Ideas were still tumbling over each other in my brain as I glanced back at the others. They were all there, patients and staff, gathered around Doctor Lenz and the bridge tables.
As I watched, a man detached himself from the group. I didn't pay much attention at first. Then I realized it was David Fenwick, our spiritualist. In the black-and-white of his evening clothes he looked even more ethereal than usual. And there was something purposeful about the way he was making for the center of the empty dance floor.
No one else seemed to notice him, but my eyes were fixed on him as he turned suddenly and faced the others. He lifted a hand as though for silence, and even at that distance I could see the gleam in his large eyes. When he spoke, his voice was curiously penetrating.
"At last they have got through," he announced in a toneless chant. "At last I have been able to take their message. It is a warning for us all, but it is directed particularly toward Daniel Laribee."
Everyone spun around. They were staring at him in a sort of fascinated stillness. I was gazing at him, too, but out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of Miss Brush moving hurriedly forward.
She was within a few feet of him when he spoke again. I suppose there must have been something about him that made her pause. For she stood there absolutely motionless as he said:
"This is the warning which the spirits sent me. Beware of Isabel Brush. Beware of Isabel Brush. She is a danger to us all, and especially to Daniel Laribee. She is a danger. There will be murder —"
The silence was tense. For a second, the two of them stood there like figures on a stage, Fenwick in a sort of trance, Miss Brush very pale and rigid.
Then a voice suddenly cried out:
"David ... David!"
To my amazement it was Dr. Stevens who had spoken and who now sprang forward. His round face had lengthened to an anxious oval. He put his arm almost caressingly around Fenwick's shoulder and whispered something in his ear.
As he drew him away, the spell broke and the room was in an uproar. Miss Brush disappeared somewhere in the milling, agitated crowd. Moreno, Lenz, Mrs. Fogarty, Warren—I had fleeting glimpses of them all as they hurried about trying to restore the polite veneer which Fenwick's startling announcement had so completely shattered.
For the first time I realized how synthetic, how superficial was this built-up pretense of normal men and women brought together for an evening's social entertainment.
That scene of half-panicky confusion was horrible and infinitely sad. As a symbol of it, I remembered Franz Stroubel, that small, distinguished man with the beautiful hands, standing in a corner, gazing serenely over the jostling crowds in front of him and moving his arms rhythmically, conducting with an unseen baton, weaving a pattern into the chaos.
People were streaming past me, but I didn't see them as I turned toward Iris. She had not moved from my side, but her hands were covering her lovely face.
"Murder!" I heard her whisper. "Murder! It's—it's terrible."
At first, when I realized she was crying, I felt helpless and miserable. But suddenly, I was glad. She was frightened, worried, but, at least, she was showing some emotion.
I suppose my nerves must have been rather shaken up, too. Before I knew what I was doing, I had taken her hand and was whispering urgently:
"It's all right, Iris. Don't cry. Everything's going to be all right"
8
BUT EVERYTHING was not all right as far as those charge of us were concerned. We men were taken back to Wing Two, and some of us were pretty jumpy. Fenwick was nowhere to be seen. Miss Brush made no appearance. Laribee, pale and distraught, was put to bed by Mr Fogarty.
The rest of us were herded into the smoking room, spent the few minutes before bedtime with Billy Trent who seemed to have forgotten the soda fountain in anxiety over Miss Brush.
"It doesn't mean anything, does it, Pete? We don'1 really have to beware of Miss Brush."
"No, Billy," I said. "It's just a lot of hooey."
"And all that about murder?"
"Bunk."
I seemed to be successful in reassuring the kid. But myself was not so easily reassured. I set very little store spiritualistic warnings, but it did seem more than a strange coincidence, that within twenty-four hours, three different persons should have heard that ominous prophecy, There will be murder."
After I had gone to bed, those four words repeated themselves in my mind: first in my own voice, as I had heard them last night; then in Geddes’ voice, just before his attack that morning. And finally I seemed to them again, intoned mechanically by the dazed Fenwick the crowded lounge.
And if there were murder, I asked myself, who would be the victim? Each of the day's incidents, whether trivial, amusing, or sinister, seemed to point to only one person, to the man lying in the room next to mine—to Daniel Laribee.
I wondered whether Lenz was still attributing all these curious incidents to an unfavorable influence. Or whether he was beginning to believe that it all went deeper, all had some basic, alarming significance. After all, Laribee seemed to have plenty of enemies, even here in the institution. If any sane person wanted to murder him, they could hardly choose a safer setting for the crime than a mental hospital.
My reflections were taking a distinctly morbid turn. I decided to go to sleep, and did.
Next morning I woke up with the sunlight, having no idea what the time was. We didn't have clocks in the rooms.
I felt a bit hang-overish but that was nothing new. For an unconscionable time I lay in bed, waiting for Fogarty to take me down to the physio-therapy room. He didn't come. At last I gave way to impatience and, slipping on my bathrobe, strolled down the corridor to look for him.
The passage clock said twenty minutes of eight. Fogarty was ten minutes overdue. I expected to encounter his wife somewhere, but her little alcove was empty and she wasn't around the corridors. In fact, no one was in sight The place had a strange, deserted atmosphere.
