The Collection

by Fredric Brown

  “How about Burd?”

  “Murphy's on the way over there now. I'm going to have that cigarette girl angle looked into, too. We can trace her easy enough if Randall set her up somewhere. Might be an angle there.”

  “More curves than angles,” I said. “Sure you don't want me to---”

  “I do not. Send in Barranya, and take Clem and Harry up to his flat.”

  Clem and Harry and I spent two hours searching, but there wasn't anything in Barranya's flat worthy of interest except a bottle of Scotch in the cupboard. The homicide boys didn't touch it because they were on duty, but I wasn't.

  When they left, I sat down at the table in the living room to wait. Holding kept Barranya down there another half hour. He looked mad when he came in. By that time my tooth had stopped jumping up and down and settled into a slow steady ache that wasn't quite so bad.

  I waved my hand toward the Scotch on the table, and the extra glass I'd put there. “Have a drink.”

  “Thanks, Sergeant, I shall. After that, if you don't mind, I'd like to turn in.”

  “Don't mind me,” I told him. “Go right ahead and turn in. It's your flat.”

  “But---” He looked puzzled.

  “Don't mind me, I'm just sitting here thinking.”

  He poured himself a drink from the bottle and refilled my glass. He said, “And how long do you expect to sit there and think?”

  “Until I've figured out how you killed Charlie Randall.”

  He smiled, and sat down on a corner of the table. He said, “What makes you think I killed Randall?”

  “The fact that you couldn't have,” I told him, very earnestly. “It's all too damn pat, Barranya. It's like a stage illusion. It's a show. It doesn't ring true. It's just the kind of murder and kind of alibi that an illusionist would arrange. The kind of thing that wouldn't occur to an ordinary guy.”

  “You're logical, Sergeant, up to a point.”

  “And I'm going to get past that point. Go on to bed if you're tired.”

  He chuckled and stared down into the amber liquid in his glass. “Is that all that makes you think I did it?”

  “Not quite,” I said. “We found something very suspicious in this flat. That's what makes me sure.”

  He looked up quickly.

  “We found nothing, Barranya. Absolutely nothing of interest.”

  His smile came back; mockingly, I thought. “And you find that suspicious?”

  “Absolutely. I have a strong hunch that before you left here this evening you took away and hid any papers, any notations, you wouldn't have wanted the police to find. And the gimmicks connected with the seances you hold here.”

  “They aren't seances. I've explained---”

  “It's just unlikely,” I went on without paying any attention to his interruption, “for us not to have found something you wouldn't want found. Not even letters tied in blue ribbon. Not a scrap of a notation about one of your customers.”

  “Clients.”

  “Clients, then. Nothing at all. I just don't believe it, Barranya. And if you knew this apartment would be searched, then you knew Randall was going to be killed. That means you killed him, somehow.”

  “Brilliant, Sergeant. Have your deductions gone any farther?”

  “Yes. You knew when he was going to be killed---or when it would appear that he was killed. Probably it was twenty minutes before I got that phone call. Time for you to get from his flat to my office.”

  “And you think I framed myself by accusing---”

  “Why not? That radio was a swell trick. It wasn't the radio at all, Barranya. I've thought that out. It was ventriloquism. My first guess was right, only I found that radio going and naturally thought that the voice came from it. You fixed the radio yourself, and any spiritualist knows ventriloquism---the safest and easiest way of getting spirit voices in a seance. The trick has whiskers on it.”

  He said, “Interesting, Sergeant---if you can prove that I do know ventrilo---”

  “I can't, but I'm not interested. All I have to prove is that you killed Randall. As long as I know you could have pulled that stunt in the car, I can forget it. How's about another drink? And incidentally, what you said was clever as hell. You knew we'd find out about you and Mrs. Randall, and if you accused yourself of having that motive, it would spike our guns. You expect to marry her, don't you, and get Randall's money?”

  He filled my glass, but not his own. He stood up, yawning. “Hope you'll excuse me, Sergeant. I am tired.”

  “Go right to bed,” I said. “Got an alarm clock, or shall I wake you any special time?”

