The Deadly Percheron

by John Franklin Bardin

  Anderson smiled confidently. “I was coming to that,” he said to her. Then he looked back at me. “You didn’t succeed in ‘disappearing’ last year as well as you thought. I knew your every move from the time you rented this apartment until I finally lost track of you last April. You did some peculiar things during those months. You hired a detective agency, interviewed a lot of people. You may have had an accident of some kind as you say, but it made you forget your whole past life, not just the immediate past. I had a man watching you day and night and I know. I had a man on duty here when you had your wife rent the apartment under an assumed name. That’s how I knew where you were. I knew you visited Mr McGillicuddy, an old gentleman who was trustee of John Blunt’s estate – I visited him, too. What I did not know from having you watched all the time, I learned from this – ”

  Anderson picked the notebook up from where I had thrown it on the floor. “This apartment was searched thoroughly one weekend recently when your wife was away. I had photostats made of the leaves of this notebook.” He picked up the knife. “There was another knife just like this one in the apartment then and it had your fingerprints on it.” He looked at it, then back at the body, saw that there were two identical knives in the room. “Why, this is it!” he exclaimed. “And I think we’ll find it is the knife you used to kill Raye just as that one was used to kill your wife.”

  He laid down the notebook and pointed to it dramatically. “This alone contains all the circumstantial evidence we need to convict you. It’s a very complete record of a man in search of his past. Oh, you were cagey about it–the separate entries are cryptic, but with a reasonable amount of study they lead to only one logical conclusion: your real name is not George Matthews as you would like us to believe, but Edgar Augustus Blunt!”

  Jacob interrupted, “But, Lieutenant, I don’t know an Edgar Augustus Blunt. If he exists, shouldn’t I know him?”

  Anderson shook his head. “No, it isn’t likely you would. His existence was a well-kept secret. Your father never let you know you had a half-brother. But this man is legally your halfbrother and I think blood tests will prove it. His mother was a chorus girl in a Broadway musical at the turn of the century. His father was your father. They were never married. Later his mother married a ne’er-do-well actor and threatened to reveal the existence of a son by old Blunt if he did not pay for his support. John Blunt established a living trust which was to continue only as long as the child made no claim to the name of Blunt. In the event of your death, Jacob, this man would inherit your entire estate!”

  Anderson turned back to me. “In a way I’m sorry for you,” he said. “You must have led a hell of a life as a child. McGillicuddy told me that your mother died soon after giving birth to Frances, her second, and only legitimate, child. You were both raised by her husband and successive nursemaids, your income was stretched to support this man – a broken-down actor – and your half-sister. At one time you even met your half-brother, Jacob. McGillicuddy told me some story about you being fast friends before old Blunt found out about it and separated you. Then your stepfather got a contract with a carnival and started touring the country. That is how you and Frances lived for the next five or six years until your stepfather died in a drunken brawl.”

  Jacob came over to me and stood looking at me. “Then you must be Pruney,” he said wonderingly. He examined me closely, then turned back to Anderson. “But he couldn’t be, Lieutenant. He doesn’t look like him! And Pruney was only a little older than me!”

  Anderson riffed the pages of my notebook until he found the photograph of Jacob and his childhood playmate that I had pasted in it. When he found it, he handed the notebook to Sonia, asking, “How old would you say this person was?” Sonia looked at the photo for a short while, then handed the book back to Anderson. “In his teens,” she admitted, “although he might be almost any age. I never saw such an old face on such a stunted body. But he certainly doesn’t look like Dr Matthews!”

  “This snapshot was taken fifteen or more years ago,” said Anderson. “A person can change a great deal in that length of time.”

  “Dr Matthews is not Pruney,” Jacob insisted stolidly.

  I felt it was about time I came to my own defense. I resented Anderson’s absurd claims, particularly since I had reasoned from the same evidence to entirely different conclusions. “I was born in Indianapolis, Indiana,” I said. “My father’s name was Ernest Matthews and my mother’s name was Martha. My name has never been any other. I am in no way related to Jacob, and if you will check the records at the courthouse in Indianapolis they will prove it.”

