Murder on the Blackboard

by Stuart Palmer

  They all rushed to the door, Miss Withers in the lead. But they saw only the perspiring face of the Sergeant, his hat over his eyes and his right hand dangling an empty handcuff.

  He was running down the hall toward them, his legs moving like pistons, but making very poor time. A floor nurse followed him, temporarily shocked out of her usual poise.

  “He’s got away and escaped!” the Sergeant announced, unnecessarily. “Hit me over the head, and then ran back up these stairs and down the front ones!” The Sergeant was near to collapse.

  “After him!” shouted Bob Stevenson. He set out down the hall at a fast sprint, with Georgie Swarthout trotting leisurely behind, and Macfarland and Tobey in the rear. Miss Withers could hear Stevenson’s feet pounding down the stair, and then suddenly stop on the lower landing.

  The young man was at the window when Georgie and the others caught up. “Which way did he go?” they demanded. “Did you see him below in the street?”

  Bob Stevenson shook his head. “I thought so, for a minute. But I guess it wasn’t he. I’m afraid it’s no use—he’s got clean away.”

  The men climbed the stairs again, to where Miss Withers and the others were waiting. The floor nurse had already returned to her desk and her doze. Miss Rennel had something to say about it all. “The idea of letting a dangerous maniac run loose among us, with only one or two half-witted officers in the whole building! I shall write a letter to the Times about this!”

  “I’m really awfully sorry about the whole thing,” Miss Withers apologized. “Our intentions were the best in the world. Well, good night, everybody. If it is possible to have the Inspector go through with this tomorrow, we’ll be notified at the school.”

  Bob Stevenson lingered a little behind the others. “Miss Withers,” he suggested, “I’m taking Janey Davis home, and there’s plenty of room in the cab. Won’t you ride with us? She lives quite near you.”

  “Not tonight, thanks,” she refused him. “You two children run along together. Two is a company, you know….”

  She put on her hat and coat, and followed the procession down the stair, oblivious of the fact that there was a good deal of hostility rampant about her. In the lower hall she paused.

  “Good night, everybody,” she said. “I think I’ll just run back up and see how the Inspector is.” The Sergeant paused, dejected and disheveled.

  “Bang the door when you leave,” he advised. “The lock is set.”

  She had a last glimpse of Macfarland’s face, strangely haunted, as she turned away. She stood on the lower step of the stair for a moment, making note of the lower hall, now half-darkened and completely deserted. Up toward the front of the building, she knew, the night phone girl was on duty, but this rear hall, used in the daytime for deliveries and ambulance cases, was left to its own devices.

  After a few minutes had passed, Hildegarde Withers crossed the hall again intent upon releasing the spring lock of the door. Much to her surprised gratification, she discovered that someone had been forehanded, and that she had been beaten to it.

  Leaving the door as it was, she climbed the stairs again. But this time she did not go down the hall to the waiting room, but went on up to the fifth and top floor. At the far end of the long hall, a sleepy night nurse was bent over a magazine. Through the windows, violent howls resounded from the violent ward of the Mental Wing, but all was quiet here. Not a red light showed above a single door.

  The Inspector’s room was at the end of the hall, the first door from the rear stair. Miss Withers opened it, and stepped inside.

  Inspector Piper, far from being in the state of coma so touchingly described by Dr. Horman, was calmly reading a copy of Real Detective Tales, with the blue smoke of a cigar eddying above his head.

  Hildegarde Withers brusquely removed the cigar from his mouth and tossed it from the window, which she opened to its fullest capacity. Then she put away the magazine.

  “How do you expect anyone to believe you’re sick when the place simply reeks of tobacco?” She tucked him carefully in, smoothed his pillow, and emptied his ashtray.

  “Everything go all right?” he wanted to know.

  “Like clockwork,” she answered.

  “Anderson make his getaway?”

  She smiled. “It was a narrow squeak. Allen and Burns were pretty slow to grab him, and I was afraid for a minute that Bob Stevenson, who is quicker on his feet than I thought, was going to queer the works, as you say, by recapturing the fugitive. But it all went off perfectly. The Sergeant is coming up the front way, and he ought to be here any minute. There’s someone now—yes, it’s he.”

