Paula told the chauffeur, “Stop at the stage door on Ninth Avenue. I think the door on Eighteenth Street must be locked by now.”
Nothing was as it should be. The car stopped. They got a first sniff of the air of calamity and official power that had intruded on the place; the smell of damp uniforms and cheerful policemen, wet rubbers and soggy cigars. Bennett recognized it. A policeman, who had lumbered out of the shelter of the dark doorway and waved with his night-stick for them not to leave the car, ducked his wet head into the tonneau through the door the chauffeur had opened. The policeman waggled his night-stick towards Eighteenth Street.
“No, ma’m, you can’t get in this way now. I got to send everybody around the corner. Yes ma’m, if you talk to the sergeant around there he’ll tell you anything you want to know. I ain’t supposed to say anything. Now look out with your hand, ma’m, and I’ll shut the door...”
Mrs Christien bit her lips. The car swung in the direction the policeman had pointed, then east along the curbing of Eighteenth to a small door of stainless steel, the entrance to the business offices of the Opera House. Several nondescript men huddled here. They turned white faces towards the car. Handmaidens of disaster, they signified the worst. Reporters. Hunching their shoulders against the rain, they descended on-the car. Like a gleaming sea lion among penguins, a large policeman waddled after them and good-naturedly pushed them aside. He took his turn at thrusting an inquiring head into the tonneau.
“Yes, ma’m?”
“I’m Mrs Christien. I—”
“Christien? Yes, ma’m.” A stir. “You’re to go right up, Mrs Christien. Step back, boys. Mind the wet, lady...”
Perhaps the sergeant had taken a drink to fortify himself against the weather, and as a result exuded respectful amiability and the scent of cloves like some kind of leaky balloon. He seemed to think Bennett was Mrs Christien’s father. “Going up with her, mister? Kind of look after her, eh? Bad night for us old fellows to be out, eh? Come along now, and I’ll take you up.”
Through the reporters and past a battery of blank staring eyes in a small lobby, they were led to an elevator. This took them to an upper floor. They walked down a silent corridor to the door of the theatre’s infirmary. Here a solemn, friendly little doctor in dinner dress met them. He warned them to be quiet.
“Mrs Christien, I’m very glad. He’s awake now, for a few moments. Come in quickly. Nothing to excite him, and no talk. He may drop off again at once. Just ease his mind as much as possible, and come away at once if I tell you to.”
Doctor and wife went softly through an inner door, and shut it after them. While it was open, Bennett had a glimpse of a man in a white bed, the white face motionless on a pillow. Christien in health looked something like Calvin Coolidge in a puckish, gleeful mood. Now he looked like a hollow wax effigy.
Bennett waited. He saw that he was in the central room of the infirmary, elaborately equipped for surgery. An obvious policeman in plain clothes stood against an opposite wall, watching the sick man’s door and smoking a cigarette. Bennett scowled, and thought.
The door opened again,, and the doctor came out. He answered Bennett’s stare with a flickering grim smile. Bennett attached the man by his arm, and drew him to an end of the room, as far from the door and the policeman as possible. He talked very softly.
“Very ill, I take it. How ill?”
The doctor shook his head and whispered, “Critically.”
“Will he live?”
“Live? We hope so, don’t we? It’s hard to say.”
“Conscious?”
“For a moment. Lucid enough, too. He’s talking to his wife.”
“You’re Fawke, his usual man, I presume?”
“Yes. I’ve known him for ten years or more.”
“Quite so. What happened to him?”
The doctor shrugged. “A great many things. Mostly what you’d call a weak heart, and strychnine. He used strychnine to stimulate it. Not on my advice, believe me!”
“No, of course not. Could it have been suicide?” Fawke made a wry face, shrugged, and resorted to a cigarette. Blowing out smoke, he confessed, “Damned if I know. Who are you, by the way? Related?”
Bennett said, “No. Not at all. A friend.”
“He’ll need one,” murmured the doctor, after looking shrewdly at Bennett from his boots to his white hair. “Look here, sir; if Christien lives, he won’t be able to help himself for a very long time, and it will be up to his friends to do something. You know Christien pretty well? Do you think he’d kill himself?”
