Dark Tunnel

by Ross Macdonald

  Haggerty stuck his nose and a gun out of the window and said, “Stay where you are.”

  I said, “Throw me a sheet then. My knees are naked to the blast. As well as my—”

  “I said you were nuts,” Haggerty growled but he threw me a sheet and I disguised myself as Julius Caesar. He clambered over the sill, dropped to the ground, and seized my togaed arm.

  Feeling unpleasant and at the same time unaccountably gay, I said, “Et tu, Haggerty? Then die, Caesar.”

  “Jesus,” Haggerty said to himself, looking at me with the awe policemen reserve for rich men and lunatics. “He really is nuts.”

  He spoke to me in dulcet accents, as to a little child, “C’mon, professor, let’s you and me just go inside, eh? What are you doing out here anyway, eh?”

  “Reconstructing the crime,” I said.

  “C’mon, professor, that’s all right, forget it. Don’t bother your head any more with that awful tragedy. You’ve had an awful night.”

  He twisted his face into what he thought was a smile of kindly solicitude, and led me gently but firmly towards a side door, babbling lines from Grade B movies:

  “Everything’s going to be all right, professor. You just have a nice, long rest and everything’s going to be jake. President Galloway’s here to see you and we’re going to drop our charges against you.”

  “You mean I can get out?”

  “You don’t have to run away, professor. Nobody’s going to hurt you. You just stay in bed and have a nice, long rest.”

  “Like hell I will. Bring me my clothes.”

  Haggerty led me into my room and urged me towards the bed with friendly grimaces. The policeman with the camel jaws was standing by the bed, looking sullen and betrayed. He said:

  “I just went down the hall for a drink of water, and when I came back this bastard is out the window.”

  “Where’s Galloway?” I said. “If you won’t bring me my clothes, bring me Galloway.”

  “You just get in bed now,” Haggerty said, “and I’ll bring you anybody you want. Then you can have a nice sleep and forget all about this awful calamity.”

  I sat down on the edge of the bed as a concession and said, “You damn fool, I think I know how Judd was murdered.”

  Haggerty looked at me and it began to dawn on him that I wasn’t crazy after all. I could see the sun rising in his eyes. Midnight sun. He said:

  “None of that talk now, professor. You can’t talk like that to an officer of the law. I could be pretty nasty about you trying to escape again.”

  “I wasn’t trying to escape. I was going to tell you how Judd was killed. Now I’m not going to give it to you.”

  “He wanted to confess, Sarge,” said the ship of the desert. “Want me to take it down?”

  “Bring me my clothes,” I said. “And take me to Galloway.”

  “Listen, professor.” Haggerty’s personality shifted again but it was still deficient. “If you know something, it’s your duty to tell us. Come on, professor, let’s have it.”

  I thought of the handcuffs and the thought left me feeling unpleasant and not at all gay. “I wouldn’t trust you with an old menu. I want to talk to a detective who isn’t moribund above the coccyx. Bring me my clothes.”

  Then I remembered that the clothes I had been wearing would make a good tail for a kite.

  A nurse opened the door and said to Haggerty, “Does the patient seem able to receive visitors? President Galloway is waiting in the office to see him.”

  “It depends upon the visitors,” I said. “These gentlemen, for example, irk me. Please take them away and bring the President.”

  Haggerty turned red and said, “You’ll have to talk at the inquest to-morrow morning.” He went out and the other policeman followed him, shaking his head over my treachery.

  After covering my legs with a sheet so as not to arouse her, I called in the nurse:

  “Will you do something for me, nurse?”

  “It depends on what it is,” she said, as if I looked capable of anything. I remembered my eyes.

  “Will you call up the janitor of the Plaza Apartments and tell him to bring me some clothes?”

  “I can’t do that,” she said. “You have to be released by a doctor.”

  “Is Dr. Meinzinger, in Surgery, here now?”

  “I think so.”

  “Bring him here. He’ll release me. And then call Max Simon at the Plaza and tell him to bring me a complete outfit in a taxi as fast as he can. Suit, shirt, tie, shoes, socks. Underwear. From my apartment.”

