“Yes,” I said. “I guess that’s that.” It was as though they had treed an animal, and that, in fact, was just the case. I was the animal. I said: “That’s smart stuff, Leon. You used your head.”
“Dick and Mike are down on the main floor, helping the fellow from the Van Barth. In about two minutes we’ll have every door and exit covered, too.”
I suddenly reached for my coat, but didn’t go through with it. I couldn’t, now, it was too late. Instead, I pulled out some cigarettes, moved around in back of my desk and sat down.
“You’re certain it’s the right man?” I asked.
But of course there was no question. I had been seen on my way back from lunch. And followed.
“The porter is positive.”
“All right,” I said. The phone rang and mechanically I answered it. It was Dick, reporting that they now had the elevators fully covered. In addition to the porter, a night bartender at the Van Barth, Gil’s waitress, and the dealer had all arrived. “All right,” I said again. “Stay with it. You know what to do.”
Methodically, Phil Best explained, in his shrewish voice, what was unmistakably plain.
“If he doesn’t come out during the afternoon, we’re sure to pick him up at five-thirty, when the building empties.” I nodded, but my stunned and scattered thoughts were beginning to pull themselves together. “It’ll be jammed, as usual, but we can have every inch of the main floor covered.”
“He’s in the bag,” I said. “We can’t miss. I’m going to stay right here until we get him. I’ll send out for supper, and if necessary I’ll sleep upstairs in the restroom on the twenty-seventh floor. Personally, I’m not going to leave this office until we’ve got it all sewed up. How about the rest of you?”
I wasn’t listening to what they replied.
Even Roy would know that if a man came into a building, and didn’t go out, he must logically still be inside of it. And this inescapable conclusion must eventually be followed by one and only one logical course of action.
Sooner or later my staff must go through the building, floor by floor and office by office, looking for the only man in it who never went home.
It wouldn’t take long, when they did that. The only question was, who would be the first to make the suggestion.
Louise Patterson
THIS TIME when I answered the doorbell, which had been ringing steadily for the last four days, I found that tall, thin, romantic squirt, Mr. Klausmeyer, from that awful magazine. It was his third visit, but I didn’t mind. He was such a polite, dignified worm, much stuffier than anyone I’d ever met before, he gave my apartment a crazy atmosphere of respectability or something.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you, Mrs. Patterson,” he said, making the same mistake he’d made before.
“MISS Patterson,” I shrieked, laughing. “You are, but come in. Haven’t you caught your murderer yet?”
“We aren’t looking for any murderer, Miss Patterson. I have told you the—”
“Save that for Hokum Fact’s regular subscribers,” I said.
“Sit down.”
He carefully circled around the four children, where the two younger ones, Pete’s and Mike’s, were helping the older pair, Ralph’s, as they sawed and hammered away at some boards and boxes and wheels, building a wagon, or maybe it was some new kind of scooter. Mr. Klausmeyer carefully hitched up his pants, he would, before sitting down in the big leather chair that had once been a rocker.
“You have us confused with True Facts,” he firmly corrected me. “That’s another outfit altogether, not in the same field with any of our publications. I’m with Janoth Enterprises. Until recently I was on the staff of Personalities.” With wonderful irony he added, “I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Perhaps you’ve even read it. But right now I’m working on a special—”
“I know, Mr. Klausmeyer. You wrote that article about me in Newsways Bunk.” He looked so mad that if he hadn’t come because of his job I’m sure he would have gotten up and gone like a bat out of hell. “Never mind,” I said, simply whooping.
“I enjoyed it, Mr. Klausmeyer. Really I did. And I appreciated it, too, even if you did get it all cockeyed, and I know you didn’t really mean any of those nice things you tried to say about me. I know you’re just looking for that murderer.
Would you like some muscatel? It’s all I have.”
I dragged out what was left of a gallon of muscatel and found one of my few remaining good tumblers. It was almost clean.