“Incredible rot, sir!”
“Yes. I’d better tell you, I think. I knew Christien, and I knew there was danger of a collapse. He had a habit of using up his physical reserves. He lived on his willpower, he burned himself out; lots of men do it. I warned him years ago. And I think I expected something like this. His wife was afraid of it, too.”
“Quite.”
“Occasionally he felt trouble coming. His heart, mostly. He used strychnine to tide him over. Then he came to me about it, and paid no attention to what I told him because he hadn’t time to bother. Well, tonight he suffered some extreme shock or strain, something I haven’t had time to find out about. He felt his heart kicking up. He carried strychnine with him, and he took it. Too much. He collapsed at once. You understand, this is my opinion, putting suicide entirely out of consideration? Very well. Now he’s lying in there, in the worst possible shape; strychnine poisoning, a strained heart, and something like general exhaustion, with an open invitation to any old complication that comes along. Frankly, I suggest his affairs be put in shape as quickly as possible.”
“Why did you say he needs a friend? His affairs?”
“No. Something else. Look here: when a man encounters sudden trouble, and promptly takes a dangerous dose of strychnine, he’s bound to be suspected of suicide. You know what rotten minds people have. And if they think it’s suicide, they think naturally that the man was up to something peculiar and found himself at the end of his rope. We know he wasn’t. But a hundred friends who admired him yesterday will be so-so about him tomorrow. I’m telling you this for a reason. A police inspector named Tussard believes Christien tried to kill himself. He’s been down here talking to me. I didn’t get anywhere with him.”
“What name?”
“Tussard.”
“Ah? Tussard. Where is he?”
“Down the hall a few doors, I suppose. Where the trouble happened.”
“Indeed. If Christien lives how long will he be incapable?”
“I can’t say. Weeks at least, I should guess, before he’ll be any use to himself. Possibly a month. When he drops off now, he’ll be unconscious for a very long time. These few lucid moments are the result of the strychnine.”
Bennett was thoughtful. He stood looking down at the doctor. The policeman had become absorbed in whittling his finger-nails with a crude pocket knife. At last Bennett said, “Christien must live, you know. Quite competent, are you?”
The doctor bristled (unaccustomed, perhaps, to being challenged like a new schoolboy by a gruff master) and smiled uncomfortably, and at the same time, managed to shrug his shoulders deprecatingly. “Come, come, no offense! Dare say you are,” Bennett told him. “How am I to know you’re competent if I don’t ask you? No occasion for huff. No. Ah, the door. Paula coming out. Leave us, like a good chap, will you?”
Paula, with strained face and stricken eyes, looked up at Bennett. The doctor disappeared into Christien’s room. The policeman grew uneasy, like a tethered horse. Bennett awkwardly put out an arm to support the woman, and made brusque, reassuring growls in his throat.
She said, “He fell—asleep. The nurse made me come away.”
“Quite natural, my dear.”
“Will you do something, Geoffrey? You’ve got to. Somebody’s got to.”
“My dear child, you must not let this—”
“You didn’t see him, Geoffrey. You didn’t hear him. It’s—
terrible!”
“Quite.”
“Some man was killed.”
“Devilish.”
“They think he did it Why should they think that?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. Come, shall we walk a bit?” Ignoring the policeman, they walked slowly back and forth across the infirmary. Paula took a cigarette from Bennett. He said, “Damn nice of you not to cry. Tell me what he said.”
“He’s dreadfully sick, Geoffrey. He couldn’t say much. He said he went out on the terrace. The terrace outside his office, I suppose. He stumbled over a dead man in the dark. He didn’t know what it was at first, in the dark, and then he felt—felt his heart going, and took some of his strychnine tablets. That was all.”
“All?”
“He doesn’t remember anything more. He closed his eyes again. He doesn’t know about—about him.” She bent her head towards the policeman. “The nurse told me they think Fred killed that man, and then tried to commit suicide. Oh, Geoffrey, it’s so horribly wrong! He couldn’t—”
“No, to be sure.”
