by Don Wilcox
I ducked out and strode down the corridor to find the doctor. It was high time he and I had a confidential talk.
CHAPTER II
Jonathan’s Jewel
Reentering Dr. Ramsell’s room, I carefully closed the door behind me.
“All right, Doctor, I’ve seen him,” I said. “I’ll admit he gave me plenty of pains I couldn’t locate. What does it all add up to?”
“Maybe murder,” said the doctor enigmatically, without looking up. “Maybe insanity. I’ll discuss it with you shortly.”
He remained engrossed in a book for several minutes. I sauntered to an open window and I looked down toward the wealthy residential section of the city.
From this height I could pick the Buffler estate in the bend of the river that passed the edge of the city. The red tile roof of the mansion, almost two miles distant, stood out distinctively from this vantage.
“Come,” said the doctor. “We’ll go to lunch and thrash this thing over. Oh, by the way, here’s an interesting volume on symbolism.”
From his numerous books dealing with different types of psychoses, he picked up one and opened it to a picture—a reproduction of an intricate pen and ink drawing.
“A bit of art done by a patient at a mental hospital,” he said.
I studied the picture and praised it. It was a Spanish market scene with a wealth of carefully etched detail. But not until the doctor pointed it out did I see the skull cunningly hidden among the shade-covered cobblestones. Then I saw the mark of the Spanish Loyalist that adorned the skull.
“The artist,” said Dr. Ramsell, “went to infinite pains to draw that picture, just so he could plant that one symbol. His particular mental disorder happens to be based on a fear of his enemies. His fight against the Rebels came to a bitter defeat, and he saw many of his comrades shot down. But here he gets a secret feeling of victory out of representing his enemy as a death’s-head being trodden underfoot.”
“An elaborate lot of art for one small trick,” I commented.
“Exactly. That’s a curious but typical thing about many such cases,” the doctor mused. “Incidentally, Jonathan Buffler’s mirrors are a pretty elaborate lot of art, too. I only hope they may serve as a safety valve, in his case.” We went down the elevator a few floors to a cafeteria, where we found a suitable corner for carrying on our discussion. By this time my thoughts seemed as crisscrossed as the fibers of a rug—or even the light waves from mirrored walls.
“Then you think,” I ventured, “that all these mirrors have a purpose other than saving Uncle Jonathan’s eyes?”
“Uncle Jonathan’s eyes—rot! His eyes are as healthy as anyone’s, when new rugs come in to be looked over. His suffering is just a front. So are the mirrors. Like the picture of the Spanish market.
“But that secret purpose—the death’s-head—the victory over the enemy—that’s what I’m looking for in Jonathan Buffler’s mirror mania. And I want you to help me find it. Have you seen either of the females?”
“Becker,” I said. “But I noticed a plump blonde with black eyelashes when I passed a room marked ‘Secretary Number 2’. Could that be Jewel?”
“That’s Jewel. All play, no work. Both eyes on your uncle’s money. All right—here’s how the jigsaw fits together. Your aunt died not long after Jewel came to work for Buffler. I wasn’t connected with Buffler at that time, but I’ve heard that the coroner and a few other officials held their breaths for awhile until that incident blew over. I have reason to believe that your Aunt Mary Buffler died under strange circumstances.”
Ramsell’s tone brought my appetite to a sharp stop. I laid down my fork. I only listened. And with every word, I caught a clearer picture of Uncle Jonathan as Aunt Mary’s murderer!
“Whatever those circumstances were,” the doctor continued, “I’m sure, from the indications Gertrude Becker has given me, that she knows. Perhaps she has proof of that murder. At any rate, that is the source of her power over Buffler. She holds a whip hand over him. She stands in his path as solid as a prison wall.”
“Prison wall!” I echoed under my breath.
“And that wall has begun to frustrate Jonathan Buffler more every day. It won’t let him have the one thing he craves more than anything else.”