  “Yes, sir, if Dr. Meinzinger releases you.”

  “Tell him that if he doesn’t, I’ll remove his thyroid gland without benefit of ether. And please tell President Galloway I’d be very glad to see him.”

  “Yes, sir.” She crackled off down the hall.

  I got up and put on my toga and looked out the door. There was an office across the hall with an open door and a telephone on the desk. So far as I could see, there was nobody in the office.

  I ran across the hall, closed the door behind me, and sat down at the desk. I dialed the police station and asked to speak to the motorcycle officer who had interviewed Dr. Schneider about his automobile accident. I couldn’t remember his name.

  “Who is speaking, please?”

  “Beaumont Fletcher,” I said recklessly, “of the F.B.I. Quickly, please.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The motorcycle officer came to the phone and said, “Yes, Mr. Fletcher? Moran speaking.”

  I said, “When you interviewed Dr. Schneider last night, did he do any phoning? Or did his son do any phoning?”

  He thought a moment and said, “No, sir. None of them did any phoning while I was there.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I said, “Thanks,” and hung up.

  Then somebody else must have called Alec and told him to get up. Ruth Esch? I didn’t see how she could have, because she hadn’t got back to her hotel until ten to twelve. And when she got there, she had had to take a phone call herself. The call on Alec’s line had been put in soon after 11:30, the operator thought. Did Peter and Ruth have a third accomplice?

  But according to my reconstruction, Alec was unconscious until five minutes after twelve; otherwise, he’d have heard Helen Madden at the door and answered her. How could anybody have telephoned him if he was unconscious?

  I couldn’t work it out. I remembered where I was and got up and went into the hall. The nurse was coming down the hall towards me with President Galloway. I pretended to be a lost sheet blowing idly in the wind and scampered inconspicuously back into my room.

  I was in bed when the nurse opened the door and said, “Naughty, naughty, Mr. Branch. You haven’t been released yet. But I’ve brought you a visitor.”

  “Thank you. I was just testing my legs. Now bring me Bill Meinzinger and my clothes. Max Simon. Plaza.”

  She went away again and Galloway came across the room with his hand out. I shook the hand that had shaken the hands of governors and penetrated the pockets of wealthy alumni.

  “How are you, Robert, how are you?” Galloway intoned with the extreme urbanity of embarrassment. “You’ve had a fearful ordeal.”

  “I feel all right, thanks. A bit stiff, but I needed exercise. I understand the police are letting me out of here.”

  “Chester Gordon and I talked with Garvin, the County Prosecutor, this morning. Gordon found the marks of Schneider’s bullets in the Dictionary room. Garvin decided that—this—was all a mistake and he took immediate steps to rectify it. Perhaps you acted a trifle—er—indiscreetly, Robert, but the rest of us were decidedly obtuse. I feel very badly that you should have been—forcibly detained.”

  “I had a good sleep. There’s nothing like a police guard to keep people away from you—and you away from people. Has Peter Schneider been caught?”

  “Not yet. But they’re hot on his trail, I understand.”

  “Where’s
Gordon now?”

  “At McKinley Hall, I believe. After we spoke with Garvin, he said he was going to make a thorough examination of Alec’s office. He may very well be there still.”

  Bill Meinzinger put his long, intelligent Savonarola face in at the door and said:

  “Hello, Bob. I hear you want to see me.”

  “Pardon me,” I said to Galloway. “Do you know Dr. Meinzinger? President Galloway.”

  They shook hands and I said, “Did you see my x-ray picture?”

  “Yeah,” Bill said. “Your neck’s O.K.” He reached over and dug his fingers into it. It hurt and I threw up my hand to ward him off.

  The sleeve of my hospital gown fell down and exposed my forearm and he shifted his attention to it.

  “What’s the matter with your arm?” he said. “Intravenous? Whoever did it bungled it.”

  I looked at my arm and saw the blue circular bruise as big as a nickel just below my elbow. As soon as I looked at it, I was conscious that it hurt slightly. I remembered the sharp stab I had felt in my arm when Peter Schneider had me hog-tied in the barn.

