The Case of the Crumpled Knave

by Anthony Boucher

  Then, without any warning, a voice began shouting, “Yoo-oo-oo turn me inside out.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir!” the Colonel exclaimed.

  “What’s biting you, buddy?” the driver inquired in words largely drowned out by the voice, which was describing its further gyrations as “Upside down and around about.”

  “Someone,” Colonel Rand observed heavily, “seems to be comparing me to a blasted whirligig.”

  “Oh that.” The driver seemed disappointed. “That’s the radio.”

  The Colonel bristled. “My man, despite my years I am sufficiently aware of the wonders of modern science to realize that fact. But what can I do about it?”

  “There’s a knob in there,” said the driver indifferently, and turned his attention to a traffic problem.

  Colonel Rand had rarely gone “harrumph” with more vicious sincerity. He cast a trained glance over the interior of the cab and located the knob of the offending scientific marvel. The adenoidal voice was now comparing itself to a castoff glove, which seemed to the Colonel an unwarrantable slur on a worthy article of wearing apparel. He seized the knob and twisted.

  It broke.

  That was the beginning of the nightmare. In its way, it was a good thing. Without this maddening introduction, the grave news that Colonel Rand was soon to learn would have wounded much more deeply. As it was, the whole business fused into wild fantasy. The song, now blaring forth at the instrument’s top volume (which was considerable), apparently inspired the cab-driver. He put fresh spirit into his work. Traffic, even Southern California traffic, meant nothing to him. He seemed possessed of a delusion that all corners were banked, like the curves on a speedway. Colonel Rand came as near as possible to abandoning his fine military carriage as he was jolted from one side of the seat to the other, constantly reminded of the fact that he turned an anonymous young crooner upside down and inside out—which was, he thought, a consummation devoutly to be wished.

  Even the narrow winding streets which led up into the bright Los Feliz hills did little to check the cab’s progress. When the driver braked to a sudden stop before the Garnett home, he did so with a consummate jerk that threw the long-suffering Colonel flat on the floor and at the same time, apparently, started Young Adenoids announcing that everything was hotcha for his hot chickadee.

  The cab door opened, and Colonel Rand lifted his embattled head, white mustaches gleaming against a surrealistically purple face, to tell the driver just what he thought of him—a plan which would have delayed his entering the house by at least fifteen minutes. But instead of the driver, he found himself glaring up at what must have been the biggest policeman in all Los Angeles.

  “And just what do you think you’re up to?” the officer demanded. While the Colonel puffed for breath, he repeated the question, shouting to drown out the crooner and adding a few colorful words which occurred rarely even in Rand’s powerful vocabulary.

  It is hard to be dignified when you are sprawled on the floor of a taxicab. Even the innate dignity of a retired army officer must suffer under such circumstances. “I have come to see Mr. Humphrey Garnett,” the Colonel stated in precisely military syllables, and drew himself up to his full height.

  Colonel Rand’s full height, however, was one factor which had never crossed the mind of the designer of Los Angeles cabs. The Colonel sat down with an abrupt force which left his posterior as grievously wounded as his dignity.

  “Drunk at this hour,” the policeman observed.

  Rand’s face grew a deeper purple and he began to splutter.

  “And at your age, too,” the officer added reproachfully.

  “And my chickadee is hotcha for me,” the crooner concluded.

  Rand could never reconstruct, to his own satisfaction, how he got out of that cab. He recalled vague details of the process, which included knocking his forehead against the door, losing his hat, and pitching into the arms of the policeman, who seemed to take the whole matter much more calmly since he’d formed his drunk theory. The next clear moment came as Rand walked up the front steps of the house.

  The crooner was only a noise in the distance now-still not exactly faint, but at least distant. The nightmare, Rand thought, was passing, even though it was annoying that this officer, evidently still suspicious, was accompanying him into the house. At first thought it seemed to him rather a small house for a man of Garnett’s wealth; but he remembered his friend’s hatred of pretense and of what he called doggishness. Despite that perturbing telegram, it would be fine to see his old friend again. Have a good sound game of four-handed chess perhaps, and see little Kay. Though she must be a good-sized young lady now. He smiled, with a quiet resumption of contentment.

