The Will to Kill

by Robert Bloch

  “Hold it a while. I’m waiting for Helen.”

  He favored me with a gold-toothed smirk and returned to the endless escapism of the ball game.

  I sat there wondering how Lieutenant Cohen had made out with the sailor. I wondered what he would say to Flint when he realized I’d given him the slip again. Then I started wondering about Helen Calgary, but not for long.

  She drifted in through the back entrance and sat down across from me. The table between us was narrow, and I could smell the cheap perfume and all the other odors it was meant to conceal. I could see the cheap powder and the lipstick, and what they were meant to conceal, too.

  The bartender was back. “Hi, Helen,” he said. “You folks ready for a—”

  “Never mind,” she said. “This is personal.”

  He walked away. When he got back to the bar he turned up the radio, loud. We were left with our twentieth-century version of privacy.

  “Got a cigarette?”

  I extended my pack, held out my lighter as she reached over, sucking in the flame with a nervous hunger. She took four long drags in rapid succession.

  “You wanted to talk to me,” I said.

  “You said you had some money for Joe.”

  I opened my wallet, took out a ten-dollar bill.

  “Is that all?”

  “There could be more. If you want to talk about it.”

  “How much more?”

  “That depends.”

  She took another deep drag. “What’s your name?”

  “Tom Kendall.”

  She let the smoke out right in my face. “Why you’re the guy who—” I nodded.

  “Hell, and when you talked to that dick, I thought maybe you really was a friend of Joe’s—” She started to get up, but I guessed where her hand would go before she left and clamped down on her wrist as she reached for the money.

  “Sit down,” I said.

  “Not me, Mister! You better get the hell out of here before I call—”

  This was the third time I hadn’t let her finish a sentence. I got out my wallet with my free hand. “Another ten if you sit down,” I said. “I can’t hurt you just sitting across from you.”

  “You bet your sweet life you can’t,” she said. But she sat down again. She picked up both ten-dollar bills and put them away. She didn’t carry a purse, so they disappeared under the table.

  “If you won’t talk, I will,” I told her. “I take it you know my name and why I’m interested. But that doesn’t make me your enemy or Joe’s enemy either. I don’t expect you to tell me where Joe is—matter of fact, I don’t even think you know.”

  “That’s the God’s truth,” said Helen Calgary. “I don’t know. And I’m worried sick.”

  “You’re not the only one. That’s why I’m down here, trying to get information.”

  “Well, you won’t get it out of me. I don’t know anything about it.” She ground out her cigarette and I passed her another, quickly, before she decided to get up again. My lighter came out, her lips sucked in.

  “I take it you don’t believe Joe is guilty,” I said.

  “I know he’s not.” She leaned forward again so quickly that four things bobbed—two of them earrings. “I ain’t talked to no cops, because what would be the use? They don’t know who I am so they haven’t bothered me. I live over here, see, and Joe stayed down at the hotel. That’s how it was. And I wouldn’t tell them nothing anyway. Fat chance I’d have getting them to believe me.” She took a puff and a breath simultaneously. “But he didn’t do it. I know he didn’t do it.”

  “What makes you so sure?” I asked. “He could have used the knife he stole from me, and then they found that stamp album he stole—”

  “He didn’t have your knife. He didn’t have any knife, not even his own, because he sold that in Dick’s for two bucks. And he sold the damned album for twenty.”

  It was my turn to lean forward. “Who’d he sell the album to?” I asked.

  “He didn’t say.”

  “But he told you about it and about the knife. That means you saw him after the murder.”

  Her mouth opened, but no smoke came out. She stared at me as I reached for my wallet again. I was running out of tens so I gave her two fives.

  “All right,” she said. “All right. I don’t know nothing to harm him, anyhow. And you’re not a cop.”

  “Believe me, I’m in this thing just as deep as he is. Deeper. Maybe I can help us both get out of it.”

  “Somebody better.” The mascara was thick, the eyelashes were false, but the look in the eyes were genuine. “I’m scared, Mister. I ain’t never been scared like this before.” She scowled. “I ain’t never seen him scared like this before either.”

