The Psychological Solution
By A. Hyatt Verrill
Copyright © 1928 by A Hyatt Verrill
This edition published in 2012 by eStar Books, LLC.
www.estarbooks.com
ISBN 9781612104621
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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The Psychological Solution
By A. Hyatt Verrill
CHAPTER I
The Discovery of Columbus
Henry Columbus, khaki clad, his ebon face gray with ashes and dust, and driver of one of those two-wheeled abominations maintained by the municipality of New York for the reception of rubbish and the dispersal of dust over passengers, was industriously emptying the ash cans on the north side of West 85th Street.
It was a charming spring morning, and Henry, well content with the world and himself, was whistling cheerily while he worked. As he rolled the battered iron containers to the curb, and raising them, dumped their contents into his vehicle, he glanced at the miscellaneous odds and ends that poured from them, ever on the watch for some discarded but still serviceable article which he might salvage.
Farther down the street, and working east from Amsterdam Avenue on the opposite side of the thoroughfare, was Tony Celentano with his wagon. Like Henry, the Italian was also on the alert for chance treasure-trove among the rubbish.
As the dusky namesake of the famous discoverer reached the group of cans before a block of brown-stone front houses, he noticed that one of the receptacles was filled to overflowing with a bulging, patched, burlap bag.
Whatever the contents were they were heavy, and wondering vaguely what the can contained, Henry heaved it over the edge of his cart. The bag. however, was tightly jammed into the can, and, in order to dislodge it, he was forced to clamber onto the half-filled wagon. Grumbling a bit at the extra labor involved, he grasped the sacking with a huge black paw and tugged at the bundle.
''Must be some folks' dawg must be daid," he muttered to himself, as he noticed the peculiar yielding limp character of the thing. "Must 'a been some pup," he continued. "Spec' he one of dem perlice dawgs mos' likely."
Exerting more strength, Henry yanked the bundle, and the old burlap ripped open. The next instant the quiet street echoed to a blood-curdling screech, as the negro leaped from the wagon, and with wildly rolling eyes, dashed westward at breakneck speed, yelling as he ran.
Had it not been for Celentano, Henry might be running yet. The Italian, startled at his fellow worker's scream, and seeing his mad dash, sprang across the street and seized Henry's flying coattails. Together the two rolled head over heels, Henry struggling to free himself and continue on his way; the Italian as intent on holding him and learning the cause of his fright.
Although the hour was early, the negro's screams had aroused the neighborhood, and boudoir-capped feminine, and tousel-haired masculine heads were appearing at windows throughout the block. Two yellow and three checker taxis were already racing for the scene of uproar, and milk wagon drivers and other early wayfarers were running from all directions towards the struggling men. Last of all— and most remarkable for having been in the neighborhood when wanted—came a panting policeman.
As the latter pushed his way through the group that had gathered about the negro and the Italian, Henry caught sight of the blue uniform and found his voice at last.
"Lordy!" he gasped. "Lord A'mighty! T'ank de Lord you's come! Boss, dey's a daid man up yander in mah cart!"
Instinctively, at the words, every head was turned, and everyone gazed half fearfully toward the wagon, which still stood where Henry had abandoned it in his flight.
"Whatcha givin’ us?" demanded the officer. "Come along here and show me watcha hollerin' about."
But Henry demurred. "No, sir, Boss." he exclaimed, fairly shaking with terror. "Ah ain' gwine near dat cart. No, sir, dey's a sack in a can wha's got a daid man inside. No, sir, Boss. Ah ain't aimin' to go meddlin' with no daid folks."
But with the officer grasping his collar, Henry, despite his protests, was dragged unceremoniously towards the cart, with the crowd following and Tony bringing up the rear.
Still skeptical, the officer stepped on the wheel hub and peered over the vehicle's side. Lying among the rubbish was the battered can, and where the rotten sacking had been torn apart, a human head was exposed.
"The smoke's right!" ejaculated the policeman. Then, turning to Celentano, "Here, you Wop, hustle around to the box and send in a call for a couple a men. Tell 'em there's a murder up here."
By the time the other officers had arrived on the scene, the usually quiet street was in an uproar, and a dense crowd filled it from Central Park West to Amsterdam Avenue. A hasty examination of the gruesome find was made, and the sack, which contained the body of a well dressed man, was removed from the wagon and taken to the police station, much to Henry's relief. But he vowed vociferously that he would gather no more rubbish cans with possible cadavers within, and an extra driver had to be sent for to drive the cart on its rounds and complete the collection of containers.
