The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  The Doctor interrupted. “Sergeant Marberry has unearthed a few other facts which might be used against the Vitelli girl to break her down. But it is only theory—not proof—and the difficulty is that if he and Mr. Green used them, and Rosa did not break down—nothing could ever be accomplished.”

  “I don’t understand,” the Banker exclaimed. “This girl has confessed to a murder. Why not go ahead and sentence her? Why bother with how she did it?”

  “You’ll see in a moment, George. It is a problem Mr. Green has several times had to face—particularly in dealing with Italians. Let me go on. Three significant facts were brought to light. One: A fourth-floor tenant over the Vitelli flat noticed that night a peculiar smell coming up. Something burning—a stench——”

  “Burning a body!” the Banker ejaculated.

  “George, don’t be absurd. Angelina’s body was found peacefully in bed—asphyxiated. The second fact, gentlemen. Whenever a peculiar, novel, and yet simple crime is committed, other criminals imitate it. You remember the ‘poison needle’ craze that swept over the country some years ago? And when bichloride of mercury once got publicity as a comfortable means of suicide, it was used widely.”

  “You mean that someone has already imitated this crime?” the Banker demanded.

  “I do not. I mean that Sergeant Marberry felt at once that this crime might be in imitation of a previous one. Where would Rosa Vitelli get the ingenuity to plan it—to originate it? Sergeant Marberry guessed that she did not. Purely a guess, but on the chance, he searched all the New York newspapers of the previous few days. He found what he was looking for. On Jan. 7, in the Bronx, an attempted murder almost asphyxiated a whole family. Understand me, I don’t mean to imply that this had any connection with the Vitellis—except to give Rosa the inspiration as to how she might murder Angelina. This Bronx affair concerned obscure people—and since no one was injured it occupied very little news space. None of you gentlemen noticed it, perhaps. But Sergeant Marberry did. And he saw in it a possible explanation of this murder of Angelina Torno.”

  Several of the Club members interrupted with questions, but the Doctor ignored them. “If Rosa Vitelli read that little news item—and possibly she did, as it was also run in the Italian paper which the Vitellis are in the habit of buying—then we can assume that she might easily have been prompted to imitate it. The circumstances were the same, and——”

  “What circumstances?” demanded the Chemist. “You don’t mean the motives?”

  “No; I mean the method by which the murder was committed.” The Doctor took a newspaper clipping from his pocket. “Here it is, read it. And then I’ll tell you a surprising suspicion which Mr. Green and Sergeant Marberry feel is close to the real truth.”

  A knock sounded on the Clubroom door. The Doctor hastily disposed of his clipping. “No more now, gentlemen. You’ll have to wait. Just sit quietly and watch. They’re here, Sergeant Marberry.”

  The door had opened. Two policemen and a blonde, stocky man in civilian clothes entered with the girl Rosa Vitelli. And with them another young man—tall, slim, and dark—Giorgio Vitelli, husband of Rosa. The blonde young man—from the Assistant District Attorney’s office—greeted his superior, and with a low command seated Rosa in a chair facing the Doctor. Her husband sat near her; the two policemen retired unobtrusively to the other side of the room and sat down, staring around curiously.

  Very briefly the Doctor introduced the newcomers, and then, standing over Rosa, he demanded, “We want to know how you killed Angelina—will you tell us now?”

  “No,” she said sullenly, with her gaze on the floor. She was a small, dark-haired girl, typically Italian-American. Pretty in a pale, bedraggled fashion. She sat hunched in her chair, staring stolidly at the floor by the Doctor’s feet.

  “You won’t?” he reiterated sharply.

  No answer.

  “Rosa, look up here.”

  Her gaze came reluctantly up to his face.

  “Rosa, why won’t you?”

  Still no answer. The Doctor shifted his question; his tone became less harsh. “Why did you kill Angelina? You’ll tell these gentlemen that, won’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said. Her dark eyes flashed, colour flooded into her pale cheeks. She burst out passionately: “Angelina steal my Giorgio. You know that! Everybody knows it. And so I kill her.”

