‘That is impossible.’
‘Well, now you are at least telling the truth. Or perhaps you can do for him what you did for yourself?’
‘You are obscure.’
‘Look harder, Frimbo. It’s the bad lighting. I mean that perhaps you can make him rise from the dead, as you did.’
Bubber could not suppress a mumbled, ‘Come on, Lazarus. Do yo’ stuff.’
‘You believe then,’ Frimbo said, ‘that my servant is dead?’
‘I know that your servant is dead. I have in my hand positive evidence of his death.’
‘Of what nature?’
‘Evidence that was retrieved from your furnace downstairs by one of my men—’
‘Hot damn!’ breathed Bubber. ‘Tell ’em ’bout me!’
‘—when you were trying to destroy it. I have a piece of the bone upon which his brain rested during life. I have a removable bridge which is known to be his, and which fits that bone—or rather the teeth in the bone joined to it. Frimbo, this is a farce. You killed your servant, who also went by the name of Frimbo. You slipped around through this house somehow on Saturday night while I was investigating this case, and moved his body to some hiding-place on these premises. You treated that body to make it burn quickly and to make what bone was left crumble easily. You dismembered it and tried to dispose of it by way of your furnace. You were seen doing this by Bubber Brown, who was in your cellar last night and who recovered a part of the bone before it crumbled. To avert suspicion, you masqueraded as your servant by a trick of your eyes. I see no point in continuing this nonsense. You’re the guilty party and you’re under arrest. Am I still obscure?’
For a long moment no other word was spoken. At last Frimbo said quietly:
‘Since I am already under arrest, it would be useless, perhaps, to point out certain errors in your charges … However, if you would care to know the truth—’
‘You are at liberty to make any statement you please. But don’t try anything funny. We’ve anticipated some of your tricks.’
‘Tricks,’ Frimbo said softly, ‘is an unkind word. The fact is, however, that I have killed no one. It is true that I have disposed of my servant’s remains. If that box contains what you say it does, and if Brown was in the cellar when you say he was, he undoubtedly saw me in the course of performing what was nothing more or less than a tribal duty.’
‘Tribal duty?’
‘The servant was a fellow tribesman of mine whom I took in and protected when his venture into this civilization proved to be less fortunate than mine. He was of my clan and entitled to use the name, Frimbo. His distinguishing name, however—what you would call his Christian name, had he not been a heathen and a savage—was N’Ogo. It is our tradition that the spirit of one of our number who meets death at the hands of an—an outsider, can be purged of that disgrace and freed from its flesh only by fire. The body must be burned before sunset of the third day. Since the circumstances made this impossible, I assumed the risk of removing and properly destroying my tribesman’s flesh. For that and for whatever penalty attaches to it, I have no regret. My only regret, Mr Dart, is that you have interrupted, and perhaps for the time defeated, my effort to complete the duty which this death has imposed upon me.’
Dart was impressed. The man’s total lack of embarrassment, his dignity, his utter composure, could not fail to produce effect.
‘Complete the duty—?’
‘It is a part of my duty, as the king of my people, to find the killer and bring him to the just punishment which he has earned. In my own land I should take that part of the matter into my own hands. Here in yours it was my intention to find the killer and turn him over to you. But as for killing N’Ogo myself—you would have to be one of us, my friend, to appreciate how horribly absurd that is. I would sooner kill myself than one of my clan. And he—he could not under the most extraordinary circumstances imaginable bring himself to do a thing against his king. He simply could not have committed an offence against me that would have caused me to decree or execute his death. Against one of his own or lower rank, perhaps, but not against me.’
The detective, ordinarily prompt in decision, was for the moment bewildered. But habit was strong. ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘how can you prove that what you say is true—that you didn’t kill this man?’
‘It is not of the slightest importance to me, Mr Dart, whether you or the authorities you represent believe me or not. My concern is not for my own protection but for the discharge of my obligation as king. If I can not complete my duty to this member of my clan, I do not deserve to have been his king. The greatest humiliation I could suffer would be death at the hands of a strange people. That is no more than he has suffered.’