  The door opened, and Taylor appeared. He was grinning from ear to ear. “Boy, I should of been an actor,” he announced. “Did I put over the phoney escape! Say, they ought to give me six curtain calls.”

  “The last act isn’t over yet,” Miss Withers reminded him. “Everything quiet outside?”

  “Like a tomb,” said the Sergeant. “The floor nurse up at the other end of the hall goes out for coffee every half hour or so, as you told her, and in between she sleeps. And that isn’t acting—she didn’t even hear me go by, and I came up the front stairs, right by her desk!”

  Miss Withers moved toward the light switch near the door. “Everything all set? Oscar, do you feel like a goat?”

  “I’m practically Billy Whiskers himself,” said Oscar Piper. “This excitement will probably set my convalescence back a week or two, but it’s worth it. Fire away.”

  But Miss Withers stopped short. “I almost forgot your medicine,” she announced. She poured some water from the pitcher at the bedside into a glass, and then shook her head. “It doesn’t look like medicine,” she decided. “Even in the dark it wouldn’t look like medicine….”

  She stepped out of the room for a moment, and returned with a tiny vial of iodine. Three drops in the half glass of water produced a remarkably medicinal looking concoction.

  “Don’t make a mistake and drink this,” she warned the Inspector. He grinned up at her.

  “Don’t you make any mistakes yourself,” he retorted. “If this scheme of yours backfires, don’t blame me….”

  “If it backfires, you’re the goat,” she reminded him. He patted his pillow, under which was a comforting lump made by an automatic .44.

  A last minute survey of the room showed everything shipshape. Miss Withers pulled down the shade, in case the fog should clear and the moon come out again. Then she motioned toward the little clothes closet across the room, in which the Inspector’s tweeds awaited his recovery.

  “To your station, Sergeant,” she ordered. “Is the cord long enough? Good.” She tested the bedside lamp, screwed the bulb in as tightly as it would go, and then made sure that the cord which ran across the floor and under the closet door was not tangled around anything.

  “Remember, Sergeant,” she said. “No matter what happens, no matter what you hear or think you hear, don’t turn on that light or come out of the closet until you hear me call your name. Get it?”

  “Got it,” answered the Sergeant. She made sure that the door was tightly closed upon him. “Remember to breathe heavily and deeply, Oscar. You’re in a coma. Well—here goes!”

  She crossed the room to the door, and turned out the overheads. Instantly the place was as black as a sea of pitch.

  Awkwardly she felt her way along the wall to the door which opened into the next room, now vacant by arrangement. There were some advantages in being in a city hospital. She stepped through the door into a room as black as the one she had left, leaving it open. She fumbled for a few moments in the darkness, finally finding the chair she sought. It was a cushionless, wooden chair with a straight back. She had chosen it so—for Hildegarde Withers did not mean to sleep this night.

  Something heavy and chill lay against her heart—it was the little gun that she had found in Janey Davis’ desk so few days and so many centuries ago. She pressed it to her, finding a solid comfort in the knowledge that it n
o longer held blanks, as Janey had left it, but that it was now capable of sending forth ten soft-nosed missives of death within as many seconds. She thought she knew how to use it, but she was not sure.

  She wished heartily that she had remembered to acquire a wristwatch with a radium dial. But at any rate her old-fashioned timepiece ticked cheerily away on her wrist, and she felt a certain companionship from its familiar sound. The ticking seemed to resound through the empty room—finally merging, against her will, into a dull, muffled roar as of many waters….

  She awakened sharply, a moment or an hour afterward. For one terrible second she forgot where she was, and why. Then it came back to her, and instantly she knew that a sound had roused her.

  It came again, a soft but definite knocking at the door of the room in which the Inspector lay.

  XX

  Tag!

  (11/21/32—1:15 A.M.)

  “CONFOUND THOSE MEDDLING NURSES,” Miss Withers whispered. It was up to her to do something about it, since Sergeant Taylor had his orders to stay in the closet until she called his name, and the Inspector could not move.

