Bubber described with enthusiasm the physician’s demonstration.
‘Say, that’s right,’ Jinx recalled. ‘My chair arm was kind o’ messy on one side, but I thought it was jes’ furniture polish and sorter blotted it off on a clean place.’
‘Then we got up and went over to the mantelpiece and was talkin’ ’bout all them false-faces and things.’
‘Yea.’
‘That’s when this guy come up and joined the conversation. But he had dropped his hat in your chair. While he was standin’ there talkin’ so much, he got your han’kerchief and that club. Then it come his turn to go in to Frimbo. On the way he leaned over your chair to pick up his hat. That’s when he got your thumb print—off the clean place. Didn’t take him a second.’
‘The grave-digger,’ Jinx muttered. ‘He sho’ meant to dig me in, didn’t he?’
‘If it hadn’t been you, ’twould ’a’ been somebody else. He jes’ didn’t mean to lose his wife and his life both. Couldn’t blame him for that. Jes’ ordinary common sense.’
A gay young man on the edge of the pavement burst into song for the benefit of some acquaintance passing by with a girl:
‘I’ll be glad when you’re dead, you rascal you—
I’ll be glad when you’re dead, you rascal you—
Since you won’t stop messin’ ’round,
I’m go’n’ turn yo’ damper down—
Oh, you dog—I’ll be glad when you’re gone!’
‘Boy,’ murmured Bubber, if he only knew what he was singin’.’
And deep in meditation the two wandered on side by side down Seventh Avenue.
THE END
JOHN ARCHER’S NOSE
THE untimely death of Rudolph Fisher in December 1934, two years after the publication of The Conjure-Man Dies, robbed the world of the first and possibly only black detective novelist of the Golden Age. In interviews Fisher revealed that he had at least two sequels planned, one of which, provisionally entitled Thus Spake the Prophet, he was apparently working on as early as January 1933. However, although no more books featuring Dart and Archer did emerge, the two were reunited in Fisher’s last published story, ‘John Archer’s Nose’, which appeared in the first edition of the short-lived Metropolitan magazine only a month after the author died.
WHENEVER Detective Sergeant Perry Dart felt especially weary of the foibles and follies of his Harlem, he knew where to find stimulation; he could always count on his friend, Dr John Archer. Spiritually the two bachelors were as opposite as the two halves of a circle—and as complementary. The detective had only to seek out the physician at the latter’s office-apartment, flop into a chair, and make an observation. His tall, lean comrade in crime, sober of face but twinkling of eye, would produce a bottle, fill glasses, hold a match first to Dart’s cigar then to his own, and murmur a word of disagreement. Promptly an argument would be on.
Tonight however the formula had failed to work. It was shortly after midnight, an excellent hour for profound argumentation, and the sounds from the avenue outside, still alive with the gay crowds that a warm spring night invariably calls forth, hardly penetrated into the consulting-room where they sat. But Dart’s provocative remark had evoked no disagreement.
‘Your folks,’ Dart had said, ‘are the most superstitious idiots on the face of the earth.’
The characteristic response would have been:
‘Perry, you’ll have to cut out drinking. It’s curdling your milk of human kindness.’ Or, ‘My folks?—Really!’ Or, ‘Avoid unscientific generalizations, my dear Sherlock. They are ninety-one and six-thirteenths percent wrong by actual measurement.’
But tonight the physician simply looked at him and said nothing. Dart prodded further:
‘They can be as dark as me or as light as you, but their ignorance is the same damned colour wherever you find it—black.’
That should have brought some demurring comment on the leprechauns of the Irish, the totems of the Indians, or the prayer-wheels of the Tibetans. Still the doctor said nothing.
‘So you won’t talk, hey?’
Whereupon John Archer said quietly:
‘I believe you’re right.’
Dart’s leg came off its perch across his chair-arm. He set down his glass untasted on the doctor’s desk, leaned forward, staring.
‘Heresy!’ he cried, incredulous. ‘Heresy, b’gosh!—I’ll have you read out of church. What the hell? Don’t you know you aren’t supposed to agree with me?’
