I broke up one of the kitchen chairs and took a leg of it. I have it across my knees. It is not very heavy. It would be only a deflecting weapon against that knife. But a man likes to have something in his fist.
He might stand out there in the night, of course, and shoot me. I have thought of that, weighing the hazards of it against the hazards of keeping constantly alert in perfect darkness in this creaky house, trying to keep him from the girl that I could no longer see, with him perhaps having cat’s eyes.
I do not think he has a gun. Guns make a noise. Gun bullets have their own rifling prints; and guns can be traced. The firing of a gun leaves powder flecks that can be determined on a man’s hand or wrist.
No, he is strong, and he has always trusted to his own hands. He would like to do the thing in darkness and silence. Doing murder with a common weapon that cannot be traced when found—a stone picked up by the roadside, or something like that—has always been his specialty.
Though he bought that serrated knife himself in Danbury, for a dollar and fifteen cents. With the girl that he was going to kill right there beside him, God help her.
I have got all the facts down.
That is it.
Bright blazing intuitions may go rushing through a man’s mind, swifter and more terrible than lightning, flashing over a landscape that seems clear in every detail. Then they go out, and there is only a greater blackness.
They cannot be trusted. A dozen times tonight I have had the flashing thought that old Adam MacComerou himself, with his big brown bat ears, his pale wrinkled eyes and mushy talk, with his- smooth old muscles sliding beneath his pale skin like the muscles of a tiger, with his big old brain that knew too much of murder, was trying to kill me. After he had seen my car parked down there right at the entrance to the Swamp Road, as I had said it was, and I had handed him back his little wrench, with him saying to me mushily, “Perhaps I had better give it to you!” and the owl howling. And a few steps later, turning with that crank in my hand that I had picked up, which had struck the rattlesnake the mortal blow in its blind heave—though I hadn’t known it at the time—and seeing him right there behind me, with that big rock in his fist. And for a long second, it had seemed to me, he held the rock, while I held the crank, before he had tossed it over into the weeds.
I had laid the crank across my knees and kept my right hand half on it, all the way back down to his place here.
Yes, I had had a blind flashing intuition that he would like to kill me, when I first came on him in his garden, for no reason. And more than once again tonight. Down there in the huge sloping sawdust heaps, when his light had gone quietly out, most of all. Before Unistaire had found his old body.
Old Adam MacComerou, who wrote Homicidal Psychopathology, that profound and lucid analysis of the murderous mind. Perhaps some way he had gone crazy, I thought. One of the most brilliant men that science has produced. Though it had been impossible that a clear mind like that could ever go crazy. And I knew that he lived here quietly at his place all the time, a little gruff over the telephone, and not very neighborly, but interested in his garden and his books. A perfectly sane life.
Blinding lightning flashes. But no good. Here are the facts. I have sweated to get them down. Every one of them, omitting nothing, however trivial it might be, or might seem to be. And there is one perfect criminal, and one only, through all of it. He is right there, right through it. He is there from the beginning. He is St. Erme. He is that man who called himself S. Inis St. Erme, though his name may have been John Jones or Judkiss Smith.
From the beginning, from his first appearance, St. Erme is the complete and perfect criminal. And no one else.
That insurance business between him and Dexter stank. Dexter, a small businessman, hard-pressed for cash, may have been only a stooge for him. Dexter doesn’t seem very bright. He may not have realized the criminality. St. Erme, having discovered him, goes to him with a proposition for an insurance fraud. St. Erme will insure his life in Dexter’s favor, then pretend to kill himself, and let Dexter collect. Maybe letting Dexter keep ten or twenty per cent of the proceeds for his trouble.
St. Erme comes into an insurance agency which he has picked. A reputable firm, but owned by an old man, and doing only a modest little business, both of which items may indicate him as a man not too sharp and bright—old Cousin Paul Riddle is a lot older than my father, and I never heard in any family talk that he was ever a ball of fire. Having an old, old examining doctor, too. Though St. Erme was strong enough. He was— he is—as strong as hell, with nothing wrong with him.