“Jewel?”
“Jewel,” Ramsell replied. “Jewel expects to marry Buffler’s wealth. But Gertrude Becker forbids him to marry her.”
“Why?”
“Because Becker has worked for him for twenty years or more, and much of his success is due to her good business judgment, not his own. Now Gerty’s just stubborn enough and proud enough to send him to prison before she’ll let him dump his wealth into the lap of a cheap gold-digger.”
“Is Becker in love with him too?”
“I’ve often wondered,” said the doctor. “Whether she is or not, in his mind she’s simply an obstruction—a wall—between him and what he wants. And Jonathan Buffler is used to having whatever he wants.”
I mused over the matter, and the doctor nervously finished his lunch.
“She’s a wall,” he repeated, his lively black eyes snapping. “She’s a wall that he hates, because walls aren’t easy to dissolve. But—you can always make a wall seem to dissolve by hanging a mirror over it!”
I must have stared at the doctor for a full minute. All my solid thoughts on this problem suddenly jumped out from under me. I turned these last words over and over, trying to make sense out of them. Gertrude Becker was a wall. Buffler hated her. So he dissolved her—symbolically—by dissolving all walls. That, at least, was the doctor’s theory.
Very impolitely, I laughed. Somehow I couldn’t quite swallow such a theory at first taste. I felt a childish impulse to poke fun at it.
“If Gertrude Becker is the real wall he wants to dissolve,” I said, “why doesn’t he hang a mirror on Gertrude?” The jibe disturbed the doctor not in the least.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if he did,” he retorted, swallowing the last of his coffee.
“Or,” I pursued, winking to myself, “if he finds it awkward to hang a mirror on her, why doesn’t he just hang her and be done with it?”
“You’re going to be a great help,” said Ramsell with a smile that stung me. “But for all your facetiousness, you’ve hit close to the real thing.”
He looked at me steadily and I felt the perspiration break out over my body.
“In other words,” he said, “whether Buffler has yet faced it consciously or not, the set-up is perfect for him to resort to another murder.”
My spine went cold. A chain of possibilities leaped through my mind. A fortune at stake. Becker fighting to save it. Murder hovering over her. The doctor plunging into the fight—and the great-nephew arriving on the scene—and what might happen to him? I tried to pull my thoughts back to something solid and tangible.
“But—but the mirrors—the safety valve—” I mumbled.
“If my theory is correct—and I’m not too confident that it is—the mirrors may act as a subconscious outlet for awhile. Buffler may even hide his worst intentions from his conscious self for a time. But sooner or later—”
The doctor rose from the table and gestured, palms outward, as if to say that anything might happen.
As we returned to the top floor I assured Dr. Ramsell that I would respect his confidence and would cooperate in every way possible.
“For the present there’s nothing to do but stay around for a friendly visit,” the doctor replied. “Of course you mustn’t seem to be watching him. But if my suspicions are well founded you’ll probably see the signs before it’s too late. After all, committing a clean murder isn’t as simple as purchasing rugs or installing mirrors. Keep in touch with me. We may find that my theories are groundless. I hope to God we do!”
For the rest of the afternoon I loafed around the offices and the rug display rooms, letting the matter turn over in my mind. I stopped in and had a chat with Gertrude Becker about the weather and the high co
st of living, and left her in a fair humor in spite of her upset over the mirrors, which were already being installed in her own office. Becker was a pretty decent sort, regardless of her ill-suppressed feud with my great-uncle.
Late in the afternoon Uncle Jonathan and I became fast friends. I listened to his pet peeves about light rays—listened my way right into his heart. He even took me through some of his offices on the next floor below, where a battery of new calculating machines was busily multiplying the number of cones in the fovea[2] of the human eye by the number of seconds of time, and these by the billions and trillions of light waves which the eye must encounter going to and from work.