“No, thank you,” he said. “About that article, Miss Patterson—”
“Not even a little?”
“No, really. But regarding the article—”
“It isn’t very good,” I admitted. “I mean the wine,” I explained, then I realized I was simply bellowing, and felt aghast. Mr. Klausmeyer hadn’t done anything to me, he looked like the sensitive type who takes everything personally, and the least I could do was to refrain from insulting him. I made up my mind to act exactly like an artist should. I poured myself a glass of the muscatel and urged him, quite gently, “I do wish you’d join me.”
“No, thanks. Miss Patterson, I didn’t write that article in Newsways.’”
“Oh, you didn’t?”
“No.”
“Well, I thought it was a perfectly wonderful story.” It came to me that I’d said the wrong thing again, and I simply howled. “I mean, within limits. Please, Mr. Klausmeyer, don’t mind me. I’m not used to having my pictures labeled ‘costly.’
Or was it ‘invaluable’? The one the murderer bought for fifty bucks.”
Mr. Klausmeyer was mad, I could see, and probably I was boring him besides. I swore I would keep my mouth shut and act reasonably for at least fifteen minutes, no matter what he said, and no matter how I felt. Fifteen minutes. That’s not so long.
“I merely supplied some of the information,” Mr. Klausmeyer carefully explained. “For instance, I supplied the Newsways writer with the description of the Judas picture, exactly as you gave it to me.”
The son of a bitch.
“God damn it all,” I screamed, “where do you get that Judas stuff? I told you the name of the picture was Study in
Fundamentals. What in hell do you mean by giving my own picture some fancy title I never thought of at all? How do you dare, you horrible little worm, how do you dare to throw your idiocy all over my work?”
I looked at him through a haze of rage. He was another picture burner. I could tell it just by looking at his white, stuffy face. Another one of those decent, respectable maniacs who’d like nothing better than to take a butcher knife and slash canvases, slop them with paint, burn them. By God, he looked exactly like Pete. No, Pete’s way had been to use them to cover up broken window panes, plug up draughts, and stop leaks in the ceiling. He was more the official type. His method would be to bury them in an authorized warehouse somewhere, destroy the records, and let them stay there forever. I drank off the muscatel, poured myself some more, and tried to listen to him.
“I did use your own title, I assure you, but there must have been a slip somewhere in the writing and editing. That will be corrected in a story Newsways is now running, with a photograph of the Study in Fundamentals.”
“I know you, you damned arsonist.” His large gray eyes bugged out just the way Ralph’s had when he showed me the pile of scraps and ashes and charred fragments, all that was left of five years’ work, heaped up in the fireplace. How proud he’d been. You really amount to something, I guess, if you know how to destroy something new and creative. “What do you want now?” I demanded. “Why do you come here?” I saw that Mr. Klausmeyer was quite pale. I guess if he hadn’t been a tame caterpillar doing an errand for Anything
But the News he would have picked up Elroy’s scout hatchet and taken a swing at me.
“We’ve located the man who bought your picture, Miss Patterson,” he said, with great control. “We believe we know where he is, and he’ll be found at any moment. We wish you�
��d come to the office, so that you can identify him. Of course, we’ll pay you for your time and trouble. We’ll give you a hundred dollars if you can help us. Will you?”
“So you’ve found the murderer,” I said.
With emphatic weariness, Mr. Klausmeyer repeated: “We are not looking for a murderer, Miss Patterson. I assure you, we want this man in some altogether different connection.”
“Crap,” I said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nonsense. Detectives have been around here, asking me the same questions you have. You are both looking for the same man, the one who bought my picture, and murdered that Delos woman. What do you think I am? Apparently you think I’m a complete dope.”
“No,” Mr. Klausmeyer told me, strongly. “Anything but that. Will you come back to the office with me?” A hundred dollars was a hundred dollars.
“I don’t know why I should help to catch a man with brains enough to like my Study in Fundamentals. I haven’t got so many admirers I can afford to let any of them go to the electric chair.”