I knew the physio-therapy room was always locked and Fogarty had the key. There was no chance of getting in without him. But I kept on my way. The ex-champ might already be down there, I thought.
When I reached it, the door was shut. I was about to take my mild irritation back to bed with me when I saw the key in the lock. It surprised me, for I wasn't used to inefficiency on the part of Doctor Lenz' staff. Feeling curious, I turned the handle and went in.
The physio-therapy room was a kind of miniature Turkish bath without the Turkish baths. There were all types of. electrical gadgets along one wall; showers on another; and small alcoves on the third, where we took rubdowns and other uncomfortably beneficial treatments.
A casual glance showed that Fogarty wasn't with the electrical equipment. I called his name and strolled to the showers. He wasn't there. And then, outside one of the alcoves I saw, lying on the floor, the suit which he had been wearing the night before. For a moment I thought Jo must have been out on a bender and was giving himself a rubdown to help sober up.
I was smiling when I pushed back the curtain. Then, suddenly, I realized what writers mean when they talk about a smile "freezing" on your face. I had started some fool phrase, reproving Fogarty for his unpunctuality, but the words stuck in my throat.
Lying on the marble slab in that tiny room was a thing more ghastly than the furthest horrors of delirium tremens.
"There will be murder." The phrase was familiar enough, but I had not expected anything quite like this.
I could hear a sound re-echoing against the hard stone floors and walls—a muffled, persistent sound. It was my own teeth chattering as they had done those first days without alcohol, here in the sanitarium.
I couldn't think coherently for a moment, but when reason returned, I knew this was no hallucination. It was still there, that thing on the marble slab, that thing which had been Jo Fogarty.
There was no blood, no mutilation. It was the position of the body that was so shocking. The man was lying on his chest in his trunks
and socks. And the upper part of his body was bound in a strange garment, the significance of which I didn't immediately recognize. Only gradually did it identify itself in my mind with pictures I had seen of strait-jackets.
The stout canvas was strapped tightly across his great naked torso, pinioning his arms to his sides. Around his neck had been tied an improvised rope, made from plaited strips of towel. This rope was also attached to his ankles, drawing his head and legs back so that he looked like a swallow diver, caught and trussed in mid-air. I noticed vaguely that his feet were secured by his own tie and belt; and his own handkerchief was bound around his mouth to hold in place a gag of torn towel.
The whole tableau was like some mad modern sculpture, symbolizing the apotheosis of agony. And it was the very strength of the man that made it so horrible; the strength of that powerful frame, those swelling muscles straining against the bonds, straining, it seemed, even in death.
For he was dead. Instinct would have told me that immediately even if I had not seen the towel cord, tight around the bull neck, the unnatural set of the head, jerked backward by the weight of the sagging heels. I do not even want to think of the expression on that contorted face, the desperation in those dead eyes.
Suddenly the realization dawned on me that I was alone with death—alone in a small room of vaultlike marble. I was seized by a violent claustrophobia—a fear that I should go mad if I stayed another minute in that cramped, low-ceilinged alcove.
I remembered the key in the lock outside. Swiftly I hurried out of the room and, with trembling fingers, locked the door. I slipped the key into my pocket, looked up and down the corridor, and then started forward.
My thought processes were hopelessly confused. But one phrase repeated itself time and time again in my mind.
"Doctor Lenz ... must go to Doctor Lenz ..."
I didn't hear Moreno as I turned a corner in the passage. He seemed suddenly to have appeared from nowhere, standing in my path and looking at me with that dark, smoldering stare of his.
"You're up early, Mr. Duluth."
Inside my bathrobe pocket my fingers gripped the key. "I've got to see Doctor Lenz," I said with sudden decisiveness.
"Doctor Lenz is not up yet."
"But I've got to see him."
Moreno's eyes seemed to penetrate mine, trying to read my thoughts. "Will you go back to your room alone, Mr. Duluth? Or do you want me to go with you?"
"I have no intention of going back to my room." I stood there a moment, trying to get a grip on myself. Then I added: "Something very serious has happened."
"Has it?"
"Something that only Doctor Lenz must know about Now will you let me go?"
"Listen, Mr. Duluth—"
Moreno started to humor me in his quiet, relentless fashion. Suddenly there seemed no point in holding back what I knew. Moreno would hear about it soon enough, anyhow.
"Come with me," I said grimly.
He followed me to the physio-therapy room. I unlocked the door, but I could not go near the alcove. As he pulled the curtain back, I saw his jaw drop slightly. But his voice was brisk, dangerously calm as he asked:
"When did you find this?"
I told him.
Slowly, deliberately, he took out a handkerchief and passed it across his forehead.
"Now will you let me go to Doctor Lenz?" I asked.
"We will go together," he said quietly.
9
I HAD A NASTY ATTACK of jitters after my interview with Doctor Lenz. They sent me to bed, and a pale and very solemn Miss Brush brought me some breakfast. After a cup of black coffee, I felt better and able to think more coherently.