That a murder had been committed seemed evident. The dead man's clothes were stiff with dried blood, and an ugly gash just below the collar-bone showed how he had met his end. Naturally, therefore, the police immediately conducted an examination of the premises in front of which Henry had made his discovery, and, of the occupants thereof. But equally as naturally, without results. The houses, once the residences of well-to-do citizens, had been converted into furnished apartments and were occupied by tenants whose respectability and good standing could not be questioned. Not one, and for that matter not a resident of the entire street, could be found on whom the police could cast suspicion, though why the police should have imagined that a murderer or murderess would place the body of a victim under his or her own window was as great a problem as the crime itself.
And the mystery of the crime very rapidly deepened and became more and more involved. Even the dead man's identity was unknown. No one who in the least resembled the body had been reported as missing. There was no mark or clue that would throw light on the matter. The sack which had contained the dead man was so old and had been patched and mended so often that it was hopeless to endeavor to trace it. Not a soul in the street could remember ever having seen the murdered man, and the police were forced to admit at last—as they might just as well have done in the beginning—that the body had been brought from a distance and dumped into the ash can.
That such an easy and safe means of disposal of a corpse had never before been adopted by murderers was rather astonishing, and the very simplicity of the unique method of getting rid of the body made it the more baffling. At any time during the night, a motor car might have driven through the street and might have drawn in to the curb without arousing the least attention or suspicion. And, with equal ease, the body might have been carried from the car across the few feet of intervening sidewalk and dumped into an empty ash can. The street, during the night, was unfrequented and not too well lighted, and by waiting for a favorable opportunity, the criminal or criminals might easily have stepped from the car, dropped the sack with its contents into the container, and continued on their way as though nothing unusual had happened. Even had pedestrians been near, there would have been little chance t
hat the murderer would have been noticed. The cans stood in heavy shadows between the high front steps of the houses, and no passer-by would have thought it unusual to see a car parked before a house or to see a man entering or emerging from the area-way under the front steps.
Indeed, residents of the block agreed that a number of cars had been through the street during the night preceding Henry's discovery, and that several of them had been drawn up in front of the houses where the body had been found.
In fact, by checking up, the police found that there had scarcely been an hour during the night when cars or taxis had not been in the street; but not one of these had attracted enough attention to cause the observers to note the license numbers, the body types, the colors or the makes of the cars.
For a time the murder mystery filled the papers. A thousand and one theories and suggestions were advanced. A score of people identified the body, only to be proven wrong as the supposed victims were duly accounted for. Then the whole affair lost its news interest and the public forgot it.
CHAPTER II
Doctor Thane, Psychologist
Although the press, the man about town, the subway perusers of the daily papers, and the public in general had forgotten the crime and its baffling mystery, two men were still deeply interested in solving it. One was the chief of detectives in whose district the body had been found; the other was Doctor Edmund Curtis Thane, the eminent scientist.
Doctor Thane had, on more than one occasion, proved of invaluable aid to the police in unravelling mysteries of crime, and yet he was neither a criminologist nor, in the ordinary sense of the word, an amateur or scientific detective. He was by profession an anthropologist, and most of his waking hours were spent in his office on the fifth floor of the American Museum of Natural History, where he pored over scientific reports and studied fragments of the skeletons of long dead and forgotten human beings of strange races. He had traveled widely, especially in out-of-the-way regions and among primitive savages, and he had written numerous monographs on the results of his researches and studies. These had been undoubtedly of the greatest scientific interest and value, but were utterly unknown to the public at large; for that matter, neither was the Doctor himself.
For years the short-sighted, quiet, pleasant-faced little scientist had been striving to solve the age-old puzzle—the origin of man and the relationship of races. He had attacked the problem from every angle, and having at last reached the conclusion that it was impossible of solution from accepted viewpoints, it had occurred to him that greater progress might be made from the psychological standpoint.
From the very first his studies along this new line met with marked success. Men's bodies and bones, their lives and habits, their dialects and arts might be greatly influenced and altered through environment. But the mind, the psychology of the races, he theorized, would remain steadfast, and even if undergoing a change through external influences, would retain the ancestral characters and serve to connect the various races far more reliably than pigmentation of skin, dialects or other characteristics of the human race.
Moreover, so Doctor Thane reasoned, it would be in the psychological reactions of the more primitive and ignorant types of mankind, that valuable discoveries would be made. So, following his hypothesis, Doctor Thane turned his attention to the mental workings of the criminal classes. It was his belief and contention that crime, as defined by law and civilized standards, was merely the result of a psychological condition, a reversion to the ancestral type, a manifestation of our prehistoric ancestors' mental processes. Scientifically speaking, it was not crime at all; it was natural, and the criminal was no more responsible for it, than he or she is responsible for the color of his or her hair or eyes or the form of the skull.
