And Cameron, come to think of it, could have committed the murder after closing-time, and could then have calmly walked out the service door, setting the alarm device at any time he pleased.
Cameron!
He had testified, as had Gilda herself, that the only exit from the Library was by way of the three doors. It seemed curious that a great building like the Library should be so well sealed. Was there nothing they had overlooked, or concealed? A coal-chute, for instance? No, for the building was heated from the University steam plant. How about the ventilating system, whose tortuous channels ran through the entire building?
Perhaps there was a vent of the system in the locked press! Could a man have crawled through it into the press? Or out again?
She must look into the ventilating system.
She rose and went to pay the pallid cashier, who was shaking some digestive tablets into a glass of water.
“Here, give me a couple,” said Gilda. “You ought to pass those out after every meal like after-dinner mints.”
The cashier smiled drearily.
The trouble with these Home Economics meals, thought Gilda, is that they have lost touch with humanity. They aren’t on the human scale. They are full of fancy and imagination, but they really demand some new organ to digest them. And maybe even that wouldn’t work. What was that awful limerick of Francis’s?
A phenomenal fellow of Weston
Has about fifty feet of intestine;
Though a signal success
In the medical press,
It isn’t much good for digestin’.
Chapter XIV
AFTER LUNCH Gilda stopped in at the Librarian’s office.
“Dr. Sandys,” she said, “I have an idea. I wish you would let me into the locked press.”
“Certainly, Miss Gorham.”
Dr. Sandys took the key from his desk drawer. He escorted Gilda up the stairs to the Wilmerding Library. She glanced about; no one was visible. Dr. Sandys unlocked the locked press and the two entered.
“I was wondering about the ventilating system,” she said. “Is there a vent in the locked press? And if so, is it large enough for a man to crawl through?”
Dr. Sandys laughed. “Miss Gorham, I think your idea is a little fantastic. But let’s try it, anyway. Let me see; yes, here is a vent in the wall. You see this grille. I should say it is about twenty inches square. A small man could conceivably wriggle through it. But notice that the grille is screwed over the vent, and there are no fresh marks on the screws. Besides, the air passage must run down vertically at some point. No, I’m afraid it’s no soap, as the boys say.”
“I’m afraid you’re right,” said Gilda, reluctantly.
“You aren’t going to suggest that the killer had a trained mongoose or something?”
“No. A mongoose couldn’t choke a man to death. Maybe a boa constrictor, which was educated to wrap itself around the victim’s neck and constrict.”
Both laughed. Curious how soon one could laugh about a thing like this.
“You know,” said Gilda, “there is another thing I was wondering about.”
“Yes, Miss Gorham?”
“I have never strangled anyone myself, nor been strangled. I was wondering how it is done. When the strangler gets his thumbs on the stranglee’s windpipe, I should think the stranglee would be able to wiggle free, or at least hit and kick enough to leave a mark on the strangler. That is, unless the victim was knocked out first by a lead pipe or something.”
“That is indeed a problem.”
“Would you feel like trying to solve it?”
“How?”
“Let me try to strangle you.”
“Bet you a nickel you can’t strangle me!”
Gilda noticed with amusement that Dr. Sandys was actually playful.
“I’ll bet you a nickel I can!”
Gilda reached suddenly for the Librarian’s well-fleshed neck. Her hands were too small to clasp the neck; her thumbs found the windpipe beneath the beard and slipped on the short clipped bristles. Dr. Sandys raised his arms sharply and knocked her hands away.
“I didn’t get a good hold that time! Of course, you were on your guard! Let me try again.”
Dr. Sandys let Gilda settle her hands well in place. Smiling, he wound his arms over hers, drew her hands against his breast, and held them there imprisoned with one arm, while with the other hand he gave her nose a tiny tap. Gilda realized that his arms were extremely powerful, for a sedentary man.
“I won’t try to strangle you! But it isn’t fair. You’re too strong!”
