Dr. Poggioli: Criminologist (The Lost Classics Book 14)

by T. S. Stribling

  “That part isn’t, but look at this. Five years later he is imbued with such a hatred for Mordag that he is trying to kill him with all this red fire and melodrama.”

  “But La Plesse’s wife will inherit a fortune if Gaylord Morning is put out of the way.”

  “That’s true, but La Plesse was a popular magician and he must have had money. And then your genuine cynic would never turn into a murderer. Cynicism is a shield, not a sword. A cynic is a man who has no more fight left in him.

  Since life rides him hard, he says his galled withers are trifles; since he can’t win love that love is ridiculous; since he can’t keep a wife, that he never cared anything about her. Such a man would never go out and commit murder for a fortune. He would tell himself that fortunes were tiresome things and that he was glad he had none.”

  The office girl looked impressed. “He would do that, wouldn’t he?”

  “Certainly. That is why the knife throws such a blank mystery over the whole affair.”

  “You don’t believe the man who would give away a knife would now try to murder Mr. Morning?”

  “I know he would not—but he did. Now that is what constitutes a mystery.”

  “Then what do you believe about it?” cried Janet excitedly.

  “Personally, I don’t believe La Plesse has anything to do with this.” The office girl was logically outraged.

  “The idea of such a thing; the notes, the knife, the poison! You’ve got to account for them somehow. Besides that, you yourself saw La Plesse and his wife and child on Johnson Boulevard.”

  “They are details that will have to be worked out separately,” said the docent. “But La Plesse has followed Morning around from city to city.”

  Poggioli smiled.

  “Suppose I should suggest to you that Mordag has been following La Plesse around from city to city . . .”

  “What!”

  The psychologist nodded slowly with the faint smile of one who deals in oracles. “Exactly. Mordag, or Morning as you call him, was La Plesse’s assistant. Mordag still carries around with him a pocket full of old newspaper clippings extolling the showman. The poor devil genuinely believes that La Plesse can perform any sort of miracle whatever. Now here are some of the things Mordag believes La Plesse can do; read your thoughts, get out of a grave, fling one object through another without leaving a trace, produce writing on blank paper without any physical means of doing so. And I feel sure that Mordag was hypnotized by La Plesse for exhibition purposes every evening for two years. When the helper was discharged, he was, you might say, left without his divinity.”

  “Why, Mr. Poggioli,” ejaculated Janet with horror in her face, “that is the crawliest thing I ever heard of.”

  “Or take another theory; if La Plesse hypnotized Mordag for such a long time, it is within the bounds of reason that wherever La Plesse decides to go, Mordag automatically makes up his mind to go to the same place. That is why they are eternally meeting one another, on trains, in the street, in hotels. Mordag always chooses to stop where La Plesse is stopping.”

  “And doesn’t know that he is doing it,” ejaculated the office girl.

  “No, he thinks he is trying to get away from the man—his conscious side thinks that, while his subconscious side is following him.”

  “That nearly makes me sick,” cried Janet.

  “That’s merely a theory,” said the docent. “It explains part of what we know. But if La Plesse really is trying to murder Mordag after having given him that throwing knife, I must say this is the most blindly mysterious affair I ever encountered.”

  “So you don’t believe the magician is after Mr. Morning at all?”

  “I do not.”

  As the docent said this they heard the faraway tinkle of the office telephone. The girl started, then said:

  “They have been ringing for you, I don’t know how long, Mr. Poggioli. The janitor said they were ringing when he swept out.”

  The docent frowned.

  “It’s something about that case.”

  “I imagine Mr. Morning has gone quite mad because you aren’t with him.” Poggioli smiled.

  “No, he and Tapper have hit on a plan that entirely dispenses with me.”

  “What are they going to do?” asked Janet.

  “You’ll see it in the afternoon papers.”

  Here the janitor entered the laboratory from the office.

  “Mr. Poggioli, they’ve been calling for you about every three minutes since before I came. Shall I muffle the bell or will you answer it, sir?”