  “Never mind.” He sauntered to the door of the bedroom and then turned. “I'll appreciate your leaving one drink in the bottle.”

  “I'll buy you a new bottle,” I assured him. “Barranya, you know anything about relays?”

  “Relays? I'm not sure I know what you mean.”

  “I'm not, either. Probably that's the wrong name for it. But it's the first thing I looked for when I came up here. I didn't find it.”

  “And where would you have looked for one?”

  “I thought of the bell box of your telephone. Look, while you were playing Randall for a sucker on the celestial advice racket, didn't you have his phone wire tapped?”

  “No, Sergeant. But how would a tapped wire---”

  “Here's the idea. Holding gave it to me, in a way. He said you might have phoned from the booth at the station, right out in the hall. Except that the call came from here, that would have made sense. So I got to thinking.”

  “So?”

  “This could have happened. You came here, driving fast from the roadhouse, killed Randall, and switched in the gimmick. You'd have everything ready, so you could do it in a minute. There'd already be the tap on Randall's wire. The gimmick is a little electromagnet in your phone's bell box.

  “You drive to the station and call your own phone. The circuit is shorted through the electromagnet, so instead of ringing the bell, the magnet throws the double switch---just as though the receiver had been lifted from Randall's phone. You're on Randall's wire and when the light goes on down at the phone company switchboard, it's over his number. That switch also opens his circuit, of course. When Central says ‘Number, please?’ you give my number, and---well, that's all it would take. You knew, of course, that snapping a rubber band across the diaphram of the transmitter makes a sound like a shot.

  “And when you hung up, both circuits would be broken, and things just like they were. The call would trace back to Randall's phone, but his receiver was never off the hook!”

  Barranya's eyes had widened while I was talking. He said, “Sergeant, I never thought it of you. That's positively brilliant. But you didn't find such an electromagnet?”

  “No,” I admitted. “But it was a good idea.”

  He yawned again. “You underestimate yourself. It was excellent. Pardon me.”

  “I will,” I said, “but how about the governor?”

  He chuckled and closed the bedroom door. I poured myself another drink, but I didn't touch it. The last three drinks hadn't had any further effect on the toothache, so I figured I might as well stay sober and bear it.

  I listened until I heard him get into bed. Then I gave it another ten minutes by my watch.

  I went out the door and closed it, being neither quiet nor noisy about my movements, got into the elevator and---in case the sound of the elevator would be audible---I rode it all the way down to the first floor and walked back up to five. One of my set of keys worked easily on the door of the absent Mr. Shultz.

  I crossed over to the telephone and bent down to examine the box. There wasn't any dust on top of it, and there was a thin layer of dust on most other things in the room.

  I didn't touch it. I was sure enough now that the electromagnet would be there, and I didn't want to lessen its value as evidence by taking off the cover until there were other witnesses. Anyway, there was an easier way to check my hunch.

&nbs
p; I picked up the receiver and when a feminine voice said, “Number, please?” I asked, “What phone am I calling from?”

  “Pardon?”

  I said, “I'm alone at a friend's house. I want to tell someone to call me back here, and I can't read the number without my glasses.”

  She said, “Oh, I see. You're calling from Woodburn 3840.”

  Randal's number. That cracked the case, of course. Barranya had worked it just as I'd told him upstairs, except that, knowing his own flat would be searched, he'd put the tab on Shultz' phone and called up there.

  “Fine,” I said, “Now give me---”

  That was when something jabbed into my back and Barranya said, “Tell her never mind.” His tone of voice meant business. “Never mind,” I told the operator. “I'll put in the call later.”

  As I put down the phone, Barranya's hand reached over my shoulder and slid my police positive out of its shoulder holster. He stepped back, and I turned around.

  He'd really undressed for bed; he wore a lounging robe over pajamas and had slippers on his feet. That's why I hadn't heard him come through the flat. I'd known he'd be down sometime today to remove the evidence, but I'd expected him to wait longer, and I hadn't thought of the back door. Maybe I'd drunk more Scotch than I thought I had, to overlook a bet like that.