  “You will be given the opportunity to prove it,” said Anderson, “but I doubt your ability.” He looked searchingly at me. “I think your name is Blunt, and I know your half-sister’s name is Frances Raye. I think you hated this half-sister, just as you hated your mother before her. I think you hated Jacob, too, and felt that all of them stood between you and your rightful inheritance. I think that you had planned for a long time – ”

  I broke in. “Do you really want to know who killed Frances Raye, Nan Bulkely and” – my voice broke – “and now Sara?” I had grown tired of his wrongheaded charges.

  “I think you did,” said Anderson.

  “Give me a chance to prove you wrong,” I pleaded. “Give me until tomorrow morning. If I don’t have final, irrefutable proof of my own innocence and the murderer’s guilt by then, you can do what you think best.”

  Anderson studied me for a long moment. I thought he was going to grant my request, but then he shook his head. “No,” he said, “once before I took a chance with you, George – and I regretted it. Now I’m placing you under arrest – ”

  He reached out to take my arm and handcuff me. I hated to do it, but there was no other way out – I stepped forward and hit him hard on the side of the jaw. He fell sprawling on the floor. I ran out the door, vaulted down the stairs to the street. A policeman and a detective – Sommers, dozing as usual – stood on either side of the entrance to the house. I went past them so fast that I was in Anderson’s car and had released the clutch — the motor was running – before they knew what I was doing. The car roared down the street in a second. I shifted into high as I turned the corner. In rapid succession I heard shouts, the shrilling of police whistles and the windshield shattered as a bullet struck it. But by then I was in the clear – I had turned onto Eighth Street from Fifth Avenue and was racing for Third Avenue, Canal Street and the Bridge…

  II

  I had never driven that recklessly before and I hope I never have to again. I drove through traffic lights, busy intersections – once I narrowly missed colliding with a brewery truck. I ignored the brakes, using them only when the police car began to sway dangerously going around a corner or when a streetcar blocked my path. I turned on the radio and heard news of my escape being broadcast to all other scout cars. But by the time I reached 5755 Ocean Avenue none of them had found me yet.

  I went there because this was the address I had scribbled under the name “Edgar Augustus Blunt” on the back of the photograph months ago, and also because I had now remembered what I had done that last day of April: I had gone to 5755 Ocean Avenue to confront the murderer. One other time I had visited this address, if by accident, and that was a few nights ago when I had taken a walk in the Coney Island neighborhood and had stood and laughed at my reflection in the crazy mirror.

  Yes, 5755 Ocean Avenue was the address of the Fun House! As I drew up along the curb in front of it, I noticed that there was a sign pasted over the box office window that read “CLOSED FOR REPAIRS.” I paid no attention to this sign but pushed up the latch that barred the flimsy gaudily streak-painted door and walked inside.

  It was pitch dark. I stood still until my eyes became accustomed to the blackness. My heart pounded against my ribs as I saw that the only way to go was along a steep, narrow, twisting passageway. I told myself that this place was just like many amusement concessions I had visited in my child
hood at Indianapolis; but my head told me that it differed in one essential: somewhere inside lurked a murderer. I began to climb the tortuous passage.

  Soon I could see nothing even when I looked around for the slit of light that marked the door by which I had entered. I felt along the wall as I climbed to find that it was of the roughest plaster and an old nail that obtruded tore at my hands. I kept climbing, higher and higher. Sometimes the floor seemed to drop away from under me – these were the hinged boards meant to give pleasurable scares to amusement seekers. Then, after I had climbed for about five minutes, the passageway began to steepen. Jets of air blew up my trousers, a thin stream of water spurted into my face. Another time I would have laughed, but instead I climbed grimly upward.

