A Case for Brutus Lloyd

by John Russell Fearn

  “About time!” he snapped testily. “Get in!” Then as he started the car moving he added, “We’re going to see Inspector Branson. He has the matter in hand. Good man, Branson—within limits.”

  “So I thought.”

  “Your opinions do not concern me, Mr. Thomas. Tell me, did you have any more visions last night?”

  “Well, sort of. I saw that unknown laboratory rather hazily, but not my brother.”

  “Yet if you saw the visions and they are directly connected with your brother, it seems to indicate he is still alive,” Lloyd mused. “In other words, mens invicta manet—the mind remains unconquered.”

  “Yeah—something’s damned phony somewhere and I don’t like it.”

  Lloyd said nothing further, seemingly lost in thought until police headquarters was reached. Then he marched into Inspector Branson’s office holding his crook-handled, neatly rolled up umbrella.

  “Morning, Branson. Four scientists have been murdered—all with knives. What have you done about it?”

  “I—”

  “Nothing!” Lloyd thumped his umbrella on the floor. “Just nothing! And for this we pay a sales tax, a property tax, and Heaven only knows what else!”

  “So,” Branson said bitterly, “you’ve decided to bust in with some high-flown scientific theories, eh?”

  “There is no law against a specialist, Branson—and such a specialist! You ought to be grateful. Brute ad portas— Brutus is at the gates!”

  Branson gave a resigned sigh. “Okay, I know it’s useless to try and get rid of you. Matter of fact, this scientist business has rather got me stymied anyway.”

  “Ah!” Lloyd’s eyes glittered with approval.

  “So few clues—in fact, none at all,” Branson growled. “In each case, the murder was committed in a room which has a gravel path outside it—so there were no soil footprints or anything else to guide us. No finger marks on the knives or anywhere else.”

  “And each time the murderer drove the knife straight to the heart?” Lloyd asked slowly.

  “Straight to the heart,” Branson affirmed.

  “Hm-m. The paper mentioned surgical knives. I’d rather like to see them.”

  “Right.” Branson pressed a button and gave instructions to the clerk who entered. “I think they’re called scalpels,” he added.

  “You think! Vis inertiae!”

  “Huh?”

  “The power of inertness,” Lloyd beamed, snuggling back in his chair. “Of course, I admit that genius is only given to the few—”

  Then he straightened up again as the clerk returned with a steel box. Branson laid out the ticketed and labelled knives on the desk with his handkerchief.

  “Exhibits One to Four,” he commented briefly.

  The diminutive scientist studied each one in turn, narrowed his eyes at the tarnished stain on the gleaming blade in each case.

  “Scalpels, yes,” he said slowly. “But the stains?”

  “Blood, according to the laboratory. The scalpels are leading us to look for a surgeon as the culprit. And—”

  “Blood tarnishing stainless steel?” Lloyd asked pointedly. “Da locum meliorbus, my friend—give place to your betters! Blood!” he sneered. “Clear those boneheads out of your laboratory and get some real men of science. This isn’t a bloodstain: it’s an acid of some kind—and it’s on each knife, too.”

  “But I have the report—” Branson began, but Lloyd waved a small hand.

  “Light your pipe with it! Don’t presume to talk to me of science, Branson.”

  He pondered a moment, then wrapped one of the knives up in his handkerchief and thrust it in his pocket.

  “I’m taking this—and don’t start any arguments. I want it for two reasons—A, to prove what the stain really is; and—B, to prove to a very dense world that it is not always the obvious solution which is the right one.”

  “In other words, you aim to make a monkey out of me?” Branson snapped.

  Lloyd chuckled as he headed for the door, remarking dryly to his puzzled client,

  “Avito viret honore, Mr. Thomas—he flourishes on ancestral honours. You’ll hear from me later, Branson.”

  “I’d better!” Branson roared, as the door dosed. “You’re stealing my evidence!”

  III. THE DEAD UNDEAD

  “It is possible,” Dr. Brutus Lloyd said, as he drove down the street, “that—A, your visions were not the result of supper; and that—B, your brother Brian is not dead, or at least was not dead when you saw him in your vision.

