He looked, using my matches and examining the labels of a row of bottles in the compartment under the sink. He came up with one and looked at it closely. “Nope. This is marked ‘Danger’ in big letters and “Keep away from fire.’ Guess we haven’t got the non-inflammable kind.”
I sighed. It would have been simple if Carl had had the right brand. I had some myself, at home, but I didn’t want to go there. It meant a trip to the supermarket.
And I didn’t ask Carl for a candle. I could get that at the supermarket, too, and I neither wanted Carl to think I was crazy or to have to explain to him what I was going to do.
We had our drink. Carl shuddered at his, but got it down. He said, “Doc, listen, isn’t there anything I can do?”
I turned back at the door. “You’ve done plenty.” I told him. “But if you want to do more, you might get dressed and ready. I might be phoning you soon if everything goes all right. I might need you then.”
“Doc, wait. I’ll get dressed now, and——”
“You’d be in the way, Carl,” I told him.
And got out quickly before he could press me any farther. If he’d even guessed how bad a jam I was in or what a damn fool thing I was going to do, he’d have knocked me down and tied me up before he’d have let me out of there.
Dim grey light of early morning now, and I no longer had to grope my way. I’d forgotten to ask Carl the time again, but it must be about a quarter after five.
I was under greater risk, now, of being seen if Kates and the deputies were still cruising around looking for me, but I had a hunch that they’d have given up by now, convinced that I’d holed in somewhere. Probably now they were concentrating on the roads so I couldn’t get out of town. And getting out of town was the farthest thing from my mind.
I stayed in the alleys, just the same. Back the way I’d come and ready to dive between garages or behind a garbage can at the first sound of a car. But there weren’t any cars; five-fifteen is early even in Carmel City.
The supermarket wasn’t open yet. I wrapped my handkerchief around the butt of one of my two revolvers—Two-Gun Stoeger, they call me—and broke a pane in one of the back windows. It made a hell of a racket, but there aren’t any residences in that block and nobody heard me, or at least nobody did anything about it.
I let myself in and started my shopping.
Cleaning fluid. Two kinds; I needed some of the non-inflammable kind and, now that I thought of it, a bottle of the kind that was marked “Danger. Keep away from fire.”
I opened both of them and they smelled about alike. I poured the inflammable kind down the drain of the sink at the back and replaced it with the kind that doesn’t burn.
I even made sure that it wouldn’t burn; I poured some on a rag and tried to light the rag. Maybe it would have been in keeping with everything else that had been happening if that rag had burned and I hadn’t been able to put it out, if I’d burned the supermarket down and added arson to my other accomplishments of the night. But the rag wouldn’t burn any more than if I’d soaked it with water instead of the gasoline-smelling cleaning fluid.
I thought out carefully what other items I’d need, and shopped for them; some rolls of one-inch adhesive tape, a candle, and a cake of soap. I’d heard that a cake of soap, inside a sock, made a good blackjack; the soap is soft enough to stun without killing. I took off one of my socks and made myself a blackjack.
My pockets were pretty well laden by the time I left the supermarket—by the same window through which I’d entered. I was pretty far gone in crime by them; it never occurred to me to leave money for my purchases.
It was almost daylight. A clear grey dawn that looked like the herald of a good day—for someone; whether for me or not I’d know soon.
I stuck to the alleys, back the way I’d come and three blocks on past Carl’s house.
Al Grainger’s. A one-storey, three-room house, about the size of mine.
It was almost six o’clock by then. He was asleep by now, if he was ever going to sleep. And somehow I thought he would be asleep by now. He’d have been through with everything he had to do by two o’clock, four hours ago. What he’d done might have kept him awake for a while, but not into the next day.
I cased the joint, and sighed with relief at one problem solved when I saw that the bedroom window wasn’t closed. It opened on to the back porch and I could step into it easily.