  A curiosity moved Poggioli to know what Mordag wanted with him now. “I’ll answer it, Henderson,” he said, and went out front to the telephone. When he put the receiver to his ear a man’s voice asked in nervous haste:

  “Has Professor Poggioli come in yet? Has he a telephone? What’s his street address? How can I get into communication—”

  “This is Poggioli,” interrupted the docent with a discomforting premonition. “Thank God I’ve found you, Professor. This is Manderby, city editor of the Dispatch. You know more about this case, I believe, than any other man in town. You have carte blanche to hire anybody, draw on us for any amount, but run the murderer to the earth.”

  Poggioli’s heart suddenly dropped into his chest.

  “You don’t mean Mordag has been killed?” he gasped. “No; it’s Tapper!”

  “Tapper! What happened to—”

  “La Plesse shot him through the window. We knew Tapper was a good friend of yours—the way he protected your name in his stories. You’ll go, won’t you?”

  “Oh, yes; yes, I’ll go. Starting right now.”

  He hung up. On his way out he said to Janet—

  “La Plesse killed Tapper last night in Mordag’s room.”

  “Oh, my Lord,” ejaculated the girl. “The man who wrote—”

  She followed the docent out to the door and watched him signal a taxi to the curb.

  Poggioli motored to the Vendig, confounded by this swift and certain proof that Herman La Plesse had concealed himself in the hotel with murderous intent. He tried to construe some rationale that would transform a cynical man into a murderer, but failed.

  As the psychologist approached the desk at the Vendig, the clerk turned to a tall athletic man standing nearby and said—

  “This is Professor Poggioli, Mr. Olsen.” The two men shook hands.

  “I’m with the Dispatch, in Tapper’s place,” explained Olsen in lowered tones. “I wanted to meet you in the lobby so I’d know it was you.”

  The docent nodded and started to the elevator with the new reporter. The two men got out on the eighteenth floor.

  “Have you any theories about this, Professor?” asked Olsen. “I’ve got to go through the case with you. I’d like to know what we’re trying to do?”

  “It has been a tentative theory of mine that Mordag was following La Plesse, and not La Plesse Mordag,” began the docent.

  “What?” ejaculated the reporter, staring at the psychologist.

  Poggioli ceased his explanation and concluded with a perfunctory— “Of course I’ll have to discard that idea now.”

  “I should think so,” nodded the reporter, “after what has happened to poor Tapper.” The two men went on to room 1827. Olsen produced a key and let himself and his companion inside.

  In an easy chair by the bedside Tapper still sat. He might still have been watching except for his stonelike stillness. Under the covers of the bed, Poggioli saw the outline of a man’s form which occasionally shook or jerked.

  As the two men entered Olsen said in a lowered tone— “I have brought Mr. Poggioli, Mr. Morning.”

  The man in bed put his face out from under the quilts and looked at the reporter. The thin man was ashen.

  “W-when are you going to bring the h-helicopter, Mr. Olsen?” he chattered. “Right away—at once,” soothed the big man in the tone one uses to a child. “You are really going to take me?” queried Mordag suspicio
usly.

  “Of course I am.”

  The thin man looked at the figure sitting by his bed.

  “Oh Lord—to kill him just to frighten me. What a fiend! I wish the airplane would come on.”

  Poggioli glanced at Olsen interrogatively. The big man shook his head slightly. “The story is here now,” he said, guarding his meaning as if Mordag were a

  very young child.

  The thought came to Poggioli that fear would kill Mordag that night if nothing else did.

  “Well,” said Olsen in a muted voice, “nothing has been touched. Everything here is exactly like it happened.”

  The psychologist took in the ensemble—the body, the little hole in the window where the bullet had entered the room, the lesion where it had entered the skull, the place on the other side of the head where it had come out.

  “Let’s locate the bullet in the wall,” suggested the docent, “and get its line of trajectory.”

