“Djever hear of another key?”
“Never.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Um, never.” He settled back in his chair, with an air of profound thought. He roused himself to say to the Sergeant: “Write down she never heard of another key.”
He wasn’t so terrible after all, thought Gilda. She plucked up her courage to ask a question.
“You didn’t find a key on him, then?”
“No. He had a big knife on him with tools on it, scissors and things, but you couldn’t force a Yale lock with scissors. So how in hell did he get in?” There was something plaintive in the Lieutenant’s ferocity.
The young man from the District Attorney’s office spoke up. “It looks to me as if—”
“Well, young feller?”
“—as if the murderer let him in. Or else he had a key, and let himself in, and left the key in the lock. Going into a place like that, it would be natural to leave the key in the lock until you come out. And then the murderer took it away with him.”
“You’re learning, young feller,” said Lieutenant Kennedy loftily. “Prof Sandys, you ever turn over your key to a locksmith to be reproduced?”
“Oh, no.”
“Anyone ever borrow your key, or that other key of Prof Dickson’s?”
“Never. However, it occurs to me—”
“You just answer my questions. If I want to know what occurs to you I’ll ask you what occurs to you.”
“Oh, very well.”
But Gilda was learning that the police will answer questions if you simply ask them politely. She tried to fill her eyes and voice with humble admiration.
“Lieutenant Kennedy,” she said, “would you have to be a locksmith to reproduce such a key?”
“Naw. They ain’t hard to reproduce, if you got the original. You can get the blanks anywhere, and if you’re handy with tools, you can cut or file one down. But you’d have to be careful. Them tolerances is pretty small.”
The Lieutenant fell into one of his fits of musing. He turned his swivel chair sideways and felt in his pocket. Suddenly he swung the chair a full half-turn toward Dr. Sandys and Gilda and whipped from his pocket a white slip, which he held close before their eyes.
“Djever see this before?” he thundered.
On the card, a three-by-five thesis slip, the words were typewritten in capitals: THOU SHALT DO NO MURDER.
“No,” said Gilda.
“No,” said Dr. Sandys. “But only yesterday—”
He stopped, remembering Lieutenant Kennedy’s objection to volunteered information.
“Go on. What’s the matter with you? Can’t you talk?” shouted the Lieutenant.
Dr. Sandys told the tale of the mysterious microfilm.
“I’ll have a look at that film,” said Kennedy. “And at the manuscript too. But first—”
“Where did you get the slip?” asked Gilda.
“Found it in his pocket. Nothing else of interest. He had about forty dollars in his pants. ’Twasn’t robbery. Now I want to ask you two something. Do you know of anyone who had a grudge against this Prof Hyett?”
“No.” Dr. Sandys and Gilda both seemed sure.
Gilda tried to run over in her mind the names she had written the night before. Belknap, Casti, Parry, Sandys, Cameron. Only five names now. She was still sure.
“Do you know of anyone who would profit by his death?”
“No.”
“Any life insurance? Who are his heirs?”
Dr. Sandys and Gilda did not know.
“Well, we’ll find out. And we’ll get to the bottom of this business pretty quick. But it does beat all hell. . . .”
Lieutenant Kennedy knew his own weakness: a too ready confession of his own mystification. He pulled himself together and put on his look of professional confidence.
“Let’s have a look at this here manuscript.”
Obediently Dr. Sandys led the way to the locked press. He unlocked the grilled door. The body of Professor Hyett, Gilda saw with relief, had been removed.
The party filed into the press. There were five aisles, each lined from floor to ceiling with books, either precious or indecent. A queer fellowship, thought Gilda: Saint Francis de Sales and Aretino, Pilgrim’s Progress and the Memoirs of Fanny Hill. A superb morocco binding might contain an Eliot Indian Bible or the fetid fancies of Felicien Rops. And, after all, there was some sense in their association. They were all books that must be defended from public curiosity, books so valuable, or so perverse, that some people might want them too much. Some people would become thieves for their sake. They were dangerous books. For all our talk of knowledge, there are things too high and too low for us to know. Some things should be hidden; some things belong in the dark.