I bent and stepped through it. I didn’t make much noise and Al Grainger, sleeping soundly in the bed, didn’t awaken. I had my gun—the loaded one—in my right hand and ready to use in case he did.
But I kept my right hand and the loaded gun out of sight. I got the rusty, unloaded Iver-Johnson, the gun that had been used as a bludgeon to kill Miles and Bonney, into my left hand. I had a test in mind which, if it worked, would be absolute proof to me that Al was guilty. If it didn’t work, it wouldn’t disprove it and I’d go ahead just the same, but it didn’t cost anything to try.
It was still dim in the room and I reached out with my left hand and turned on the lamp that stood beside the bed. I wanted him to see that gun. He moved restlessly as the light went on, but he didn’t awaken.
“Al,” I said.
He wakened then, all right. He sat up in bed and stared at me. I said, “Put up your hands, Al,” and held the gun in my left hand pointed at him, standing far enough back that he couldn’t grab at me, but near enough that he could see the gun clearly in the pale glow of the lamp I’d lighted.
He looked from my face to the gun and back again. He threw back the sheet to get out of bed. He said, “Don’t be a fool, Doc. That gun isn’t loaded and it wouldn’t shoot if it was.”
If I needed any more proof, I had it.
He was starting to move his feet toward the edge of the bed when I brought my right hand, holding the other gun, around into sight. I said, “This one is loaded, and works.”
He stopped moving his feet. I dropped the rusty gun into my coat pocket. I said, “Turn around Al.”
He hesitated and I cocked the revolver. It was aimed at him from about five feet, too close to miss him if I pulled the trigger and just too far for him to risk grabbing at, especially from an awkward sitting-up-in-bed position. I could see him considering the odds, coldly, impartially.
He decided they weren’t good. And he decided, probably, that if he let me take him, it wouldn’t matter to his plans anyway. If I turned him over to the police along with my story, it wouldn’t strengthen my story in the least.
“Turn around, Al,” I repeated.
He still stared at me calculatingly. I could see what he was thinking; if he turned, I was probably going to slug him with the butt of the revolver and whatever my intentions, I might hit too hard. And if I killed him, even accidentally, it wouldn’t help him any to know that they’d got me for one extra murder. I repeated, “Turn around, and put your hands out in back of you.”
I could see some of the tenseness go out of him at that. If I was only going to tie him up——
He turned around. I quickly switched the revolver to my left hand and pulled out the improvised blackjack I’d made of a sock and a cake of soap. I made a silent prayer that I’d guess right on the swing and not hit too hard or not hard enough, and I swung.
The thud scared me. I thought I’d killed him, and I knew that he wasn’t shamming when he dropped back flat on the bed because his head hit the head of the bed with a second thud that was almost as loud as the first.
And if he had been shamming he could have taken me easily, because I was so scared that I put the revolver down. I couldn’t even put it in my pocket because it was cocked and I didn’t know how to uncock it without shooting it off. So I put it on the night stand beside the bed and bent over him to feel his heart. It was still beating.
I got the rolls of adhesive tape out of my pocket and started to work. I taped around his mouth so he couldn’t yell, and I taped his legs together at the ankles and at the knees. I taped his left wrist to
his left thigh, and I used a whole roll of adhesive to tape his right arm against his side above the elbow. His right hand had to be free.
I found some clothes-line in the kitchen and tied him to the bed, managing as I did so to pull him up into an almost sitting position against the head of the bed.
I got a pad of paper, foolscap, from his desk and I put it and my ball-point pen within reach of his right hand.
There wasn’t anything I could do but sit down and wait, then.
Ten minutes, maybe fifteen, and it was getting pretty light outside. I began to get impatient. Probably there wasn’t any hurry; Al Grainger always slept late so no one would miss him for a long time yet, but the waiting was horrible.
I decided that I could take a drink again and that I needed one. I went out into his kitchen and hunted till I found a bottle. It was gin instead of whisky, but it would serve the purpose. It tasted horrible.