This was an attitude which Dart had never encountered. The complete and convincing unimportance to Frimbo of what was paramount to the detective left the latter for the moment without resource. He was silent, considering. Finally he asked:
‘But why did you have to do so much play-acting? Accepting what you say as true, why did you have to pull all that hokum about rising from the dead?’
‘Do you not see that it was necessary to my plans? I had to have time in which to dispose of N’Ogo’s body. I had to account for its disappearance. It is easy for me to pass undiscovered from almost any part of this house to any other part. I have a lift, electrically operated and practically undiscoverable, in the old dumbwaiter shaft. It travels from this floor to the cellar. What appears on examination to be the roof of the old shaft, with rusty gears and frazzled rope hanging down, is really not the roof but the bottom of the floor of the lift. N’Ogo’s remains reposed on that lift, securely hidden, during the latter part of your search. So did I until the proper moment for my entrance. What better way can you think of to account for the disappearance of a body than to claim to be that body? I even wounded myself as N’Ogo had been wounded, in anticipation of the good doctor’s examination. I took every possible precaution—even inviting the doctor alone here to determine the extent of his investigations and divert him from the truth if possible.’
‘What about those sex glands?’
‘They too are a part of the tradition. They alone, of all his flesh, must be preserved as a necessary item in the performance of one of our tribal rites, one which I went so far as to mention to Dr Archer today. That I can not speak further of, but I think the doctor’s excellent mind will comprehend what it can not fully know.’
‘But this is unheard of. You haven’t told the whole story yet. You say you don’t know who killed this servant or tribesman of yours. Do you know when he was killed?’
‘Not even that. I know only that one of the people who came here to see me killed him, thinking he was I.’
‘How could anybody make that mistake?’
‘Easily. You see, it has always been our custom, as is true of many peoples, that the chief, in whom resides the most important secrets of the nation, should not be unnecessarily exposed to physical danger. Just as a lesser warrior in medieval days donned the white plume of his commander to deceive the enemy and prevent the possibility of their concentrating upon the leader, killing him early, and demoralising the troops by eliminating competent direction, so with us for many hundreds of years a similar practice has been in effect. The king is prohibited by tribal law from unnecessarily endangering the tribal secrets residing in his person. My servant knew of certain dangers to which I was exposed here. I had devised a mathematical formula whereby I was able to predict a certain probability in the popular policy game of this community. My part in the dwindling fortunes of one of the so-called bankers was discovered through the disloyalty of a disgruntled underling in the rival camp which my information was aiding. The loser intended to eliminate me. Whether this actual killing was his doing or not I am not sure—that was one possibility. There was another.
‘At any rate, N’Ogo and I exchanged roles. It had been so for several days. I am able through a divertissement learned in youth to diverge
my eyes as easily as most people converge theirs, and so, to the casual observer, could easily pass for my own servant.
‘My servant had only to sit here in this chair in the darkness. I myself, dressed in his costume, would usher the visitor to the entrance there, turn aside, and come down the hall to my laboratory at the rear. There a device of mine enabled me to convince the visitor, now seated in that chair opposite, that it was really I who sat there. This light over my head is far more than a light. It is also a mechanism whereby I can see the illuminated face of whoever occupies that chair, and whereby also I can transmit my voice to this point. It comprises nothing mechanically original or unusual, except, perhaps, its compactness. By means of it, I was able to carry on my observation of a visitor and talk to him quite as if I were really in this chair, except that I could see only his face. Thus, you see, by the use of two rather simple mechanisms, my lift and my light, I enjoyed remarkable freedom of movement and considerable personal security in case of necessity.