  She rose from her chair and tiptoed softly through the open doorway and across the other room. She paused for a moment by the door, and then threw it open.

  The face of Bob Stevenson met her own. For a moment they stood there, speechless. “Don’t be startled,” he whispered. “But I thought you would probably decide to keep a vigil here tonight, and I had to talk to you.”

  “But—” she protested. This was not what she had expected.

  “I know what you’re thinking. You were afraid there might be an attempt on the Inspector’s life, weren’t you?” Stevenson was strained and excited.

  “Perhaps I was,” admitted Miss Withers.

  “So was I.” His voice was tense. “Listen, you ought to know this. I didn’t tell anybody what I saw from that landing when I was chasing the escaped man—not even Janey. I took her home first, and then came back here. You’ve got to know. There’s a plot of some kind on foot—how do I know? I know because from that window I saw Anderson being led into a waiting auto by two men—a prisoner! His escape was faked, or else somebody planted the whole thing!”

  “Good heavens!” said Miss Withers.

  “And I know why it was faked,” Bob Stevenson continued. “Don’t you see! With Anderson at liberty—or a captive somewhere away from the police—he would be blamed for anything that might happen to the Inspector tonight? Suppose the real murderer arranged for Anderson to get a chance to escape, and then had him kidnapped so that he could never prove any sort of an alibi! His next move would be to kill the Inspector, who is the only living person who could ever identify the murderer … and then the janitor would shoulder the blame, and the murderer of poor Anise would go scot-free!”

  “I suspected as much,” Miss Withers confessed. “That’s why I’m here.”

  Stevenson looked at her, and real admiration shone in his eyes. “You’re one woman in a million,” he said. “I only hope Janey turns out half as big as you are if such an emergency ever arises … with us. It takes real nerve to wait here alone in the darkness, knowing that a murderer may come at any minute …”

  “But I’m not alone,” Miss Withers told him.

  “Oh, yes—the Inspector.” Stevenson looked over her shoulder. “Is he—all right?”

  Oscar Piper’s heavy breathing filled the room, as it had for an hour. Miss Withers nodded slowly. “He’s all right, so far,” she said. “But young man, we can’t stand here.”

  “Of course not.” Stevenson was apologetic. “On my way here I stopped off at home and picked up my own gun,” he explained. He brought it out of his pocket. “Want to take it, just in case?”

  Miss Withers shook her head. “I won’t need it,” she told him. “But I think you could help me, if you will. Want to stand guard duty with me till morning—or until something happens?”

  “Now you’re talking,” said Bob Stevenson. She pulled him through the doorway, her hands trembling with excitement, and guided him across the room to the connecting door. “There’s another chair,” she told him. “It’s comfortable, so don’t go to sleep.”

  He found it, by striking a match. But he insisted, in polite pantomime, that she take it. “Neither of us will sleep tonight,” he told her. He was right.

  They took up the vigil where Miss Withers had left off, and again the ticking of her watch and the slow breathing of the Inspector were the only sounds that broke the stillness of the night.

  Once or twice footsteps sounded in the hall outside, but it was only the nurse on her infrequent errands. The watch ticked on—and on—

  “If anybody comes now, we’ll be ready for ’em,” Bob Stevenson whispered in the darkness.

  Miss Withers hushed him with a sibilant “shsh.” More seconds, minutes, hours went by. Hildegarde Withers began to wonder if it had all been a failure after all, a trap baited and set, but all too evident to the eye of the Hunted—who was also the Hunter.

  “It must be nearly morning,” whispered Bob Stevenson in her ear. She did not answer, though her body was as tense as a steel spring. The first faint flickerings of dawn were already showing beneath the shades of the windows. It was now, or never….

  There was no sound of a turning knob, and the hinges of the door did not creak. But all the same, there came a faint sound from the other room, a sound like the falling of a leaf upon the water….

  Miss Withers rose to her feet, her voice for a moment strangling in her tight throat. Then she gasped, weakly—“Taylor! TAYLOR!”