The review of the calculating activities, however, had a depressing effect upon Uncle Jonathan. He came away with new pains in his eyes, and he suddenly announced that he was almost too ill to be on his feet. We trudged back to his darkened office and he dropped weakly into his chair.
Then Jewel came in, her blond hair bouncing and her darkened eyes flashing with anger and her carmine lips drawn hard. I took one look at her and buried myself in a newspaper and was forgotten.
“So that’s what you think of me!” she snapped at Uncle Jonathan.
“Now Jewel,” Buffler protested in his lovey-dovey voice. “Don’t be that way.”
“But you did it deliberately, Johnny. I’m jealous. I’ve got a right to be.” She gored him with her sharpness. “You deliberately gave that woman her first choice of the tints—and what about poor me? Poor me gets left out in the cold.”
“But Jewel, you wouldn’t want pink-tinted mirrors in your office.”
He plumped down in a chair and sulked.
“I certainly would! Pink is my color. You know that. And yet you give all the pink mirrors to old Drizzlepuss.”
“Jewel, dear, be reasonable.” He tried to stroke her hand but she jerked it away. “You can have any other tint you want, just so every office is different—that’s the way I contracted for it.”
“Then change your contract!”
“You can have blue—green—amber—”
“Just because she’s your Number One secretary, and I’m Number Two—”
“Jewel, stop it!”
“You don’t love me, Johnny, no you don’t, or you’d let me have my way!” The quarrel got worse as it went on, and I took a nod from Buffler as a sign for me to leave. I obeyed reluctantly, for the profanity was just beginning to get good, and I had never heard a female who was more of an artist at it than this Jewel.
That evening as the chauffeur drove Buffler and me along the river drive toward the red-roofed mansion, I perceived that my uncle was in a terrific turmoil.
“She may walk out on me,” he shuddered, as if the thought filled him with deep terror.
“Then you didn’t give her the pink mirrors she wanted?” I asked.
“No, dammit, the pink ones were already installed in Drizzlepuss’s office. I made Jewel take green.” He sighed painfully. “It’s a helluva thing to break a little girl’s heart over, ain’t it? But that’s what I’ve done.”
CHAPTER III
Death in the Night
From all appearances my uncle was a very sick man. He had me fix a blindfold over his eyes and read the evening paper to him, while he lay on a bed and suffered. At length he said he believed he would sleep, and begged me not to waste my evening taking care of him. The yellow roadster in the garage was mine to use as long as I cared to extend my visit, and I might as well enjoy myself.
Unpredictable. That’s what Doctor Ramsell had said of him, and the doctor was right. Jonathan Buffler’s hospitality was so much greater than I had expected that I should have been suspicious.
I drove out of the garage and through the driveway with my eyes on the bright lights reflected in a pink glow over the skyline. I could see Buffler Tower, one of the nearest tall buildings, rising stately into the darkness. The majesty of that building was impressive; it made me stop and wonder whether I had the proper appreciation for its owner.
As I skimmed along the pavement, that wisp of sentiment kept tickling my mind, and it was the thing that made me turn around and go back before I had reached the city’s bright lights.
“This is no way to do,” I told myself, “running out on my uncle the first night of my visit, after the warm welcome he’s given me. There’ll be other nights to run around.”
So I zipped back to the red-roofed mansion, thinking to myself what a lonely place it must be, now that Aunt Mary was gone. It was, in fact, almost a deserted place; for Jonathan Buffler had dispensed with all his servants and kept only a houseman. Perhaps he was lonely, misunderstood, in need of a companion—even such as Jewel. I could not believe he had murdered Aunt Mary.
I ran the roadster into the garage, and the doors slipped closed quietly at my touch. As I walked toward the porch steps a faint flash of light issued from along the side of the house—a curious quick flash that caught my curiosity. Impulsively I went toward it, puzzled because it had come from near the ground.