  The reporter got his bearings from the window and the body and began searching for the bullet. But the closet stood in its path. The closet door was open and in the confusion of this closet the missile was impossible to locate.

  “Get a window cord,” directed Poggioli, “and we can approximate its line of flight by the wound and the hole in the window.”

  Mordag sat up in bed watching them with a colorless face. The two men used chairs, a walking stick, the throwing knife, and so maneuvered the line into position; one end pointing at the wound, the other at the hole in the glass. The line was leveled on a window across the court.

  “Describe the location of that room to the desk clerk,” suggested Poggioli, “and see if it was occupied last night.” Olsen went to the house telephone and began talking. The psychologist turned to the man on the bed.

  “Did you hear anything in the night, Mordag, a shot—”

  “Mr. Poggioli, please—”

  “I’m sorry—Morning—Did you hear a shot last night?”

  “No, I went to sleep.”

  “He would hardly have heard it anyway, coming from a room across the court,” interposed Olsen. He began talking to the office again. “A room on this floor on the opposite side of the court....Has two windows in it . . . What number? Oh,

  1875. And you say it was empty last night? . . . Empty but locked. Well, we supposed it was locked; that’s running true to form....Yes, if you’ll send the key up, we’ll cross over.”

  HE PUT the instrument on its hook. Poggioli was examining the pane of glass itself. The ball had struck from the outside, taking off delicate slivers on the inside. It really had been shot from across the court. He gave up the examination.

  “Well, let’s go around to 1875 and see what we can find there.” Mordag began getting out of bed hurriedly.

  “I’m not going to stay in here by myself. I’ll go with you.”

  The ex-assistant was so shaken that Poggioli begged him to stay where he was, but his fear overcame his weakness.

  “No, I can walk; I’m all right.” He repeated, “I can walk.”

  “We’re going to hunt for La Plesse,” warned the psychologist, hoping to discourage him.

  The cadaverous man gave the wannest twist of his skeptical smile. “I’m not afraid of you finding him.”

  The two men helped Mordag get on his socks and shoes and tied his tie, then the three walked out of the room and started along the corridor that led around the court.

  When the matron at the floor desk caught sight of the thin man, she threw up her hands.

  “Poor Mr. Mordag—they’ve poisoned him at last!”

  “No,” said the docent, “it’s the strain. He’s under a terrible strain.”

  “Poor man,” consoled the matron, arising from the desk and following the trio. “Here are the keys. The clerk telephoned me to go with you. Just pick out any room you want and I’ll let you in.”

  “Thanks,” said the docent.

  “Have you found out anything new—what does Mr. Tapper think about it?”

  “Mr. Tapper—” the thin man’s mouth made mussitations of Tapper’s name when Olsen said—

  “Oh, Tapper remains hopeful of getting Mr. Morning out of his trouble; so do I for that matter.”

  The three men and the woman walked on around the turn in the corridor. As the room numbers neared 1875 Mordag became more and more nervous.

  “There’s not any use looking in that room,” he complained. “You know he won’t be there after he killed Mr. Tapper.”

  “What! What!” cried the floor matron. Olsen turned sharply.

  “Don’t pay any attention to him,” he advised significantly. “He has murder on the brain.”

  At this moment a door behind the group opened and a man came out into the corridor and walked past the four in the direction they were going. The searchers lined up along the wall to allow the man to pass. The stranger walked rapidly and was ten or twelve doors ahead when suddenly Mordag caught the psychologist’s arm.

  “O God!” he gasped, on the verge of collapse. “That’s Professor La Plesse!” A kind of shock traveled through Poggioli. He started forward.

  “La Plesse! La Plesse! Stop there!”

  The next moment Olsen and the docent began running. The man down the corridor broke into a sudden dash without a glance over his shoulder, and swung suddenly aside into a door. They saw him work a moment at a bolt and vanish suddenly into a room.

  Poggioli dashed up to the door with Olsen at his heels. He tried the bolt and found it locked.

