If only, Matt thought, he could keep the conversation going long enough to grasp some clew to this man’s identity. There was a faintly accented flavor to his speech, but it was not the same as Ahasver’s. The voice, moreover, was pitched somewhat higher than the cultist’s. “That’s a poor price for integrity,” he said.
“Hardly for the integrity of anyone living in this hotel. However, I am a generous man. Seventy-five hundred?”
“That’s better.”
“Then you agree?”
“I’m not saying. What do I have to do?”
“Give to me a certain file from Mr. Harrigan’s collection, and forget all knowledge of its contents when the District Attorney’s office asks you about it. It is a simple task.”
“Which file?”
“You are eager, Mr. Duncan. I shall tell you which file when you have given your definite assent.”
Soundlessly Matt stretched forth his arm into the vacant darkness. The gesture seemed to pass unnoticed; no reproving comment came from the voice.
“Come, Mr. Duncan. It will be a great pity if it should become necessary to assign to you the other passive role. Believe me, I should regret it; and I dare go so far as to believe that you should do likewise. And do not think that I should be afraid to shoot in the hallowed precincts of a public hotel. Your dresser, if I remember, is beside your bed. Listen.”
Matt heard the plop of a silenced shot and then the thud of a bullet burrowing into wood. Silently he placed both outstretched hands before his nose and wiggled the fingers. Even this derisive action drew no comment from the voice.
“I must urge you to hasten your decision,” it went on implacably. “Your snoring night clerk did not see me enter. No one knows of my presence here. I should feel no compunction …”
As the voice spoke on in level deadliness, Matt stretched forth his arm again, but this time with a purpose. He was sure now that the owner of the voice could not see in the dark and had fired only from memory. And he knew the peculiar habits of the window-blind. Without moving his body—that would have made the bed creak—he could just touch the edge of the blind with the tips of his fingers. But that was enough.
With those tips he gently tweaked the edge. Suddenly, with a tumultuous clatter, the blind flew upward. Instantly the man in the chair had sprung to his feet, faced the window, and fired. Glass clinked into the street below.
Before the man could recover his guard, Matt was behind him, pinning his arms tautly against his sides. It was Friday night’s struggle over again, without the mud, but with the same cast. For the voice, as Matt saw in the first light from the window, belonged to the Swami Mahopadhyaya Virasenanda, otherwise known as Hermann Sussmaul.
The silenced automatic fell to the floor as Matt wrenched at the man’s wrist, and a swift thrust of Matt’s foot sent the weapon scuttling under the bed. “Go on,” Matt urged. “Make more noise. The sooner somebody comes up to investigate the better I’ll like it.”
The Swami was swearing again in that language unknown to Matt which was his present help in time of struggle. And on this occasion whatever strange gods he invoked were kinder than on Friday. A terrific jerk, which must have come near throwing his shoulder out of joint, freed him for an instant. Matt stepped back toward the bed to guard the approach to the automatic. But the Swami’s thoughts were no longer centered on destruction. He had seen the fire escape outside the window, and before Matt could intercept him, he had flung up the window, swung himself over the ledge and was halfway down the iron ladder.
Regretfully Matt screwed back the bulb which Sussmaul had loosened. The room was a mess, not only from the struggle but also apparently from a thorough and (as it must have been) fruitless search during his absence.
He crawled down into the musty space beneath the bed and emerged sneezing, with the automatic. He stood for a moment balancing it in his hand. “That guy,” he thought, “is damned careless where he leaves his accessories.”
When Lieutenant Marshall finally got home that night, he entered neither the pampering comfort of the Harrigan mansion nor the dispiriting shoddiness of Matt’s hotel. He simply walked into the living room of an ordinary Southern California five-room bungalow and fell flat on his face.
Sleepily he struggled to his feet, picked up young Terry’s quacking Donald Duck pull-toy, threw it at the sofa, missed, and tiptoed to the bedroom.