  “I guess that’s what it is,” I said. “I was drugged this morning when I—”

  “I heard about that,” Bill said. “You don’t know what drug it was, do you?”

  “No.”

  “What were your subjective symptoms?”

  “I just went out like a light, it felt like floating away. Like sudden death. When I came to, I had a hangover head.”

  “How long were you out?”

  “I don’t know. It couldn’t have been so very long. Perhaps half an hour.”

  “It sounds like sodium pentothal to me,” Bill said.

  “What’s that?”

  “One of the barbiturates. Nothing to worry about; in fact, we’ve been using it a couple of years for bone-setting and the like. I understand they’re using it in the army now for battle fatigue. 20 c.c. will put a man out in about ten seconds, and keep him that way for twenty minutes to half an hour. No ill-effects, except that it leaves him feeling as if he’s been on a jag.” He stopped lecturing and looked at my arm again. “Your man knows the latest in materia medica, but he’s no hell at giving an intravenous.”

  “He’s good enough,” I said. Suddenly I thought of something: “Would this drug—sodium penthothal, is it?—show up in a post-mortem?”

  “Probably not, unless death occurred immediately after the injection. It’s excreted very rapidly. The mark of the needle would show, of course. It usually bruises the tissue a bit. But if you had succeeded in hanging yourself, there’d likely have been no trace except the mark on your arm, that is, if it was sodium pentothal.

  “Watch those eyes,” he said. “I’ll give the nurse some drops for you.”

  “Can I get out of here now?”

  “If you want to. Don’t you want more sleep? Or have you decided to break off the sleeping habit?”

  “I have a date with the F.B.I.”

  “Take care of yourself. Alec is going to be missed.”

  “He certainly is,” Galloway said.

  I said to Bill, “Tell the nurse I’m free, will you?”

  “O.K. So long. Good day, Dr. Galloway.”

  Bill went away and I turned to Galloway, who had sat down in a chair beside the window. “Have they captured Ruth Esch?”

  “No, they haven’t.” After a pause, he said as if he were contemplating a newly-discovered department of the universe:

  “It’s something I can’t understand, how scholars like Dr. Schneider, devotees of the humanities, can sink to such a level.”

  “Pro patria. They’re Germans. One-third of the officers of the Nazi party are school-teachers, or used to be. But I can’t understand the Esch woman.” I tried to think and talk about her as impersonally as I could. “When I knew her in Germany she was liberal to the core.”

  “Schneider, too, seemed to be a genuine liberal,” Galloway said. “He had taken out his American papers, you know. I’ve rarely been so mistaken in a man.”

  “I hardly took Alec’s suspicions seriously at first, yesterday.” Yesterday seemed very remote, something seen through the wrong end of a telescope. “I was trying so hard to be liberal and tolerant that I couldn’t see straight. Alec himself tried too hard to be fair. If he had gone to the police right away, he’d be alive now. But he gave Schneider an even break, and it cost him the best years of his life.”

  “He was a good and useful man,” Galloway said. “We shan’t be able to replace him.”

  The nurse opened the door, and Max Simon followed her in with my clothes over his arm. Everybody went out and I put them on in a hurry, cursing Max’s ideas of color-harmony under my breath.

  Galloway drove me to McKinley Hall and left me on the first floor to go into his own office. I started up the stairs two at a time. Halfway up to the fifth floor, I met Gordon coming down. He looked tired and strained—he couldn’t have had any sleep yet—but more friendly than he had been.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m a free man, thanks to you.”

  “Good. How do you feel?”

  “Better than I look. I want to talk to you, Gordon.”

  “Make it fast. I’m on my way.”

  “Then you’ve figured it out?”

  “How Judd was killed? No, I haven’t. I read the police reports, and the record of your testimony, and went over the room. But it doesn’t come clear. The autopsist found the marks of an intravenous injection on his arm, so it’s fairly certain he was drugged. But that doesn’t fit in with his being conscious when he fell. Are you sure about that?”

  “Yes, and so was Helen Madden. It fits in. Come up to the office, will you? I think I can show you how it was done.”