Assuming that this were so—and of this Dr. Thane was firmly convinced—then the study of crime and the analysis of criminals' minds were the paths to follow in his studies. Hence the mild mannered, spectacled little man of science at once interested himself in matters usually left to the police. And as he was a man who never did anything by halves, he made as deep a study of crime as he had of skeletons and shards in the past. The more involved, inexplicable and unsolvable a crime, the more it fascinated him. Looking, as he did, upon crime from an entirely new viewpoint, and being the possessor of a truly remarkable intellect, keen reasoning powers, deductive ability and a wonderful memory, and being thoroughly conversant with the habits, lives and points of view of nearly every savage and barbaric race, Dr. Thane soon proved himself a master mind at solving mysteries which utterly baffled the officials.
Personally, he cared not a jot whether a criminal was brought to justice or not. Rather, he would have preferred—for his purposes—to have the violators of the law turned over to him for study, instead of being summarily dealt with, or through the medium of the electric chair or a hangman's rope remove their mental processes forever from all possibility of scientific investigation.
As he was forced to cooperate with the police in order to carry on this most interesting research successfully, it naturally followed, as a rather regrettable but unavoidable result, he thought, that his cooperation inevitably resulted in the removal of his subjects from his sphere of studies at a most inopportune time. Hence Dr. Thane could not be included in the category of a detective or criminologist. Though he had studied all available works on crime and the methods of world famous investigators, he had discarded all recognized and familiar lines of his predecessors, and went about his investigations in a totally new way.
For the detective heroes of fiction—Sherlock Holmes and similar characters—Dr. Thane had the greatest contempt. The mysteries of literature unraveled by these wonderful characters were very different from the real things. The author of the tale worked backwards, building up a series of incidents, of baffling puzzles and of misleading clues to fit a solution already prepared and known in advance. In actual practice, however, the investigator had to build up and find a solution from whatever fragmentary information he could obtain. But just as the famed hero of Sir Conan Doyle's stories was wont to deduce the truth through his miraculous knowledge of everything from the distinctive ashes of various tobaccos to the chemical properties and peculiarities of every ink and paper, so Dr. Thane proved himself able to deduce the truth through his even more marvelous knowledge of human minds and primitive psychology. Very often he could solve a seemingly insoluble mystery without moving from his comfortable study chair. Having absorbed the known facts, he would lean back, place the tips of his long fingers together, half close his eyes and concentrate his mind. Then, after a few moment's silence, he would mutter, something like this, half to himself:
"A clear case of reversion to nomadic, polygamous ancestral traits. Probably of Cro-Magnan affiliations influenced by Semitic fanaticism and inherited Mongol traits and tribal customs. Let me see. Ah, I think you will find that the crime was committed by a short, stocky, dark-haired man with a narrow receding chin, rather heavy projecting brows, a sloping forehead, high cheek bones, a prominent nose, thick lips and sparse beard. He will, I think, have restless, shifty eyes of uncertain hue. He will be quick and active for a man of his build; he will in all probability have bowed legs and long arms, and will be of a roving disposition. You will undoubtedly find that he has changed his residence frequently, has had a number of wives— very likely a bigamist—or at least has lived with several women coincidently; that he is a thief and a pickpocket, if not a burglar, and is, at least outwardly, very religious."
These, and many other details outlined by the scientist, would be proved as amazingly accurate as though Dr. Thane had been present when the crime had been committed.
Very carefully, too, he had recorded every minute detail of every crime he had studied, had tabulated the results, and had jotted down the deductions he had drawn from his analysis of each case. But he discovered, in studying these results, that there had been a lamentable lack of variety and originality in the crimes which had come under his ob
servation. For more ready reference and comparison, he had divided the cases into groups, arranging them according to the psychological and racial facts drawn from them, and he found that many links in his chain of evidence were woefully lacking.
Most of the cases were, so to speak, negative. Many were so similar that they might be considered duplicate specimens in his collection. And, to his chagrin, he found that comparatively few races had taken part in the committing of acts against the community. To be sure, there were those baffling East side murders, which Dr. Thane had solved by tracing them to Ethiopian savagery actuated by an inherent belief in Obeah and devil worship. There were the almost equally inexplicable crimes of the Malay which had been cleared up by the scientist's deep knowledge of Malaysian beliefs and mental processes. And there were a number of Mongolian crimes. But the great majority were those committed by Europeans, by men or women of mixed ancestry and mental characteristics so involved, that even Dr. Thane despaired of drawing logical and unassailable conclusions from them.
Indeed, he had almost despaired of carrying to the end this most fascinating investigation, when he learned of the discovery of the body in the ash can.
CHAPTER III
Dr. Thane Draws Some Conclusions
When Dr. Thane first undertook to unravel criminal mysteries by means of psychological anthropology, he was laughed at by the police. Not that the officials of the department, or their underlings, openly ridiculed him, for Dr. Thane was far too prominent a man, and possessed far too many influential friends and sponsors to warrant that. But he was looked upon as a harmless crank, a "bug hunter" as the police put it, who had a nonsensical hobby, and many were the jokes and loud laughter at his expense when he was out of sight.
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