  What I expected to find at the top of the passage was a way down into the interior of the Fun House. I remembered only vaguely the time I had been here before; that is, I could remember entering and climbing the same steep ascent. I remembered that other things had happened too, horrible things, but what had gone wrong? I stopped and decided to try to collect my thoughts, sort out my memories, so I would be prepared for what would happen next.

  From the moment I had struck Anderson and dashed pell-mell for the car until then I had not paused for deliberation. I knew roughly what my plan was, but it had been formed under great pressure of time. Now I could afford a breathing spell. I fumbled in my pocket for a cigarette and a match and in so doing I must have shifted my weight heavily from one foot to another and pressed a movable board for the floor fell out from under me.

  I was slipping, sliding, madly scrambling down, down, down. And, at the same time, I heard a shrill laugh that went on and on in a spasm of hysterical merriment!

  I slid faster and faster until my body began to scorch through my clothes because of the awkward position I had fallen into and the needless friction it caused. I knew from the way I was falling that I was going down a slide, but it was many seconds before I was thrown forward at last on my hands and knees at its bottom. As I stood up on what was apparently a gently sloping, polished surface, the lights went on dimly. These were only a few dusty bulbs strung haphazardly in odd corners of the cavernous, vaulted structure with its mazes of passages and surprising devices. The slide had deposited me in the center of a turntable – one of those rides that begins to revolve slowly as you cling to the high center and spins faster and faster until centrifugal force tears you away and flings you off tangentially. High above me were tier after tier of balconies, partly covered, that ringed the barnlike building. When the Fun House was open, customers entered from the street as I had done, walked along these ascending balconies until they reached the drop-off unexpectedly and fell headfirst down the slide… Just as I came to this conclusion, I heard again that laugh.

  I looked upwards toward the ceiling and saw a catwalk high in the rafters – there, partly in shadow, his back turned to a giant switchboard, I saw my adversary – Eustace.

  He was dressed in the same absurd velvet jacket, tattersall waistcoat and ridiculous mauve broadcloth trousers as he had been the first day I saw him. He looked down at me and laughed again.

  I had been a fool. Now I remembered fully my previous experience in this same Fun House not more than three months before. Then, too, I had tracked him here, caught him, only to find myself caught, a helpless prisoner. And I remembered how he had freely admitted his crimes at that time, bragging about them to me. He had tried to kill me then and he had failed. Now it was my turn.

  “Well, Doctor, shall we try it again?” As Eustace leaned down from his platform high above me, he flicked a switch and the turntable I was on began to revolve very slowly. “You have regained your memory, haven’t you? You have rediscovered your theory that I am the murderer!”

  “Yes,” I said. “Aren’t you?”

  Eustace leaned far over the guard rail of the high platform. “Why ask me, Doctor? Why don’t you tell me as you did once before? You had it all figured out. My name was not Felix Mather, not even Eustace, but Edgar Augustus Blunt, old John Blunt’s unacknowledged son. You even told me why I killed Frances. You said I hated her because she was my mother’s daughter and that I hated my mother because she bore me. You said that who I really hated, and could do nothing about my hate because he was dead, was my father, John Blunt. You even had a name for my motivation – you called it ‘illicit transference.’ You said my natural love for my mother had been thwarted when I was a child by my father and had turned into an unnatural obsession against Frances and Jacob, my half-sister and half-brother.”

  “And I was right!” I exclaimed. Eustace leaned over the rail until he seemed to be dangling by his hand which clung to a lever on the wall behind – actually a slim guardrail protected him.

  “Yes,” he cried, “you were right. Of course, I hated them. I hate every one of you long-legged, straight-bodied, huge, overbearing people. But Jacob and Frances I hated particularly. One of them had my father, the other shared my mother. Yet neither of them was like me. Why? I’ve asked myself that question a hundred thousand times. My father did not reject me because my mother was not married to him. No, he rejected me because my face and body revolted him, because he could not stand the sight of me!

