‘I don’t know. His job—his wife—it’s all such a mess. I guess he wants to take it out on somebody and he can’t—on Sonny.’
‘I see. What does he intend to do?’
‘He’s coming here and hold you up for that knife. If you refuse to give it to him—he’ll take it.’
‘How?’
‘He has a pistol. He has to have it when he’s loading mail, you know. The way he is now, he’d use it.’
‘In which case he might be actually guilty of a crime of which he is now only suspected.’
‘Yes. He might kill you.’
‘And naturally you want to save him from that.’
‘Him—and you.’
‘Hm … What do you suggest?’
‘Give me the knife.’
He smiled. ‘But I’ve promised Sergeant Dart to turn it over to him in the morning.’
‘I know. But I’ll give it back to you, I swear I will.’
‘My dear child, I couldn’t do that. Don’t you see—it would make my position very awkward? Obstructing the due course of justice and all that?’
‘Oh—I was afraid you wouldn’t—Please! Don’t you see? It may mean your life—and Ben’s. I tell you he’s crazy.’
‘How is it that he didn’t get here first?’
‘He had to stay with Ma. She passed out. I’m supposed to be out looking for medicine. As soon as I get back, he’s coming.’
‘As soon as you get back. Well, that makes it simple.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Don’t go back. Stay here. Sergeant Dart will come for the knife at eight o’clock in the morning. It’s three now. When it has been examined, he will come back for us. It will be too late for Ben to do anything to me then.’
‘Stay here the rest of the night?’
‘You’ll be quite safe. I should hardly be—ungrateful for your effort to protect me.’
‘But—but—what about Ma’s medicine?’
‘If she simply fainted, she’s in no danger.’
‘I couldn’t stay away. If anything happened to Ma—’
The physician meditated.
‘Well,’ he said after a moment, ‘strange how the simplest solution is often the last to occur to one. I can easily take care of both the danger to myself and the further implication of your brother.’
‘How?’ Petal asked eagerly.
‘By just spending the rest of the night elsewhere. Parts unknown.’
‘Oh.’
‘Come. That will settle everything. You run along now. Get your mother’s medicine. When brother Ben arrives I’ll be far, far away.’
Reluctantly the girl arose. Suddenly she swayed, threw a hand up to her face, and slumped back down into the chair. Dr Archer sprang forward. She was quite limp. He felt her pulse and grinned. She stirred, opened her eyes, smiled wanly.
‘A little water—?’ she murmured.
He filled a paper cup from the washstand faucet in the corner and brought it to her.
‘It’s so warm,’ she protested.
‘I’ll get a bit of ice.’
He went through the next room into the kitchen, put ice in a glass, filled it and returned. She had not apparently moved, but the flap of his bag on the desk was unsecured at one end. She drank the water.
‘Thank you. That’s so much better. I’m sorry. I feel all right now.’
Again she arose and now preceded him through the waiting-room. At the front door she turned and smiled. She was really very pretty.
‘You’ve been swell,’ she said. ‘I guess everything will turn out all right now.’
‘I hope so. You’ve done bravely.’
She looked at him, turned quickly away as if eluding some hidden meaning in his words, and stepped across the threshold. As she did so, the bang of a pistol shot shook the foyer. Archer reached out, seized the girl’s arm, yanked her back, slammed the door. He secured its lock, then hustled her back into the consulting-room.
There, both drew breath.
‘Somebody means business. Sit down.’
She obeyed, wordless, while he went back to reassure Dart. When he returned a moment later, he found a thoroughly frightened girl.
‘I—I heard it hit the side of the doorway,’ she breathed. ‘Who—who’d shoot at me?’
‘I can’t imagine who’d shoot at either of us. Even your brother would try to get what he came for before shooting.’
‘It was at me,’ she insisted. ‘You were still inside the room. It was from the stairs at the back.’
‘Well. Looks as if we both have to stay here a while now.’
‘There’s no other way out?’
‘Yes. The kitchen. But that door opens on the same foyer.’