‘Spare me, your grace.’ The twinkle which kindled for an instant in Dr Archer’s eyes flickered quickly out. ‘I’ve had a cogent example today of what you complain of.’
‘Superstition?’
‘Of a very dark hue.’
‘State the case. Let’s see if you can exonerate yourself.’
‘I lost a kid.’
Dart reached for his glass. ‘Didn’t know you had one.’
‘A patient, you jackass.’
Dart grinned. ‘Didn’t know you had a patient, either.’
‘That’s not funny. Neither was this. Beautiful, plump little brown rascal—eighteen months old—perfectly developed, bright-eyed, alert—and it passes out in a convulsion, and I was standing there looking on—helpless.’
‘If it was so perfect, what killed it?’
‘Superstition.’
‘Humph. Anything for an alibi, hey?’
‘Superstition,’ repeated Archer in a tone which stilled his friend’s banter. ‘That baby ought to be alive and well, now.’
‘What’s the gag line?’
‘Status lymphaticus.’
‘Hell. And I was just getting serious.’
‘That’s as serious as anything could be. The kid had a retained thymus.’
‘I’ll bite. What’s a retained thymus?’
‘A big gland here in the chest. Usually disappears after birth. Sometimes doesn’t. Untreated, it produces this status lymphaticus—convulsions—death.’
‘Why didn’t you treat it?’
‘I did what I could. Been seeing it for some time. Could have cleared it up over night. What I couldn’t treat was the superstition of the parents.’
‘Oh.’
‘Specially the father. The kid should have had X-ray treatments. Melt the thing away. These kids, literally choking to death in a fit, clear up and recover—zip—like that. Most spectacular thing in medicine. But the old man wouldn’t hear of it. None of this new-fangled stuff for his only child.’
‘I see.’
‘You can’t see. I haven’t told you yet. I noticed today, for the first time, a small, evil-smelling packet on a string around the baby’s neck. In spite of the shock immediately following death, my curiosity got the better of me. I suppose there was also a natural impulse to—well—change the subject, sort of. I asked what it was.’
‘You would.’
‘The father didn’t answer. He’d gone cataleptic. He simply stood there, looking. It seemed to me he was looking rather at the packet than at the child, and if ever there was the light of madness in a man’s eyes, it was in his. The mother, grief-stricken though she was, managed to pull herself together long enough to answer.’
‘What was it?’
‘Fried hair.’
‘What?’
‘Fried hair. No—not just kinky hair, straightened with hot irons and grease, as the term usually implies. That packet—I examined it—contained a wad of human hair, fried, if you please, in snake oil.’
Dart expelled a large volume of disgusted smoke. ‘The fools.’
‘A charm. The father had got it that morning from some conjure-woman. Guaranteed to cure the baby’s fits.’
‘He’d try that in preference to X-rays.’
‘And his name,’ the doctor concluded with a reflective smile, ‘was Bright—Solomon Bright.’
After a moment of silence, Dart said:
‘Well—your sins are forgiven. No wonder you agreed with me.’
‘Di
d I?’ Having unburdened his story, John Archer’s habit of heckling, aided by a normal desire to dismiss an unpleasant memory, began now to assert itself. The twinkle returned to his eyes. ‘I am of course in error. A single graphic example, while impressive, does not warrant a general conclusion. Such reasoning, as pointed out by no less an authority than the great Bacon—’
‘I prefer ham,’ cut in Dart as the phone rang. His friend, murmuring something to the effect that ‘like begets like,’ reached for the instrument.
‘Hello … Yes … Yes. I can come at once. Where? 15 West 134th Street, Apartment 51 … Yes—right away.’
Deliberately he replaced the receiver. ‘I’m going to post a reward,’ he said wearily, ‘for the first person who calls a doctor and says, “Doctor, take your time.” Right away—right away—’
He rose, put away the bottle, reached for hat and bag.
‘Want to come along?’
‘You’re not really going right away?’
‘In spite of my better judgment. That girl was scared.’
‘O.K. All I’ve got to do before morning is sleep.’