  “Say, buddy!”

  He turned to see the cabdriver. The nightmare wasn’t over yet.

  “That’ll be two bucks and a half you owe me.”

  He counted out the exact change, pointedly leaving no opportunity for a tip, and took up the bag the man scornfully proffered him.

  The policeman looked at him pityingly. “So you’d even try to do a poor working man out of his money!”

  Colonel Rand decided that it was high time to take a firm stand in this matter. “Officer,” he said, “I do not know what strange ideas you seem to have formed concerning me, but I assure you that they are false. Any or all of them. I, sir, am a respectable citizen, a taxpayer, and a retired member of the military forces of this country.”

  “Now ain’t that nice, General,” the officer grinned, but the grin was not encouraging.

  “What is more, I am a guest of Mr. Humphrey Garnett.”

  The officer squared himself. Rand was a large man, but he felt small beside this uniformed bulk. “And do you want to know what I think you are, with your taxicabs and your radios and your mustaches?” (There was something familiar about this official burst of fury. Rand could not place it at the time, but he later recalled its identity with the screen antics of one Edgar Kennedy.) “I think you’re a crank, and I think you’re drunk, and if you don’t prove anything else, I’ll be keeping you out of this door for the rest of this fine summer day.”

  The Colonel was past indignation. He assumed dignified silence in its stead. Quietly he reached into his breast pocket, took out the telegram, unfolded it, and passed it over.

  The simple act of reading those twenty-five words took a good foot off the officer’s height. He looked at the Colonel with a mixture of respect, awe, and incredulity. “Follow me,” he said abruptly, and led the way into the house.

  It seemed exceedingly odd to Colonel Rand that the policeman did not ring, but just walked in. It was even odder that a second policeman stood in the hallway near the door.

  “Wait here,” said Policeman Number One, and disappeared.

  Colonel Rand opened his cigar case and took out a cigar. The whimsical thought crossed his mind that men in novels, under circumstances of similar confusion, always “select” a cigar. He wondered how they did that and why they’d bought the ones they didn’t select.

  As he struck a match, Policeman Number Two became vocal. “Hold it, pop,” he said, and relapsed into silence.

  Rand shook out the flame regretfully. “‘Drest in a little brief authority.’” he murmured, irritated by this meaningless officiousness. But he stood as silent as his uniformed companion, chewing hard on the unlit cigar. In a few moments, Number One appeared again.

  “The Lieutenant says you should come right in,” he announced. “This way.”

  There was still a nightmare quality to the proceedings, but its nature had changed. The first part had been mad and comical, even when it was most destructive of dignity. But there was a chill of earnestness about this second phase.

  Colonel Rand followed Number One into a room which he recognized at a glance, even though he had never seen it before. It must be Humphrey Garnett’s study. It was so exactly like the study of any house which Garnett had ever lived in. There was the strange miscellany of books, wh
ich seemed so random at first and later struck you as a complete, if cryptic, outline of the host’s character. There was the littered desk, of course, and the huge cabinet which housed Garnett’s invaluable collection of playing cards. And there was the exquisitely inlaid table designed especially for four-handed chess.

  Rand began to feel a cruel conviction that that desired game of four-handed chess would never take place.

  II

  Lieutenant Jackson Tells of a Murder

  Colonel Rand had examined the room in an instant. Now he looked at the two men in it. One, despite civilian clothes, he recognized at once as the Lieutenant of whom Number One had spoken, and obviously a Lieutenant of Detectives. He was young and rangy, but there was a professional directness and sharpness about him which stamped him unmistakably.

  The other man was also young and equally obvious. At first glance, Rand decided against him. It was a type he didn’t care for. Too good-looking, too well-dressed, too easy. Quite possibly, the Colonel’s sense of fair play forced him to admit, this was a very decent chap; but he was definitely something in the artistic line, and that wasn’t a man’s work.