Mr. Klausmeyer’s face showed that he fully agreed, and it pained him that he couldn’t say so.
“But perhaps we can help you reclaim your picture. You wanted to buy it back, didn’t you?”
“No. I didn’t want to buy it back, I just didn’t want it to rot in that black hole of Calcutta.”
And I knew no one would ever see that picture again. It was already at the bottom of the East River. The murderer would have to do away with it to save his own hide. He would get rid of anything that connected him with the dead woman. Yet one more noble little angel of destruction.
I realized this, feeling mad and yet somehow cold. It was no use telling myself that I didn’t care. The canvas was not one of my best. And yet I did care. It was hard enough to paint the things, without trying to defend them afterwards from self-appointed censors and jealous lovers and microscopic deities. Like Mr. Klausmeyer.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll go. But only for the hundred dollars.”
Mr. Klausmeyer rose like something popping out of a box.
God, he was elegant. When he died they wouldn’t have to embalm him. The fluid already ran in his veins.
“Certainly,” he said, warmly.
I looked around and found my best hat on the top shelf of the bookcases. Edith, who was four—she was Mike’s—scolded me for taking away her bird’s nest. I explained the nest would be back in place before nightfall. Leaving, I put the whole trading-post in charge of Ralph junior until further notice. He looked up, and I think he even heard me. Anyway, he understood.
In a taxi, on the way to his office, Mr. Klausmeyer tried to be friendly.
“Splendid children,” he told me. “Very bright and healthy.
I don’t believe you told me much about your husband?”
“I’ve never been married,” I said, again shrieking with laughter, against my will. God, I would learn how to act refined, beginning tomorrow, if it was the last thing I ever did.
“They’re all LOVE children, Mr. Klausmeyer.” He sat so straight and earnest and looking so sophisticated I had to postpone my graduation from kindergarten for at least another minute. And then I had that awful sinking sensation, knowing I’d behaved like a perfect fool. As of course I was.
Nobody knew that better than I did. But Mr. Klausmeyer was so perfect, I wondered if he could possibly know it. Probably not. Perfect people never understand much about anything. “Excuse me, Mr. Klausmeyer, if I confide in you. I’ve never done it before. There’s something about you Factways people that seems to invite all kinds of confidences.”
I suppose this lie was just too transparent, for he said nothing at all, and a moment later we were getting out of the cab.
Mr. Klausmeyer looking just too pleased and preoccupied for words because he would soon be rid of me. God damn him.
If I’d been dressed when he arrived, if I’d really wanted to make an impression, I could have had him under my thumb in five seconds. But who wanted to have an angleworm under her thumb?
I was drunk and sedate for the whole three minutes it took us to enter the building and ride up in the elevator. Dignity was a game two could play at. But after I’d used up mine, and we got out of the elevator, I asked: “Just what am I supposed to do, Mr. Klausmeyer? Besides collect a hundred dollars?”
Of course, without meaning to, I’d cut loose with another raucous laugh.
“Don’t worry about your hundred dollars,” he said, shortly. “The man who bought your picture is somewhere in this building. It is just a question of time, until we locate him.
All you have to do is identify him when we do locate him.” I was suddenly awfully sick of Mr. Klausmeyer, the detectives who’d been questioning me, and the whole insane affair.
What business was it of mine, all of this? I had just one business in life, to paint pictures. If other people got pleasure out of destroying them, let them; perhaps that was the way they expressed their own creative instincts. They probably referred to the best ones they suppressed or ruined as their outstanding masterpieces.
It was a black thought, and I knew it was not in the right perspective. As Mr. Klausmeyer put his hand on the knob of an office door, and pushed it open, I said: “You must be a dreadfully cynical and sophisticated person, Mr. Klausmeyer.
Don’t you ever long for a breath of good, clean, wholesome, natural fresh air?”
He gave me a polite, but emotional glare.
“I’ve always avoided being cynical,” he said. “Up until now.”