  “Gad!” murmured the Astronomer to the man beside him, “she may have had good reason, from her view-point, to kill that other girl. The sympathetic type. It’s lucky she confessed—you’d never get a jury to convict a girl like that. And where are you going to get a judge to sentence her very heavily?”

  The Assistant District Attorney heard the comments and flashed a warning glance. The Doctor was persisting: “Yes, Rosa; we understand that. But you know it’s wrong to kill, don’t you?” Her gaze again had fallen. “Don’t you?”

  She burst out: “No! That Angelina do wrong—she steal my husband. I tell her to let him alone.”

  “How did you kill her, Rosa? You planned it ahead of time, didn’t you? … I say you planned it very carefully, didn’t you?”

  Silence.

  “You won’t tell?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Still no answer. And abruptly the girl looked up with a glance almost of appeal.

  “Why won’t you tell, Rosa?”

  The Astronomer leaned towards the Assistant District Attorney. “She’s been advised against it. Knows you are trying to establish premeditation.”

  “Yes, of course. But that doesn’t apply to the first moment of her confession. She was almost hysterical—and she isn’t clever enough to think of a thing like that. Sh!”

  “We’re going to make you tell,” the Doctor was saying gruffly. “That’s why we brought you here.” It startled the girl. She gripped the sides of her chair with her small white hands.

  Giorgio exclaimed, “You let my Rosa alone! I will get her lawyer.” He started to his feet toward a telephone across the room, but the Doctor waved him back.

  “Sit down, Vitelli. Your lawyer wouldn’t have time to get here now. Besides, I think we won’t question Rosa any further.” He added abruptly: “Gentlemen, I want you all to listen to me very carefully. And you two also, Rosa and Giorgio. You, Rosa! You think we know nothing about this except what you’ve told us, don’t you? Well, you’re mistaken—we know a great deal about it.” A grim smile pulled at the Doctor’s lips. “This is the New York Scientific Club—you know that. You were both born in New York, you’re both intelligent enough to know what science is—what it can do. We brought you here, Rosa Vitelli, to show you with your own eyes how you killed Angelina Torno. We guessed how you did it—Sergeant Marberry guessed it—but it was only a guess. Not proof. Then, last week, we of the Scientific Club, using apparatus which you will see working in a moment, proved it. Ah, that interests you, Rosa, doesn’t it? Well, you watch and you will see.” His tone grew ironical. “If we show you anything wrong, you can tell us.” He whirled on Giorgio. “You, Vitelli, you’d better watch closely also. You’ll want to repeat it all to your wife’s lawyer.… By the way, gentlemen, I have not yet told you that Rosa’s father is a fairly wealthy contractor down on Staten Island. He has retained quite able counsel to defend his daughter.”

  The Vitellis sat silent under this swift tirade. Several of the Club members were murmuring to each other, and the Doctor raised his hand for silence.

  “You gentlemen will be interested in this demonstration. It involves a well-known scientific principle which only recently has been brought to its present practical perfection. Professor Walton here”—the Doctor indicated a frail, grey-haired man who sat apart with the excited Very Young Man—“Professor Walton has perfected an apparatus which he and Jack Bruce are shortly to operate for us, and which will show Rosa Vitelli in the very act of murdering Angelina Torno.… Sit down, Rosa—we’re not going to hurt you.… No, Vitelli, you don’t need the lawyer—you can
tell him all about it.” The Doctor gazed over the room, and when he resumed his tone was quieter.

  “Gentlemen, the scientific principle involved is that of light-rays. Light, as you know, is a vibration—of the ether, let us say for convenience. A vibration which travels at the rate of one hundred and eighty-six thousand three hundred and twenty-four miles a second. A small boy once asked me a very naïve question which I am going to ask you gentlemen. He demanded of me, ‘Dr. Adams, where does light go when it goes out?’ You need not smile—I am quite serious.” The Doctor was watching Rosa closely without appearing to do so. A few of the Club members had smiled, but Rosa and her husband sat stolid—the young Italian listening intently and with apparent intelligence to the Doctor’s words, and Rosa staring sullenly at the floor.

  “I repeat that, gentlemen. Where does light go when it goes out? Let me show you something.” He signalled to the Very Young Man, who produced a candle and placed it upright on the centre table. Rosa turned to face it, staring fascinated while the Very Young Man lighted it.

