The Wailing Frail (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

“That's all.”

  “You say the same guy came to your house that night, after you overheard the two of them talking. Which one was it that showed up?”

  “The same chap I'd knocked down in the restroom—the one with two fingers missing.”

  I suppose I should have expected something like that, but it socked me a pretty good wallop anyway. And now a few things began getting more clear. I said, “Two fingers gone from his left hand?” Todhunter nodded, and kept nodding as I described Doe, the man I'd killed earlier.

  But during all the time since I'd first heard Todhunter speak, after I'd brought him around earlier, one thing had been bothering me plenty—those goofy letters to the committee. They'd been brushed over in the conversation, and they were the item that had most puzzled me so far.

  I said, “Gordon, there's one other thing of some importance. Now that I've talked to you, been with you a while, I know you're sane, completely normal. That is, I know you wouldn't do anything without good reason. So why in hell did you write those crazy letters at all?”

  He swung his head toward me, frowning. “Letters? What do you mean?”

  “Those three goofy letters, I'll-destroy-you-all and so on. It was like asking to be put away.”

  He kept frowning. Slowly he said, “I don't know what you're talking about. I wrote only one letter.”

  I stared at him, and I imagine my mouth was hanging open.

  And then it was as though a bunch of white rockets went off in my head. Talk about seeing light—I thought for a minute that I knew the answer to everything. But then I calmed down a bit, still charged up and feeling good but knowing I had to get more info. But once I got it, maybe I'd have the answer to who killed Stone and why, plus who was after me, and several other items wrapped up and ready for delivery not only to the police, but also to the committee.

  Todhunter was on his feet, looking down at me with his eyes wide. “Three letters? What are you talking about?”

  I told him.

  He stood motionless for quite a while, then he swore. “What a fiendish, diabolical...” He stopped and looked at me, and then a small smile appeared on his face. “But it is rather good, isn't it?”

  “Yeah. I still don't understand how, but it's obvious what happened.”

  “And by God,” he said, “that would certainly make it appear I was crazy.”

  “It did. You should have seen the letters. Wish I could remember the exact wording, but take my word for it, you were pretty fanatical.”

  I thought about it. The only letter Todhunter had actually written the committee was of course, the one I thought of as the second letter. It had said the writer knew who the killer of George Stone was, and so on—the same stuff Todhunter had finished telling me about. The first and third letters, it was obvious now, were forgeries. And that one letter which Todhunter had actually written wasn't really crazy when considered all by itself. Only when read in conjunction with the others, which were obviously the work of a crackpot, did it also seem like a crackpot's job. That much seemed clear now, but the reason for it still had me puzzled.

  I thought a minute. “You say this guy with two fingers missing—Doe, I knew him as—grabbed onto you the same night you mailed the letter.”

  “Yes.”

  “Obviously, then, that was before the letter could have been delivered.”

  “Of course.”

  “Well...” I was puzzled. “Did you tell this guy who grabbed you that you'd written the committee or written me?”

  He stared at me. “Why?”

  “It might be important.”

  He looked confused himself. “Frankly, I'm not sure. I don't believe so. But as I mentioned before, my recollections after that are very blurred. I might have told him—I was drugged part of the time. Men who would make a man insane, commit him to a mental institution ... well, they'd do anything.”

  “Agreed. And you don't know who else was in on this deal except Doe?”

  “No. I have no idea.”

  I lit a cigarette. “How did you happen to put that note to me on the letter to your daughter?”

  “I had already written you as a member of the committee, Shell, and felt sure you would be interested in my predicament. Particularly since I had information about the murder of Stone, which I felt sure you'd be anxious to get.”

  “And ordinarily I would have been,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Not knowing about those other letters—or that you already thought I was crazy—I naturally felt that you would be the logical man to help me. Besides—” he grinned at me—"you mustn't underestimate your reputation. You are known as a man who gets things done, even if your methods are sometimes unorthodox.”

  “Speaking of unorthodox methods, that squirt-in-the-arm routine isn't anything I ever heard of.”

