A Puzzle for fools

by Patrick Quentin

  "And then, maybe I can get some rest," he grunted, "unless those police friends of yours start acting up again, Mr. Duluth."

  I left the smoking room with Stroubel. We were strolling down the corridor together when Mrs. Fogarty rustled around a corner.

  I was surprised to see her. I had supposed that she would have stayed off duty under the circumstances. She looked pale and, if possible, more tight-lipped than usual. But there was a certain indomitable quality about that sallow, angular face. With her, I imagined, personal problems were strictly subordinated to sanitarium routine.

  When she saw us, she set her expression to the correct degree of formal greeting and made to pass on. But Stroubel moved to her side and took her bony hand in his. He stared at her with those kindly, sad eyes of his.

  "I am sorry," he said. "Last night I should not have rung for you. I should have kept my unhappiness to myself just as you kept yours."

  Mrs. Fogarty started.

  I thought he was being tactless until I remembered that the patients had been told nothing of Fogarty's death. His voice was gentle, rather touchingly apologetic. And yet I could sense once again the subtle, compelling power of personality in the man.

  Mrs. Fogarty must have felt it, too, for she reacted instinctively. At first her face had darkened, but now she smiled.

  "You know you can always ring for me, Mr. Stroubel."

  "Even so, you must tell me why you were sad. And I will help you."

  They both seemed unaware of my presence. Stroubel bent forward, his expression suddenly intent, eager.

  "You are unhappy now," he said slowly. "It isn't—it isn't because of the thing on the slab?"

  Mrs. Fogarty gave a little gasp. A hand went to her thin throat and then fell limply at her side. Her cheeks had turned a grayish white.

  I didn't know what to do. My clumsy experiment seemed to have become a Frankenstein's monster. It had sprung into independent life and was getting out of control.

  With a supreme effort the night nurse managed a smile.

  "You'd better be getting along to bed, Mr. Stroubel," she said softly. "Good-night."

  The conductor shrugged, turned slowly and wandered away.

  Mrs. Fogarty and I were left alone.

  "I'm terribly sorry ..." I began.

  But I did not finish my sentence. At that moment there were brisk footsteps on the linoleum behind us and Moreno came round the corner. His dark forehead rippled in a frown as he saw the night nurse.

  "Mrs. Fogarty, I said you need not come on duty tonight."

  He glanced at me swiftly and then back at the night nurse.

  "There is no one else to take my place, doctor," Mrs. Fogarty said stiffly. "Miss Price on the women's wing is sick. The substitute is over there."

  "You needn't worry about staff arrangements. You are in no fit state to be here tonight. You need rest."

  Mrs. Fogarty's crisp white shoulders shrugged. "And the patients?"

  "I have arranged for all the room telephones to be connected with your alcove. Warren will have to be on duty anyway. He can remain in there."

  I could not tell whether the night nurse was grateful, displeased or angry. She stood there a moment staring in front of her with dark, hollow eyes. Then, with a soft: "Very well, Doctor Moreno," she hurried away.

  I had thought things out and decided that Lenz should be told of what Miss Powell had said in the lounge. It sounded fantastically ludicrous but I had grown to suspect the ludicrous. While Moreno stood there at my side, I asked his permission to go to the director.

  Instantly he became the model young psychiatrist; the diagnostician of patients and the guardian of superior officials. His questioning eyes scrutinized my face.

  "Dr. Lenz is very busy at the moment," he said. "He is still in conference with the police."

  "But I overheard something which I think Lenz ought to know," I said determinedly. Then as he still stared at me in silence, I added, "I don't think this thing has ended yet."

  "And what do you mean by that?"

  "Just that Fogarty's death was a part of something else—something which is still going on."

  "You must be careful not to let your theatrical imagination run away with you, Mr. Duluth." Moreno was regarding his hands fixedly. "You are in a nervous condition and you still have to be careful."