So perhaps the age of the doctor didn’t make any difference.
In the office he meets this shy and pretty little girl, without friends or family. He knows that no man has ever made love to her before. It is something which any man can tell about a girl. He makes eyes at her, maybe taking her out to lunch that day. He gets to know her, so that he will seem to have more substance and more background as an insurable prospect, by using her.
Who is this young man St. Erme, anyway, Miss Darrie, who had applied for twenty-five thousand dollars’ insurance, with double indemnity in case of accidental death? I rather understood from some remark he made that you know him?
Why, I don’t really know him, Mr. Riddle. But he’s the son of an oil man from Oklahoma, I think, who left him a lot of money, though he doesn’t like to talk about it. His mother is a Scots-Indian. He’s an investor, I think. He makes money on the stock exchange whenever there is an opportunity, too, and is interested in a lot of different businesses. One of the small things that he is interested in as a side venture is an inventing business run by a garage man named Mr. Dexter. Mr. Dexter has a lot of inventions—I don’t understand all the technical details about them—but Mr. St. Erme thinks that some of them may be worth millions when they are finished. Of course he doesn’t know. He invests in a lot of things that way, I think.
Yes, he told me about his relations with Dexter, Miss Darrie. He has named Dexter as his beneficiary. That is what he wanted to get the insurance for specifically, to give Dexter protection and a sense of stability, without tying up his own money in cash. It was what his lawyers had advised him—I’m not sure if he mentioned their name to me. Dexter’s credit rating is pretty bad. Still, it is St. Erme we are insuring and not Dexter. I’m glad to have more details on him. You say you knew his mother?
Oh, no, sir. I never actually knew her. She lived out in Oklahoma. She is dead. I just said she was a Scots-Indian.
Yes, I noticed how black his eyes are. Probably got ’em from her. Thank you for the information on him, Miss Darrie. You aren’t sweet on him, arc you?
Oh, no, sir. Nothing like that. You are always teasing me. Why, he’s old. I mean, he’s thirty-three. Of course, I don’t mean that’s really old, Mr. Riddle. Why, look at you, you’re seventy-nine, and look how young you are. Still, he seems sort of old to me. He’s just taken me out to dinner once or twice....
And so, through her, he is Inis St. Erme, the rich man’s son from somewhere out in Oklahoma; and he has got his insurance. All that he needs to do now is to kill himself, let Dexter collect like a good stooge, and give Dexter his ten or twenty per cent.
He has got it all figured out, how he will be killed. He will be riding in Dexter’s car, a conspicuous car. He will pick up some tramp, the worse-looking the better. He’ll show himself to different people with the tramp. Then, in some lonely setting, he’ll kill the tramp, change clothes with him, and in a dusky twilight setting stage a scene of rushing terror, in which he will be the tramp, hunched over the wheel, making faces, blaring his horn, while the tramp, in his own clothes, sits sprawled in the car seat beside him, with his own coat on and his own fine Panama hat down over his face—looking pretty dead, because he is. He will rush away to nowhere.
The next morning, or a day or two later, maybe, the police will find the car parked on the outskirts of some small city, with blood on it. They will check the license, and inquire
about it from its owner. Dexter will tell them, as St. Erme has instructed him to, that he lent it to St. Erme, and that he hasn’t heard from St. Erme, and had been getting a little worried.
The police will back-track on the car. It was so conspicuous that someone must have seen it and St. Erme in it. They will learn about the tramp who had been with him, and that rushing scene of terror. They will track back and find how St. Erme had picked up the tramp along the road. They won’t be able to trace the tramp back, because tramps don’t have any background. They won’t be able to trace him forward, because he is dead, and buried in some lonely ravine.
St. Erme is missing, with all the indications of murder, in what is a not uncommon type of crime. After a time Dexter, according to St. Erme’s instructions, will identify some body that has been found after being in some river a long time, and the insurance will be paid to Dexter.
It fits, in every detail of St. Erme’s actions. A fairly crude play, with Dexter as the stooge in the background, and at the cost of killing a worthless little tramp, which Dexter does not have to be told about. But cruder plays have been gotten away with by brighter men. Insurance companies can be defrauded. In case of established death, they pay.