“Now I’ll bet you a nickel I could strangle you!”
“All right.”
Dr. Sandys’s hands shot out and gripped Gilda by the throat. The thumbs rested lightly on her windpipe; the strong fingers pressed the back of her neck. Almost in earnest she raised her hands to fight. Dr. Sandys’s elbows bent and forced her hands against her chest. His thumbs and fingers tightened, and he raised her from the floor. She kicked with foot and knee, but, being held close against his body, she knew that her kicks had little force.
“Enough!” she tried to cry. No sound emerged from her lips, not even a gasp. The world swayed, her mind raced and dived. Dr. Sandys’s face slowly enlarged to more than life-size. There was a strange, hot gleam in his eyes.
She shook her head. At least she could shake her head. But would it do any good? Would anything do any good?
Dr. Sandys set her down and removed his hands. He was red in the face and breathing fast. He rubbed his brow with the back of his hand.
“Well,” he said lamely, “I imagine I won my nickel.”
“You won about twenty dollars, I should say.” Angrily Gilda patted her mussed hair. “You didn’t need to prove the case so thoroughly.”
“I am sorry. Something came over me. I suppose I—was rather captured by the spirit of the thing. You are all right?”
“Oh yes. Quite all right.”
“Miss Gorham—Miss Gorham, no doubt it’s very foolish of me, but there is something I think I ought to confess to you.”
“Confess?”
“Dr. Sandys! Dr. Sandys!” A voice, with the intonation of a paging bellboy, sounded from the entrance to the Wilmerding.
“Yes,” replied Dr. Sandys.
Cameron approached from the door. “Dr. Sandys, they’re looking for you in your office. President Temple is there. Wants to talk over the shocking event.”
“Oh, all right, Cameron. I’ll be right along. That is all—ah—you wanted to consult me about, Miss Gorham? Then we can close the locked press.”
He ushered Gilda out of the press, snapped the door shut, and hurried away to his office.
“Get what you wanted, Miss Gorham?”
“Certainly, Cameron,” said Gilda frigidly. She could feel a hot blush rising to her face. She hoped Cameron had not seen it. Nor anything else.
Gilda decided that she needed a cigarette before returning to the catalogue room. She walked out the main Library door to the entrance porch, where busts of Socrates, Dante, Shakespeare, and Mr. Wilmerding look down with distaste on the cigarette butts flecking the stone floor. She lit a cigarette, adding her burnt match to the litter underfoot.
Perhaps the murderer had come out this way, only a few hours before. Or one of the other doors—
Why not stroll around and look at those doors? It would take less than the length of a cigarette to make the circuit of the Library.
With what she intended to be an idle, musing air, Gilda sauntered around the Library walls. The University’s landscape gardener had tastefully surrounded the building with shrubs and bushes. Gilda looked in vain for vines stout enough to enable a courageous criminal to descend from an upper story.
She stopped short. A door! An inconspicuous door in the basement level, which she had never noticed, or which, at least, she had forgotten.
On one side of the door was a heavily grilled window. On the other side a large, stout grating was
set in the wall. From the direction of the grating came the sound of a rhythmic whank! whank! whank! and the ground-bass of a motor.
But of course! It was the intake of the ventilating system! It was by way of the door that the machinery had been installed, and it was here that the mechanics entered to service the motor.
She peered through the heavily grilled window beside the door. She could see the large motor, connected by a fan-belt (going whank! whank! whank!) to the axle of the enormous fan in its metal housing. Beyond the motor she could see dimly into the Greek Literature stacks.
Of course! Between the machinery and Greek Lit was set an open grille, by means of which the motor was cooled, and an odor of hot oil wafted through Greek Literature. She remembered poor Mr. Hyett’s complaints; he had said that the smell of hot oil was, after all, classical, and that he wouldn’t object if only the administration would add a whiff of garlic.
She tried the door. It was locked.