  "But it's not my nerves!" I exclaimed irritably. "I know perfectly well that—"

  Moreno looked up suddenly. "If it interests you, Mr. Duluth, the police are satisfied that they know the reasons behind Fogarty's death. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the institution or the inmates. Captain Green is ready to believe that the whole affair was a most unfortunate— er—accident."

  His tone was convincing, his gaze was steady.

  But I knew he was lying.

  13

  WHEN MORENO LEFT ME, I found that all the others had retired to their rooms. The corridor was deserted as I made my way toward the chain of bedrooms at the far end of the wing.

  There is something about an empty passage in a sanitarium—something bleak and forbidding. My irresponsible nerves started to act up and I felt an unreasonable impulse to hurry out of that loneliness, to find human companionship, although if there actually were danger, it was far more likely to lurk in the presence of the other inmates than in the loneliness of the corridors.

  I reached the swinging door that led to the sleeping quarters and pushed it open. In front I could see the long rows of doors that marked the individual bedrooms. To my left was Mrs. Fogarty's little alcove plunged in darkness. I was passing it when I heard my name called. I started, felt a sudden stab of alarm and then cursed myself for a jittery fool.

  It was only Mrs. Fogarty's voice and it came from the darkened alcove.

  "Mr. Duluth!"

  I moved across the passage and stepped into the small three-walled room. The half light from the corridor crept insidiously in. I could see the night nurse's profile, irregular and shadowy beneath its pale white cap. She sat at a table by the dully gleaming telephone. There was something stiff and sentry-like about her. I could visualize her springing to attention when the telephone rang to summon her to any of the patients.

  "What is it, nurse?" I asked. "I didn't know you going to be on duty."

  "Dr. Moreno told me not to," she said quietly. "But my brother's had so little sleep, I thought I'd give him a few hours' rest before he takes over." A bony hand moved wearily across her forehead. "I have quite a headache myself. That's why I'm sitting in the dark."

  It was unlike Mrs. Fogarty to entertain a patient in banal conversation at so irregular an hour. But after all she had every reason to be unlike herself that day.

  "It's Mr. Stroubel," she said abruptly, almost accusingly. "You heard what he said—the thing on the slab. Someone must have told him about—about my husband." Her eyes shone coldly in the semi-darkness. "You are the only patient who knew."

  If I hadn't felt so guilty, I might have resented her schoolteacherish attitude. But under the circumstances I could merely be confused and angry with myself for having caused her unnecessary pain. I blurted out an inarticulate story of my psycho-analytical experiment, doing my best to conceal the fact that it had been inspired by Dr. Stevens. I explained that Stroubel had been referring merely to his grotesque composition on the piano. She listened in silence and was surprisingly nice about it.

  "I understand that you meant no harm, Mr. Duluth, and I won't report it, but please don't do anything like that again. Jo's death has been a great shock to me. I could not bear to have the patients worried by it, too."

  "I'll admit I was a damn fool," I agreed gloomily. "I only hope I haven't got the whole place upset."

  I had been leaning against the table as I talked, idly fingering the telephone. I jumped when the bell rang with sudden shrillness. Mrs. Fogarty started, too. She leaned forward and picked up the receiver. Her face was only a blur but I could tell from her shadowy silhouette that she was holding the inst
rument a few inches away from her ear in that intense, nervous attitude of a rather deaf person who has difficulty in catching what is said from the other end of the wire.

  "Hello, hello, who is it?"

  Her voice was brisk and professional, curiously out of place in that vaguely illuminated alcove.

  There was no reply.

  Once again, she asked: "Who is it speaking?"

  Instinctively I moved closer. My eyes were fixed on the shining receiver. And for months afterwards I was to associate all telephones with that incredible answering voice. It seemed hardly human. Low and distorted, it crackled across to me in a horribly intimate whisper.

  And I heard the words as plainly as though they had been breathed in my own ear. They were:

  "I am the thing on the slab.'

  This startling repetition of my phrase might have seemed merely ludicrous; it might have seemed infinitely pathetic as a symbol of all the confused, unbalanced minds in the sanitarium. But it was neither. It was the most unnerving experience in my life. There had been something malignant, evil about that hoarse voice.