  His face was expressionless; there was just a touch of mockery in his voice. “Remember that message I brought you from the spirit world a few hours ago, Sergeant? Maybe it wasn't as wrong as you thought.”

  “You can't get away with it,” I said. “Killing me, I mean. If you do, you'll have to lam, and they'll catch you. The homicide boys know I stayed with you. If they find me dead---”

  “Shut up, Sergeant,” he said, “I'm trying to think how---”

  I didn't dare give him time to think. The guy was too clever. He might think of some way he could kill me without it being pinned on him.

  I said, “A good lawyer can get you a sentence for shooting a rat like Randall. But you know what happens when you kill a cop in this state.”

  I could see there was indecision in his face, in his voice when he said, “Keep back, or---”

  I took another step toward him and kept on talking. I said, “There are still men in Randal's flat, right under us. They'll hear that gun. You won't have time to muffle it, like when you shot Randall.”

  I kept walking, slowly. I knew if I moved suddenly, he'd shoot. My hands were going down slowly, too. I said, “Give me that gun, Barranya. Figure out what a rope around your neck feels like before you pull that trigger, and don't pull it.”

  I was reaching out, palm upward for him to hand the gun to me, but he backed away. He said, “Stop, damn you,” and the urbanity and mockery were gone from his voice. He was scared.

  I kept walking forward. I said, “I saw a cop-killer once after they finished questioning him, Barranya. They did such a job that he didn't mind hanging, much, after that. And don't forget the boys below us will hear a shot. You won't have time to pull those wires up through the wall before they get up here.”

  And then he was back against the wall, and I must have pressed him too hard, because I saw from his eyes that he was going to shoot. But my hand was only inches from the gun now, and I took the last short step in a lunge and slapped the gun just as it went off. I felt the burn of powder on my palm and wrist, but I wasn't hit. The gun hit the wall and ricocheted under the sofa.

  The burn on my hand made me jerk back, involuntarily, off balance, and he jumped in with a wallop that caught me on the jaw that knocked me further off balance.

  I took half a dozen punches, and they hurt, before I could get set to throw one back effectively. I took half a dozen more before I got in my Sunday punch and Barranya folded up on the carpet.

  I staggered across the room to the phone. My nose felt lopsided and one of my eyes was hard to see out of. There was blood in my mouth and I spat it out. A tooth came with it.

  I got Holding on the phone, and told him. I said, “I guess there's no one downstairs at the moment or they'd sure as hell be up here by now.”

  He said, “Swell work, Sarge. We'll be right over; sit on the guy till we get there. How's your toothache coming?”

  “Huh?” I said, and then it dawned on me that my whole face and head ached, except for my tooth. I felt to see which one had been knocked out in the fight, and it was!

  After I'd hung up, I found Shultz, too, was a good host; his whiskey was poorly hidden. My knees felt wobbly and I figured I'd earned this one. I had another, and then heard voices and footsteps out in the hall, and knew the homicide boys were back.

  I walked over to the sofa where Barranya lay, to see if he was conscious again. He wasn't, but bending over made my head swim and suddenly my knees just weren't there any more. I don't know whether it was the whiskey, or the fight I'd been through, or the relief that I didn't have to go to the dentist.

  But I'll never live down the fact that they came in a second later---and found me sleeping peacefully on top of the murderer.

  MAD DOG!

  I got it the minute I saw that distorted face peering around the corner of the turn in the hallway. I wasn't looking toward the hallway, of course, but toward MacCready. Back of Mac's desk was a mirror and it was in the mirror that I saw it.

  For just a minute I thought I had 'em, then I remembered Mac's screwy ideas on mental therapeutics, and I grinned. I kept the grin to myself, though. Here's where I have some fun with good old Mac, I thought to myself. Let him pull his gag and pretend to play along.

  So I kept on with what I was saying. “Mac, old horse,” I told him, “can't you get it out of your head that this isn't a professional call? Quit psychoanalyzing me, dammit, or I'll leave you flat and hike right back to Provincetown over these bloody roller-coaster anthills you call dunes, and get myself drunk.”