Poor little Corkscrew, standing by the roadside with his dead mangled kitten that he felt so sorry for! Liking to ride in Cadillacs. Poor old Corkscrew, poor old Doc.
But why, in God’s name, the girl? Why the girl here, with her lovely face and her clear innocent trusting young heart? After he had played up to her to establish himself with the Riddle agency as a solid and reputable person, why didn’t he just drop her?
She had served his purpose. He was not a man to love. It sticks out all over him. Even she herself, ignorant as she was of men, had known by instinct that he did not care for women. The whole thing of love bored him, and women bored him.
So why keep it up?
He had learned from her that she had a little money of her own, that was why. She had a few dollars more than twenty-five hundred in the bank, the proceeds of the sale of her grandmother’s house. That was only a fraction as much as he would get from the insurance. But if he could get his hands on it, it would be so much extra, and it would be sure, at least. He was a businessman, as he had told her. He liked to stick his fingers in a lot of pies.
He can’t just borrow the money from her, though. That would break down his whole character as a rich man, and spoil his other game. He can’t use the wiretapping scheme or the gilt-edged-stock scheme. What he plans is to go into the bank with her some time when she is drawing a little check for herself.
He has learned that, in making out a check, she always writes the day first, and then her signature, and pauses then to debate with herself whether she will make the amount five dollars or seven-fifty. In the bank with her—which he has pretended to her is his own bank, too—he will get her to start making out a check for twenty or twenty-five dollars, while he pretends to be making out one of his own beside her. Then, just at the moment when she had written in the word for the amount, and before she has drawn the line or put down the # to terminate it, he will distract her attention, and give her some reason why he is taking her check to cash with his own mythical one.
In the way he did it, he seized her arm and called attention to their car out in front, with some hocus-pocus about some suspicious-looking man who had been staring at it. He asked her to watch it, while at some other counter he wrote “Five Hundred” after the word “Twenty,”and putthe number $2500 down, and went back to the window to cash it.
He went to a teller who, he knew, knew her by sight. When the teller was dubious about it—a check made out to cash, in a sum practically wiping out her account—he probably explained easily that Miss Darrie was buying a house or making some investment, and said with a nod, “There is Miss Darrie now.”
And she had smiled at his nod and come on back, vouching for him by her presence. Sawyer had started paying out the money, and had made some remark to her that he hoped she would profit from her investment.
Outside the bank, St. Erme had given her one of the bills, to show how rich and generous he was, telling her that he had torn up her own check, and that her money wasn’t good any more. It wasn’t. But he hadn’t expected her to keep that bill long. Not he. For she couldn’t be allowed to live now, and spoil his other game about the insurance. He will just kill her, and hide her body.
A girl without a family, without friends. No one will ever look for her. No one will ever know.
He had been cultivating her, since he had met her, with an occasional dinner or movie, with nickel trips to Staten Island and free visits to the zoo. To get her in the mood, though, for that final act—where she would go away with him where he could kill her—he had to spring marriage on her, rushing her off her feet, giving her no time to think.
Suddenly, after one special lunch that he had treated her to, saying to her, Let’s get married! Let’s get married now! Let’s go down right now to City Hall and get married this afternoon!
Of course he had known that it couldn’t be done, Still, the idea had excited her, as it would any girl, unless she loathed a man. Then, after he had rushed her down, and it couldn’t be done, he had said to her, still keeping up the excitement, the sense of urgency, Let’s go to Connecticut! Let’s drive, and make a honeymoon of it!
It is too late to go that day, she knows. But he gets her to agree to go in the morning, and calls up Dexter from a phone booth and arranges for Dexter’s car, not telling Dexter what he wanted it for, not telling Dexter about the girl, not telling Dexter it was murder. Dexter sends around the car to her, having got her address right, though not her name, and she picks him up. He stages, then, the scene that he has planned at the bank, and has her money. Now for the wedding and the honeymoon.