  I stood absolutely motionless, hardly conscious of Mrs. Fogarty's strangled sob and the dull clatter as she dropped the receiver.

  Then, on an impulse, I sprang forward, groped for the swinging telephone, lifted it.

  "Who is it?" I shouted. "What do you want?"

  Dead silence, then once more that low, husky whisper. The voice was remotely familiar and yet I could not connect it with any particular individual.

  "There will be another thing on the slab, Duluth," it said. "Take care that it is not you."

  My lips framed an answer but there was a faint click from the other end of the wire. After a moment I replaced the receiver dazedly and peered through the darkness at Mrs. Fogarty. The night nurse was leaning forward, her hands over her face. I had never seen her like that before—without her steel control.

  "I'm frightfully sorry," I said at length. "All this is my fault. I never thought of you."

  "It's all right, Mr. Duluth." The words came flat, toneless.

  "We'd better find out where that call came from."

  Slowly Mrs. Fogarty lifted her eyes. I could see them gleaming faintly in their deep sockets. "We can't, Mr. Duluth. All the telephones on the men's wing are connected directly with this alcove and so is the staff common room. It might have come from anywhere."

  "But didn't—didn't you recognize the voice?"

  The night nurse rose. As her fingers gripped my arm I could feel that they were trembling. "Listen, Mr. Duluth," she said with sudden severity, "you have done a very foolish, dangerous thing. And this should be a lesson to you. But I do not intend to report it. There has been trouble enough already. And—" her voice sank almost to a whisper—"I think we had both better forget this, not only for your sake, but for mine."

  I did not understand her, did not understand her words or the strange intensity of her emotion.

  "But, Mrs. Fogarty, if you recognized the voice ... !"

  "Mr. Duluth!" The night nurse cut in impulsively. "Did you have any idea whose voice that was?"

  "Why no. I thought it was familiar, but ..."

  "Very well." Her tone was sharp, defiant. "Perhaps you would understand more clearly if I tell you that I thought I did recognize it."

  We were standing very close now and I could make out the lines of her face, gaunt as sculptured granite.

  "Well, who was it, Mrs. Fogarty?" I asked softly.

  She did not answer for a moment.

  "I'm rather hard of hearing," she faltered at length, speaking to herself rather than to me, "and I have had a very trying time to-day. That must be why I thought I heard it. And that's why I could never report this to the authorities. You see .. ."

  She broke off, and suddenly realization came flooding into my mind. I knew what she was going to tell me, and I could feel the hairs at the back of my neck stirring.

  "Yes, Mr. Duluth. If I said anything, they would think I was mad. You see, that voice on the telephone ... If I hadn't known he was dead, I could have sworn it was my husband speaking."

  14

  I LEFT Mrs. Fogarty alone and hurried down the deserted corridor to my room. As I undressed and slipped into bed, the sound of her words still echoed in my ears. They had become for me a symbol of the day—a day which had begun with murder and closed with the most commonsensical of the staff believing herself to have heard the voice of a dead man.

  As I tossed restlessly, I tried to force my jangled nerves to accept Reason. I told myself that what both Mrs. Fogarty and I thought we had heard was patently impossible. The spirits of the dead might converse with David Fenwick, but they were not likely to speak over the house telephone to so practical and unpsychic a person as the night nurse.

  There was only one explanation. For some crazy reason, someone had chosen this particularly beastly way of frightening her and of frightening me. After all, everyone knew I had not gone to my room with the others. Anyone in Wing Two might have heard my footsteps in the corridor and my name called by Mrs. Fogarty. It did not require supernatural knowledge to realize that I was in the alcove with the night nurse.

  And yet, by removing the menace of the other world, I had only thrown myself more violently back upon the realities of our own private world of the sanitarium. And the realities were none too pleasant. The thing on the slab —! The phrase had become horrible, sinister now. It repeated itself time and time again in my tired brain. And with it, returning with monotonous regularity, came the image of Jo Fogarty—that gagged, agonized face, that helplessly bound body.