  “When did you see him?” I asked.

  “Three o’clock Wednesday morning.”

  Three o’clock Wednesday morning. That’s when I was sleeping with my nightmare. That’s when Trixie was sleeping with her nightmare—the one that never ends.

  “He came here?”

  “He came upstairs to my room. Back entrance. He said he spent the knife money for drinks at Dick’s but he still had the twenty. And he needed more, because he had to get out of town, fast. I gave him fifteen. All I had.”

  “Did he tell you why he was leaving?”

  “No. He was scared, though. I never saw him shake like that before. He said he couldn’t tell me; it would only get me messed up in it.”

  “Did he say any more about where he’d been earlier that evening?”

  “A little. He picked up this Trixie Fisher right after supper. He figured on maybe making fifty bucks, he said, even if it cost him a fin or so to get her plastered.”

  “He told you that?”

  “Sure, why not? I knew how he got his dough.”

  I didn’t yet, but I was beginning to get ideas. “Go on,” I urged. “Anything more?”

  “Well, he’d started drinking early, I guess, before he met her. And he told me about Swanee’s and the fight with you. That really burned him, so he went over to Dick’s and sold his knife and drank some more. Then he sold the album. I guess he was really sloughed or he’d of never done a fool thing like that. But he gets that way when he has too much, you know.”

  I nodded.

  “And then what happened?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know any more except what I already told you—how he come in and acted so jumpy and beat it.”

  “Maybe he was still drunk when he talked to you.”

  She shook her head. “No, he was sober. Scared sober.” She dumped the second cigarette. “I tried to get him to tell me, but he took the money and beat it. And that’s all . . . until I read in the papers that morning, and the cops came around, and then that night I read about the other killing.”

  I was beginning to sense a pattern, and just then something else clicked into place.

  “Joe knew Joan Schuyler, too, didn’t he?”

  “Joan? Of course he knew her. Just like Trixie. And that’s why I’m so scared. Whoever did it might know about me, too.”

  I gave Helen her third cigarette. “Helen,” I said. “How did Joe figure on getting fifty bucks out of Trixie?”

  She shook her head.

  I took out my wallet, but she shook her head again.

  “Did he ever get fifty bucks out of you that way?” I murmured. “Did he, Helen?”

  She stood up, and this time I didn’t grab her wrist.

  “Is that why you’re frightened?” I asked. “Helen, have you guessed who the ripper is?”

  Helen Calgary sat down again, sat down and started to sob. Long, hard, dry sobbing. “Oh, let me alone, for God’s sake, let me alone!”

  I put my hand on her shoulder. “All right. I’m sorry. It’s only that the more you tell me, the easier it will be to catch him. Then we’ll all be safe.”

  She nodded, still sobbing. I took the last five out of my wallet and laid it on the table. “Thanks for helping,” I said. “A
nd one thing I’ll promise you—your name won’t be mentioned.”

  Helen Calgary looked up. Her shoulders shook, then the shaking subsided.

  “That stamp album,” she said. “Joe told me where it come from. He said he stole it off his lawyer—Anthony Mingo.”

  THIRTEEN

  I didn’t go back downtown. I took the alley exit and circled around, looking for more alleys. I walked way over to the near north side before I stopped into a neighborhood restaurant for supper.

  It was dark when I got out, and the taxis were going by. But I didn’t want a taxi. Lieutenant Cohen had probably sent out an order covering taxis, if he wanted to see me. And I had a hunch he did.

  Drexel Boulevard was a long way out, but I took the trolley bus. I transferred, rode some more, and then I walked. There’s never any public transportation running near the real Gold Coast, because the wealthy like their privacy.

  Right now, Anthony Mingo’s privacy was about to be invaded. I came along the street and stopped before the thick hedge which extended back for over a hundred feet. Then the trees began, another thirty feet of them. And behind the trees was the big house: the big dark house.

  It would be dark tonight, because Mingo had left town. Possibly he had servants. Maybe there was a big dog loose on the grounds.