Leona switched on the light on her side of the double bed as he came in to the room. Marshall paused in the doorway, beaming on her, rejoicing even through his sleep-starved stupor that he was one man whose wife went to bed with a clean face and greeted you looking like a human being, and a damned lovely one at that.
“Hard night?” Leona whispered.
“As hell. Tell you in the morning. I’m dead.” He dropped his coat casually across a chair and didn’t even notice Leona’s frown. “How did you amuse yourself?”
“Read until I was sleepy.”
“Another mystery?” There was only a little professional scorn in his voice.
“Yes, and it was marvelous. All about a locked-room problem. I love those. Got a cigarette? I ran out.”
“Don’t—!” Marshall thundered.
“You’ll wake Terry.”
“Don’t,” he resumed in a strained whisper, “say locked-room to me.”
“The socks,” Leona observed, “go in the laundry bag, not the waste basket. But this was wonderful. It has a whole chapter called ‘The Locked-Room Lecture.’”
“I told you not to—!”
“Sh.” Leona yawned. “It goes all over everything and it tells you every possible solution there is to a locked-room situation. It’s marvelous.”
Lieutenant Marshall stood for a moment in drowsy nakedness. Then he pulled himself up and vigorously blinked the sleep from his eyes. “Where is that book?” he demanded.
Chapter 10
Matt woke up toward noon with a feeling something like the prime ancestor of all hangovers. He looked around the room and didn’t feel any better. It is not a comforting sensation, upon first awaking, to see a bullet hole in your dresser and to feel the cold draught from a shot-shattered window.
Even the day’s first smoke brought no peace to his spirit. The most nearly comforting item was the hard feel of the Swami’s automatic under his pillow—though that reassuring weapon, he reflected, should be turned over to the police at once.
As he pulled on old slacks and a patched polo shirt, he tried to decide on a program for the day. He supposed that he should get in touch with the Harrigans; but his position in that household, now that Wolfe had left it, was decidedly anomalous. He should certainly see Lieutenant Marshall, if only to report last night’s invasion; but how did you go about seeing a detective lieutenant? Where did you find him?
But when he breakfasted at a counter joint (where better employed individuals were already gulping lunch), he forgot these problems in his absorption in the morning papers. Wars and politics were lucky to appear on the front page at all, so strongly had the Harrigan case appealed to every editor. The sheer impossibility of the crime was hardly mentioned; Marshall had apparently played down the locked-room angle in his announcements to the press. What made the story headline material was not the murder itself, but the sublime claim of Ahasver. “THE ASTRAL BODY MURDER,” most of the papers called it.
There were interviews with Ahasver, interviews with dozens of other occult leaders (for they grow by the dozen in Los Angeles), an interview with the eminent mystic authority Manly P. Hall (who seemed to find nothing surprising in such a claim), and even an interview with Boris Karloff, who had, by a fortunate coincidence, committed just such a crime in a Universal picture shortly to be released.
The rival occultists were divided in their opinions. The less imaginative condemned Ahasver as a rank charlatan, while the more ingenious pointed out that they could easily have performed such a deed themselves, but were law-abiding citizens.
Then there were photographs:
of Ahasver, of the Temple, of Ahasver again, and once, anticlimactically, of R. Joseph Harrigan (a flashlight snapped at a banquet). Aside from that one picture, the Harrigan family was neglected, for which Matt was thankful. They had enough to face without news photographers.
He read the stories carefully and learned nothing. The impression that a reader would gather from the papers was that Wolfe Harrigan had been accidentally killed by a stray prowler, that Ahasver had jumped at the chance to seize the credit, and that some impressionable witness had then decided that he did see a yellow robe. This theory required a complete chronological reversal of the facts; but in itself it possessed a certain plausibility. Matt half suspected that it was Lieutenant Marshall’s own shrewd contribution, a pacifying bone for the press to gnaw on while the police continued its investigation unimpeded.
When Matt returned to the hotel, his plans for the day still undecided, Fred Simmons sat on the sagging couch in the lobby, surrounded by a complete assortment of the morning’s extras.
“Hello,” said Matt.
