He began to stutter, but I hung up.
James Maddigan was still frowning at me. “I don’t quite comprehend what’s developing here, Knight; but you’re acting irrationally, I must say.”
I nodded to him. “All right, but I have good reason, Mr. Maddigan. You see, as I told your office girl to repeat to you, I found the motive for the deaths of Harry Shulman and Bob Carr.”
He reached into the cigar box and took one of the silver-wrapped perfectos from it without taking his eyes from me. He said, “Are you sure, absolutely certain?”
I nodded. “As sure as I need to be.”
“You mean, of course, a motive that eliminates the possibility of the crimes being committed by an alien intelligence.”
I said, “That was never a possibility, Mr. Maddigan; only some clever misdirection. In fact, that’s what this whole situation, this whole case, boils down to — misdirection.”
He bit the end from the cigar and lit it with care. He said gruffly, “Knight, if you’ve actually solved this, I’ll award you a bonus of — ”
I waved him to silence with a motion of my right hand. “If what I’ve just said is true, obviously I’m not interested in a bonus, Mr. Maddigan.”
“But if you can satisfactorily prove — ”
I shook my head. “I can’t prove anything.”
“But you just stated — ”
“Listen, I just stated that I’ve discovered the motive for the killings. I know who the killer is.” I was feeling worn out, tired beyond tiredness. “I didn’t say I could prove it.”
He settled back into his chair and said, “We’d better start from the beginning, Knight.”
I said, “The big thing about these killings, Mr. Maddigan, has been the lack of motive. Neither the police nor I were able to discover any reason why Shulman or Carr should be killed. That was the big stumbling block all the time. We couldn’t even figure any reason for the attempt on Zimmer, but that was a mistake on our part.”
“How do you mean?”
“Zimmer wasn’t meant to be killed; it was a pure fake from beginning to end.”
“You have evidence of that?” he asked, interested now. He leaned forward in his chair.
“The proof is in the fact that Zimmer wasn’t killed. But let me get back to the beginning; to Harry Shulman’s death. I don’t know exactly how or even where it was done, but that isn’t especially important. That can be worked out later. Harry was talked into following the murderer out through the hedge at the rear of Ross’s garden. He was taken — probably without argument on his part — to a tall building, perhaps five minutes’ fast drive from Ross’s home, and pushed from it to fall to his death. The murderer then went down, wrapped the body in a tarpaulin or something, and took it back to the party, back through the hedge to the dark spot where we found it. I doubt that they were gone more than twenty minutes — not long enough for anyone to notice their absence. The killer probably had the cold-blooded gall to leave the tarpaulin in his car; taking the chance that it wouldn’t be searched. It wasn’t.”
Maddigan said, “It makes sense thus far. It sounds like a logical explanation; in fact, I understand that the police have already considered the theory. But what did you say was the motive?”
I shook my head. “Not yet; I’ll get to that. Two days later Les Zimmer was doped. He slept extremely soundly under the influence of the narcotic. While he slept, the murderer entered the Zimmer house, using a key he had secured previously with this plan in mind, and came up to Zimmer’s room. The murderer had an ordinary blowtorch. He went to work on the wall, creating, as best he could, the effect that would result from one of the futuristic ‘heat rays,’ as Les called it. If he had wanted to kill Zimmer, he could have. He didn’t.”
Maddigan was scowling at me again. “That sounds possible, Knight, but highly improbable. Once again, why?” He leaned forward, took hold of his knee caps and squeezed.
“In a moment. That’s the important point; and we’ll get to it. Next on the list was Bob Carr. It didn’t have to be him; it could have been almost any other fan at the convention who was unknown to the murderer. But Carr was particularly good because of his knowledge of extra-terrestrial gobbledygook; that helped the misdirection.”
“Unknown to him? Are you jesting, Knight? Are you implying that — ”
“Let me tell it my way, Mr. Maddigan. As I said, this is in the way of a final report. I think it’s accurate. What you do afterwards, how you act on it, is your business, but you’ve paid for this and I’ll give it to you.”
Maddigan shifted in his chair and went back to his cigar, but his facial expression told me he wasn’t taking it all.
“All right,” I continued. “The murderer dressed himself in a costume which completely disguised him, got the key to Ross’s room from the clerk, approached Bob Carr and, using some excuse, got him to go to Ross’s room. Our murderer was carrying a suitcase. In it was various equipment he needed. I’m not sure just what he did use; for one thing he probably had some type of elctrical transformer to step up the hotel’s current so that he could get a sufficient shock to kill Carr.
“That isn’t important for this report; undoubtedly the police will work it out later. Our murderer had another piece of equipment in his suitcase, too, but we’ll get to that. Sufficient now to say that he killed Carr and dragged him into the corridor and left him there.”
Maddigan rubbed a hand up and down his right thigh impatiently. “You still haven’t arrived at the motivation, Knight. How did this mysterious person of yours profit by his homicides and by this fantastic scene at the home of Les Zimmer?”
I said softly, “He didn’t, Mr. Maddigan. Thus far, the murderer hasn’t profited at all by the killings that have taken place. His plan was to profit by the next killing. As I said earlier, all this has been misdirection.”