  “I wish I'd never heard of it. I hope there isn't any aftereffect.” He smiled. “As there was with Dr. Jekyll.”

  The French phone was on a table by the divan. I walked over to it, sat on the divan and picked up the phone. “Maybe I can find out. I'd hate to have that thought simmering in my head.”

  I called the Spartan Apartment Hotel. Two doors from my second-floor apartment lives Dr. Paul Anson. He's somewhat of a rake, but a competent medical man who keeps well up to date on the literature.

  He was awake, and when I told him who was calling he said, “Well, how much is bail?”

  “What?”

  “Aren't you in the can?”

  “Hell, no. Why should I be in jail?”

  “Cops called here, even called me trying to find you.”

  “What's the matter?”

  “Something about re-routing traffic—”

  “Oh, that.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Oh, that?’ I hear the local police, Highway Patrol, Mental Health Authorities, and half the population of L.A. and Cucamonga are after you. What in the name of grief did you do?”

  “I stole a detour sign.”

  “Sergeant Simmons told me at least fifty people phoned in your license number. Something about blocking a road and running around a hospital with a gun. I guess several people recognized you, and—”

  “I'll tell you all about it later. But, Paul, here's why I called. What might a man be injected with that would make him seem, both to himself and others, goofy?”

  “Found out what's wrong with you, eh?”

  “I'm serious, Paul.”

  “Okay. Several chemicals from a class we call indoles cause the subject to make like schizos.”

  “Schizophrenia? That fits.”

  “Uh-huh. There're several, including mescaline—even Huxley tried that one out and did a piece on it, remember?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, you illiterate. Several doctors and psychiatrists have taken doses of these chemicals for the specific reasons that they wanted to feel like a schizophrenic for a few hours. You know, have a better understanding of the patients afterward.”

  “Yeah. About these gooks; I know a man who was actually given some of the stuff. Would there be any aftereffect? Maybe a kind of relapse?”

  “No reaction at all that I know of. Not once the stuff wears off, after several hours.” “Okay. Thanks, Paul.”

  “Main thing, Shell, is the possibility that if these little bits of chemicals can briefly produce mental illness, they—or some similar chemical imbalance in the otherwise normal body might be the cause of mental illness. See? That would mean the only difference between a so-called insane person and a sane one is a chemical difference. Just last year—”

  I had to cut him off. Once he gets started, he's hard to stop. I'd passed on the info to Todhunter when we heard the rapid patter of feet in the hallway, then a quick, light knock on the door. I went to the door and opened it. Toddy, looking inexpressibly lovely, stood in the hallway.

  “Hi.” I said.

  She didn't even look at me. I suppose I could hardly blame her, but I felt just a bit put out, to tell the truth. She
looked past me, then rushed clear across the room to fling her arms about Todhunter.

  Ah, but my time was coming. In a moment she swung around and said, “Shell, you dear, you. How can I ever thank you enough?”

  I knew a way.

  She added, “You'll have to excuse us. It's been almost a year since I've seen Dad, you know.”

  “Sure. I've got some things to do right now, anyway. Why don't you two just stick here till I get back?”

  Todhunter said, “Must you go? Don't feel that just because Barbara is—”

  “No,” I interrupted. “This is business. For Pete's sake don't budge out of here, okay?”

  “All right.”

  Toddy left him and walked over from the far side of the room to me, and took my hands. She walked around me, turning me so that my back was to Todhunter, and she was hidden from him by my body. Then she looked up at me, pursed her lips and blew me an imaginary kiss, with her brown eyes half-closed. “You're quite a guy, Shell,” she said. “And I've completely forgotten I was ever angry with you.”

  I looked around at Todhunter, who was practically alongside me, thinking that even though he must know his daughter was a big girl, he might not relish what I was about to do if that big girl didn't turn off some of the juice. He had a rather interested look on his face anyway, and I figured it was time I got a little more distance between Toddy and me, at least while three was a crowd.