When I got back to the bedroom he was awake. So wide awake that I felt pretty sure that he’d been playing possum for a while, stalling for time. He was trying desperately with his free right hand to peel off the tape that held his left wrist to his thigh.
But with his right arm held tight against his side at the elbow he wasn’t making much headway. When I picked up the gun off the night stand he stopped trying. He glared at me.
I said, “Hi, Al. We’re in the seventh square.”
I wasn’t in any hurry now, none at all. I sat down comfortably before I went on.
“Listen, Al,” I told him, “I left your right hand free so you can use that paper and the pen. I want you to do a little writing for me. I’ll hold the pad for you so you can see what you’re writing. Or don’t you feel in the mood to write, Al?”
He merely lay back quietly and closed his eyes.
I said, “All I want you to write is that you killed Ralph Bonney and Miles Harrison last night. That you took my car out and intercepted them on the way back from Neilsville, probably on foot with my car out of sight. They knew you and would stop for you and let you in the car. So you got in the back seat and before Miles, who’d be driving, could start the car again you slugged him over the head and then slugged Bonney. Then you put their bodies in my car and left theirs somewhere off the road. And then you drove to the Wentworth place and left my car instead of whatever car I’d been driven there in. Or am I wrong on any little details, Al?”
He didn’t answer, not that I’d expected him to.
I said, “There’ll be quite a bit of writing, because I want you also to explain how you hired an actor to use the name of Yehudi Smith and give me such an incredible story to tell that no one would ever believe me. I want you to tell how you had him entice me to the Wentworth place—and about that bottle you left there and what was in it. And that you’d instructed him that he was to drink it. And what his right name was and what you did with his body.”
I said, “I guess that’ll be enough for you to write, Al. You needn’t write what the motive was; that’ll be obvious after your relationship to Ralph Bonney comes to light, as it will. And you needn’t write all the little details about how or when you let the air out of my tyres so I wouldn’t be using my car nor how or when you used my shop to print that card with the name Yehudi Smith and my union label number. And you needn’t write why you picked me to take the blame for the murders. In fact, I’m not proud of that part of it at all. It makes me a little ashamed of the thing I’m going to have to do in order to persuade you to do the writing I’ve been talking about.”
I was a little ashamed, but not enough so to keep me from doing it.
I took the bottle of non-inflammable cleaning fluid that smelled like gasoline and opened it.
Al Grainger’s eyes opened, too, as I began to sprinkle it over the sheets and his pyjamas. I managed to hold the bottle so he could read the “Danger” warning and, if his eyes were good enough for the smaller type, the “Keep away from fire” part.
I emptied the whole bottle, ending up with quite a big wet spot of it at a point at one side of his knees where he could see it clearly. The room reeked with the gasoline-like odour.
I got out the candle and my knife and cut a piece an inch long off the top of the candle. I smoothed out the wet spot on the sheet and put the candle top down carefully.
“I’m going to light this, Al, and you’d better not move much or you’ll knock it over. And I’m sure a pyrophobiac wouldn’t like what would happen to him then. And you’re a pyrophobiac, Al.”
His eyes were wide with horror as I lighted the match. If his mouth hadn’t been taped, he’d have screamed in terror. Every muscle of his body was rigid.
He tried to play possum on me, again, probably figuring I wouldn’t go through with it if he was unconscious, if I thought he’d fainted. He could do it with his eyes, but the muscles of the rest of his body gave him away. He couldn’t relax them if it would have saved his life.
I lighted the candle, and sat down again.
“An inch of candle, Al,” I said. “Maybe ten minutes if you stay as still as that. Sooner if you get reckless and wriggle a toe or finger. That candle isn’t too stable standing there on a soft mattress.”
His eyes were open again, staring at that candle burning down toward the soaked sheet, staring in utter horror. I hated myself for what I was doing to him, but I kept on doing it just the same. I thought of three men murdered tonight and steeled myself. And after all, Al’s only danger was in his mind. That wet spot on the sheet was stuff that would keep the sheet itself from burning.