  The room was suddenly plunged into brilliant light by the shadeless lamp at the head of the bed, and Sergeant Taylor’s solid bulk appeared in the closet door. Her own hand was clasped around the chill butt of the little .32, but she did not draw it.

  For Bob Stevenson stood by the head of the Inspector’s bed, a glass in his hand. He had removed his shoes, and his brow was beaded with perspiration.

  “What’s this?” came the voice of Oscar Piper, heavy with sleep.

  “I—only wanted—a glass of water,” said Stevenson, his eyes upon Miss Withers. “I didn’t want to disturb anyone, and I was certain that there would be water here on the bed-table.” He looked down at the brownish liquid, in which a white pellet was almost completely dissolved. “But it seems—it seems that I have a glass of medicine by mistake.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Miss Withers spoke.

  “Why don’t you drink it, anyway?” she said softly. “It’s good medicine—for you.”

  The pleasant brown eyes lighted up. Bob Stevenson smiled a weary smile, and then inclined his head toward the white-faced woman who watched him. “Your health,” he said. Then he raised the glass.

  “Stop him, Taylor, you fool!” roared the Inspector, wide awake now. But it was too late.

  Stevenson put down the glass, empty. It tinkled against the porcelain of the table as his weakening fingers let it go. For a moment longer he held himself erect, the color fading perceptibly from his eyes. But the smile remained—even after his body lay graceless and twisted across the floor, its convulsive movements dying away.

  The sickening-sweet odor of bitter almonds filled the room. “Quick,” ordered Piper from his bed. “Taylor, get the nurse! Get the house doctor—get a stomach pump. He’ll not cheat the Chair this way!”

  But Hildegarde Withers stood with her back against the door. “This is my doing,” she said, through dry lips. “Let it end my way, Oscar. I’m wearing the badge tonight. There is nothing to be gained by a legal execution to titillate the morbid and the depraved. He has cheated nobody—there is no price greater than that he has paid. And the hemlock cup was invented centuries before the electric chair.”

  XXI

  Loose Ends

  (For those who care to know Why and How as well as Who)

  “WHEN DID YOU KNOW it was Stevenson?” the Inspector asked weakly. He had been given two hypos, and still found sleep
beyond him. Miss Withers sat at the head of his bed in the full glow of the morning sun.

  “I suspected him for a long time,” she countered. “But I could not conceive of a motive until the Sergeant rallied me in this room about my hunch on the Curran girl’s disappearance. It did have something to do with the case—indirectly. For if one girl pretended an appendicitis operation to conceal her marriage and her honeymoon, it suddenly occurred to me that Anise Halloran might have had the same sort of a secret.

  “I suspected, of course, that Bob Stevenson knew her better than he pretended. But so did Macfarland, at whose summer place in Connecticut they first met. He makes a practice of inviting the young teachers who are to be under him the next year, I suppose. Or perhaps he uses his influence to secure jobs for the young people he likes. At any rate, I’ll wager anything that Stevenson and Anise Halloran were married at Greenwich last summer, probably under false names. On his salary alone they would have been very poor, but with both of them teaching, they were well off. But the fact that they taught at the same school made it necessary for them to live apart. You remember what I told you about Anise’s complaint about her landlady in her former place objecting to the frequent calls of young men—or a young man? Well, the only young man who called frequently after she moved in with Janey Davis was Bob Stevenson—ostensibly calling on Janey, so that Janey’s boss, Macfarland, would not come to know of it.

  “I’ll run briefly through what happened, or what I’m pretty sure happened. The married life of the Stevensons wasn’t very happy. The separation and the constant concealment was not an aid to harmony, and Bob Stevenson was an unbalanced, erotic and neurotic type. But let’s start at the beginning. What were the motives?

  “The lottery ticket puzzled me for a while. It offered very little motive for the murder, even though on the day she died Anise Halloran won a prize certain to be large and possibly a young fortune. Why should Bob Stevenson kill her, supposing that he was her sweetheart? Why should Janey Davis kill her, for Janey owned half the ticket anyway?