She gave a sign of despair. Slowly her eyes filled.
‘Spoils your whole scheme, doesn’t it?’
She said nothing.
‘Don’t feel too bad about it. It was spoiled already.’
Her wet eyes lifted, questioning.
‘Look in your bag,’ he said.
She opened the handbag, took out a gauze-wrapped object.
‘Unwrap it.’
She obeyed. The knife was not Sonny’s pearl-handled weapon, but a shining surgeon’s scalpel.
‘I anticipated some such attempt as you made, of course. The real thing is already under inspection.’
He felt almost ashamed at her look.
After a brief silence, she shrugged hopelessly. ‘Well—I tried.’
He stood before her. ‘I wish you’d tell me the whole story.’
‘I can’t. It’s too awful.’
‘I’d really like to help you if I could.’
‘You could give me the knife.’
‘What could you do with it now? You don’t dare leave, with somebody shooting at you.’
‘If Ben comes—’
‘Ben has surely had time to come—come to his senses, anyway. If Ben would go so far as to kill—as you claim—to get that knife, it can only mean one thing: He knows whom it would implicate.’ He paused, continued: ‘That might be himself.’
Inspiration kindled her eyes for a brief instant. Before he was sure he saw it, the lids drooped.
‘Or,’ he leaned a little closer, ‘would it be Letty? Letty, who killed Sonny for betraying her, then begged her husband to forgive her and recover the one thing that would identify her?’
She looked up at him, dropped her eyes again, and said:
‘Neither.’
‘Who then?’
‘Me.’
‘You!’
‘Me.’ She drew deep breath. ‘Don’t you think I know what it means for me to come here and try to get that thing? Why make it hard? It means I killed Sonny, that’s all. It means I told them tonight after you left. Ben would have come here and done anything to get the knife, to save me. But Ma passed out when I told. And I ran out while Ben was holding her, saying I’d get something for her. And then I came here … Why would I let Ben risk his neck for something I did?’
Dr Archer sat down. ‘Petal, you’re lying.’
‘No. It’s true. I did it. I didn’t know it was Sonny. I didn’t go out as Letty said. I hid in the room closet. I thought it was Red that came in. When he went to sleep I came out of the closet. It was dark … I meant to—to hang on to the knife, but I couldn’t pull it out.’ She halted, went on: ‘Then I went out, quietly. It was Ma who really discovered him as I came back in later. That’s why I screamed so when—’ She halted again.
‘But Petal—why?’
‘Can’t you guess?’ she said, low.
‘Good Lord!’ He sat back in his chair. ‘If that’s a lie, it’s a good one.’
‘It’s not a lie. You said you’d help me if you could. Will you give me the knife now? Just long enough to let me clean the handle?’
He was silent.
‘It’s my life I’m asking for.’
‘No, Petal,’ he said gently. ‘The beauty of your story is that if it stands up you might g
et off very lightly. Juries are funny about a woman’s honour. It’s certainly not a question of your life.’
‘Lightly! What good is a jailbird’s life?’
‘I can’t believe this.’
She stood up, her bag dropping to the floor.
‘Look at me,’ she said. He looked. ‘I’ll do anything you want me to, any time, from now till I die, if you’ll give me the knife for five minutes. Anything on earth.’
And, whatever her falsehood up to that moment, he had no doubt of her sincerity now.
‘Sit down, Petal.’
She sat down and began to cry softly.
‘It’s a lie. But it’s a grand lie.’
‘Why do you keep saying that?’
‘Because it’s so. Don’t you see how inconsistent you are?’
She stopped crying.
‘Look,’ he went on. ‘You’ve come to me, whom you know nothing about except that I’m a doctor. Nothing personal at all. You say you’ve killed for the sake of your—let us say—honour. Yet the same honour, which you prize highly enough to commit murder for, you offer to sacrifice to me if I will save you from the consequences of what you’ve done for it. Does that make sense?’
She did not answer.
‘How can you hold so cheap now a thing which you held so dear a few hours ago?’