  “Now, Jack.”

  The Very Young Man switched off the centre electrolier; the room was plunged into gloom—flickering yellow candlelight which disclosed little more than the table-top and the Doctor’s standing figure. The Doctor went on: “Light-rays from this candle are bringing the image of it to your eyes at the rate of one hundred eighty-six thousand miles a second. An inconceivable velocity measured over so short a distance. You see my hand reaching toward the candle? I touch it with my finger—so. You gentlemen understand me, you did not see me touch that candle at the exact instant I actually touched it. There was a tiny interval of time in between—the time it took those light-rays to carry the image ten or fifteen feet.

  “Is that clear? I assure you it has a bearing upon the murder of Angelina Torno! I perform an act in this candlelight; I touch the candle—so. And a tiny fraction after I touch it, you see me touch it. A very tiny fraction of a second over such a short distance. But suppose you are ten times as far away, it will then be a ten-fold greater interval of time. Then assume that you are on the moon, with a telescope powerful enough to observe me. I put a finger on the candle, and it is well over a second later that you see me do it. On the sun, some eight or nine minutes would have elapsed. On the nearest of the stars you would not see my action until more than four years after I performed it. And, observing me from one of the more distant stars, you would have to wait several hundred years!

  “To go back to the child’s question—watch my hand now, snuffing out the candle.” The Doctor pinched out the wick; the room was black. Amid a shuffling of feet and a startled cry from Rosa, the Doctor’s voice cried, “Lights, Jack!”

  The lights flashed on. The Doctor resumed quietly, “You saw me snuff the candle. Those light-rays brought the image to you at that tremendous velocity. They went on past you. Where? Out! Quite so. But not obliterated, gentlemen. Not lost. Mark you that, for it is important. We are accustomed to a mode of reasoning which says that my act of snuffing that candle is in the past, dead and irrevocably gone. Not so! If you were watching me from the sun, at this present moment you would observe the candle still lighted and several minutes yet to wait before you would see me snuff it! To an observer on the sun, therefore, that particular act has not yet been performed. It is not in the past, but in the future.

  “Do I make myself entirely clear? What I’m getting at, specifically, is this. The visual representation of every act ever performed is in existence at this present moment. Light does not go out, in the sense of being destroyed. It goes away. The light rays which shone upon the white sands of San Salvador when Columbus knelt there have not yet reached some of the distant stars. If you were on one of those stars, mechanically equipped to receive that image upon the retina of your eye, you could watch tonight and see Columbus discovering America!

  “Thus no act can be termed accurately of the past, without reference to the equipment of the observer. Let me be still more specific. We think of the murder of Angelina Torno as an act of the past. It is not, if we could equip ourselves to receive the light-rays carrying it. I said light-rays did not go out, but away. They do that—but they also come back. Reflected light.… Rosa, are you listening to all this?”

  The girl raised her eyes from the floor. “Yes,” she said sullenly. “I kill Angelina. Why you bother about me? I kill her, I tol’ you.”

  “Yes,” agreed the Doctor. “But I want you to listen, and in a moment watch closely what we’re going to show you.” He flashed a look at the young husband. “You’re listening too, Vitelli?”

  “Yes, I listen; but——”

  “But you don’t make much out of it?”

  “No. Rosa’s lawyer, he——”

  “You can tell him,” the Doctor interrupted. “You’ll have a lot to tell him before we’re finished.… I was speaking of reflected light, gentlemen. It is reflected everywhere. Sunlight goes to the moon, and is reflected back to the earth. Our own light—itself mainly sunlight—goes to the moon, and comes back to us again, and we call it moonlight. And here on earth light is everywhere reflected back and forth, from the ceiling to the floor of this very room—from each of its walls to the other. Reflected constantly back and forth, like the reverberating echoes of sound.”

  The Doctor paused momentarily, then resumed. “I come now to the crux of the whole matter. Light-rays, you must realise, are never lost. Their velocity never changes. Nor do they in their entirety necessarily leave the neighbourhood of their source. The sound of my voice—also vibrations which travel at the rate of something more than a thousand feet a second—will echo back and forth across this room for, theoretically, a limitless period. Growing dimmer—yes. Almost instantly, far below the very narrow range of our human hearing.