  “It is likewise possible that—C, extreme fear caused telepathic power to be established between you. That is by no means uncommon in twins.”

  “But I saw Brian in the morgue! You forget that!”

  “I forget nothing!” Lloyd retorted. “Nothing!”

  He became silent after that, patting the knife in his pocket reflectively now and again. Once he arrived home, he stalked straight into his laboratory, threw on a gigantic smock, then went to work on the knife with reagents and burners. Thomas, interested but baffled, lounged around watching.

  At last the little scientist straightened up and fondled his lock of hair.

  “Bloodstains! Bah!” he exploded finally. “The stain on this knife contains proportions of sodium chloride—salt, to the uneducated—phosphate, lime, a trace of sulphuric add, and cochineal for coloring. No man with that mixture in his veins could ever live. No man—not even I, and I can do most things.”

  “Then where did the stains come from?”

  Lloyd said slowly, “The facts are these: A—the knives were found in the heart each time; B, they were removed by the police, and the blades would not be contaminated with anything else afterward, that much is certain; and—C, they contain the fluid which was in the bodies at the time. That is obvious.”

  “Then why didn’t the police chemists find the mistake?”

  “They probably did—they must have, but they couldn’t reconcile the mystery, so they said it was a bloodstain. You understand?”

  Rex Thomas scratched his head. “Damned if I do! Sounds nutty to me.”

  “Branson referred to accurate stabbing by the murderer each time,” Lloyd mused. “We are asked to believe that the murderer was able to drive true to the heart on four distinct occasions. I don’t believe it!”

  “Then just what do you believe?”

  “I believe that the bodies were never alive anyway!”

  “What!”

  Lloyd grinned insolently at the sensation he had created. He added calmly,

  “Synthesis, my friend! Synthetic flesh!”

  “But, dammit it all—” Thomas gave a gasp. “Say, Dr. Clayton is the one who understands synthesis. But it is inconceivable that—”

  “Palmam qui meruit ferat, Mr. Thomas—let him bear the palm who has deserved it. Yes, he invented synthesis, but— What I do not like are—A, the sinister implications behind all this; B—the suggestion of its being a cover-up for something else; and—C, the decided shadow cast across Clayton.”

  For a long time Dr. Lloyd stood brooding over the knife in his rubber-gloved hand; then turning suddenly he picked up the telephone, quickly contacted the police headquarters.

  “Hello, there! This Branson? Good! This is your superior, Brutus Lloyd. I want you to exhume all four murdered men right away. They never lived, anyway—”

  The receiver squawked in response and Lloyd stood glaring at the instrument.

  “What do you mean, am I mad?” he snorted. “You’re talking to Brutus Lloyd, Branson—clarum et venerabile nomen—an illustrious and venerable name! I am a scientist; you are not. Therein lies infinity— You what? Why, man, I believe the four scientists never died by a dagger, but were actually used for some other and probably more diabolical purpose.”

  Again the receiver rattled with Branson’s irate voice.

  “My reasons?” Lloyd asked calmly. “A—the blood on the knives might be a mixture worth selling to a chemical works; B—no
murderer could strike dead true to the heart four times on the run, and—C, most significant of all, the scientists who are presumed dead would probably be far more useful alive.

  “Dig up those corpses! What? Oh, I’ll bring the knife with me tonight. See you at seven, and you’d better have a body dug up. No reason to? The Brian Thomas death hasn’t been looked into yet? Then conduct your autopsy on him. See you at seven.”

  Lloyd put the receiver back, and as he did so Rex Thomas added,

  “Of course, Brian won’t be buried yet. His immediate associates have planned a big funeral. I heard about it this morning. I asked to go, of course—tomorrow. Only you wanted me, you said, and—”

  “I fancy that the events of this evening will make the undertakers short of a job,” Lloyd murmured. Then more brightly, “But now for lunch, my friend. This afternoon my brain will knit into a concrete whole what it has already learned; and this evening— Well, flectere si nequeo superos Acheronta movebo—if I cannot move the Gods, I will stir up hell! Come!”