They get to Danbury late, as he had arranged it. But they can’t be married there. All right, let’s go on up to Vermont! Come on! We’ve come this far! Why hesitate now? It would spoil it to turn back. Listen, it you’re worried, sweet, I just thought of old John R. Buchanan, the rich man—you’ve heard of him, everyone has heard of him. He has his summer place up in Vermont. Maybe you’ve heard of it, too. Old John will give us a wonderful wedding. He’s even got a wonderful honeymoon place up in the hills that he has promised to lend me. We’ll head for his place, not bothering with hotels—I don’t like registering in them, either. We’ll get some supplies and have a picnic on the way!
If he had said to her at the beginning, back in New York, “Let’s go up to Vermont to be married,” it would have “seemed to her too far. They could wait three days in New York. He had to lure her on by stages, in a spirit of whipped-up excitement. To the place where he had wanted her. To some deep black lake up in some lonely district, where he could sink her body so deep with stones that it would never be found.
Dead Bridegroom’s Pond. The name had frightened her when Postmaster Quelch had mentioned it. But no doubt he had thought it funny.
How could he do it to her? With her beautiful face, with her sweet and trusting young heart? A man not human. A man with no heart at all. The mother who had borne him must have been cursed and damned.
Maybe he had done it to other girls before her. That ring he gave her that doesn’t fit her. Who knows? Or will ever know?
There had been that moment in Danbury when she had almost pulled back. She had felt that dark shadow. She had been afraid of him, though she didn’t know what her feeling was. Perhaps she had been terrified of him all along, deep underneath, with all the deepest instincts of her life. So he had dragged the name of old John R. Buchanan out of his memory as a bait. And they had bought groceries and the picnic plates in the ten-cent store, and he had bought the knife.
And she went on with him, to what he had planned would be her death alone.
Just outside of Danbury there had been the little tramp by the roadside, though. Maybe St. Erme had planned his own death to be a little later. Maybe not until one more insurance pr
emium had been paid. But that little tramp, with his repulsive face, with his extraordinary and unforgettable clothing, was too marvelous to pass over. He presented the opportunity to St. Erme to kill two birds with one stone. Or knife.
Poor damned little Corkscrew! Poor old Doc, with his quiet voice and his sorrow over a dead kitten and his little courteous nice manners and his Latin. Where he came from, who will ever know? I wonder if he really ever was a doctor? It is not education only that keeps a man from going down.
Not education, but something hard inside him. Something that says, I’ll face the issue. It’s my hat, all right. It was probably my own stolen surgical instruments that were used. The fifty fifty-dollar bills that have been found in a white envelope marked “For Dr. Riddle” in the blood down on the road edge overlooking Dead Bridegroom’s Pond are doubtless mine, lost out of my pocket. But that car did not pass me, I’ll stand on that. I never saw it. I’ll stick to that.
He took her down there by the black lake to kill her, leaving that little tramp in the car to be killed after he had come back up, when he would change clothes with him, and drive on. He stooped by the lake shore to pick up a rock and kill her. In the twilight, by the deep blackI waters. And she screamed. She screamed, “Don’t!”
He thought she had guessed. He caught sight of that face peering over the rock edge above. The little tramp had suspected something, too. He had followed them down.
He must be disposed of. He was dangerous. He was a witness, In a rage St. Erme went rushing after him to get him, leaving her to be disposed of when he got back.
He caught Corkscrew by the car, and killed him there, with that scream which she had heard as she hurried up after. He changed clothes and hats swiftly before anyone might come along the road in the twilight. From this moment onward anyone must see dirty ragged old Checked Coat, Saw-tooth Blue Hat, alive, and see fine silky Gabardine Coat, Panama Hat, dead. The little tramp’s shoulders were broad, for all his truncated stature, and their coats fitted. The blue saw-tooth hat, a seven and three-eighths, was even a little too big for St. Erme, but all the better, pulling down to cover more of his face. He jammed his Panama down on Corkscrew’s head, with brim turned down. If it was tight, Corkscrew did not complain.
The Red Right Hand Page 16