Quests of Simon Ark
Page 23
“What’s on your mind?” Simon asked Banto. “I thought you were seeing Maud Slumber this morning.”
“I am, at eleven. But I thought I’d see you first.” He reached into his pocket and took out a small plastic device of a sort I’d never seen before. “Any idea what this thing is?”
Simon took it and turned it over in his hands. It was round and flat, a couple of inches in diameter, with a hollow channel running along one side. There was a small spring in the channel and I could see a little lever that latched the spring and held it in place. “Look,” I showed him, “when the spring is latched a certain amount of pressure on the side plate will release it. Whatever’s put in this channel would be propelled forward about an inch.”
“Where did you find this?” Simon asked Banto.
“In Eric Caser’s room. He had an apartment in Greenwich Village. There was nothing else of interest, but this intrigued me because I don’t know what it is.”
“I saw one once before, years ago,” Simon said. “Remember, my friend, when we investigated the killings at the army base in the desert back in the 1950s? They were still doing research into nerve gas then and working on possible defensive measures. That was always the problem—how do you protect yourself against a gas that kills within seconds, before you have time to put on a protective mask?”
“This thing protects against gas?” Banto asked, unbelieving.
Simon nodded. “It was tested but never issued to the troops. The threat of nerve gas simply faded away. The idea was that an antidote had been developed. Work on it was begun during World War II. All that was needed was an instant manner of injection during possible exposure. A tiny hypodermic needle was fitted into this channel and loaded with one shot of the nerve-gas antidote. The disc was worn taped to the arm or leg. Pressure on this side-simply by squeezing the arm against the body—was enough to release the spring and inject the needle into the skin. It took only a second and that was fast enough to counteract the nerve gas.”
“Eric Caser wasn’t killed with nerve gas,” Banto said.
“No, but this little device has solved the case for us.”
“How’s that?”
“Do you want proof of the killer’s identity, Sergeant? Do you want to make a capture red-handed?”
Banto laughed. “Why not?”
“Then tell Maud Slumber you’re going down to search Caser’s apartment later this afternoon. Make up some excuse why you haven’t been there before this. Tell her you’re looking for some clue as to how he died.”
“All right. I can do that.”
“Say nothing else. Just tell her you’re going down after lunch. Meanwhile, give us the address and we’ll watch the place till you get there.”
“I’ve got detectives who can do that.”
“What’s the address?”
Banto told us. “All right,” he said, “here’s the key. Put this gadget back in one of the drawers for me and then get out. My men will cover it from there. If you’re right, she’ll try to get to it before I do my search, is that right?”
“Something like that,” Simon admitted.
“Go to it.”
We took a taxi down to the Village, arriving at the apartment on Bleecker Street just a few minutes after eleven. “I’m surprised he trusted us,” I remarked to Simon.
“He didn’t. He radioed ahead. There’s a detective in that doorway watching us. He had nothing to lose by going along with my idea, but that doesn’t mean he trusts us.”
I unlocked the apartment door and we entered the silent, plainly furnished room. There was a desk and a few books, mainly in French, with a sofa that converted to a bed at night. It was the apartment of someone on the move, a rest stop along a journey. Simon slipped the plastic device into a dresser drawer, making no attempt to hide it.
“Let’s go,” I said.
He touched my shoulder. “No, my friend. We stay.”
“But the police—”
“We stay. Our killer is a very slippery individual who may expect a trap.”
“What if Marie isn’t there to hear Banto say he’s going to search the apartment?”
“She’ll be there.”
“And she’ll tip off Vic Tannet, right?”
“We shall see.”
So we waited, standing behind a curtain that hid a small walk-in kitchen from the rest of the studio apartment. We waited for an hour and nothing happened. The noontime street noises drifted up, but no intruder came.
“It’s hopeless, Simon,” I said. “A good idea but—”
“Quiet!” he whispered.
There was a scratching at the lock and suddenly the door popped open. A figure moved across the room, searching quickly in the likely places. I could see it was a man.
And then I remembered that Maud Slumber hadn’t been alone at her meeting with Sergeant Banto. She’d asked Greg Hopkins to be present too.
I heard a drawer slide open. He’d found the thing he sought.
“Don’t try to escape,” Simon said, stepping through the curtains.
He turned then, his face twisted with fury, and his hand went to his pocket. I saw the hypodermic needle held high, beginning its swing toward Simon, and then Banto was there, crashing in from the fire escape.