He sat quietly, his eyes on my face but seemingly going beyond it and into infinity.
I went on wearily, “The oldest of police theorems, Mr. Maddigan, is find the motive. Given the motive for a crime, you can usually find your criminal. For instance, if a man carrying heavy life insurance in his wife’s name dies of poisoning, the obvious first suspect is his wife. So obvious that even though she may have built up a seemingly foolproof alibi, the police are usually able to break it down. They have the motive — they can find the criminal.
“That was what our killer had to avoid. He badly wanted to kill a certain person, but he knew that if he did, the finger of suspicion would point immediately to him. He alone had motive.
“So he started his chain of misdirection. He killed two persons wantonly, without reason, deliberately choosing two whose deaths would profit no one. He took steps to see the case would be publicized and that the fact that they were motiveless and fantastic would be stressed. He was building up a situation, so that when the third killing took place, it too would be thought of as motiveless. Whether or not it would have worked, I don’t know. Perhaps. Whether or not a touch of insanity was necessary in order to be capable of such wanton killing, I don’t know either.”
“Ridiculous,” Maddigan blurted, getting chilly about the eyes.
I lifted my right shoulder, let it drop. “I don’t think so. It’s the only answer to the whole thing.”
“Well, who is this third victim? Who is it that is next on the list?”
“Your nephew, Ross.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
We sat there in a silence you could emotionally feel, for long moments. James Maddigan extinguished his cigar carefully, leaned back in his chair and crossed his hands over his stomach. He worked his plump lips in and out, as though undecided what to say.
Finally, “Evidently, you have a good deal more. You might as well proceed.”
“All right. Let’s go back to the beginning again. You must have decided a long time ago to kill Ross. The reason?” I shrugged. “I’m not sure. Either you were misappropriating his funds and were afraid he would discover the fac
t, or possibly you were jealous of your wife’s attentions to him; maybe both.”
Maddigan’s eyes flared suddenly. “Leave my wife out of this discussion, Knight! Continue with your silly jabber, if you must, but leave Sandra out of it! Do you understand?”
“All right. I won’t mention your wife again. To go on: You initiated the idea of hiring me to investigate the possibility of the presence of alien life forms. That was the beginning of the misdirection. You brought Art Roget and Harry Shulman along with you so that it would look as though it were a three man idea. It wasn’t. Neither Roget nor Shulman nor the treasury of the Scylla Club had sufficient funds to hire me. It was your scheme from the beginning.
“At the Scylla Club party, you talked Shulman into accompanying you and drove him to your own home, only a few minutes away by car. I’m not sure of this, but it seems likely.”
He sat there staring at me, wordless.
“You pushed him from the terrace of your apartment into the shaded and dark courtyard below. It wasn’t too difficult to do. Then you retrieved his body and returned with it to the party.
“You had undoubtedly been preparing for this for some time. Somewhere along the line in your activities in the Scylla Club, you were able to acquire a key to Zimmer’s house. I don’t know how — I don’t care. You got it, knowing how you were going to use it. I admit, I might be wrong here; you might be an accomplished amateur locksmith, which would also explain how you entered my office to secure the fanzine from my desk.
“The day following Shulman’s death Zimmer came to your home to protest your hiring me. You took advantage of the opportunity and slipped him a mickey. When he got home that night, unknowingly drugged, you knew he’d sleep through your entering his house and applying your blowtorch to his wall.”
Maddigan yawned deliberately. “You know, Knight, you’ve constructed quite a story, but you miss one point. Don’t you realize that you are my best alibi? Don’t you recall that only a few minutes before your discovery of the body of Bob Carr you’d been talking to me over the phone? I called you from here, my office, a full half-hour away from the Bigelow Hotel.”
I grinned sourly at him. “I’ll admit that had me stumped. But I finally figured it out. That phone call wasn’t made from your office; it was made from Ross’s room where you had just finished off the Carr boy. I know it sounded as though you were in your office. I could even hear the typewriters in the background, and, of course, your office girl’s voice. But remember, I told you that our murderer had two machines in his suitcase? One was a recorder, probably a wire recorder. On the wire you had your office girl’s voice and the typewriters’ clicking. You must have made the recording one day through your own phone. At any rate, at the time of Carr’s death you simply called me from Ross’s room, let me listen momentarily to your recording, then cut in direct and carried on with the conversation.”
I pointed to a door that opened upon the corridor. “You’d probably left your office by that rear door there, telling your girls not to bother you. You went down to the convention — somewhere along the line getting into that Martian costume — committed your murder, then returned to the office. Later, you went out by the front entrance, letting the employees see you go and giving them the impression that you’d been in the whole period.”
Maddigan was still trying to bluff it through. He said, “If all this were true, Knight, why in the world would I hire you? Would I be so stupid as to — ”
“You had two reasons,” I said bitterly, “neither of them flattering to me. For one thing, you wanted to get started with this aliens from space stuff, one of the principal ingredients of your campaign of misdirection, and you assumed that no other agency would take the job. For another, you wanted a line on the police. One of the things you asked me first was whether or not I had connections on the police force. You wanted daily reports. Sure you did; you wanted to know how the cops were coming along, and you figured I’d be able to help you there. I was. I got dope from Hermie Cain, a wartime buddy, and passed it on to you.