  The young Lieutenant looked up and nodded as Rand entered, then turned back to the object of the Colonel’s disaffection. “I’ll want to speak to you again, Mr. Vinton. Will you wait outside with the others?” He spoke civilly enough, but Rand felt that his surface courtesy was no mask for the strict efficiency behind it.

  Vinton agreed graciously. “Ever at your service, Lieutenant. Anything I can do for Miss Garnett—I think you understand. That sounds like a polite formula, but it means a great deal. I shall see you later.” He smiled and turned to leave.

  Rand had a better look at the fellow now. Suddenly he realized that this was no mere dislike of a type. Vinton wasn’t the name he’d used then; but it was the same man, and a rotter from the word go. Too late the Colonel tried to suppress his automatic reaction. But he feared he was not successful.

  Number One followed Vinton from the room. As soon as the two were gone, the Lieutenant asked, “You know that man?”

  There was no use being secretive. Rand already suspected, with a dreadful sinking of his heart, the reason for the Lieutenant’s presence; and any fact might now be of value. “Yes, I know him—blast him,” he admitted.

  “We’ll take that up in a minute.” The Lieutenant shoved some papers aside and took up a fresh pencil. “Won’t you sit down, sir? My name is Jackson—Lieutenant of Detectives. And yours?”

  “Rand. Theodore. Colonel. U. S. A., retired.” The Colonel spoke sharply and clearly as the police officer jotted it down.

  “You came here at Humphrey Garnett’s invitation?”

  “Yes.”

  “This telegram …” He fingered the yellow slip which Number One had brought him. “You received it—when?”

  “Three days ago.”

  “Today’s Monday. Sunday … Saturday … That would be Friday last?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Sent an answering wire announcing my arrival and left as soon as I could.”

  “Why?”

  “Isn’t that obvious? He was my friend. He needed me.” Rand spoke with laconic sincerity.

  “But although the message was such a strange one, you took no steps to check up on it?”

  “Why should I?”

  “You came all the way across the continent on what might easily have been a hoax of some sort?”

  “To tell you the truth, Lieutenant, I did not care. I was sick to death of vegetating in a New York suburb—especially since my gardening efforts had taught me that nothing else was capable of vegetating there. So why should I? That message promised something interesting, whether it was truth or hoax. And if nothing more comes of it than a visit with an old friend, I shall be content.”

  “Hm.” Jackson paused a minute, then seemed to accept, at least for the time being, the good faith of the Colonel’s rash visit. “And who is this Hector?”

  “Frankly, I have no idea.”

  “And who is the man who just left this room?”

  The Colonel had by now recovered all his once imperiled dignity. He used it as he spoke. “Young man,” he said, “you have asked enough questions. Now I am going to ask two. The first is: May I smoke?” He lit his cigar without waiting for a reply and went on between relieved puffs. “The second is: What, in God’s name, is this all about?”

  There was a sympathetic gravity on the young Lieutenant’s face which answered the question without the need of words. Rand waved his cigar to brush aside futile phrases and sat smoking in silence for almost a minute. “So Garnett’s dead,” he said at last. “I shan’t say anything about that. It means a lot to me, and I can’t talk about what I feel. I wasn’t made that way, and it’s no use trying.” There was another instant of silence, and then, with abrupt efficiency, the Colonel leaned forward, went “harrumph,” and asked, “Murder?”

  “I think so.”

  “Of course, or you wouldn’t be here. Is he—have they—?”

  “He’s at the morgue, sir.” The Lieutenant spoke respectfully and softly.

  “Rotten luck. He was a good man. Well, Lieutenant, I’m yours now. Tell me what you think fit and ask your questions.”

  “There’s not much to tell you, Colonel Rand. It’s a simple case, and I’m in hopes that your arrival may make it even simpler. I’ll put it as briefly as I can. You see, it’s one of those times when circumstances are helpful and limit the investigation. You probably know that your friend didn’t like house servants. He had a cook who came in by the day and a couple of Filipinos who cleaned once a week. So there was no one in this house last night except the family and their guests. The doors were all bolted on the inside this morning; and there’s no reason to suspect any elaborate locked-room trickery.