We entered a room filled with a lot of other office angleworms.
“How many children have you got, Mr. Klausmeyer?” I asked, intending to speak in a low voice, but evidently I was yelling, because a lot of people turned around and looked at us.
“Two,” he whispered, but it sounded like he was swearing.
Then he put on a smile and brought me forward. But as I crossed the room, and looked around it, my attention was abruptly centered upon a picture on the wall. It was one of mine. Study in Fury. It was amazing. I could hardly believe it. “George,” Mr. Klausmeyer was saying, “this is Miss Patterson, the artist.” It was beautifully framed, too. “Miss Patterson, this is George Stroud, who has charge of our investigation. She’s agreed to stay here until we have the man we want. She can give us some help, I believe.”
A good-looking angleworm gen up in back of a desk and came forward and shook hands with me.
“Miss Patterson,” he said. “This is an unexpected pleasure.”
I looked at him, and started to bellow, but lost my breath.
Something was quite mad. It was the murderer, the very same man who bought the picture in the Third Avenue junkshop. “How d’you do?” I said. I turned to Mr. Klausmeyer, but Mr. Klausmeyer just looked tired and relieved. I stared back at Mr. Stroud. “Well,” I said, uncertainly, “what can I do for you?”
For the fraction of a second we looked at each other with complete realization. I knew who he was, and he knew that I knew. But I couldn’t understand it, and I hesitated. This ordinary, bland, rather debonair and inconsequential person had killed that Delos woman? It didn’t seem possible.
Where would he get the nerve? What would he know about the terrible, intense moments of life? I must be mistaken. I must have misunderstood the whole situation. But it was the same man. There was no doubt about it.
His eyes were like craters, and I saw that their sockets were hard and drawn and icy cold, in spite of the easy smile he showed. I knew this, and at the same time I knew no one else in the room was capable of knowing it, because they were all like poor Mr. Klausmeyer, perfect.
“It’s very kind of you to help us,” he said. “I imagine Don explained what we’re doing.”
“Yes.” My knees were suddenly trembling. This was away over my head, all of it. “I know everything, Mr. Stroud. I really do.”
“I don’t doubt it,” he said. “I’m sure you do.” Why didn�
�t somebody do something to break this afternoon nightmare? Of course it was a nightmare. Why didn’t somebody admit it was all a stupid joke? What fantastic lie would this Stroud person invent, plausible as all hell, if I chose to identify him here and now?
I gave an automatic, raucous laugh, yanked my hand away from his, and said: “Anyway, I’m glad somebody likes my Study in Fury.””
“Yes, I like it very much,” said the murderer.
“It’s yours?” I squeaked.
“Of course. I like all of your work.”
There were about five people in the office, though it seemed more like fifty, and now they all turned to look at the Fury. Mr. Klausmeyer said: “I’ll be damned. It really is Miss Patterson’s picture. Why didn’t you tell us, George?” He shrugged.
“Tell you what? What is there to tell? I liked it, bought it, and there it is. It’s been there for a couple of years.” Mr. Klausmeyer looked at the Stroud person with renewed interest, while the rest of them gaped at me as though for the first time convinced I was an artist.
“Would you care for a drink, Miss Patterson?” the murderer invited me. He was actually smiling. But I saw it was not a smile, only the desperate imitation of one.
I swallowed once, with a mouth that was harsh and dry, then I couldn’t help the feeble, half-measure of a roar that came out of me. Even as I laughed, I knew I wasn’t laughing.
It was plain hysteria.
“Where in hell’s my Study in Fundamentals?” I demanded.
“The one your lousy magazine calls Judas.”
Stroud was very still and white. The others were only blank.
Mr. Klausmeyer said, to Stroud: “I told her we’d try to get the picture back for her.” To me, he patiently explained, “I didn’t say we had it, Miss Patterson. I meant that we’d automatically find the picture when we found the man.”
The Big Clock Page 13