  “Why should Jacob be straight, handsome, tall, while I was a dwarf? Why should Frances be beautiful, while I was loathsome and frightening? Why should I be content with a trust fund and the name Mather when a great fortune was Jacob’s? Mather! I hate that name! It was my mother’s name before she married Raye. When I lived with him and Frances after my mother’s death – when we traveled back and forth across the country with a carnival – even then I was different. Raye lived off my money and called himself my guardian. That brat of his, that pigtailed Frances, wouldn’t even play with me! She called me Pruney. It was then, years and years ago, that I made up my mind to kill her eventually. Then one year we came to New York…”

  “Where you used to play in Central Park. Where you met Jacob and the two of you became good friends. Why should you hate him now?”

  “Jacob!” the dwarf screamed wrathfully. “All he has is mine rightfully!” He was nearly hysterical, maniacally angry. He yelled some incoherent sentences I could not understand. Then he paused and went on more quietly. “Jacob was my brother at one time. Really my brother. Those were the days when we played together in Central Park. I knew who he was because my mother had showed me a picture of him she had clipped from the papers before she died. He did not know who I was, yet he accepted me, liked me, was my friend. But that did not last. One day my father came and found him with me in the Park, took him away. He was never allowed to play with me again after that. And I grew to hate him, too!” His voice had risen shrilly again.

  “You traveled with the carnival some more after that,” I said. “When you came of age, what did you do with your income?”

  “I bought this place for my amusement,” he shouted down at me. “I run the controls, see?” He pressed a lever and the turntable I was on began to revolve faster. “Every summer I sit up here, high above everyone else, looking down at all the fools who come in here, playing tricks on them. I throw the switches, press the buttons. I blow up the girls’ skirts, tilt the floors, cause farting noises to sound, scare them, bedevil them, make them even more ridiculous than they seem to think I am…”

  “When I came here in April, you admitted that you killed Raye,” I shouted up at him. “You killed her in such a way that the police were bound to think Jacob did it – or that was the way your plan should have worked. You hired midgets from a sideshow to help you persuade Jacob to do insane things, dressed them up in queer suits and provided them with money. Jacob fell in with your plan, but he acted intelligently twice. He came to see me and he refused to deliver the percheron. So when you murdered Raye, there was no one to blunder into her apartment after wards.”

  “That’s right as far as it goes,” said Eustace. “I hired Tony to drive the truck that carried Jacob and the percheron to Raye�
�s apartment. But I did not know that Jacob would get wary and refuse to ring her doorbell. I planned to have him discover her body, phone for the police and tell them his crazy story. If he didn’t get convicted of first degree murder for that they would certainly declare him criminally insane and either way I would get his fortune.

  “But he told you too much for my good. And, while I was inside Raye’s apartment, he decided not to go through with the delivery of the horse. I had knifed Raye and made my escape through the dumbwaiter – I got out at an empty apartment and waited in the hall until the coast was clear – when a scout car frightened Tony, the driver of the truck, just as he was delivering the horse. Caught in the act he, stupidly, told the story Jacob was supposed to tell.”

  The turntable was spinning faster and faster and I was growing dizzy. But I knew I must keep Eustace talking. I remembered what had happened before, how I had tried to escape by one of the exits and he had pushed a lever that brought a crushing weight down on me…

  “So then you sent Nan down to Police Headquarters to bail Tony out and to try to get hold of me. You wanted to get me to tell you Jacob’s whereabouts. After I was foolish enough to allow Tony to be released into my custody, Nan pushed me into the train and searched my pockets for the photograph of you that Jacob must have told you he had given to me. She didn’t find it because it was in my other suit hanging in my closet in my house. So Nan and Tony took me to Nan’s apartment and you conceived of the brilliant idea of having a quack doctor administer shock treatments to me to make me tell you something I didn’t know: where Jacob was.”

  “I’ll never believe that you didn’t know,” Eustace said. “I still think you know where he is.”