  “And so it is with light-vibrations. The light-vibrations that candle sent out are still reverberating across this room. Altered in form. Dimmer—yes. Almost instantly far below the narrow range of our human sight. But, gentlemen, they are still here. And we could still see the candle being snuffed if we could isolate those light-vibrations and again make them visible.”

  There was no one who spoke when the Doctor halted. Rosa still kept her gaze on the floor. But, though the girl’s mentality could not follow the Doctor’s reasoning, Giorgio quite evidently understood to what this scientific analysis might lead. He gazed at his wife with an obvious, growing fear, and then back to the Doctor, as though fascinated.

  The Doctor continued: “In principle, gentlemen, I have told you it all. Some of you, even, are familiar with the detailed workings of Professor Walton’s apparatus. To the rest of you I need only add that he has succeeded—crudely, still with much to perfect—in isolating and magnifying, let me say, otherwise invisible light-vibrations. The modern radio does something of the kind with otherwise inaudible vibrations of sound. To use popular language, Professor Walton ‘tunes back’ amid the mingled vibrations of light until he has isolated those he is seeking. They become crudely visible. The past, in so far as that particular scene is concerned, becomes the present.”

  The Doctor’s voice rose to sudden vehemence. “In that tenement building where Angelina Torno lived, there are still vibrations of light carrying the scene of the murder. Professor Walton’s apparatus is connected at this moment with that building. Gentlemen, you are about to witness—not a representation of the murder—but the actual murder itself!”

  As though his words were a signal, the Very Young Man, without warning, switched off the electrolier. The room went black. For a second or two only, then a purple beam of light sprang from an unnoticed orifice in the wall. It bathed the room in a deep, lurid glare. The thing was startling. Rosa screamed. Giorgio was on his feet, but the Detective pulled him back to his chair. Over the confusion the Doctor’s voice sounded—

  “Quiet, gentlemen! We did not mean to startle you.”

  The Very Young Man, sprung suddenly into action, was lowering a cord. Professor Walton hurried past
him—and, unnoticed in the purple glare, went through a side door and out of the room. The cord which the Very Young Man was operating lowered from the ceiling a shimmering veil—a rectangle some ten feet wide and eight feet high. It hung from the ceiling almost to the floor. The occupants of the room all turned to face it. The purple beam of light from the wall orifice struck it from behind. It glowed—purple, then dissolving into scarlet: a blood-red veil, still quivering from the movement of its descent.

  The Doctor’s voice said: “The fabric of that veil is finely woven wire. The light is from Professor Walton’s apparatus in the adjoining room. Vitelli, I want you to watch closely. Your lawyer will be interested in this. You, Rosa! You hear me? You watch this! I am going to show you yourself, in the very act of murdering Angelina Torno!”

  A silence fell over the room. The club members, the Vitellis, the Detective, the Assistant District Attorney, and the two policemen—all staring with a silent, awed fascination. The veil, blood-red, was creeping and crawling with colour. Spots of shadow seemed forming upon it. Vague, distorted, formless blurs of movement, shifting slowly as a cloud-bank—shapes dissolving formlessly one into the other. A hum now filled the room, low at first, then louder—a penetrating, electrical hum. The Doctor raised his voice above it.

  “Those blurs which you see are scenes in the third-floor hall-way of the tenement building in question. Professor Walton’s observation station is erected there. To the left is the door to the Vitelli flat. Angelina’s door is directly across the hall to the right. Formless blurs, gentlemen, as yet. But wait a moment. Professor Walton is ‘tuning back,’ so to speak. Back through the mingled light-vibrations until he reaches those of the murder scene. Watch, Rosa! Soon you will see.”

  No need for his admonition. In the glare of red light the girl’s figure showed as she sat in her chair, staring at the blood-red veil. The shadows there grew denser. Moving shapes—condensing, taking form. The hum in the room went up an ascending scale, then struck a level. Like an accelerating dynamo, reaching its pitch and holding it. The Doctor spoke louder.