‘Isn’t Red Brown here?’ was the detective’s first question.
‘No,’ Ben told him. ‘He left right after you did last night and hasn’t come back.’
‘The first law of nature,’ murmured Dr Archer.
‘Yea,’ Dart agreed, ‘but who is he protecting himself from—Mr and Mrs Dewey here or the law?’
‘It could be both,’ remarked the tight-lipped Letty.
‘Or neither,’ the doctor added. ‘He’s probably stayed out all night before. And I doubt that I should care to occupy Sonny’s bed under the circumstances.’
‘I told him to be here,’ Dart said. ‘This doesn’t look good for him.’
One of the headquarters men called Dart aside.
‘Autopsy report,’ he said, low. ‘Tuberculosis both lungs. Due to go anyway, sooner or later.’
‘M-m.’
‘Here’s the knife.’
‘Anything on it?’
‘Nothing.’
And the detective, knowing that every Dewey’s eyes had followed where their ears could not reach, pretended a satisfaction which only valuable information could have given.
‘Thanks,’ said he aloud. ‘This is all I’ve been waiting for.’
He surveyed the four members of the household—Ma, seated in the same chair she had occupied last night, much as if she had not left it since; Petal, again protectively by her side; Letty, still disagreeably defiant, standing beside Ben, her scowling husband. But the far-away expression was no longer in Ma’s eyes; she was staring now at the detective with the same fearful expectancy as the others.
After a moment of complete silence, Dart, looking meditatively at the knife which he balanced in his hand, said almost casually:
‘If I were the guilty party, I think I’d speak now.’
Ma Dewey drew a quick breath so sharply that all eyes turned upon her.
‘Yes,’ she said in a dull but resolute voice. ‘Yes. That’s right. It’s time to speak.’
‘Ma!’ cried Petal and Ben together.
‘Hush, chillun. You all don’ know. I got to tell it. It’s got to come out.’
‘Yes, Mrs Dewey?’
‘Oh Ma!’ the girl sobbed, while Ben shoulders dropped suddenly and Letty gave a sardonic shrug.
‘I don’t know,’ Ma said, ‘what you all’s found on that knife. It don’t matter. One thing I do know—my hand—this hand—’ she extended a clenched, withered fist—‘had hold o’ that knife when it went into Sonny’s heart.’
Petal turned desperate, appealing eyes to Dart. No one else moved or spoke.
‘I told the chillun las’ night after you all had lef’.’
Dr Archer gave Petal a glance that at last comprehended all she had tried to accomplish in his office last night.
‘You all don’ know,’ the old lady resumed with a deliberate calmness of voice that held no hint of insanity. ‘You don’ know what it means to a mother to see a child goin’ down and down. Sonny was my youngest child, my baby. He was sick, body and soul.’
She stopped a moment, went doggedly on.
‘He got to runnin’ around with the wrong crowd here in Harlem. Took to drinkin’ and comin’ in all hours o’ the night—or not at all. Nothin’ I say or do seem to have no effect on him. Then I see he’s beginnin’ to fall off—gettin’ thinner by the minute. Well, I made him go ’round to the hospital and let them doctors examine him. They say he got the T.B. in his lungs and if he don’ go ’way to a cemetarium he’ll die in a year. And I knowed it was so, ’cause his father died o’ the same thing.’
She was looking back over the years now, and into her eyes came last night’s distant stare.
‘But he wouldn’ go. Jes’ like his father. Say if he go’n’ die he go’n die at home and have a good time befo’ he go. I tried ev’ything—prayer, charms—God and the devil. But I’d done seen his father go and I reckon I didn’ have no faith in neither one. And I begun to think how his father suffered befo’ he went, and look like when I thought ’bout Sonny goin’ through the same thing I couldn’ stand it. Seem like sump’m kep’ tellin’ me, “Don’ let him suffer like that—Don’ let him suffer like that.”
‘It weighed on my mind. When I went to sleep nights I kep’ dreamin’ ’bout it. ’Bout how I could save him from goin’ through all that sufferin’ befo’ he actually come down to it. And las’ night I had sech a dream. I seen myself kneelin’ by my bed, prayin’ for strength to save him from what was in store for him—strength to make his death quick and easy, ’stead o’ slow and mis’able. Then I seen myself get up and slip into the hall and make into Sonny’s room like sump’m was leadin’ me. Same sump’m say, “If he die in his sleep he won’ feel it.” Same sump’m took my hand and moved it ’long the bureau-top till it hit Sonny’s knife. I felt myself pick it up and move over to the bed … and strike …’
Her voice dwindled to a strained whisper.