‘But on Saturday night, I had no need, any more than on any other night, for entering this room. Visitors were always accustomed to paying their fees to the assistant in the hall as they departed. So negative was my assistant’s part in this masquerade that I did not—and do not—know just when he was attacked. But the strange experience—what you will call a premonition—that momentarily startled me during Mr Jenkins’ interview made me exclaim in a way that startled him also, so that he jumped up to investigate. The crime had been done before that moment. It was done between the time when some prior visitor rose to go—disappearing from view in my mechanism—and the time when I collected the same visitor’s fee in the hall. Or perhaps between the time when I bowed him into this room and reached my laboratory.
‘From that point on you know what happened. I could do only what I did do. Tonight I had every reason to believe, before your interruption, that I should determine the identity of the murderer. Perhaps I may do so yet—I have arranged certain traps. In case of the unexpected, Mr Dart, be careful what you touch—’
A wholly strange voice suddenly shot out from the deep shadow behind Frimbo.
‘So it’s really you this time, Frimbo? Why weren’t you careful what you touched?’
At the last word a pistol banged twice.
In that frozen instant, before any of the dumbfounded bystanders could move, Frimbo’s light was abruptly blotted out and the room went utterly black. At the same moment a shriek of unmistakable pain and terror broke through the dark from the direction of the two shots.
‘Brady—that light—quick!’ came Dart’s sharp voice. The powerful extension light flashed brilliantly on.
There was no need for haste, however. Against the wall at the rear of the black-draped chamber, whence the distressed cry had come, everyone saw a figure slumped limply down, as if it would fall but could not. It moaned and twitched as if in a convulsion, and one arm was extended upward as if held by something on the wall.
Dr Archer reached the figure before the detective, started to lift it, looked up at the point where the hand was clinging, and changed his intention.
‘Wait—be careful!’ he warned the detective. The man’s hand was grasping the handle of the switch-box which occupied that point on the wall. ‘That handle’s live in that position. Here—push it up by lifting him by his clothing—that’s it—a little more—I’ll push up his elbow—there!’ The hand fell free.
Supporting his limp figure between them, they got the man to his feet. They swung him, more unnerved than hurt, around into the light and drew him forward.
It was the railroad porter, Easley Jones.
Dr Archer first did what he could for Frimbo, who, still sitting in the chair, had fallen face-down on the table; lifted his shoulders so that he resumed an erect posture, and began to loosen his clothing in order to examine his wounds. Frimbo, rapidly weakening, yet was able to lift one hand in protest. He smiled ever so faintly and managed a low whisper:
‘Thank you, my friend, but it is of no use. This is what I foresaw.’
Martha Crouch had come forward like one walking in a daze. Now she was beside Frimbo. Her face was a portrait of bewilderment and dread. Frimbo’s head sank forward on his chest.
‘The Buwongo secret,’ he murmured, ‘dies …’
The young woman put her arm about his sagging shoulders. Her horror-struck face turned to Dr Archer, mutely questioning. He shook his head a little sadly.
‘How about the car downstairs, doc?’ Dart was asking. ‘Shoot right over to Harlem Hospital if you say so.’
Dr Archer stood beside Frimbo a moment longer without answering. Then he sighed and turned away. ‘It’s too late,’ he said. ‘Have him taken up to his room.’
He approached Easley Jones, who stood between two policemen, looking down at the palm of his left hand, where the live switch handle had burned him. The doctor picked up the railroad porter’s hand, inspected it, dropped it.
‘Just what under the sun,’ he said, looking the man up and down, ‘could you have had against Frimbo?’
Easley Jones said nothing. His head remained sullenly lowered, the bushy kinks standing out like a black wool wig, the dark freckles sharply defined against pale brown skin.
‘Have you anything to say?’ Dart asked him.
Still he was silent.
‘You sneaked around in the dark until you were near that switch Frimbo mentioned Saturday night. Then you shot Frimbo from behind, intending to throw off the switch and get back to your place during the excitement. We were looking for something like that, otherwise this extension would have been useless. We plugged it in downstairs on another circuit.’