‘Don’t count on it. Got your gun?’
‘Gun? Of course. But what for?’
‘Just a hunch. Come on.’
‘Hunch?’ Dart jumped up to follow. ‘Say—what is this? A shooting?’
‘Not yet.’ They reached the street.
‘So what?’
‘Girl said her brother’s been stabbed.’
‘Yea?—here—let’s use my car!’
‘Righto. But lay off that siren. It gives me the itch.’
‘Well, scratch,’ Dart said as his phaeton leaped forward. ‘You’ve got fingernails, haven’t you?’ And with deliberate perversity he made the siren howl.
In three minutes they reached their destination and were panting up endless stairs.
‘It’s a cowardly trick, that siren,’ breathed the doctor.
‘Why?’
‘Just a stunt to scare all the bad men away from the scene of the crime.’
‘Well, it wouldn’t work up here. This high up, they couldn’t hear a thing in the street.’
‘You’re getting old. It’s only five flights.’
Dart’s retort was cut off by the appearance of a girl’s form at the head of the stairway.
‘Dr Archer?’ Her voice was trembling. ‘This way.—Please—hurry—’
They followed her into the hallway of an apartment. They caught a glimpse of a man and woman as they passed the front living-room. The girl stopped and directed them with wide, frightened eyes into a bed-chamber off the hall. They stepped past her into the chamber, Dart pausing automatically to look about before following the physician in.
An old lady sat motionless beside the bed, her distorted face a spasm of grief. She looked up at the doctor, a pitifully frantic appeal in her eyes, then looked back toward the bed without speaking.
Dr Archer dropped his bag and bent over the patient, a lean-faced boy of perhaps twenty. He lay on his left side facing the wall, his knees slightly drawn up in a sleeping posture. But his eyes were open and fixed. The doctor grasped his thin shoulders and pulled him gently a little way, to reveal a wide stain of blood on the bedclothing below; pulled him a little farther over, bent in a moment’s inspection, then summoned Dart with a movement of his head. Together they observed the black-pearl handle of a knife, protruding from the chest. The boy had been stabbed through his pyjama coat, and the blade was unquestionably in his heart.
Dr Archer released the shoulder. The body rolled softly back to its original posture. The physician stood erect.
‘Are you his mother?’ he asked the old lady.
Dumbly, she nodded.
‘You saw the knife, of course?’
‘I seen it,’ she said in almost a whisper, and with an effort added, ‘I—I didn’t pull it out for fear of startin’ him bleedin’ ag’in.’
‘He won’t bleed any more,’ Dr Archer said gently. ‘He hasn’t bled for an hour—maybe two.’
The girl behind them gasped sharply. ‘You mean he’s been—dead—that long?’
‘At least. The blood stain beneath him is dry.’
A sob escaped the old lady. ‘Sonny—’
‘Oh Ma—!’ The girl moved to the old lady’s side, encircled her with compassionate arms.
‘I knowed it,’ the old lady whispered. ‘I knowed it—the minute I seen him, I knowed—’
Dr Archer terminated a long silence by addressing the girl. ‘It was you who called me?’
She nodded.
‘When you said your brother had been stabbed, I knew the case would have to be reported to the police. Detective Sergeant Dart was with me at the time. I thought it might save embarrassment if he came along.’
The girl looked at Dart and after a moment nodded again.
‘I understand.—But we—we don’t know who did it.’
A quick glance passed between the two men.
‘Then it’s lucky I came,’ Dart said. ‘Perhaps I can help you.’
‘Yes.—Yes perhaps you can.’
‘Whose knife is that?’
‘His own.’
‘His own?—Where did you last see it?’
‘On the bureau by the head of the bed.’
‘When?’
‘This afternoon, when I was cleaning up.’
‘Tell me how you found him.’
‘Just like that. I’d been out. I came in and along the hall on the way to my room, I noticed his door was closed. He hasn’t been coming in till much later recently. I stopped to speak to him—he hadn’t been well.—I opened the door and spoke. He didn’t answer. I pushed on the light. He looked funny. I went over to him and saw the blood.—’
‘Shall we go into another room?’