  He snorted, a well-bred Scotch snort. “You'd fall flat on your lace before you got halfway. Bryce, how you ever made it out here's got me beat. And how you ever write plays that get on Broadway, when you keep yourself so full of whiskey that---” He shook his head in bewilderment.

  “Ever see any of my plays, Mac? Maybe you'd get the connection. But---”

  I caught sight of that face again in the mirror, and I calculated the angle and decided that Mac couldn't see it from where he sat. The guy in the hall had come around the corner now, and was pussy-footing up to the door. He was smiling, if you could call it a smile; one corner of his mouth went up and the other down so his mouth looked like an unhealed diagonal wound across the bottom of his face. His eyes were so narrowed you couldn't see the whites. I thought crazily that if the British had done that at Bunker Hill they wouldn't have got fired on at all.

  All in all it wasn't a nice expression. I shuddered a bit, involuntarily. Whoever was stooging for Mac on this gag of his ought to be on the stage. He could do Dracula without makeup, unless he already had the makeup on, and if he did, it was a wow.

  Mac was talking again, it dawned on me. “If this wasn't my vacation---” he was saying. “Listen, Bryce, even if it is, I'll take you on. It'd take me three months to get you wrung out so you'd stay that way, but I'll do it if you say the word. You're darned far on the road to being an alcoholic. At the rate you're going, pal. . . .”

  I grinned at him. “You underestimate me, old horse. I'm a lush of the first water, right now. I like it. But listen, Mac, there is something that worries me. I'm three months overdue on starting my next play, and I haven't a ghost of an idea. I thought a summer in Provincetown would fix me up. Cape Cod and all that and the picturesque fishing smacks and all that sort of tripe. But---well, I'm worried stiff.”

  I was, too. There's nothing worse than not having an idea when you need an idea. That's the trouble with being a playwright. If you need a house or a horse or a multiple-head drill or a set of golf clubs, you go out and buy it, but if you need an idea and need it bad, you sit and stew and maybe it comes and maybe it doesn't. If it doesn't, you go slo
wly nuts.

  You get to the stage where you remember that an old friend of yours is a psychiatrist and has his summer home on the other side of the cape, with the waves of the Atlantic rolling into his front yard, and you hike across the dunes to see him to find out what's wrong that you haven't got an idea.

  He said, “How to help you there, Bryce, I'm not sure. But this should be good country for you. Eugene O'Neill got his start here, and Millay, and others. Harry Kemp has a place only a few miles from here, and . . .”

  That was when the guy in the hallway reached around the door jamb and switched off the light. Mac's head---I could still see dimly because it was only eight-thirty and not completely dark out yet what with daylight savings time and a bright moon---jerked around toward the doorway and I saw his eyes widen. He reached quick for a drawer of his desk and then slowly started to raise his hands up over his head instead. He was going to take it big, I could see that.

  I turned my head slowly toward the doorway. The man had stepped fully into the room now, and although his face was in the shadow now, I could see how big and powerful he was. He wore an overcoat three sizes too large for him, and he held something in his hand that looked like a cross between a pistol and a shotgun. It must be, I decided, a scattergun---one of those things cautious householders keep on hand for burglars. It's useless at any range to speak of, but up to twenty feet it can't miss a man, and it can't miss doing unpleasant things to him. It shoots a small gauge shotgun shell.

  Of course, this one wouldn't be loaded. Maybe my pal Colin MacCready didn't know I'd read his most recent book, but I had. In it, he told his ideas about what he called “shock treatment.” Alcoholism was one of the things it was supposed to help. I won't go into details, but the basic idea is to scare the pants off the patient.

  He'd described several ways of doing it; apparently the treatment was varied to suit the individual case. I personally thought the idea was screwy when I read about it, but then I'm not a psychiatrist, thank heaven. Anyhow, it sounded interesting, and for a moment I wished that that book hadn't tipped me off in advance so I could tell how I'd feel if things really were what they were maybe going to be.