‘I’m not. It’s worth all it ever was. Something else is worth more, that’s all.’
‘How you must love your brother.’
‘Myself.’
‘No. You wouldn’t do this for yourself. If you were the only one involved, you’d still be defending your honour—not trading it in.’
‘Please—you said you’d help me.’
‘I’m going to help you—though not in the way you suggest—nor at the price.’
‘Then—how?’
‘You’ll have to leave that to me, Petal.’
There was complete defeat in her voice. ‘It certainly looks that way.’
‘Now call your home and say that you’ve been detained by the police, but will be there in the morning. Tell Ben you were detained for trying to see me. That will keep him safe at home.’
She obeyed, replaced the receiver, turned to him. ‘Now what?’
‘Now lie down on that sofa and rest till morning. I’ll be in the next room, there.’
With utmost dejection in every movement, she went toward the sofa. John Archer turned and went out, back through the living-room into the bedroom where Dart waited, and went into whispered close communion with the detective.
An hour later he came softly back to the consulting-room, cracked the door, looked through. Petal lay face-down on the sofa, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
During that hour of whispered conference, the physician and the detective had engaged in one of their characteristic disagreements.
‘You yourself said,’ Dart reminded the doctor, ‘that the party who is obviously guilty is guilty. That party is Ben. He is the only one with sufficient motive. This Letty and Petal stuff is hooey. Women don’t kill guys that trick ’em any more. They sue ’em. But men still kill guys that trick their wives.’
‘You’re barking up the wrong sycamore, Perry. Ben didn’t know anything about Letty’s two-timing—delightful phrase, “two-timing”—till Red spilt it over two hours after the stabbing. The way you say he acted proves that. Why, he was still staring dumbfounded at Letty when the medical examiner and I came back on the scene. Men may kill guys that trick their wives—if I may borrow your elegant diction—but surely not till after they know the worst. It is still customary, is it not, for a cause to precede its effect?’
‘You needn’t get nasty. Maybe there was some other motive.’
‘You wouldn’t abandon your motive, would you Sergeant? “Love is all,” “Seek the woman” and all that?’
‘It’s been known to play a part,’ said the other drily.
‘I wish I could place that smell.’
‘I wish you could place it, too—as far away as possible.’
‘Let’s see now. I got it in the dead boy’s room when we first went in. But I didn’t get it when the medical examiner and I went in.’
‘So?’
‘So it must have been upon someone who was present the first time and absent the second.’
‘Yea.’
‘Don’t growl—you’re not the hound you think you are. That would mean it was on one of four people—Sonny, Petal, Ma, or you.’
‘Wake me when this is over.’
‘Then I got it in the front flat during the first period of questioning. So it couldn’t have been Sonny. And I did not get it anywhere else in the flat when you and I were looking around. Hence it couldn’t have been you.’
‘Nope. I use Life-Buoy.’
‘That leaves Petal and Ma. But I didn’t get it when Petal greeted us at the head of the stairs, nor while I was talking to her just now. I actually leaned close to her to be sure.’
‘You leaned close to her—why?’
‘To be sure.’
‘Oh. To be sure.’
‘That leaves Ma.’
‘Hmph. So Ma killed Sonny. I begin to smell something myself.’
‘I didn’t say the bearer of the odour killed Sonny.’
‘No. You only said the odour would lead to the killer. You had a hunch.’
‘I’ve still got it—bigger than ever. Ma may not have killed Sonny, but I’ll bet you champagne to Rochelle salts that if it hadn’t been for Ma, Sonny wouldn’t have been killed.’
‘It’s a bet. And the one that wins has to drink his winnings on the spot.’
‘In other words, Ma is inextricably bound up in the answer to this little riddle.’
‘Anything besides an odour leading you on?’