“Ready to write, Al?”
His horror-filled eyes shifted from the candle to my face, but he didn’t nod; I thought for a moment that he was calling my bluff, and then I realized that the reason he didn’t nod was because he was afraid to make even the slight muscular movement for fear of knocking over the short candle.
I said, “All right, Al. I’ll see if you’re ready. If you aren’t, I’ll put the candle back where it was, and I’ll let it keep burning meanwhile so you won’t have gained any time.” I picked up the candle gently and put it down on the night stand.
I held the pad. He started to write and then stopped, and I reached for the candle. The pen started moving again.
After a while I said, “That’s enough. Just sign it.”
I sighed with relief and went over to the telephone. Carl Trenholm must have been sitting beside his own phone; he answered almost before it had finished ringing the first time.
“Dressed and ready?” I asked him.
“Right, Doc. What do I do?”
“I’ve got Al Grainger’s confession. I want it turned over to the law to clear me, but it’s not safe for me to do it direct. Kates would shoot before he’d read and some of the deputies might. You’ll have to do it for me, Carl.”
“Where are you? at Al’s?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be around. And I’ll bring Ganzer to get Al. It’s all right; Hank won’t shoot. I’ve been talking reason to him and he admits somebody else could have put those bodies in your car. And when I tell him there’s a confession from Grainger, he’ll listen.”
“How about Kates, though? And how come you were talking to Hank Ganzer?”
“He called up here, looking for Kates. Kates left him to go back to the office an hour or two ago and never got to the office and they don’t know where he is. But don’t worry, Kates won’t take any shots at you if you’re with Ganzer and me both. I’ll be right around.”
I phoned Pete and told him that all hell had been popping and that now we had a story we could use, one even bigger than the ones that had got away. He said he’d get right down to the shop and get the fire going under the Linotype’s metal pot. “I was just leaving anyway, Doc,” he said. “It’s half-past seven.”
It was. I looked out the window and saw that it was broad daylight. I sat down and jittered until Carl and Hank got there.
It was eight o’clock exactly when I got to the office. Once Hank had seen that
confession he’d let Carl and me talk him into letting Grainger do any explaining that remained so I could get the paper out in time. It was going to take me a good two hours to get that story written and we’d probably go to press a little later than usual, anyway.
Pete got to work dismantling page one to make room for it—and plenty of room. I phoned the restaurant and talked them into sending up a big thermos jug of hot, black coffee and started pounding my typewriter.
The phone rang and I picked it up. “Doc Stoeger?” it said. “This is Dr. Buchan at the asylum. You were so kind last night about not running the story about Mrs. Griswald’s escape and recapture that I decided it was only fair to tell you that you can run it after all, if there’s still time.”
“There’s still time,” I said. “We’re going to be late going to press anyway. And thanks. But what came up? I thought Mrs. G. didn’t want to worry her daughter in Springfield.”
“Her daughter knows anyway. A friend of hers here—one whom we went to see while we were hunting our patient—phoned her to tell her about it. And she telephoned the asylum to be sure her mother was all right. So she already knows and you might as well have the story after all.”
I said, “Fine, Dr. Buchan. Thanks a lot for calling.”
Back to the typewriter. The black coffee came and I drank almost a full cup of it the first gulp and damn near scalded myself.
The asylum story was quick and easy to get out of the way so I wrote it up first. I’d just finished when the phone rang again.
“Mr. Stoeger?” it asked me. “This is Ward Howard, superintendent of the fireworks factory. We had a slight accident in the plant yesterday that I’d like you to run a short story on, if it’s not too late.”
“It’s not too late,” I said, “provided the accident was in the Roman candle department. Was it?”
“Oh, so you already knew. Do you have the details or shall I give them to you?”
I let him give them and took notes and then I asked him how come they wanted the story printed.
Night of the Jabberwock Page 18