  Moreno had said that the police thought the death was an accident. I could never believe that. I knew as certainly as my name was Peter Duluth that Fogarty's murder was part of something else; some step in the progress of that unseen force which was jerking all of us like marionettes in a mad puppet show of its own devising.

  Until that moment I had been able to see no motive for the attendant's death, but now I realized one with sudden clarity. Wasn't it possible that Jo with his love of gossip and personalities had stumbled inadvertently upon some knowledge; some knowledge which made him both dangerous and in danger? And if that were so, wasn't it also possible that I, too, had unconsciously discovered something which put me in the same position? After all, I had been warned by that voice. And something told me its warnings were not to be taken lightly. I felt a growing sense of uneasiness, and my regular night fears started to show up again, too. In my mind that intangible menace had become crystallized now, crystallized into an immediate, personal danger to myself. Danger…!

  I tried to cut off the train of thought. I sat up in bed, looking at the strip of lighted passage through the open door. Usually I liked the idea of that open door; it was a contact with the outside world; it made me feel safe from the neurotic fears in my own mind.

  But that night my fears were external. If there were danger, it would come through that door. On a sudden impulse, I jumped out of bed, hurried to the door and closed it. But when my uncertain fingers felt for the key, I remembered there was no lock. The thought came to me tinged with panic. Slowly I moved back to the bed.

  I do not know how long I lay awake in the darkness, listening to my heart beat and cursing myself for an old soak. I almost reached the maudlin state of thinking the prohibitionists were right after all. At any rate I realized I was now paying for my alcoholic excesses with a vengeance that would have satisfied even Carrie Nation herself.

  The cure seemed to have become more nerve-wracking than the disease. I think that if it hadn't been for Iris, I would have got up then and there, demanded my baggage and turned my back on the Lenz Sanitarium once and for all.

  After what seemed like hours I calmed down sufficiently to slip off into a doze. I was half asleep, luxuriating in the new sensation of tranquility when I heard footsteps.

  Instantly I was horribly awake again. Those footsteps were moving nearer. They were coming to my room. I knew
it. I sat up and then froze against the pillows like a dummy.

  The door was opening. I saw a crack of light, a fragment of a silhouette. As I flung out a hand for the telephone, I realized that by now Mrs. Fogarty would be off duty. If I summoned aid, only Warren would come, and in my jittery state I felt I would rather face this thing alone than with the hostile night attendant.

  The door had opened to its full extent now and was shutting again. I made no sound. The indistinct figure that moved toward me was nothing but a blur in the shadows. I strained my eyes, helplessly unable to identify it with any living person in the sanitarium.

  It was so near now that I could feel the cold sweat breaking out on my forehead. Then it spoke:

  "Are you awake, Duluth?"

  I almost laughed, the relief was so great. It was only old Laribee.

  He fumbled for a chair and drew it toward the bed. Ponderously he sat down—a pathetic, ungainly figure in his gray pajamas.

  "I want to talk to you, Duluth," he whispered eagerly.

  My fears had vanished. I only felt curious now.

  "But how did you get by Warren?"

  "He's out there asleep in the alcove."

  "Well, what's on your mind?"

  He leaned forward. His heavy face was close to mine, and I could see his eyes gleaming.

  "I'm not mad," he said. "I'm sure of that now. I want you to know, too."

  "Good for you," I said feebly and without conviction.

  But he hardly waited for my reply. He went on hurriedly:

  "For several days, I thought I really was going insane. That night I heard the ticker in my room. On the walk I heard my broker's voice speaking in my ear. That's enough to make any man think he's crazy, isn't it? But you found that stop watch in my pocket. I've been thinking it out and I see it was all a frame-up. They're deliberately frightening me—trying to drive me mad."

  I drew the bedclothes up to my chin and waited for him to go on.

  "I know their little game," he was continuing breathlessly. "I know why they're trying to frighten me. Shall I tell you?"