The flash did not come again, nor did I see anyone with a flashlight. All I found was a basement window with a piece of glass broken out of it. Through the break came a very faint glow of light from a basement room. I concluded that the flash I had seen must have been nothing more than an electric light switched on and off by the houseman.
The voice of Jonathan Buffler, however, rattled through the basement room. This somehow punctured my sentimental picture of him. For I had been expecting to find him still in his bed, perhaps wishing there was someone to bring him a drink of water or read a book to him. The voice I heard was vigorous and hearty, not the voice of a sick man. I bent to the window.
I couldn’t see much through the aperture, for it was almost completely clogged with the ends of two tubes that pointed through the window. I had the sensation of looking down a double-barreled shotgun.
But being interested in the state of Jonathan Buffler, and not in shotguns, I paid scarcely any attention to the pair of poised tubes. I was vaguely aware that they were connected with a hodgepodge of mechanism which cluttered a large share of the dimly lighted basement room. I was vaguely aware too, that some of that mechanism was electrical, and that all of it was new and gleaming.
But those observations were largely unconscious. It was Jonathan Buffler that I was curious about, and it was Jonathan Buffler that I saw.
“She wanted pink mirrors too, damn her!” came his voice as plainly as if I were in the room with him.
His hulking round form plodded across the floor toward the open door of an adjoining room. He was pouring out his confidences to the houseman, in whose wake he trailed.
“But I’ll square things with her after we’re through,” he added with a bitter chuckle.
“Sure. She’ll understand,” said the houseman, and their voices were lost in the further room.
So the old scoundrel wasn’t sick! It made me hot in the face to think how easily he had deceived me. I walked away from the window and struck out along a river path afoot. It was high time for me to pull my slow wits together and think some of these things out.
Was Jonathan Buffler insane—or wasn’t he? If he could be too sick to walk—too sick to use his eyes—too sick to keep his date with Jewel, and then within an hour could lose every symptom of that illness, he was either a superb actor or else he was mentally unbalanced. Was it possible that he had become a split personality, living alternately in two different worlds? Had he lapsed into schizophrenia?
I scuffed along the gravel path looking across toward the lights of the downtown skyline that reflected in the river. The three red lights atop the Buffler Tower and its several bright windows kept the scenes of the day turning over in my mind. A few lights on the top floor were burning.
I wondered if the doctor was still up there, poring over his theories. I wondered if the new pink mirrors in Becker’s office, and the mirrors through the hallways and in Buffler’s sanctum, were still tirelessly swaying.
I sauntered back to the mansion and found that Buffler was again in bed with the blindfold over his eyes. He was awake and I talked with him a few minutes.
“Thank God, I can close out the devilish light with a blindfold,” he muttered darkly. “I’m a sick man, Olin.”
“Let me send for Doctor Ramsell,” I said.
Buffler vetoed the suggestion with a pained oath.
“That damned idiot doctor! He’s got no heart! I try to tell him how I suffer, but he won’t hear me. He just looks a hole through me, like a hungry owl. I’d like to change eyes with him once and give him a taste of what I endure.
“But hell, you could shoot copper wires through his eyes and it wouldn’t affect him any more’n every light ray that shoots through mine!”
“I’m sorry you’re feeling so badly,” I said.
“Go to bed and forget about me,” he snapped. “And sleep late, because I’m not going to work tomorrow. I’m not going to be able.”
I trudged off to bed, but not to sleep. This thing had me going now. Jonathan Buffler was ill in my presence. That was the thing that stuck in my mind. If he was acting, the acting itself amounted to illness, it was so intense.
Following the doctor’s train of thought, I pondered over the blindfold. If this affliction was all psychological, the blindfold must be a subconscious expression of something that Buffler hated to face. But what? The memory of a past murder? The conception of a future one?
I snapped on a light and tried to read, but it was useless. Every news story in the paper related somehow to my troubled thoughts. Then my mind reverted to the curious apparatus I had glimpsed in the basement. I put on my clothes and tiptoed downstairs.