“We’ve got to do something, Geoffrey.”
“We shall. His solicitors, first. Who are they?”
“His lawyer? Asbach; it’s a firm, Green, Asbach and Croly. I could see him, I suppose, but...” She hesitated doubtfully.
“Ah, but! You don’t think well of him?”
“I do. But I don’t know, he’d be so slow—and we ought to do something now, tonight, and—Oh, what can I do, Geoffrey!”
“Stay at Freddy’s side. The beaming eye, my dear. The cheery smile. Your hat’s awry, you know. Much better. Go keep watch with the nurse, there’s a good girl.”
“You will do something for him, Geoffrey?”
“Quite.”
“I’m glad you came with me, and—”
“Rubbish. I want a word with the doctor. Go away. And don’t worry.”
Paula was propelled smoothly into Christien’s room, and the doctor beckoned out. Bennett spoke briskly.
“This Tussard. How can I find him?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know how this place is laid out.”
“No matter. You will stay with Christien?”
“Yes.”
“Keep them—“ he nodded towards the policeman “—away from him. And from her, if possible. You understand?”
“Yes. I’m going to move him to my hospital.”
“Good.”
The doctor went back to his patient. The policeman, even more like a cab-horse, turned suspicious and disillusioned eyes on Bennett, then on the tips of his own boots. Bennett saw dangers, and far implications, like a countryside in a flash of lightning. Questions to be asked, delicate steps to be taken. A dead man stumbled on in the dark. The newspaper telephoning to Southampton.
He put on his hat, and mentally girded his loins, and stalked off determinedly into the bright, new passages of that exquisite white elephant of the theatrical world—the great Chelsea Opera House and Academy of Music, otherwise known as the Chelsac Theatre.
CHAPTER TWO
THE ART CENTER of the nation it is called, and the art center of the nation is what it is intended to be, though the general idea may appear strained, self-conscious, and a little silly at first glance. (The fact that the grandiose Chelsea Opera House and Academy of Music had to be converted, for financial reasons, into the Chelsac Cinema Theatre helps not at all to make it more dignified.) Simply, however, it is a group of new buildings coordinated into an ingeniously planned community; and the whole, covering an irregular space of ground between Eighth and Tenth Avenues, and Twentieth and Seventeenth Streets in New York City, is known as the Chelsea ‘ Project. It includes the Clarke Building, which contains artists’ studios, dwelling flats, and business offices, mostly used for art galleries, the editorial offices of magazines, and various altruistic societies, at the present time. South of the Clarke Building is the Chelsac Theatre, hieing Ninth Avenue, and the Moore House tower, hieing Eighth. South of this, another block is divided between the Chelsea Athletic Club and the newly founded De Lancey College. De Lancey College contains the moderately celebrated Bennett School of Political Administration, an institution determined to develop political leaders to rule these United States, or know the reason why. On the west side of Ninth Avenue, and opposite the Chelsac Theatre, rises the hardly completed mass of the Livingston School of Architecture and Fine Art, and its neighbor, the Livingston Art Library.
The offices of the Chelsac Theatre Corporation are on the fourth floor of the building, and at the south side, looking across Eighteenth Street at the windows of the Chelsea Athletic Club. The infirmary is also on the fourth floor, and at the east end of an enameled passage. The fourth floor of the Chelsac Theatre is notable, so far as the Crooked Man affair involves it, for having only two means of access to the street: by the elevators, and by a steel fire escape descending through a kind of well or chimney from the infirmary to Eighteenth Street below.
At this late hour, the first flush of municipal pomp and hubbub had subsided entirely on the fourth floor. The Deputy Police Commissioner who had come because he hoped to get a kick out of it, had got his feet wet and gone home again to bed. The routine of investigation (under way now, grimly and quietly) was in the charge of a man from Center Street—’Tussard. In appearance Percy Tussard was plain as a lamppost: stouter, shorter and more agile, but quite as hard and matter-of-fact. He had mouse-colored hair combed flat. He had gray jowled cheeks which looked greenish and unnatural by sunlight, if they happened ever to be exposed to it. He wore a plain gray suit, even on Sundays.