But Cameron must have known of this door! And he had not mentioned it to the police Lieutenant!
To be sure, the door did not really give entrance to the Library, but only to the room that housed the machines. The grille separating the machinery room from the Library stacks was fixed irremovably in place. Or, at least, that was her recollection.
Gilda walked quickly around to the main entrance and descended two flights of iron stairs to the Greek Literature section. She inspected the grille. It was securely screwed into its frame. And the screws were on her side.
She peered through the grille at the external door. She could see the lock, an ordinary Yale-type lock.
Well, no one had escaped this way last night. Or—yes, there was a possibility. The culprit could have unscrewed the grille, walked out the door, and returned this morning with a screwdriver, to replace the screws.
She looked carefully at the screws. They were not dusty. The grooves in the screw-heads had been slightly abraded on both sides; hence they had been unscrewed as well as screwed in. But that proved nothing at all. There were no marks that looked unmistakably fresh, no litter, no tracks on the metal floor.
Well, she hadn’t really discovered anything. But she felt she had not wasted her time.
There was something else she had mentally noted, to be further investigated. What was it, now?
Gilda’s mind was admirably indexed. Ah, here it comes! The Hopkinson Library! The book-theft at the Hopkinson Library!
Someone had been talking about it not long ago, at the time of the Williams College theft, in fact. And whoever it was that told the story had mentioned that the theft had taken place during the war that we called, in our simplicity, the Great War. Gilda was just a kid then, of course, and totally uninterested in libraries.
She went to the periodical room and took down the New York Times Index for 1914. Under “Hopkinson Library” she found a few items about the acquisition of sensational book-treasures at sensational prices. Nothing about a theft. No luck in the Indexes for 1915 and 1916. But in 1917 she read: “Hopkinson Library: Theft of rare book. Jan. 12, 14:6. Cont’d, Jan. 13, 24:1. Book returned, Jan. 20, 11:4.”
Nodding to the periodical-room librarian, she went behind the delivery desk and into the newspaper stacks. The New York Times was bound in enormous volumes, one to a month, and disposed in tiers according to the year. January was at the top, well above Gilda’s head. Everything she had to look up in the New York Times seemed to have happened in January. She worked the volume out of its shelf and tipped its back toward her. When it began to slide like an avalanche, she succeeded in catching it on her head, her breast, and her knee on its descent to the floor. The next Library murder would probably be that of the editor of the New York Times by a librarian, using the New York Times as a lethal weapon. A blunt instrument, assuredly.
Gilda put her foot under the back, and tried to lift the mighty volume to a newspaper reading-desk, and then decided to consult it on the floor.
Here was January 12, page 14, column 6. Two paragraphs. The first told of the disappearance of the Paris Donatus of 1451 and of the mystification of the authorities. The second described the book. Its value was estimated at a hundred thousand dollars.
January 13, page 24, column 1. Everyone continued to be mystified. A summary of the examination of the Librarian, John Morrow, of the Reading-Room Superintendent, McCutcheon Voigt, of the messenger of the Rare Book Room, William Sandys—
William Sandys! Not our William Sandys, surely!
She looked at January 20, page 11, column 4. The book had been returned by parcel post. There was no clue to the sender.
William Sandys!
Gilda left the New York Times on the floor. At the periodical-room desk she told a weedy working student, who was employed by the Library at twenty-five cents an hour, to return the volume to its place. He rose with a sigh.
Gilda went to the reference room and took down Who’s Who. She turned to Sandys, William. She read:
“SANDYS, William Bentley, librarian; b. San Francisco, June 18, 1893; s. William Henry and Dimple (Cummings) S.; A.B., U. of Calif., 1914; A.M., 1916; Ph.D., Columbia, 1924; unmarried. Enlisted U. S. Army 1917; commissioned 2d. Lieut. Inf. . . .”