‘But it was Frimbo,’ Dr Archer said, ‘who caught him. Frimbo had wired that switch box so that the handle would go live when it was pulled down. Frimbo anticipated all this—he said so. Deliberately exposed himself to another attack in order to catch the killer. He even knew he was going to die.’
‘What this guy’s grudge was I can’t imagine. But he’s saved us a lot of trouble by trying again. I suppose he would have tried it before if he hadn’t known he was being trailed. How’d you know we were trailing you, Jones?’
No answer.
‘Incredible,’ Dr Archer was muttering. ‘Nothing about him to suggest the ingenuity—’
‘Frimbo!’
The physician swung around, stepped back to Martha Crouch, who had uttered the name as one might cry out in torture. Never on any face had he seen such intense grief.
‘Why, Martha—what in the world? Does this mean all that to you?’
Her eyes, wide and dry, stared impotently about in a suppressed frenzy of despair. Clearly, she would have screamed, but could not.
‘You mean’—the physician could not bring himself to accept the obvious—‘that you and Frimbo—?’
It was as if that name coupled with her own was more than she could endure. She wheeled away from him, and from the sudden tense immobility of her figure he knew that in a moment all that she was now curbing by long self-discipline would explode in one relieving outburst.
Suddenly she about-faced again. This time her eyes, fixed on a point behind John Archer, had in them the madness of hysteria. The doctor manifested an impulse to restrain her as she passed him. He hesitated a trifle too long. Before anyone knew her intention, she had swept like a Fury upon the man whose arms were in the grasp of the two officers. Low words came from between her clenched teeth as her hands tore at his face.
‘You—killed—the only man—’
They managed after a moment to pull her away. What shocked her, however, out of that moment of mania into a sudden stupor of immobility was not the firm grasp of friendly hands but the realization that in her tightly closed fingers was a wig of kinky black hair, and that the sleek, black scalp of the man before her, despite the freckles which so well disguised his complexion, was that of her husband, the undertaker, Samuel Crouch.
CHAPTER XXIV
JINX JENKIN
S, released, and his ally, Bubber Brown, walked together down Seventh Avenue. It was shortly after midnight and the Avenue at this point was alive. The Lafayette Theatre was letting out somewhat later than usual, flooding the sidewalk with noisy crowds. Cabs were jostling one another to reach the curb. Brightly dressed downtowners were streaming into Connie’s Inn next door. Habitués of the curb stood about in commenting groups, swapping jibes. The two friends ambled through the animated turbulence, unaware of the gaiety swirling around them, still awed by the experience through which they had passed.
‘Death on the moon, boy,’ Bubber said. ‘What’d I tell you?’
‘You tol’ me,’ Jinx unkindly reminded him, ‘it was the flunky done it.’
‘The flunky done plenty,’ returned Bubber. ‘Got hisself killed, didn’t he?’
‘Yea—he done that, all right.’
‘His name was N’Ogo,’ Bubber said, ‘but he went.’
They emerged from the bedlam of that carnival block.
‘Smart guy that Frimbo,’ observed Bubber. ‘Y’ know, I wouldn’t mind bein’ kind o’ crazy if it made me that smart.’
‘That Crouch wasn’t no dumbbell.’
‘Dart say Crouch must ’a’ known all about a railroad porter named Easley Jones, and made out he was him.’
‘Hmph. Guess now he wishes he was him sho’ ’nough.’
‘Sho’ was different from his own self—act different, talk different.’
‘He wasn’t so different. He was still actin’ and talkin’ cullud, only more so.’
Bubber’s hand was on the roll of bills in his pocket which he had won at blackjack, but his mind was still in Frimbo’s death chamber.
‘Them artificial freckles—that man must ’a’ been kind o’ crazy too—jealous crazy—to sit down and think up a thing like that. Freckles sump’m like yourn, only his comes off.’
‘Mine liked to come off too when I seen who he was. How you reckon he got my finger print on that thing?’
The Conjure-Man Dies Page 24