But even so, nothing seemed to make sense. This horrible and utterly unexpected death only added to the confusion of those other strange incidents which the past twenty-four hours had been piling up. Last night I had known there was danger, but that danger had seemed to be connected with Daniel Laribee and Miss Brush. Fogarty had no place in that pattern. There seemed no conceivable reason why anyone should want to kill the attendant whose worst fault had been his boastfulness.
And it seemed incredible, too, that anyone had been able to murder him in that beastly way. It would have needed amazing strength—the strength of a madman, a homicidal maniac.
Maniac! I remembered the look on Lenz' face when he had said: "I feel there is someone in this sanitarium who ought not to be here." Lenz might think it the work of a madman. Yet my own instinct told me it was not. The whole thing was either too deliberately crazy or too horribly sane.
It was a relief when Miss Brush came in and suggested that I should get up.
I strolled into the library, hoping to find Geddes for a soothing game of billiards. He wasn't there. The room was deserted except for Stroubel who sat in a leather chair, staring in front of him with an ineffably sad expression his sensitive face.
The famous conductor looked up when I entered and smiled. I was surprised, for he had never paid any attention to me before. I moved to his side and he said quietly:
'This is a tragic world, Mr. Duluth. We do not realize that others beside ourselves suffer."
I was going to ask what he meant, when he lifted one of those beautifully molded hands of his.
"Last night, lying there in the darkness, I was sad. I rang for Mrs. Fogarty. When she came I saw that she had been crying. I had never thought of that. Never thought that a nurse could have sorrows like mine."
Instantly I found myself interested. It was rather pathetic to think of the grim-faced Mrs. Fogarty crying. Surprising, too.
Last night she couldn't have known what had happened to her husband. Had she, like the rest of us, heard that strange prophetic voice? I hoped Stroubel would tell me more, but at that moment Miss Brush came in and said I was wanted again in Doctor Lenz' office.
She took me there herself. As she walked briskly at my side, I glanced at her curiously. She still preserved her brightness, but I suspected her composure of being as artificial as the pinkness of her cheeks. I asked her if she had been bothered by Fenwick's little scene of the night before. Immediately her lips moved in that fixed smile of hers.
"We expect those things, Mr. Duluth. For a while Doctor Lenz felt I should be transferred to the women's wing. But we decided it was best for me to stay."
We made no reference to Fogarty.
She left me at the door of the director's office. Doctor Lenz himself was sitting behind the desk, his bearded face gloomy. Moreno was there, too; and Dr. Stevens. A couple of plain-clothes men lounged by the wall, and in the seat usually reserved for interviewed patients sat a solid individual whom Lenz introduced to me as Captain Green of the homicide bureau.
They seemed to take very little notice of me. Lenz explained briefly that I had discovered the body, and then continued with a discourse which my arrival had interrupted.
"As I was saying, Captain, I must make one point clear before there is any investigation in the sanitarium itself. As a citizen, I have an obligation to the State, an obligation to see that justice is done. But as a psychiatrist I have an even greater obligation, and that is to my patients. Their mental health is in my hands. I am responsible for them and I must absolutely forbid any kind of police cross-examination."
Green grunted.
"Any shock of that sort," Lenz went on, "could cause irreparable damage. Of course, Dr. Moreno and other members of the staff will do all they can in a tactful manner, but I cannot allow anything more direct than that."
Green nodded rather curtly and threw a suspicious glance at me. I suppose he took me for one of the sensitive patients in question.
Lenz seemed to read his thoughts. He assured him with a slight smile that I was a little different from the other inmates and suggested that I might prove useful.
"You can be perfectly frank in front of Mr. Duluth, Captain."
From the conversation which followed between the captain and Lenz, I gathered that Fogarty had been dead for three or four hours whe
n I discovered him. He had last been seen when he left the social hall to go off duty. It appeared that both Mrs. Fogarty and Warren had already been questioned. They had had nothing to report and were able to account for one another's movements during the night.
Throughout this exchange of question and answer Moreno had preserved a cold silence. At length he leaned forward in his chair and said rather acidly:
"Isn't it perfectly possible that the whole thing was an accident? After all, we have no reason to believe that anyone would have wanted to murder Fogarty. I don't see why some practical joke—"
"If it was a practical joke," interrupted Green tartly, "someone around here's got a pretty queer sense of humor. If it was an accident it was a pretty queer accident And if it was deliberate murder, it's one of the cleverest jobs I ever came up against. Dr. Stevens here says it's impossible to tell when the man was put in that strait-jacket. It could have been done any time last night, and whoever did it could have established a hundred alibis."
"It's not only clever," broke in Dr. Stevens quietly. "If it was a crime, it's just about as brutal a one as you could imagine." His normally cherubic face was pale and contoured with lines. "The medical examiner and I believe that Fogarty was probably conscious up to the end. He must have been dying there in slow agony, maybe for six or seven hours. The gag kept him from calling for help and every movement he made to free himself only would have increased the pressure around his throat. It was the tightening of the towel rope, caused by the gradual constriction of his leg muscles, that eventually strangled him." He looked down at his hands. "I can only hope with Dr. Moreno that the death turns out to be the result of some unfortunate accident People have been known to tie themselves up."
A Puzzle for fools Page 5