  I pulled my hands from Toddy's, put a hand on the door and said, “I'll be back as soon as I can. Stay put, huh?” Both of them nodded and I took off.

  As I left the hotel and started walking down the street toward my Cad I heard the engine of a car running and looked toward the curb where a new, dark Packard was parked. The lights were out and the car was empty, but the engine was running and the sound jarred me momentarily. I couldn't figure out why at first, but then I remembered it had been a sound much like that which had helped to warn me of trouble on the night when Doe had let go a couple blasts at me with that shotgun.

  So I shrugged off the momentarily creepy feeling. Undoubtedly, I thought, it was Toddy's car. She would naturally have been in a hurry to get up to the hotel room and see us. Or, I amended, see her father. But she'd been friendly and warm enough during those last few moments.

  In my car again, I headed for the Civic Building. I felt a little leery of being in the Cad, since its license number was by now most likely known to all law-enforcement officers in the seven Western states, but I was in a hurry. As I drove, I put into order again the things that Todhunter had told me, and tried to figure out what they meant.

  He had overheard Doe and—call him Smith for now, I thought—talking about Stone's murder, and the probability of knocking me off by “accident.” He had then written a letter about his being able to identify Stone's murderer, and sent it to me in care of the committee. I had shown the letter to Senator Wise, who had, after reading it and looking at the signature, gone to the files and pulled out a previous letter supposedly from Gordon Todhunter.

  I knew now that both it and the third letter, the one delivered to Beasley, had been forged so that the real letter would appear crazy, and the charges baseless. That meant the charges themselves must have been dangerous to somebody.

  It meant, too, that the previous letter couldn't have been in the committee's files for two weeks, since it was forged after the writing of the real letter.

  For a moment something leaped and flickered in my mind, but then I lost part of it. I was trying to remember exactly what Todhunter had said in that second letter. It seemed there was something about investigating ourselves, to find the guilty persons. I couldn't pin it down and I wondered why Todhunter and I hadn't discussed it already.

  But I put that aside and looked again at what my deductions about Todhunter's single letter had told me. And there it was.

  The other fellow Todhunter had overheard talking to Doe in the restroom must have been Senator Sebastian Wise.

  It had been Wise who, after reading the letter I'd received from Todhunter, had gone to the files and taken out that first letter. He had told me it had been in the files for a couple weeks or so. He had lied.

  And once I got over my shock and really examined that thought; it explained everything. First of all, even though Todhunter had said he didn't remember for sure, he must have told Doe—or Wise, or another of those in on his commitment—about sending me the letter. That would have given Wise time that night to forge, or have forged, a fake letter, much crazier in tone than the real one, and have it ready in the files to show to me when Todhunter's valid letter arrived.

  And now, I remembered that when that letter arrived and I read it Wise had been in my office, had in fact been waiting there for some time. The conclusion obviously was that he had known the letter was going to be delivered, and made sure he was present so that he could “remember” the odd name, Todhunter, and dig the faked letter out of the files.

  When I pictured Todhunter in that restroom listening to a conversation—not between “a man with two fingers missing” and another man—but between Doe and Sebastian Wise, then the whole operation could be explained.

  Once anyone had seen Todhunter's letter, killing Todhunter would only serve to prove his charges—something that Wise could hardly afford. And if he had been seen by Todhunter in that restroom, it made no difference whether Todhunter knew who he was or not; once Todhunter appeared before the committee he would recognize Wise as the other man involved in Stone's murder.

  Since Wise couldn't afford to kill Todhunter, he had to discredit the man, discredit his word, everything about him. And only now did I appreciate the cleverness of what he had done. Besides forging two letters which would appear to have been written by Todhunter before and after the real one, making all of them appear the work of a deranged mind—he had simply deranged the mind of the man himself. After that, it was Ravenswood for Gordon Todhunter, who would conveniently commit suicide.

  I parked at the Civic Building and went up the steps. It was now nearly four in the morning, but I knew the night watchman would let me in. I had a key to my office, and to the file room, because on occasion I had worked late here. I felt that I had just about everything figured out as it must have happened, but there were some things that still puzzled me, things that I couldn't explain. And I wanted to look at all three Todhunter letters again.