Murder belongs in the dark. It was appropriate that murder should take place in the dark, in this locked press, the home of secret and forbidden things.
Dr. Sandys went to the great safe against the wall. He spun the combination: left, right, left, right, left. He pulled the bar that opened the ponderous door, and switched on a light inside the safe. The walls of the safe were lined with books and manuscript cases. Some were of sumptuous leather; some were in the original bindings of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, vellums more enduring than brass; some, tattered and disreputable, preserved the cheap nineteenth-century bindings in which they had first appeared, poor, humble little books, destined to glory.
Dr. Sandys put his hand confidently toward the third shelf in the right-hand press, and stayed it in mid-air.
“It’s gone!” he cried.
“Not B 58!” cried Gilda.
“Maybe it’s out of place,” suggested the young man from the District Attorney’s office.
The same thought had occurred to Dr. Sandys. He went methodically along the shelves.
“Maybe it’s in behind the others,” said the young man.
“No, the shelves aren’t deep enough. There is no other place in the safe it could be. It’s gone.”
“Just what is this manuscript, anyhow?” said Lieutenant Kennedy.
Dr. Sandys tried to speak, in vain. He went out in the locked press and sat down on the chair on which Professor Hyett had sat, dead.
But Gilda found herself surprisingly calm. She recited what sounded to herself like a memorized lesson: “It is a miracle play of the twelfth century, in Latin rhymed verse, evidently by the wandering scholar Hilarius, who is supposed to have lived and worked in Angers. Several of Hilarius’s plays have been published, the Suscitatio Lazari, for instance. But his Filius Getronis has been unknown. It was Professor Belknap who attributed it to Hilarius and recognized its importance. It tells the story of a miracle of Saint Nicholas, who restored a Christian boy, held captive by the pagans, to his parents. The manuscript itself is in a fine clerkly hand of the thirteenth century. It has some very remarkable miniatures, illustrating the methods of production of miracle plays. It is bound in blue morocco by Trautz-Bauzonnet of Paris.”
“Worth a lot of money, hey?”
“Mr. Wilmerding paid twelve thousand dollars for it at the Montucla sale in 1885. What it would be worth now could only be determined by an auction. But a dealer wouldn’t think of asking less than a hundred thousand.”
“That ain’t hay!” Lieutenant Kennedy whistled. “How would a fellow sell a job like that?”
“I really don’t know.”
“Hey, Prof Sandys, how would a fellow sell a job like that manuscript?”
Dr. Sandys wiped his brow with his handkerchief and rejoined the group.
“Sell it?” he said. “Why, it would be difficult and dangerous. He might find a wealthy and unscrupulous collector who would buy it. But the collector would get little satisfaction from it. He would hardly dare to show it to many of his fellow collectors, for fear of being denounced.”
“But someone might buy it without knowing it was hot?”
“Anyone who would be likely to pay a la
rge sum for such a manuscript would demand an authenticated history of his purchase, for fear of its being stolen goods.”
“Maybe a fellow would steal a manuscript like that just for himself, just to have it around?”
“That could happen. There are some very peculiar things that happen in the world of books.” Dr. Sandys smiled wanly. “A few years ago, I have been told, there was an instructor in English here who was working on Carlyle. He took a strange dislike to Jane Welsh Carlyle, and he went through all the Carlyleana, effacing references to her, adorning her picture with mustaches, and writing insulting and even obscene references to her in the margins. Of course he was a little insane.”
“We never got any report on that.”
“It was never reported to the police. It was hushed up.”
“Try and hush this up!” Lieutenant Kennedy meditated sourly. He tried a new tack.
“Who knows the combination to this safe?”
“Presumably I am the only one who knows.”