The gaunt ex-grocer usually responded to the younger man’s greetings with homely affability; but this morning he looked up hard and hostile. “So that’s why you were at the Temple. And I talked about how good it was to see young people there! Spying, you and your precious Wolfe Harrigan! Don’t bother to lie, young fellow; your name’s down here as a witness, and if you’re a friend of that man, you were up to no good at the Temple. But now you know; you saw, with your own eyes, what the Nine Times Nine can do.”
“Did I? That’s what I keep asking myself. What did I see with my own eyes?”
“Smart, ain’t you? But the Nine Times Nine can do a darned sight more than you’ve seen yet, and you’d better remember it. Do you know that the Governor of this state is a Communist? Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
Matt started to laugh, then looked at Fred Simmons’ eyes and stopped. He had no fears of a successful Nine-Times-Nine offensive against the Governor of California; but he remembered Wolfe Harrigan’s fear of a powerful political intent hidden behind the Children of Light. And if the teachings of Ahasver could bring that gleam of lusting hatred into men’s eyes …
“Hey!” the ancient desk clerk shouted. “Duncan! There’s a lady phoned and wants you should call her. Ellen Harrigan. Here’s the number.”
Matt walked away from Fred Simmons and took the slip of paper. “Thanks.”
“Ain’t that the sister of the man that got murdered yesterday?” The old eyes glistened behind their five-and-dime spectacles, but this was the relatively clean light of normal sadistic curiosity, the ordinary casual thirst of the race, which likes blood impersonally, but has no special desire to spill it.
The butler answered Matt’s call, sounding quite unperturbed by the mere murder of a master, and put him through to Ellen Harrigan’s extension.
“This is Matt Duncan, Miss Harrigan. You wanted to speak to me?”
“Yes.” Aunt Ellen went right to the point. “I want to offer you our guest bedroom. Now please, Mr. Duncan, don’t interrupt me with polite protestations. My brother had spoken of, if I may say it crudely, installing you here to help him with his work; and I think that in this sad time of stress your presence is even more needed. Please say that you will come.”
“I’m afraid I’d only be a trouble to you. A stranger at such a time as this …”
“At such a time as this, as you say, Mr. Duncan, a stranger might be rather helpful. My brother Joseph agrees that this is advisable, particularly if you are to handle my brother’s papers, and I have spoken to Lieutenant Marshall. He thinks the arrangement convenient from his point of view as well.”
Matt’s protestations were only perfunctory. The thought of good breakfasts and smooth linen triumphed over any compunctions.
The unpleasant moment had been with the butler. Only with the greatest reluctance did Matt surrender to him his shabby suitcase. To be sure, he had carefully packed only his most nearly presentable clothes (discovering as he did so that the Swami’s demonstration bullet had ruined one of his three almost decent shirts); but even these were hardly fit for the austere inspection of a butler.
“Miss Harrigan is expecting you on the croquet lawn,” the dignitary informed him. “Shall I show you out?”
“No, thanks. I can find it.” As Matt followed his memory, he caught a glimpse of the butler carrying the suitcase upstairs, at arm’s length.
The lawn was bright in the sun. Wickets and posts glinted like a neckpiece of gay costume jewelry spread out on a background of green velvet. And on the bench from which Matt and Joseph had looked in at the French windows sat Miss Harrigan—Miss Concha Harrigan.
“It’s you,” Matt said foolishly.
“It is?” Concha inspected herself. “Why, so it is! What did you expect?”
“The butler said ‘Miss Harrigan’—all I thought of was your aunt.”
“I should be annoyed.”
“Please don’t. By the way, what is the butler’s name? He must have one. It seems stupid always to think of him as The Butler. It’s like those symbolic plays—The Man, The Woman, The Policeman.”
Concha looked at him. “You see,” she said.
“See what?”
“You’re embarrassed to see me because my father died yesterday. You’re too tongue-tied for condolences, so you try to be bright and meaningless. And right off you say Policeman. We can’t get away.”
“Smart child.”