Well, that was interesting! If our Dr. Sandys was the Hopkinson Library messenger of 1917, he had omitted to put in Who’s Who the beginning of his library career. And he failed to mention what he was doing between the taking of his A.M. in 1916 and his enlistment in 1917.
No wonder he had been shocked to discover that the Filius Getronis was missing! But then, he would have been shocked anyhow. He had seemed, in fact, on the edge of collapse. But that didn’t prove anything. The trouble was that nothing proved anything!
It was high time she was getting back to the catalogue room. She returned the Who’s Who to its place, which is more than most people do.
In the lobby she met Cameron. He was carrying six rebound volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
“Cameron!” she said sharply.
Cameron halted. “Yes, Miss Gorham?”
“I have just been looking around a little. And I noticed the door of the ventilating apparatus.”
“Yes, Miss Gorham.”
“In your testimony to Lieutenant Kennedy, you didn’t mention that door.”
“He didn’t mention it either.”
“You should have suggested that it was a possible means of escape for a criminal.”
“Oh, but, Miss Gorham, there’s a fixed grille there! No one could get out that way.”
“They could if they had a screwdriver.”
“Yes, but Miss Gorham, all the screws were in place this morning. I looked specially.”
“Would you swear to that?”
“Certainly.”
“Anyhow, I think you ought to mention it to Lieutenant Kennedy. Or I will myself.”
Cameron slowly set down his burden of Britannicas on the floor.
“Now look here, Miss Gorham, do you really think it’s a good thing to go and tell everything you know to the police?”
“Of course.”
“I think that just bothers them. I think it’s better to wait until people ask you something. That’s my advice to you, Miss Gorham, and I used to be a detective. Wait until you’re asked.”
“If I ask you something, will you give me an answer?”
“Why, of course, Miss Gorham.”
“Who do you think murdered Mr. Hyett?”
Cameron waited several moments before replying.
“Well now, I tell you, Miss Gorham. When I was a detective, I found out that most crimes have something to do with money. ‘Cherchez la femme,’ they say, but the cops say: ‘cherchez le jack.’ About the first thing the cops do is to investigate what they call the financial status of the people involved. It don’t usually prove anything, but it gives them an idea where to look.”
“I presume they will do so in this case.”
“Yes. But they may not have all the opportunities of some private in
dividuals. Some people don’t like to go around blabbing everything they know to the cops. But they do tell things to their friends. For instance, I happen to know that there’s an organization in town called the Excelsior Personal Loan.”
“I’ve heard of it. A shyster money-lending outfit.”
“That’s it. But they’re very confidential. A lot of people go to them who don’t want to be seen borrowing money from a bank. For instance, your friend Dr. Sandys borrowed a thousand dollars from Excelsior when he came here in July, giving a lien against his salary as security.”
“How do you know this?”
“I’m a director.”
Cameron smiled, with a deprecating air of triumph. “But I think it would be a shame to bring all that up to the police, don’t you? So, as I was just suggesting, better not go telling them things until they ask you. See?”
“I think I see.”
“Well, I must be getting my exercise. We all ought to keep in trim. I get pretty near enough exercise around the Library. I don’t have to do any calisthenics. If I do need to, maybe I could join you in the locked press? You and—”
“Cameron!”
Cameron smiled sweetly, picked up the six volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica with no appearance of effort, and walked lightly away.
Chapter XV
GILDA ENTERED the catalogue room. She was conscious that all the bright, inquiring eyes of the staff were fixed upon her. She sat down at her desk with a flounce and seized a handful of communications in her Incoming basket.
A letter from an alumnus saying that his wife had picked up a very ancient book with the covers gone, a school arithmetic of 1830, and asking if it was, possibly, of great value. An offer from another alumnus to bequeath his library to the University, with the remark, apropos of nothing, that his brother had just been made an honorary LL.D. by Allegash College. She glanced down the attached inventory of the library. Allen and Greenough’s Latin Grammar; Le Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon; David Harum; Graustark. . . .
The Widening Stain Page 14