“What happens if you get bumped off?”
“The combination is recorded in a sealed envelope, which is kept in the Treasurer’s office.”
“Have you got it written down somewhere?”
“No.”
“Did you ever tell it to anybody?”
“Certainly not.”
“You never get a little tight, maybe, and talk too much?”
“Good God, no!”
“No offense. Some people do. The safe shuts, I suppose, by just spinning the knob?”
“Yes.”
Lieutenant Kennedy brooded for a moment. Then he burst out in a deafening roar. “Hell! A guy murdered in a locked room! A manuscript gone out of a safe! A girl jumping off on her head! And two years before I go on a pension!”
Chapter XII
BACK IN the Librarian’s office, Lieutenant Kennedy meditated massively in the Librarian’s desk-chair. He turned to Dr. Sandys.
“How many people had copies of this here microfilm?”
“Professor Belknap of History, Professor Casti of Romance Languages, and Professor Parry of Dramatics.”
“Get ’em over here.”
“They may be in class now.”
“Get ’em out of class then. I’ll lecture these profs for a change.”
Dr. Sandys left the room to telephone from his secretary’s office.
Lieutenant Kennedy scowled at Gilda.
“How’d this murderer get out of the Library?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know, hey? How many doors are there?”
“Three; the main entrance, a side entrance to the periodical room, and the service door.”
“What kind of locks they got? Ordinary spring locks?”
“No. The front door and the periodical room have big, ponderous old-fashioned locks on them; you just turn the key in the lock. But there are also bolts. When the janitor locks up at night, he shoots the bolts. Then he goes out the service door.”
“What kind of a lock on that?”
“A Yale-type lock. But all three doors are connected with an alarm device. The janitor sets it when he leaves. It rings a warning in the office of the Campus Patrol, if any of the doors are opened between closing-time and a quarter to eight in the morning.”
“Who locks up at night and opens her up in the morning?”
“The janitor, Cameron, or one of the assistant janitors. They take turns. They are all old employees, and we have perfect confidence in them.”
“Who was on duty last night?”
“Cameron, I think. Yes, Cameron.”
“Alarm bell didn’t ring last night?”
“Certainly not. If it had rung, the campus cops would have come over on the run, and everybody would have been informed.”
“How about jumping out a window?”
“All the ground-floor windows are sealed shut. The windows on the upper floor open, but they are too high for anyone to jump out of.”
“Don’t people ever get locked in at night?”
“Oh yes, once in a while. They usually telephone to the Librarian, and he informs the Campus Patrol and then he comes over and gets them. Once or twice people have broken a window on the ground floor and got out that way. And sometimes it appears that they have spent the night on the couch in the women’s rest room.”
“No windows broken this morning?”
“No.”
“Huh.”
“I suppose,” ventured Gilda, “it is clear that Mr. Hyett was killed after closing-time?”
“No, it ain’t clear. Nothing is clear. Doc says he could have died any time from about ten to twelve at night. Say—” His voice rose to a roar. “Who’s asking questions around here, anyhow?”
He ruminated for a moment, and shot a new question at Gilda.
“Djever hear of any of these professional book-thieves?”
“Oh yes. There was a case at Williams College a year or so ago. A fellow came in with a forged letter of introduction and asked to see a First Folio Shakespeare, I think it was. He had prepared a dummy that resembled it exactly, and when he went out he put the genuine book in his brief-case and simply returned the dummy at the desk. Later he sent back the book, but I don’t know whether it was from remorse or whether he couldn’t dispose of it. Then there was another case; somebody was talking about it just recently. It was a long time ago, in the Hopkinson Library in California. A very valuable book disappeared. I seem to recall that it was the Paris Donatus of 1451. Yes, that was it. In that case, too, the book was returned by mail.”
“Well, that gives us a precedent, anyhow. Now lookit here, Miss Gorham. Out of your special knowledge, have you got any ideas how this Prof Hyett could have got into the locked press?”