“I’m not a child,” said Concha gravely. “I told you that. And the butler’s name,” she added with a slow smile, “is Bunyan.”
Matt laughed. “John or Paul?”
“It is a funny name, isn’t it? Arthur says it’s corny.”
“This, Miss Harrigan, is a cruel comment to make to any sister, but I must confess that that is just what I should expect your brother to say.”
“You don’t like Arthur?”
“Not wildly.”
“He doesn’t like you, either. He says that all this trouble started after you came here.”
“Well … didn’t it?”
“Uh-huh. Sorry you came?”
“No.”
“Neither am I.” She held out her hand. “Shake.”
Matt sat on the bench beside her, stretched out his long legs, closed his eyes, and threw back his head. “Sun feels good,” he murmured.
“Can I be a smart child again?”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“You’re thinking: ‘This is all very well. It’s nice here and she’s a sweet little girl and everything else; but she isn’t acting like a daughter whose father was murdered last night.’”
Her voice cracked a little. Matt opened his eyes and saw that she was standing now. “But what can I do?” she went on pleadingly. “We aren’t the same, not any of us. I can’t spend all my time praying for him like Aunt Ellen, or Throw Myself Into My Work like Uncle Joseph, or even go around moping and making nasty stupid remarks like Arthur. And I won’t cry. That’s childish.”
“You can sit down and talk to me and stop worrying about what I’m thinking, that’s what you can do. Or we could play croquet.”
“I think maybe I’d sooner talk. … I cut school today.” She was still young enough so that it sounded like the confession of some dreadful guilt.
“As who wouldn’t?”
“But this was different. I didn’t just up and cut school. You see, Sister Ursula told me to.”
“Fine advice from a nun. Undermining our American institutions, that’s what she’s doing. Mind if I smoke?”
“Go ahead. You know, it was funny. She told me to stay with Aunt Ellen all last night and go to mass with her this morning—sounds almost like a penance, doesn’t it? But I suppose you wouldn’t know.”
“I thought penances were what you paid when you went to confession.”
“Paid!” For an instant the Hispano-Irish temper blazed up. “Oh,” she added more calmly, “people do believe the sil
liest things. Nobody ever has to pay anything for confession. A penance is what you do to atone—usually a few prayers.” She laughed reminiscently. “I remember when Arthur was eighteen. He came home one Saturday from confession and he went up to my room—I was having a tea party for my dolls—and he said, ‘You know what I have to say for a penance? I guessed five our fathers and five hail marys; that was the worst I’d ever had. Then he laughed and said, ‘No. Three rosaries. I’m a man now!”
“I’m afraid I’m just a non-Catholic dullard. I don’t see anything funny about that.”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t.” She sighed a little.
“But why should Sister Ursula ask you to do that? Or is that something else beyond my understanding?”
“It’s beyond mine, too. I don’t know. It bothers me. When we got back from church, I called her and told her everything that Aunt Ellen did. She specially wanted to know did she go to confession and communion.”
“And did she?”
“Just to communion. You see, Aunt Ellen’s a daily communicant and I don’t think she’s ever out of the state of grace anyway. But I suppose that’s something else you wouldn’t understand.”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t.”
Concha looked at him fixedly. “You don’t like Catholics, do you?”
“I’ve nothing against them.” Matt was embarrassed. “It’s a free country. But my mother was an agnostic of the old school—you know, Thomas Paine and Robert Ingersoll. ‘Let Man be free from the tyranny of the priesthood!’ I’m afraid I never quite got over it.”
“And my mother,” said Concha softly, “believed in God and loved Him and served Him. And she had bad eyesight and she died.”
This was a strange remark. In the silence that followed it, Matt kept turning it over in his mind and trying to shape some sense out of it. “She had bad eyesight and she died …” For some reason he could see the study again and a frightened girl and a book that fell open at Hyoscyamus.
Bunyan was standing by the French windows. “Mr. Gregory Randall wishes to see you, Miss.”
“Oh, bother. Tell him—tell him I’m prostrated.”
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