  * * * * * * *

  On the stroke of seven, Dr. Brutus Lloyd’s goblin-like figure walked into Inspector Branson’s office. The inspector was looking rather bewildered, but he was cordial enough.

  “You were right,” he said, as Lloyd returned the knife to the desk with a clatter. “Come and see the result of the autopsy. Only been at work on the so-called Brian Thomas so far, but the other bodies are probably the same—”

  “Definitely!” Lloyd thumped his umbrella down. “Don’t dare to doubt it!”

  He and Thomas followed the inspector to the surgery down the corridor, and presently stood gazing at the result of the medico’s work under the bright lights.

  It was the corpse of Brian Thomas that lay there—and when he could bring himself to look fully at it, for the medical mutilation had rather sickened him, Rex Thomas experienced dumb wonder. For it was not a real man that lay there—but a contrivance of springs and padding which gave the illusion of stiffness and yet fleshy pliability! A partly metallic skeleton simulated the weight of a real body, The rigor mortis of a dead body was perfectly simulated.

  The staggering fact was that the ‘man’ was only a model with a flesh covering. There were no internal organs, not even a heart. The wound from the assassin’s scalpel had simply passed through the outer casing.

  “This—this is incredible,” Thomas whispered. “So like my brother, even to the eyes.”

  “Dead eyes always remind me of dusty grapes,” Lloyd murmured. “These eyes probably belong to a wall-eyed dog. They give the impression of death.”

  “As to the identity of appearance to the real Brian Thomas, any expert modeller could do it with synthetic flesh as easily as with clay, if he had the frame to work on,” Branson said thoughtfully.

  “Which reminds me—I’ve got some new information. Crandal, the well-known sculptor, has disappeared. Been missing for several months now. His relatives thought he had gone to South America, but they seem to think now that something must have happened to him. They asked us to help only this afternoon. Seems to me it might mean something.”

  “There are times when I realize why you became an inspector,” Lloyd commented cynically. “Crandal, eh?” he repeated sharply. “Hm—I seem to recall a lot of his big sculpture shows were financed by Joseph Clough. Mystery, indeed! Crescit eundo—it increases as it goes.”

  “This synthetic flesh is a new one on me,” Branson muttered, shaking his head. “And as to the reason for such elaborate precautions—I give up.”

  “Without an autopsy, you would have considered this and the other three bodies to be normal corpses,” Lloyd observed. “Proof indeed that my genius is far ahead of the normal intellect.” He pushed his Derby farther back on his scholarly brow and said gravely,

  “Branson, we face a crisis!”

  “So I’ve figured for some time,” Branson said sourly.

  “Consider the facts! We have—A, somebody with a knowledge of synthesis and sculpture; B, such a person must be a brilliant scientist, and—C, when four famous scientists are picked out by a scientist, it is for a reason distinctly detrimental to the victims and the world at large. Otherwise, why the precautions?”

  Lloyd paused, then added, “Suppose, Branson, that you had found synthesis. Impossible, I know, but suppose you had? Suppose you could model a man at will but could not make him live. What would you do?”

  “Open a waxworks, maybe,” Branson hazarded, rubbing his jaw.

  “Or else make imitation corpses, fix daggers all ready in their apparent hearts, and steal the real people!”

  “Hell! You’ve got something there. But one couldn’t model a person so accurately without knowing every detail of his physique.”

  “Most of that could be overcome by photography,” Lloyd snapped. “And cameras can fit into a tie pin if necessary. Personal contact would help, of course; therefore we can assume that the culprit knew each of the dead scientists very well indeed. Well enough to know every anatomical detail worth knowing—”

  “The culprit’s a doctor; got to be,” Branson said doggedly. “Those scalpels prove it! Seems to me the thing to do is to check up on the immediate acquaintances of the four dead scientists and start a new trail from there. Eh?”

  Lloyd smiled blandly. “Commendable—but do you imagine so clever a criminal as this one seems to be would appear as himself each time when near his intended victims, just to provide you with a clue? Satis eloquentiae, sapientiae parum, Branson—eloquence enough, but so little wisdom!”

  “Then we’ll look for somebody who knows something about synthesis!” Branson retorted.

