t know what else to do. I started pounding on the door, and somehow I—I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t keep from starting to scream—and—and cry …”

  She looked up at Gray, her small face convulsing for a moment. She beat her closed fist on her knee. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do!” She broke off on the verge of hysteria, paused, fought for control. “Either way—it might kill my mother,” she said. “Either way…”

  “What other way?” Gray asked softly.

  She gave him one quick glance, her voice suddenly very quiet. He could hardly hear what she was saying.

  “I thought maybe I ought to kill myself…”

  Gray waited, though he knew he couldn’t wait long.

  “She’s an invalid—my mother is. You know about that. I told you. I didn’t tell you it was my fault…” The voice faltered briefly. A puzzled look crossed the girl’s face. She wasn’t looking at Gray. Her gaze seemed to be focused inward on some scene visible only to herself, and only incompletely even now. “My fault,” she said, almost whispering. “I remember that. Something in my mouth.”

  Her free hand moved falteringly, spread flat, hovering over her stomach, her abdomen. “Hot,” she said. “Something hot…”

  Gray held his breath. Was this floating memory a clue around which centered the clustering guilts that drove Eileen so hard? Some memory which it had taken all these violent stresses to dislodge…

  “It was my fault,” she said again, whispering. “If only I hadn’t—”

  Sudden, heavy knocking thudded on the door to the outer office. Eileen jumped convulsively. But even now, Gray noticed, her left hand clutched her purse tightly. He hadn’t time to wonder just now about it.