  He stopped straining at the conversation like a whippet on a leash and came along quietly to Alec’s office. Nothing had been changed in it since I saw it last the night before, except that the telephone-receiver had been replaced and the window closed.

  I opened the bottom pane wide, swinging it out to a horizontal position. Then I lifted the dumbbell shaped receiver-transmitter from the telephone on the shelf beside the window, and hooked the receiver end over the inner edge of the sash so that it hung there precariously.

  “What are you doing?” Gordon asked, with a resurgence of impatience in his voice.

  “I’m reconstructing a delayed-action murder. The principle is much the same as that of my own hanging-party. It’s the principle of the booby-trap, which is arranged in such a way that the victim destroys himself by his own efforts. It’s a clever idea but Schneider made the mistake of applying it twice. The repetition of a phenomenon leads to generalization.”

  I deliberately adopted the dry and impersonal manner of a lecturer, partly because it was the easiest way to talk about Alec’s death, partly because Gordon had been too condescending in the morning. He took it very well:

  “I think you’re right. I had the same idea but I couldn’t make it fit the circumstances. As a matter of fact, I found out from Schneider’s housekeeper this morning that Peter had been trained in the German army as a booby-trap expert.”

  “Did you find out anything else?”

  “Nothing important, except that Peter almost never came home because he got on badly with his father. The old woman’s either completely ignorant and innocent, or devilishly clever. Go on with your reconstruction, Branch.”

  I took the chain of the wall-lamp beside the window, which was still sticky at the end, and fastened it to the inside corner of the open pane with the piece of adhesive which was still there.

  “That’s all,” I said. “I’m not sure of all of this but I’m sure of most of it: Peter drove the Esch woman down to the hotel, where she registered about eleven. Meanwhile, Alec found his evidence against Dr. Schneider and hid it in the Dictionary office. On the way home, Peter spotted Alec’s car in front of McKinley and followed him in here—he must have had one of his father’s keys. Alec heard somebody in the building and phoned me
, but before he could finish, Peter surprised and overpowered him. He gave Alec a shot of sodium pentothal or some other quick-acting drug to put him to sleep. Then he phoned Ruth at the hotel, because he needed help. She must have come up here by taxi in a hurry.

  “They carried Alec up here, opened this window wide, and laid him out flat on it. Then they called up an accomplice on Alec’s telephone, and hung the receiver on the window like this. They didn’t leave anything to chance. The accomplice kept on saying, ‘Get up,’ or something of the sort over the telephone—”

  “That’s right,” Gordon said. “I talked to the operator. The exact words she heard were, ‘Get up, old man, get up!’”

  I went on: “That was the unintelligible voice Helen Madden heard through the door. When Alec came to, he heard the insistent voice telling him to get up. He didn’t know where he was, his mind was dazed and confused by the drug, and he said, ‘I don’t feel like it, but I will if I have to.’ Helen heard him. He sat up, the window partly closed under his weight, and he fell to the pavement. The person on the other end of the wire hung up.”

  “Why do you assume an accomplice, Branch? The principle of scientific parsimony—”

  “There must have been one,” I cut in brashly. “Peter did no telephoning after he got home. When Ruth got back to the hotel, she had a phone-call waiting for her to establish the time of her alibi, and she couldn’t have done it. They couldn’t have called Alec anyway: an unconscious man can’t answer the telephone.”

  Gordon didn’t look tired any longer. There were tiny candle-flames of excitement in his black eyes. He said:

  “Ruth Esch called herself at the hotel before she left this office. Then she wiped the receiver—or more likely she wore gloves—and hung it on the window and rushed down in a taxi to take the call at the other end. Certainly, it helped to establish her alibi, but it meant as well that she could sit down in her room and listen to his every movement over the telephone. She could persuade him to get up and make sure that he died. Perhaps she heard him cry out as he fell, perhaps the fall of the receiver when the window closed was all she waited for.”

  I had a clear, ugly vision of the woman sitting in a chair in her hotel room listening to a man die by telephone, with bright concentration in her green eyes.