“You weren’t afraid of me. You knew I was the most incompetent detective in the city; that’s another reason I was hired rather than someone else. I should have been suspicious of that from the beginning.”
He eyed me coldly now. “What in the world started you on this trend of thought, Knight?”
It was about over. I said wearily, “I got an idea from Harry Shulman’s magazine. Stealing them — you must have picked up a key from Harry sometime or other, too — was another piece of misdirection, because, actually, there was nothing in that issue of which you were afraid. Nevertheless, his editorial gave me a hint. You were in the Scylla Club for another reason than science fiction. You’ve shown a dozen times that you have no real interest in science fiction; not even the books in your home are science fantasy.
“Your real reason for joining the Scylla Club was to be near Ross. Julie Sharp told me that you and he didn’t particularly get along, but you needed a way of getting close to him so you could find a favorable opportunity for murder.”
James L. Maddigan came to his feet and stard down at me. “You realize that you can’t prove any of this.”
I stood up too. “I admit that, Mr. Maddigan. I can’t prove it at all; but, for that matter, I don’t have to. I told you at the beginning that the police could ferret out murderers better than can a private detective. They can and will; it isn’t my problem. All they need is the hint I stumbled upon. When they start checking back they’ll be able to find the necessary evidence.”
“What, for instance?” he sneered.
I was tired of talk now, and winding up. “Possibly the day you went to the Bigelow Hotel and killed Carr, someone spotted you along the way. Possibly your office girl, outside, will remember that you made no phone call from the office at the time you were supposedly talking to me from here. Possibly — possibly a lot of things. As I said, the police will be better at this than I could hope to be.”
I finished wearily, “I guess that’s all, Mr. Maddigan. That’s all of my report.” I turned my back to him and started for the door.
He snarled, “Wait! Wait a minute! Let me think.”
I looked back and shook my head negatively. “It’s no good, Mr. Maddigan; you’ve got no out. You can’t even kill me here, because your office girl saw me enter. Besides that, I phoned the police; they’ll be on their way over now.”
All the fight was out of him suddenly. His heavy shoulders sagged. He began desperately, “Perhaps we could — ”
I shook my head again. “It’s no go. Even if I was a potential blackmailer, I’d be afraid. You’re too clever, Maddigan, to allow a blackmailer to have something on you. And too utterly ruthless. Oh, I don’t really believe you’re insane, not in the ordinary sense of the word. You don’t have to be insane to be a killer of persons who have harmed you not at all. You just have to be ruthless, completely so.
“No, I won’t blackmail you, Maddigan. The minute we’d made a deal you’d start figuring a way of eliminating me. Besides that, the racket doesn’t appeal to me. I’ll admit that you’ve managed to finish off my last chances of making a success of my detective business; there might be an ironic twist in your setting me up as a blackmailer. But, somehow or other, I’m going to appreciate seeing you pay for Harry Shulman’s death.”
I left then, closing the door softly behind me.
The office girl smiled brightly and said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Knight.”
“Good afternoon,” I told her.
I met Lietuenant Davis at the elevators. He came charging out, his face pale with rage, and nearly bumped into me.
He saw who it was, did a double take that would have done credit to a Walt Disney cartoon, and checked his rush. Mike Quinn, more easily, came ambling out of the elevator after him.
Davis snapped, “Okay, wise guy; you can’t stay out of it, can you? You can’t keep your nose where it belongs, eh? I’m placing you under arrest for — ”
His mouth dropped open at the snarl in my voice, but he snapped it shut preparatory to starting roaring again.
“Besides,” I went on, before he caught his breath, “I’ve just located your killer for you.”
Mike Quinn laughed. “Oh, brother! Listen to Buster.”
Davis spun on him. “Shut up, Mike; I’ll handle this.” Then back to me. “What’re you talking about, eh?” He had sneering disbelief in his voice, but there was also desperate hope in his eyes. It suddenly came to me that I probably wasn’t the only one taking an awful panning as a result of this case.
I motioned with my thumb toward Maddigan’s door. “There he is, James L. Maddigan; he’s your boy.”
He snapped, “What evidence do you have for that crazy charge?”
“That’s your business, Davis; I’m just giving you a tip. You can work it out, and you can get the credit. But I can suggest two things to check for a beginning. First, the books of Maddigan and Maddigan. He’s probably been stealing Ross Maddigan blind. The second thing to check is his relation with his wife. He’s crazy jealous of her and she’s been playing up to his nephew — among others.”
“But why the devil would he — ”
“Listen, Davis,” I said wearily. “I’ve just been through all this; I’m not going to do it again. He was dragging a whole fishing boat of red herring all over the place, preparatory to killing Ross. Check the back of his car for bloodstains he might have got carrying Shulman around the night of the first death. Another thing: he claims he phoned me from his office; I think he did it from Ross’s room at the Bigelow. But this is your job, as you’ve told me a hundred times. Why should I work it out for you?”
The Case of the Little Green Men Page 17