  Twenty minutes later I'd practically torn the files apart, but I found none of the three letters. Well, that made sense. Wise certainly wouldn't want them in the files. If Todhunter had hanged a few minutes longer, and that shotgun blast or earlier try had got me, then all Wise's troubles would have been over.

  But now they were just beginning—if I could find him.

  I couldn't find him. He wasn't at his home. I phoned Lester Beasley, Andrew Carter, and Paula, without turning up any lead to where Wise might be.

  Finally, while I was at a phone, I put in a call to the Preston Hotel, for Mr. Elbert Jacobs's room. I wanted to describe Wise to Todhunter and ask him if that was the description of the man he'd seen talking to Doe.

  There wasn't any answer from Todhunter's phone.

  I wondered if perhaps I'd got the name he'd registered under wrong, and asked the clerk for Room 212. There was still no answer. Then I remembered that dark Packard, empty and with its engine running. I ran to my car.

  Five minutes later I was racing up the stairs of the Preston Hotel. I didn't even knock at the door of 212, just twisted the knob and shoved the door open. I didn't see Todhunter or Toddy, and I went inside, looked around. Then I stood in the middle of the room, my mind momentarily blank.

  There wasn't any sign of a struggle. No chairs tipped over, no blood, nothing. The room was just empty.

  I stood in the middle of the room breathing through my mouth, trying to fight down the cold fear swelling up in me, but helpless to stop it. Because now it wasn't just Todhunter. Now it was Toddy, too. Soft, lovely, sweet, wonderful Toddy. And the thought of Todd
y gone sent a kind of cold horror into my blood so that it seemed to touch every cell in me, chilling my heart, and my skin, and my brain.

  Finally I went out of the room and slowly down the stairs.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I wondered if Toddy and Todhunter might simply have walked out, gone someplace else. But that idea didn't make sense, and they'd said they'd stay put until I got back. I was afraid that Wise, or men acting on Wise's orders, had got to them. But for a minute I couldn't imagine how. I knew that nobody could have followed me from Ravenswood, that no one could have know the Elbert Jacobs in the Preston Hotel was Gordon Todhunter. And then, of course, it finally penetrated. It was simple; I was simple.

  I'd been concentrating my thought upon Todhunter; but anybody wanting to kill him, or find him, after his escape from Ravenswood, would undoubtedly have kept an eye on the man's daughter, if they knew where she was. And they might have known. She could even have been found by somebody tailing me to her hotel. The important point was that she had been at the Biltmore, and might easily have been followed from there tonight—after I had phoned and asked her to come over. Again I remembered that car, with its engine running.

  I swore. But there wasn't time for regret about what was already done; I had to find them somehow, before it was too late. I could feel a kind of panic welling up in me as I thought of Toddy, but I pushed it down, forced my mind away from it. I wouldn't get anything done if I let my mind dwell on what might now be happening.

  I had already tried without success to find Wise. He wasn't at his usual address, and neither Paula nor the committee members knew where he might be. I stopped at the desk on my way out. The clerk drowsily said he didn't know if anybody had left or come in. He didn't know anything about anything. But I noticed that the box for the key to 212 was empty. At least that told me for sure they hadn't turned in their key and just walked out. I had to find Sebastian Wise. I felt sure that if I could find, him, I'd find Todhunter and Toddy; but I didn't have the faintest idea how or where to find the senator. I went on out to my car.

  I sat there for several minutes, just thinking, and every once in a while the fear and panic would start to rise and I'd have to fight it down. Much as I disliked to think Wise had grabbed them, I would simply have to face it and proceed on the assumption that Wise certainly wouldn't kill them until he'd made Todhunter tell him everything about why I had showed up at Ravenswood. And I had a hunch Todhunter could hold out for quite a while. And Wise might not kill Toddy at all; not at least for quite a while. So undoubtedly there was at least a little time, and all I had to do was use it right.