“No.”
“Or how somebody could have opened the safe?”
“No.”
“Or who might have had some reason to take that manuscript and rub out Prof Hyett?”
“N-no.”
“Well, we’ll catch him all right. Don’t you worry. If we can find out how it was done we’ll find out who did it. And vice versa. We’ll get this guy; you can bet your bottom dollar on that.”
But the tone of the Lieutenant’s voice suggested that he would not venture his own bottom dollar.
“Dja get those fellows?” he said to Dr. Sandys, who had returned from his telephoning.
“Yes. They’ll be right over.”
Dr. Sandys sank wearily into a chair. He was taking this very hard, thought Gilda. And no wonder; when a responsible librarian sees his good friends and guests of his library murdered, and when precious manuscripts disappear out of his safe, he has a right to feel depressed.
“While we’re waiting, let’s talk to this Cameron,” said Lieutenant Kennedy.
“I knew you’d want him; I have him in the outer office,” said Dr. Sandys.
Cameron was summoned. He entered, suave and smiling, like the guest of honor at a party.
“Sit down, Cameron. We want some information out of you. Sit down and make yourself easy. And don’t get excited. We ain’t suspecting you of anything.”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Where was you at ten o’clock last night?”
“I was making my round of inspection and shutting the fire-doors.”
“Go into this Wilmerding place?”
“Yes, sir.”
“See anything out of the way?”
“Nothing. The Wilmerding Library was empty when I made my rounds.”
“When d’you leave the Library?”
“It must have been about quarter to eleven. But I didn’t notice particularly.”
“Lock up all right, did you?”
“Of course, Lieutenant. I went out by the service door, and set the alarm device as usual.”
“Um. Any sign this morning that the alarm device was tampered with?”
“No, sir.”
“I’ll have a look at it myself. Any other way a fellow
could have got out after hours?”
“No, sir. I have made the rounds of the windows this morning, and I don’t find that any are forced.”
“Could anyone have jumped out of one of the second-floor windows?”
“No, sir. All those windows are locked; anyone escaping that way would have had to leave a window unlocked. And I don’t find any signs of anyone landing on the ground or bushes below.”
“I’ll take a look at that too. A guy could have spent the night in the Library and walked out early this morning without being noticed?”
“Certainly, sir. I believe it has been done.”
“Now about the locks on those doors—”
Cameron corroborated Gilda’s evidence at every point.
Lieutenant Kennedy meditatively felt in his pocket, and drew forth a package of cigarettes. Cameron, Gilda, and Dr. Sandys cried, almost in chorus: “No smoking in the Library!”
Kennedy returned the cigarettes to his pocket, embarrassed. He found a stick of gum, somberly peeled it, and thrust it in his mouth. Again he felt in his pocket.
“Djever see this before?” he shouted, whipping forth the thesis slip and holding the message: THOU SHALT DO NO MURDER, six inches before Cameron’s eyes.
Cameron started back. After all, thought Gilda, it is entirely natural to flinch if a police lieutenant suddenly thrusts his big fist right in your face. But was Cameron’s flinch a flinch of recognition? You couldn’t analyze things so closely. Anyone would be scared to death by the Lieutenant’s technique. He ought to be examining witches, with that book of Mr. Belknap’s, the Hammer of Witches, for his manual!
Cameron collected himself immediately.
“I’ve seen the sixth commandment before, if that’s what you mean. But I’ve never seen this particular slip.”
“Ho.” The Lieutenant relapsed into gloom.
“You make the microfilms for the Library?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Remember making one of a Latin manuscript, called, now, uh—”
“Filius Getronis,” supplied Dr. Sandys.
“Oh yes,” said Cameron. “B 58. I did that only two or three weeks ago.”
“You see this business: ‘Thou shalt do no murder,’ anywhere in the film?”
“What! Certainly not, sir.”
The Widening Stain Page 12