  This I’d find out about, the hard way. And it was going to be the hard way. Tom Kendall, boy detective. What was that business about going up to the killer’s room and searching for evidence and then getting slugged? All very amusing, and yet here I was. Here I was, without a gun, or a knife, or a file, or a jimmy, or even a flashlight. Nothing but a small hunch and a big hole in the head.

  That was why I couldn’t turn to Cohen for help. He’d call Mingo in, certainly he would. He might even issue a search warrant after talking to him. But I doubted that latter possibility very much. Mingo was no fool—he’d cover his tracks thoroughly. And once he knew that the heat was on, the tracks would stay covered. My chances of finding anything out would be over.

  So I’d do it the hard way.

  I walked up the stone path, then paused. What are you doing here? I asked myself. You’re crazy. Better to cut it out. Run away.

  The night was dark, and the wind bent the trees, and their shadows nodded at me. The shadows knew, the shadows agreed. I’d better run away.

  But I was sick of shadows and running. I was sick of blackouts and being afraid to remember. I wanted to be free, I wanted to have Kit. I’d lied to her when I said I’d see a doctor—and then again, maybe I hadn’t lied.

  This was the therapy I needed. To focus on the problem, face it, and follow through to a solution.

  I started walking again, reached the door.

  No dogs barked. I peered through the mullioned panel, saw a dim light burning in the hall. There were windows off to my right. I could try them in just a moment. But first I had to make sure about the servants.

  I hesitated. Suppose there were servants, what then? What if somebody answered the door, and I said—

  The answer was ridiculously obvious. Anthony Mingo was my attorney, wasn’t he? So I’d come to talk to him about the case. Simple. No gun, no knife, no file, no flashlight. Just common sense.

  Common sense pressed the buzzer. Common sense stood there while the echo died away. Common sense waited, then subsided. I began to think about the windows again after all. About no gun, no knife, no file, no flashlight.

  I turned, started away.

  And then the door opened, and Anthony Mingo said, “Come right in! Good to see you, Tom.”

  It was as easy as that. He led me down the long hall, past a library, past a parlor entrance. In these lofty corridors he seemed more than ever like a little boy to me—a little boy who had lost his way.

  But Anthony Mingo knew where he was going.

  “Let’s step down to the recreation room, if you don’t mind,” he said. “I was just preparing to run off a film.”

  So I was even going to see the recreation room!

  “We can talk while it’s on,” he told me, as we descended the stair. “It’s a silent. Quite a stroke of luck, my being able to locate it—and it’s on rental to me for tonight only.” We walked through the basement. “So you called and found out I’d changed my plans about leaving town,” he said. “Fortunate that I heard your ring way down here.”

  So he’d notified his office he wouldn’t be leaving town. I breathed a bit more easily after I heard that. Then I tightened up again as we entered the recreation room.

  I don’t know what I expected to see, after Kit’s hints and what I’d surmised since. I was prepared for almost anything: a bastadino, a rack, even an Iron Maiden. But that’s what comes of reading too much fantasy or science fiction. Anthony Mingo was no mad scientist, and he wasn’t operating a torture chamber or a private morgue.

  What he had, instead, was a private museum. At least, that’s what it looked like to me. There were more bookcases, of course, and big leatherbound files of old newspapers. I saw just one weapon—a Yezidee knife, hanging on the wall behind the bar. The rest of the room was lined with glass cases on wooden mounts.

  Mingo hadn’t been lying. On the wall opposite the bar was a beaded screen for home movies, and in the center of the floor stood a projector, film already wound.

  But at the moment I wasn’t interested in that. I had to see what was in those cabinets.

  “Look around,” Mingo invited. “I’ll mix us a drink. Let me see—you would take rye, wouldn’t you?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “Katherine told me.”

  I shrugged. I wondered just how much Kit had told him, and why. That could wait. I wanted to look into the cases. I did. What I saw was disappointing. A piece of rope. A torn fragment of a skirt. An old shoe. And—so help me—a pair of false teeth!

  “Landru’s,” Mingo murmured, from behind me. “Here’s your drink.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Landru?”