‘Yes, please.—Come, Ma—’
Stiffly, with the girl’s assistance, the mother got to her feet and permitted herself to be guided toward the door. There she paused, turned, and looked back at the still figure lying on the bed. Her eyes were dry, but the depth of her shocked grief was unmistakable. Then, almost inaudibly, she said a curious thing:
‘God forgive me.’
And slowly she turned again and stumbled forward.
Again Dart and Archer exchanged glances. The former’s brows lifted. The latter shook his head thoughtfully as he picked up his bag. As the girl and her mother went out, he stood erect and sniffed. He went over to the room’s one window, which was open, near the foot of the bed. Dart followed. Together they looked out into the darkness of an airshaft. Above, one more story and the edge of the roof. Below, an occasional lighted window and a blend of diverse sounds welling up: a baby wailing, someone coughing spasmodically, a radio rasping laboured jazz, a woman’s laugh, quickly stifled.
‘God forgive her what?’ said Dart.
The doctor sniffed again. ‘It didn’t come from out there.’
‘What didn’t?’
‘What I smelt.’
‘All I smell is a rat.’
‘This is far more subtle.’
‘Smell up the answer to my question.’
The physician sniffed again, said nothing, turned and started out. He and Dart overtook the others in the hallway. A moment later, they were all in the living-room.
The man and woman, whom they had seen in passing, waited there, looking toward them expectantly. The woman, clad in gold-figured black silk Chinese pyjamas, was well under thirty, slender, with yellow skin which retained a decided make-up even at this hour. Her boyish bob was reddish with frequent ‘frying,’ and her eyes were cold and hard. The man, in shirt-sleeves and slippers, was approximately the same age, of medium build and that complexion known as ‘riny’—light, sallow skin and sand-coloured kinky hair. His eyes were green.
The girl got the old lady into a chair before speaking. Then, in a dull, absent sort of way, she said:
‘This is the doctor. He’s already turned the case over to this gentleman that came with
him.’
‘And who,’ the woman inquired, ‘is this gentleman that came with him?’
‘A policeman—a detective.’
‘Hmph!’ commented the woman.
‘Fast work,’ added the man unpleasantly.
‘Thank you,’ returned Dart, eyeing him coolly. ‘May I know to whom I owe the compliment?’
The man matched his stare before answering.
‘I am Ben Dewey. This is my wife. Petal there is my sister. Sonny was my brother.’ There was unnecessary insolence in the enumeration.
‘“Was” your brother?’
‘Yes, was.’ Mr Dewey was evidently not hard to incense. He bristled.
‘Then you are already aware of his—misfortune?’
‘Of course.’
‘In fact, you were aware of it before Dr Archer arrived.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that no one has stated your brother’s condition since we came into this room. You were not in the bedroom when Dr Archer did state it. Yet you know it.’
Ben Dewey glared. ‘Certainly I know it.’
‘How?’
The elder brother’s wife interrupted. ‘This is hardly the time, Mr Detective, for a lot of questions.’
Dart looked at her. ‘I see,’ he said quietly. ‘I have been in error. Miss Petal said, in the other room just now, “We don’t know who did it.” Naturally I assumed that her “we” included all the members of the family. I see now that she meant only herself and her mother. So, Mrs Dewey, if you or your husband will be kind enough to name the guilty party, we can easily avoid a “lot of questions.”’
‘That ain’t what I meant!’ flared the wife. ‘We don’t know who did it either.’
‘Oh. And you are not anxious to find out—as quickly as possible?’
Dr Archer mediated. ‘Sergeant Dart naturally felt that in performing his duty he would also be serving you all. He regrets, of course, the intrusion upon your—er—moment of sorrow.’
‘A sorrow which all of you do not seem to share alike,’ appended Dart, who believed in making people so angry that they would blurt out the truth. ‘May I use your phone?’
He went to the instrument, resting on a table near the hall door, called the precinct station, reported the case, asked for a medical examiner, and declined assistants.
The Conjure-Man Dies Page 25