‘Yes. There are two things I can believe out of Petal’s story: First, Petal is awfully anxious to protect somebody. Second, Ben—who was coming here also if Petal had returned home—is also very anxious to protect somebody. There was time for plenty of talk after we left, so it’s unlikely that Ben and Petal are concerned over two different people. Ben and Petal, brother and sister, are trying to protect the same person. It wouldn’t be Red, whom Ben tried to beat. It wouldn’t be Letty, whom Petal has shown no special affection for. But it would be Ma, their mother, the one person in the picture whom both love.’
‘Are you trying to say that Ma killed her own son, and that Ben and Petal know she did?’
‘Not exactly. I’m saying that Ben and Petal believe that that knife will incriminate Ma.’
Dart became serious for a moment. ‘I get it. Ben’s ignorance of Letty’s two-timing eliminates him. Petal’s inconsistency eliminates her. Yet each of them wants the knife, because it may incriminate Ma.’
‘Beautifully summarized, professor. With the aid of a smell.’
‘Where do you want to smell next?’
‘At their apartment in the morning. Have everybody there—and-a few trusty fallen arches. I’m going to locate that odour if it asphyxiates me.’
‘Y’know, maybe I ought to put you on a leash.’
‘Have the leash ready. I’ll get you somebody to put on it.’
In the morning about eight-thirty the two men and the girl had coffee together, Dart pretending to have just arrived. Petal exhibited a forced cheerfulness that in no wise concealed the despair in her eyes.
Even the hard habits of long police experience had not wholly stifled the detective’s chivalry, and in an effort to match the girl’s courageous masquerade, he said lightly:
‘You know, this case is no cinch. I’m beginning to believe some of your folks must walk in their sleep.’
As if struck, the girl jumped up. It was as if the tide of her terror, which had receded during the early morning hours, suddenly swung back with his remark, lifting her against her will to her feet. Controlling herself with the greatest effort, she turned from the table and disappeared into the next room.
‘Gee!’ said Dar
t. ‘Bull’s eye—in the dark.’
‘M—m,’ murmured Archer. ‘Ma. But I hope I’m wrong.’
‘I hope so, too.’
Petal reappeared.
‘I’m sorry. I’m so upset.’
‘Better finish your coffee,’ said the doctor.
‘My fault,’ Dart apologized. ‘I might have let you out a few more minutes.’
‘It’s all right—about me. But there’s someone I wish you would let out—as far as you can.’
‘Who?’
‘Ma.’
‘I don’t understand. Surely you don’t mean that your mother—’
‘No. Of course not. But—perhaps I should have mentioned it sooner—but it’s not something we talk much about. You ought to know it though.’
‘I’ll certainly try to protect your confidence.’
‘My mother is—well—not entirely—right.’
‘You mean she’s—insane?’
‘She goes off—has spells in which she doesn’t know what she’s saying. You saw how she was last night—she just sat there.’
‘But,’ the physician put in, ‘anybody—any mother, certainly—might act that way under the circumstances. The shock must have been terrific.’
‘Yes, but it is more than that. Ma has—I don’t know—she sees things. As long as she’s quiet it doesn’t matter. But when she starts talking, she says the most impossible things. When you see her again, she’s likely to have a complete story of all this. She’s likely to say anybody did it—anybody.’ Her voice dropped. ‘Even herself.’
The two men looked at her, Dart quizzically, Archer gravely.
‘That’s why I’m asking you to—let her out. If ever she had reason to be unresponsible for what she says, it’s now.’
‘Quite so,’ the doctor said. ‘I’m sure Sergeant Dart will give your mother every consideration.’
Dart nodded. ‘Don’t worry, young lady. Policemen are people, too, you know.’
‘I just thought I’d better tell you beforehand.’
‘Glad you did. Now let’s get around to your place and see if we can’t clear up the whole thing. Some of the boys are to meet me there at nine. Perhaps something has developed that will put your mind at rest.’
‘Perhaps,’ said the girl with no trace of conviction or hope.
When, a few minutes later, they reached the Dewey apartment, they found a bluecoat in the corridor outside the door and two of Dart’s subordinates already awaiting him, with the other members of the family, in the living-room.
The Conjure-Man Dies Page 28