  “The Frenchman. The Bluebeard. Fifty, sixty women—perhaps more. An interesting memento, is it not?”

  Yes, it was not. But I began to sense the pattern here. The shoe, now.

  “Annie Chapman wore it the night the Ripper found her. At least such is the claim of the unsavory gentleman who sold it to me in London some years ago. Of course, it might be that I’m the victim of an imposture, since there’s no way of authenticating it. The skirt, now, I’m reasonably sure of. Edinburgh. Helen McDougall. She was the paramour, you know, of one William Burke. You’ve heard of Burke and Hare.”

  I’d heard of Burke and Hare. Then the rope.

  “Thug strangling cord. Thuggee hasn’t been entirely stamped out, contrary to common belief.”

  I’d heard of Thuggee, too.

  Within the next few minutes I heard new names, saw new souvenirs: Palmer, Jesse Pomeroy, Strangler Nelson. A glove, a weskit button, and a belt buckle with the initial “N.”

  And all the while my courteous guide was talking, talking, and it was quite commonplace, really. The objects he displayed were utterly prosaic; everything was normal, and nothing was frightening. Except, perhaps, the realization of the thoughts that crawled through Mingo’s head.

  “I’ve quite a newspaper file, too,” he was saying. “Recently, I’ve taken to collecting a new category. I call it my ex-soldier file.” We were back at the bar now, and he was pouring another drink. “During the past several years, I’ve been struck by the number of cases in which ex-soldiers have literally run amok, you might say. They all seem to follow the same pattern. Breakdown, confinement, discharge—followed by a period of seemingly normal adjustment to civilian life. Then, suddenly, something snaps. And they kill, in blind and berserk fury. Wives, mothers, sweethearts, children, strangers. During one year alone the clipping bureaus have supplied me with over a hundred items.” I caught sight of a grimy hand as he waved.

  He paused. “Wasn’t that your trouble, Tom? Crackup while in service?”

  “Sorry,” I sai
d. “I’ve never gone berserk. Not yet.”

  He glanced up over the bar. “That’s interesting.” He indicated the dagger. “Ever hear of the Yezidees? In Crusader times, they furnished the Assassins: the hasheesh-drugged killers who terrorized the Moslems and the Christians alike. The dagger is one of a pair; pity I couldn’t obtain the other.” He broke off. “Do you find my tastes interesting or am I guilty of boring you?”

  “Not in the least. But weren’t you going to show a movie?”

  “Ah, yes. Indeed I was. And if you do share my interests, to a certain extent, you may be pleased.”

  That’s what makes your deviate truly unbalanced. He comes to believe that his tastes are normal, that everyone shares them.

  But in this instance, I nodded, I wanted to see the movie.

  “Sit down, make yourself comfortable,” Mingo invited. “I’ll snap off the lights and we’ll start running. I got it from a foreign exchange this morning and the print isn’t too good, I fear. But then, it’s thirty years old. Das Wachsfigurenkabinett.”

  “What?”

  “Waxworks. The Paul Leni film. I’m not running the first episode, with Jannings. It’s the second and third, the Veidtand the Krauss, I want to see. You remember way back, Tom? No, of course you wouldn’t. Conrad Veidt—there was an actor for you! And Werner Krauss. Both of them were together in Caligari, too.”

  So here was another facet of Mingo’s personality; he was a movie fan. Or was it another facet? As the screen flickered, I began to wonder.

  Mingo sat down next to the projector and stared at the screen in rapt silence. I stared, too. I stared at Veidt and realized Anthony Mingo wasn’t interested in the acting. He was interested in the story—the story of Ivan the Terrible and the lovers in his torture chamber. On one level it was merely an excellent weird fantasy—but in terms of Mingo’s reaction, the film was a pathological study.

  I gathered that, despite the fact that Mingo never stirred or uttered a word. But I heard him breathe, heard the changing rhythm. Midway in the film, when I judged him to be utterly absorbed, I moved. I slipped out of my seat and slipped back in again, all within the space of forty-five seconds. His head never turned in the darkness.