  “That’s easy,” growled Rex Thomas. “Dr. Clayton invented it.”

  Lloyd put a hand to his eyes and thumped his umbrella on the floor.

  “Deus avertat!” he groaned. “God forbid! He has to go and throw away my most important clue like that— Idiot!” he blazed, waving his umbrella overhead. “Why the heck don’t you keep your trap shut?”

  Branson smiled bitterly. “Keeping things back, eh, Lloyd?” he asked coldly. “Trying to steal a march again with your cockeyed science? Okay, we’ll see! I’ll have Dr. Clayton roped in on suspicion of murder in two bats of an eyelash. Why, the thing’s a cinch!”

  “Wait!” the little scientist roared, his blue eyes frigid with command. “Wait, confound you! I’ll not have you upsetting my well-laid plans! I wasn’t trying to hold back anything. Why should I? I can outthink you any time. No, I wanted to piece together one or two things first.”

  “Yeah? Such as?”

  “A—would Clayton freely admit his knowledge of synthesis if he were connected with an affair like this? B—what is the connection between Clayton and his wife?”

  “Wife?” Branson stared. “I thought she was dead.”

  “No. I found out long ago that his wife, the mother of Beryl, is serving a life sentence in a State penitentiary. Her name before marrying Clayton was Kimberley. Beryl is the stepdaughter of Dr. Clayton, of course.”

  “So what? What’s all this got to do with synthesis?”

  Lloyd sighed. “Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio—in labouring to be brief I become obscure. Not that I expected you to see anything in the observation anyway,” he added tartly. “You—”

  “Oh, the hell with all this!” Branson interrupted impatiently. “I’ve got to pin a conviction on somebody, and Dr. Clayton is that one man.”

  “Now wait a minute!” Lloyd snapped. “Get this, Branson. I’m not obstructing you in your duty, but I have certain privileges I mean to exercise. I can’t stop you clapping a warrant on Clayton—but I want two clear hours in which to see Clayton first. In taking him out of the way, you may ruin the best clue I’ve got. Now, what about it?”

  Branson hesitated. “Well, all right. I guess that can’t make much difference—but I warn you, it’ll be too bad for you if you mess things up!”

  “If I mess things up!” Lloyd smiled insolently; then, thumping his D
erby back into position on his head he moved to the door. “Festina lente, Branson—make haste slowly. Come, Mr. Thomas.”

  Out in the corridor Rex Thomas came out with a string of apologies. The only response he got was a flinty glare from Dr. Lloyd’s blue eyes.

  “Well, I’m sorry anyway,” Thomas repeated, as they settled in the car. “But just what do you figure you can get out of Dr. Clayton?”

  “A solution,” Lloyd snapped. “Now keep quiet. I must think.”

  He started up the engine with a sudden roar. Soon the car left the comparatively quiet main street, headed through the heart of the city, then out to the night-swathed country road leading to the scientist’s suburban residence.

  “Listen, sir,” Thomas said presently, “what do you make of all this? For instance, I didn’t know Beryl’s mother was in prison. What’s that angle?”

  “There isn’t any. At any rate, not yet. I put it in to give that fool Branson something to work over. Pity about Branson—he’s got brains, only they’re muscle-bound.”

  “Well, about my brother? Do you think he’s still alive?”

  “Possibly—” Lloyd was silent for a while then unburdened himself again.

  “Let us consider. A—the four scientists have been kidnapped and models of their bodies left in their places to present the impression of murder. B—their deaths would set the police looking for a murderer and not a kidnapper. C—we also realize that the kidnapper knew he could not return the bodies, hence the synthetic duplicates.

  “Therefore, surely your uneducated brain can grasp that something fiendish is indicated which will incapacitate said scientists from any chance of return!”

  “Good Lord—yes!”

  “Ah! Interdum vulgus rectum videt—sometimes even the rabble see things aright. The kidnapper would have no reason to take the scientists if he intended to kill them. He could do that without leaving models. And what are scientists noted for?”

  Lloyd preened himself for a moment in his own ego.

  “For their brains, young man! Their brains!”