  “So that narrows it down to the five people in the house—Garnett’s daughter Kay; his brother-in-law Arthur Willowe; his assistant, a young man named Harding; and two guests, Vinton, whom you just saw, and a Miss Sallice. Just what the Sallice girl’s status in the family might be, I haven’t been able to learn. Vinton is more or less a permanent member of the household; he even has his own room. He’s Kay Garnett’s fiancé.”

  Colonel Rand started. Jackson observed him a moment and went on. “Mr. Garnett stayed on in his study after the others had retired. They all went their separate ways, and any one of them might have come back to him, for all they can prove to the contrary—though, of course, they all deny it. Before they left, this Sallice girl had brought him a nightcap of whiskey and water, which he set aside to drink later. He drank only half of it. But that was enough.”

  “Poisoned?”

  “Yes. Hydrocyanic acid—prussic, as most people call it. Death almost instantaneous. But he did manage to leave us a clue—the first time in actual experience that I’ve come across anything like that. And I’m not sure yet what it might mean. Apparently, as he lay dying, he deliberately crumpled one playing card.”

  Rand leaned forward with dignified eagerness. “If my guess proves right, sir, my arrival may indeed make the case simpler. Was this card a knave of diamonds?”

  Jackson looked up sharply. “It was.”

  “And how do you interpret that, Lieutenant?”

  “As I say, I don’t quite know. If I remember anything about fortunetelling, it used to mean a blond young man; but there’s only one such on our list, and he doesn’t quite fit in. Then one of the men from the coroner’s office was talking about a mystery novel he read that had a jack of diamonds in it, and it meant a pun on somebody’s name in French. I don’t see that that helps us much either.”

  “Hang your coroner’s men and their mystery novels. Let me assure you, Lieutenant, that this knave of diamonds means a dark young man, and a darkhearted knave he is.”

  Jackson’s interest was high. “Go on, Colonel.”

  Rand settled back and enjoyed his cigar for a moment. “Five year
s ago, sir, I was on a Cunarder returning home from a visit in England. I am a land man, and ocean travel has always seemed to me only a regrettable necessity. My one objection, despite all the mewlings of the pacifists, to the World War—my last active service—was that we had to cross an ocean to fight it. So instead of viewing the supposed beauties of the sea, I spent my time in the smoking room playing cards.

  “There was a sound crowd of men on that voyage, mostly Britishers. I’d met a good few of them around the London clubs, and liked them. And then there was a young chap named Lawrence Massey. Nobody seemed to know anything about him; but several of the others had met him before, and we all accepted him.”

  Rand resumed his cigar while the Lieutenant looked impatient. “I think,” he went on, “that it was this Massey who suggested we try pinochle. I’m not sure. None of us had ever tried it before—fact is, I never really thought it was a gentleman’s game—but we were all tired of poker and contract, and pinochle proved interesting and challenging once we got into it—a truly first-rate game, with an admirable balance of chance and science. Massey won a good deal. At first we thought it was simply because he knew the game better—could play up to the really fine points—and we admired him for a deft player.

  “Then old Vantage—Sir Herbert, you know—the War Office man—noticed that it was generally a double pinochle with which Massey made his big winnings. Those two queens of spades and two knaves of diamonds seemed to fall inevitably into his hand.

  “Well, Lieutenant, I’ll make a brief story out of it. It was a rotter’s trick, and I’m frank to say I never quite caught the hang of it. There was sleight of hand involved, that I do know. Of course none of us would speak to him after that. Still, he’d made a fair killing already, and it didn’t seem to worry him. But just snubbing him wasn’t enough to satisfy old Vantage. That chap has a vicious sense of practical humor, and he had to carry on with it.

  “It started with his merely dropping references to a knave of diamonds whenever Massey was within earshot. Then Vantage slipped down to Massey’s stateroom and stuck a knave of diamonds on the door. It took the room steward some work to get it off. Next the old man bribed the bartender. He pasted a knave of diamonds on a glass, and every time Massey ordered a drink he got it in that glass.