Tussard believed it to be to his advantage to know practically everything; and when Mrs Christien arrived at the infirmary, he knew that, too. He sent a policeman for her, and this was because Tussard left nothing to chance. Tussard, it may be deduced, was thoroughgoing. Also, he had important questions in his mind. And it was the policeman, on his errand, who encountered Mr. Geoffrey Bennett, unknown and unauthorized, prowling the corridor. In an access of thoroughgoing zeal, the policeman attached Bennett and brought him instead of Mrs Christien.
At the moment, Tussard stood alone in the secretary’s office which separated Christien’s private office (to the left of the entrance from the passage) and that (to the right) of Christien’s assistant, a certain Lowes Levison. He stood with arms folded, scowling, and looking down at a motionless shape covered with a crisp, glaring white sheet in the center of a fine bright blue carpet. He looked up at the policeman and Bennett without great interest. He let his scowl flatten gradually away. He asked, “Who’s this?”
“He come in with Christien’s wife. He says he was looking for you.”
“All right. Now go back and see about Mrs Christien. After she gets through in here, you can let them come up and take this away.” He indicated the body at his feet.
The policeman went away, shutting the door.
Bennett looked at Tussard. Tussard looked at Bennett, and finally said, “Well, mister? What’s your name?”
“You’re Tussard, I presume? I’m Bennett. A friend of Mr. Christien’s. Where did it happen? Out there?” With his umbrella, he pointed to a large French window behind the secretary’s desk, and directly opposite the door from the passage. Many feet had tracked the wet into the room from the darkness outside.
“Yes. Englishman, aren’t you? You came here with Mrs Christien, didn’t you? Have a chair.” Tussard’s manner combined off-handed politeness, coldness, and some indifference, as if he were thinking about more important matters. “What do you know about this business?”
“Nothing,” said Bennett. He remained standing. He touched the sheet with the end of his umbrella. “Who is this fellow?”
Tussard usually kept a beautifully blank free, but the question touched a very tender spot. He looked suddenly weary. “Don’t I wish I knew,” he murmured. He recaptured the beautiful blankness, and went on. “All right, Bennett, I’ll ask you to take a look at him. Then you can leave your name
and address with the man at the door, in case I have to get in touch with you tomorrow. Then I want Mrs Christien to take a look, and that’ll be about all for tonight.”
“Does she have to see this?”
“Can’t be helped. I got to clean him up tonight. Lot easier on her seeing it here, anyhow, than down at the morgue.”
“Quite...Oh, I’m damned!”
Tussard had squatted on his haunches and flipped back the sheet.
The victim was at first sight, hideous; then, on closer inspection, merely pathetic. The body wore a rumpled dinner jacket, finely tailored, but showing that it had been put roughly in place again after the medical examiner’s work. On the floor near the dead man’s shoulder lay a tangled heap of gauze bandage and a stiff gauze mask. Tussard, catching Bennett’s glance of inquiry, explained, “That was on his face when we found him. So as to hide him, kind of, and still let him breathe.” Bennett nodded. The reason for the mask was obvious.
“How was he killed?”
Tussard expressively put a hand to his throat, made a motion of choking himself.
“Ah. Yes, I see.”
“He couldn’t put up a fight. And he couldn’t let out a yell, because he was a mute. Nothing to yell with.”
Bennett stooped close. Faint marks on the throat were still visible. In fact, it was only on the flesh of the throat—or on the forehead—that a bruise would have shown, since the rest of the man’s face was a gap, a revolting emptiness. There remained no jaw, cheeks, chin, mouth or nose. The monstrous disfigurement had healed long ago into red scar. This, undoubtedly, had been covered by the mask. Above the wound, however, and in pitiable contrast with it, were two clear and sensitive eyes; and a broad forehead, handsome, covered with skin that still, even in death, looked soft, fine and healthy. Bennett shifted his position. He looked at the dead hand. (There was only one.) That, too, like the forehead, seemed exceptionally fine, soft, well cared-for.
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