  “Matron! Matron!” he shouted. “Come on!” He ran back to her and met her down the corridor while she fumbled at her keys.

  “What room?” she puffed.

  “What room, Olsen?” called the docent. “The one we were hunting—1875.”

  The woman selected a key and Poggioli went running back with it.

  “He won’t be in there,” chattered Mordag, stopping two or three doors down the hallway and staring after the men fearfully.

  “Why,” cried Olsen, “I saw him go in.” The reporter twisted at the key in the lock. He looked at Poggioli. “He’s holding the knob from the inside.”

  “What’ll we do?”

  “I believe I can break in the panel of the door . . .” Olsen looked at the convex hardwood finish.

  “You won’t find him if you break in,” cried Mordag. “I’ve seen it tried before.”

  “But I tell you he’s holding the door,” snapped the newspaper man.

  “He does that—holds it up to the very last second, then turns it loose and he’s gone.”

  “Keep up the pressure,” cried the psychologist. “As long as he twists against you you know he’s there. Matron, go get help!”

  The woman went waddling down the corridor in a great hurry.

  At that moment the lock on the door suddenly gave. The bolt snapped back and almost at once Olsen and the docent found themselves inside.

  The room was one of those uncompromising cubicles with one door and two windows such as a single room in a large hotel usually is. It was obviously empty.

  “Look in the closet,” suggested Poggioli, glancing about the blank interior. Olsen jumped for the knob of the closet and tried to turn it. This also stuck.

  Then after at least a half minute of straining, it gave way. The door swung open so suddenly that Olsen half fell. Poggioli stepped inside with hand out ready to grapple with anything inside, but beyond the musty warmth of an unaired closet he felt nothing.

  The psychologist groped around, found the switch of the closet light, turned it on. The interior was empty except for two or three whisky bottles and an old shirt some guest had discarded.

  The two men reentered the room. The window on the court was raised about six inches.

  “That’s where he went out,” cried Olsen, running to it. “He tried to pull it down after him but didn’t have time!” The reporter jerked up the sash and thrust his head out. He looked up and down. “He might be one of these human flies—
”

  “You don’t see him?” asked Poggioli, running to the same window and looking out. “No, but he’s had time to climb down three stories and crawl in a window below.”

  Poggioli was somehow not at all surprised at the magician’s escape. He looked up and down in the futile fashion of the reporter. Then he observed that the dust and soot on the window ledge and on the fillet of masonry below it were not marked. He reached down his finger and touched the film. It made a clear cut dot. Poggioli glanced at Olsen. The reporter was not watching and did not get the significance of the untracked dust.

  The psychologist leaned out of the window, looking this way and that. Across the court, in one of the opposite windows, he presently picked out the form of Tapper still sitting by the bed. Just then the docent’s fingers felt a little roughness on the outer edge of the ledge. He leaned out and looked at it. It was a bullet hole. He reached in his pocket, drew out his penknife. He began digging in the wood. Presently he touched steel and a few minutes later had the missile in his hand. He turned it about, looked at it.

  “Olsen,” he said slowly, “this is why we couldn’t find the bullet in Mordag’s closet.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Olsen, mystified.

  “I mean La Plesse was standing in the closet across the court when he fired at Tapper. This is his bullet.”

  “But look, man,” cried the reporter. “La Plesse’s bullet entered that window across yonder, you can tell by the fracture of the glass.”

  “M-m-m, yes; that’s true.”

  They heard a sound at the door and both men whirled.

  It was Mordag. He was leaning against the side of the door giving an impression that he had crawled up the corridor to that point.

  “You didn’t catch him—he wasn’t in here?”

  “No.”

  “I—heard what you said. If—if he had already got into my room, why did he kill Mr. Tapper?”

  “He advanced that idea merely on the strength of one bullet,” explained Olsen comfortingly. “He found a bullet here in the window ledge; it may have been shot across the court a long time ago.”

  “And if he fired a bullet in my room, why didn’t it wake me?” complained Mordag.