There was an instant’s struggle as Banto flung himself on the man and toppled him to the floor. “Get that needle!” Simon warned Banto. “It’ll be full of cyanide!”
Then the struggle went out of Banto’s captive and I got my first clear look at his face.
It wasn’t Greg Hopkins.
It was Doctor Langstrom.
“I wasn’t surprised,” Simon Ark said later. “From the minute Banto showed us that device I knew it had to be Langstrom. He did government research with electric eels, remember? During the Second World War the antidote for nerve gas was developed through continuing research with electric eels. Langstrom had these gadgets and it was a simple enough task to persuade Eric Caser to wear one.”
“How simple?”
“Eric’s brother had already been killed, possibly as a result of Maud Slumber’s hex. Langstrom convinced Eric she’d used some sort of nerve poison on her ex-husband and that she planned to kill him the same way. After all, Langstrom was a respected physician and Eric believed him in medical matters. What’s more, Langstrom told him he and Maud had just been married, giving him an inside track on her plans—he didn’t want Eric to die like his brother, he said, so he had to be prepared with this poison antidote.”
“But there was no poison,” Sergeant Banto said.
“Exactly. Langstrom couldn’t have known Eric would get stuck in the revolving door, of course—that was just happenstance. He’d probably warned him to beware of the elevator or some other part of the building. Beware of closed spaces, he might have said. He knew that sooner or later Eric—very nervous by now—would squeeze the disc to his side and inject himself with the antidote that was really poison. It didn’t really matter if the disc was found still taped to the dead man’s arm—there was nothing to connect it to Langstrom.
“But as luck would have it he was in the building, at Maud’s apartment, when Eric died and he was the first to examine the body. So when he ripped open Eric’s shirt to try to ‘revive’ him it was a simple matter to pull the disc and tape from his arm and pocket them. Naturally he’d call Maud for a rundown on her talk with Banto, so he learned of Banto’s plan to search this apartment later. I supposed he’d given Eric a duplicate disc in the event the first one malfunctioned. Remember, when we met Eric in front of the apartment house he told us he had his own amulet against hexes? This was it, only it killed him.”
“Then Lyle’s death and Eric being stuck in the revolving door were only coincidences?”
“Yes,” Simon said, “if such things can ever be coincidence. Langstrom made up the two dolls after the deaths, of course, using a bit of glass to indicate the method of Lyle’s death. He planted them in Maud’s bedroom himself, knowing t
hey’d be found. I imagine it was the first part of a long-range plan to have her declared insane. Marie said no one ever came to the apartment. But of course Dr. Langstrom did.”
“But why did he kill Eric?” I asked.
“Maud had left Lyle and Eric money in her will—a sum which had grown to a great deal of money, I believe. When she threatened to put a hex on them, Hopkins suggested she simply disinherit them instead. But even after Langstrom talked her into marriage she was still reluctant to change her will. So with Lyle already gone by accident, Langstrom decided to kill Eric and have all the money for himself. Maud told us she sent someone to talk to the brothers when they came back into her life. I’m sure that was Langstrom. That’s how he struck up the acquaintance with Eric.”
“He must have been very persuasive to convince Eric to inject something into his body.”
“Oh, he was,” Simon agreed. “The perfect bedside manner. After all, he persuaded Maud to marry him. But even Eric must have realized the truth at the moment he was dying. That’s why he managed to print that word on the glass. And that’s how I knew the doctor had confided his wedding news to Eric.”
“But he printed Marie! What did she have to do with any of it?”
“Nothing. You’ll remember she told us she never met Eric. Lyle knew her, but not Eric. He wasn’t trying to tell us her name. He was trying to indicate the man who had tricked him into poisoning himself. And as he died he reverted to his native French tongue. Langstrom was too long a name to print, so he managed marie instead—the French word for bridegroom.”
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Village of the Dead © 1955 by Columbia Publications, Inc.
© Renewed 1983 by Edward D. Hoch
The Man from Nowhere © 1956 by Columbia Publications, Inc.
© Renewed 1984 by Edward D. Hoch
The Vicar of Hell © by Columbia Publications, Inc.
© Renewed 1984 by Edward D. Hoch
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The Unicorn’s Daughter © 1981 by Davis Publications, Inc.
The Witch of Park Avenue © 1982 by Edward D. Hoch
Copyright © 1984, by Edward D. Hoch.
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