‘That’s all. When I opened my eyes, I was in my own bed. I thought it was jes’ another dream … Now I know better. It happened. I killed him.’
She had straightened up in her chair as she spoke. Now she slumped back as if her strength was spent.
Dr Archer went quickly to her. Dart saw him lean over her, grow abruptly rigid, then fumble at the bosom of her dress, loosening her clothing. After a moment, the doctor stood erect and turned around, and upon his face was the light of discovery.
‘She’s all right,’ he said. ‘Wait a minute. Don’t do anything till I get back.’
He went into the hallway, calling back, ‘Petal, just fan your mother a bit. She’ll be all right’—and disappeared toward the dining-room at the rear of the apartment.
In a few moments, during which attention centred on reviving Ma Dewey, he returned with a newspaper in his hand.
‘This was on the dining-room table, open at this page, last night,’ he said proffering the paper to Dart. ‘Read it. I’ll be right back.’
He turned and went out again, this time leaving the apartment altogether, by way of its front door.
Dart looked after his vanished figure a moment, wondering perhaps if his friend might not also be acting in a trance. Then his eyes fell on the page which advertised columns of guaranteed charms.
Before he could find just what it was Dr Archer had wanted him to read, a curious sound made him look up. From the hallway, in the direction of the rear, came a succession of sharp raps.
‘What’s that?’ whispered Letty, awe-struck.
Dart stepped into the hallway, Ben, Letty, and the two officers crowding into the living-room doorway behind him. Again came the sharp succession of taps, and this time there was no mistaking their source. They came from within the closed door of Sonny’s room.
Letty stifled a cry as Dart turned and asked, ‘Who’s in that room?’
‘Nobody,’ Ben answered, bewildered. ‘They took Sonny away last night—the door’s locked.’
Again came the taps.
‘Where’s the key?’
Ben produced a key, Dart seized it, quickly unlocked the door and flung it wide.
Dr Archer stood smiling in the doorway.
‘What the hell?’ said Dart.
‘Unquestionably,’ returned his friend. ‘May I give an order to your two men?’
He wrote something on his prescription pad and handed it to one of the two men behind Dart. The latter read it.
‘O.K., Doc. Come on, Bud.’
They departed.
‘As I remarked before,’ Dart growled, ‘what the hell?’
The physician backed into the room. ‘The missing link,’ he said blandly.
‘Red Brown?’
‘You heard Ma Dewey’s story?’
‘Of course I heard it.’
‘She was quite right. She did kill Sonny. But not in the way she believes. I’m just working out the details. See you in the living-room. Lock this door again, will you?’ And he shut the door between himself and the detective.
With consummate self-control Dart suppressed comment and question and obeyed.
Then he went back into the living-room with the others. The local newspaper was still in his hand, somewhat crumpled. He smoothed the pages.
‘Take it easy, everybody,’ he advised the members of the family, with whom he was now alone. ‘We’ll wait for Dr Archer and Red Brown.’ And he began to peruse in earnest the columns of ads:
BLACK CAT LODESTONE
Draw anything you want to you.
Free—Hot foot and attracting powders with your order.
Pay the postman only $1.95 on delivery and it is all yours to keep and enjoy forever.
Burn Lucky Stars and surround yourself with good fortune.
WIN YOUR LOVED ONE
Let us send you our Sacred Controlling Love Powder.
Do you suffer from lack of Friends, Money, Health?
ORIENTAL WISHING RING
He had to read to the bottom of the right-hand column before something caught his eye, an address which seemed somehow familiar.
‘15 West 134th Street, Apt. 51—Why, that’s here!’
He re-read the advertisement:
FAITH CHARM
Faith can move mountains.
Develop your faith by using our special charm.
Secret formula. Bound to bring health and happiness to the wearer.
‘Say!’
The front door rattled. Dart stepped out and admitted Dr Archer. ‘What kind of hide-and-seek is this?’
‘It isn’t,’ smiled the physician. ‘It’s a practical demonstration in entrances and exits. It shows that even if Sonny’s door had been locked, his assailant could have entered and left his room, undetected.’
‘How.’
‘The next apartment is empty. Its entrance is not locked—you know how vacant apartments are hereabouts: the tenants bring their own locks and take them when they move. One room has a window on the same airshaft with Sonny’s, at right angles to it, close enough to step across—if you don’t look down.’
‘You jackass! You’d risk your hindquarters like that?’
‘Sergeant—please.’
‘But what’s the use? We’ve got the old lady’s confession, haven’t we?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you admitted she did it—you were working out details. Good grief—would she go around to the next apartment and climb across an airshaft—at her age? What do you want me to believe?’
‘Believe in the value of an odour, old snoop. Come on.’
They re-entered the living-room. Dr Archer went to Ma Dewey.
‘Tell me, Mother Dewey, where do you keep the oil?’
She looked up at him. ‘I don’t keep it. I gets it jes’ as I needs it.’
‘When did you last need it?’
‘Yestiddy mornin’.’
‘After it had failed so long to help Sonny?’
‘I didn’ have faith. I’d done seen his father die. But somebody else might ’a’ had faith.’
‘Curious,’ reflected the doctor, ‘but common.’
Dart’s patience gave out.
‘Would you cut the clowning and state in plain English what this is all about?’
‘I mean the mixture of Christian faith and primitive mysticism. But I suppose every religion is a confusion of superstitions.’
The doorbell saved Dart from exploding. He went to the door and flung it open with unnecessary violence.
His two subordinates stood before him, holding between them a stranger—a sullen little black man whose eyes smoldered malevolence.
As they brought him into the living-room, those eyes first encountered Ben. Their malevolence kindled to a blaze. The captive writhed from the hands that held him and leaped upon the brother, and there was no mistaking his intention.
His captors got hold of him again almost before Ben realized what had happened.
‘Who the devil’s this?’ Dart asked the physician.
‘Someone for your leash. The man that killed Sonny.’
‘Yea—’ panted the captive. ‘I got him. And—’ indicating Petal—‘I come near gettin’ her las’ night. And if you turn me loose, I’ll get him.’ Vainly he struggled toward Ben.
‘Three for one,’ said the doctor. ‘Rather unfair, isn’t it, Mr Bright?’
‘She took all we had, didn’ she? Give my wife that thing what killed our kid. We got to pay her back—all for all.’
‘Solomon Bright,’ breathed Dart. ‘The guy that lost his kid yesterday.’
Dr Archer said to the man, ‘What good will it do to pay Mother Dewey back?’
The little man turned red eyes on the quiet-voiced physician. ‘They ain’ no other way to get our chile back, is they?’
Dr Archer gave gesture of despair, then said to Dart:
‘Mother Dewey made the charm yesterday.’
‘’Twasn’ no charm,’ Solomon Bright glowered. ‘’Twas a curse. Cast a spell on our chile, tha’s what it done.’
‘Its odour,’ John Archer went on, ‘was characteristic. But I couldn’t place it till Mother Dewey fainted just now and I saw the cord around her neck. On the end of it hangs the same sort of packet that I saw on Mr Bright’s baby.’
Dart nodded. ‘I get it … When she made that charm, she was unwittingly killing her own son. This bird’s poison.’
‘Grief-crazed—doesn’t realize what he’s doing. Look at him.’
‘Realize or no realize, he killed Sonny.’
‘No,’ said the doctor. ‘Superstition killed Sonny.’ He sighed. ‘But I doubt that we’ll ever capture that.’
THE END
THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB
LIST OF TITLES
THE MAYFAIR MYSTERY • FRANK RICHARDSON
THE PERFECT CRIME • ISRAEL ZANGWILL
CALLED BACK • HUGH CONWAY
THE MYSTERY OF THE SKELETON KEY • BERNARD CAPES
THE GRELL MYSTERY • FRANK FROËST
DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE • R. L. STEVENSON
THE RASP • PHILIP MACDONALD
THE HOUSE OPPOSITE • J. JEFFERSON FARJEON
THE PONSON CASE • FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS
THE TERROR • EDGAR WALLACE
THE MYSTERY AT STOWE • VERNON LODER
THE BLACKMAILERS • ÉMILE GABORIAU
THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD • AGATHA CHRISTIE
THE CRIME CLUB • FRANK FROËST & GEORGE DILNOT
THE NOOSE • PHILIP MACDONALD
THE LEAVENWORTH CASE • ANNA K. GREEN
THE CASK • FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS
DARK DAYS • HUGH CONWAY
THE BIG FOUR • AGATHA CHRISTIE
MURDER GONE MAD • PHILIP MACDONALD
THE MAZE • PHILIP MACDONALD
FURTHER TITLES IN PREPARATION
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The Conjure-Man Dies Page 29