The Big Book of Reel Murders

by Stories That Inspired Great Crime Films (epub)

  With an effort Dr. Millard brought his attention back to the waiting attorney. “The events of that afternoon.” A flood of vivid recollection swept into his mind.

  * * *

  —

  Except for the cultivated, ironic voice of the lone, lanky figure on the stage the auditorium was still with the concentrated silence of homage. Observing the fascinated eyes around him, Dr. Millard thought of a flock of birds, mesmerized by a serpent. And indeed—he carried the reflection further—the words of Elmo Durgeon were the words of the Serpent.

  “People have accused me of encouraging sin. That is nonsense. They might as well accuse me of encouraging volcanoes. Like the volcano, sin is nature’s way of letting off steam. It becomes dangerous only when it is bottled up too long. Let me tell you, sin is one of our most misunderstood institutions. It is not sin, but excess, whether of sin or anything else, that produces trouble for us. Real evil is more likely to flow out of attempts to be excessively virtuous, than from normal, moderate sinfulness. If I had to select a single piece of practical advice to give to young people today, it would be, ‘Go forth, my son, and sin intelligently, in moderation.’ Let me tell you a story—”

  When Durgeon had first walked out on the stage and leaned over the little table with its inevitable carafe of water, the applause had been weak; most of the uplifted faces stern with disapproval. Nearly every woman in the afternoon audience—and it was composed mainly of women, with a scattering of reluctant husbands—had felt obliged to censure his notorious atheism, however delightedly they had read his prize-winning, best-selling novels, and however zestfully they had rushed to hear his famous, or infamous, lecture, Defense of Sin. Forty minutes of contact with his incandescent personality had rubbed away the masks of propriety. Ruefully, Dr. Millard considered that he never saw such captivated expressions at his sermons.

  “—what it would be like to live in a sinless world? Can you imagine anything duller than a life of unbroken virtue? Sin is the essential pigment of life, providing the color of existence. What would we talk about without the sins of our friends and neighbors? What would we find to remember in our old age if it were not for the delightful sins of our youth? For each of us the secret story of his own heart is the best story of all, and what would it be without its scarlet passages?”

  A murmur of half-shocked amusement swept the audience, and Dr. Millard shook his head. The theme, he told himself, was as old as Eden, but there was a vibrant force about the man himself that gave a certain plausibility to anything he said. It was not Durgeon’s words that made him dangerous, so much as the personal magic that reached out from him to his audience, concealing the hollowness of his sophistries. Every churchman of experience knew that the only way sin could be kept “in moderation” was to fight it relentlessly. Given encouragement, such as Durgeon was giving, sin could swiftly expand, like an exploding gas, into disaster for the individual spirit and for society as a whole. Across Dr. Millard’s mind flitted an ancient text: “An ungodly man diggeth up evil, and in his lips is a burning fire.” Burning fire. Yes; Durgeon’s words had a cool sound, but a searing quality, like dripping acid.

  “My friends, what we call our sins are no more than the normal, emotional responses of healthy human beings to a difficult life. Consider lust, for example. Let’s talk about lust for a moment. Let’s talk about it sensibly, like the intelligent people we are—and of course you’re intelligent, otherwise you would not be here. Let’s not raise our hands in pious horror, but regard lust for what it is—proof that nature wants us to reproduce and continue the species more than it wants anything else from us. Why else are we constructed the way we are? My friends, the man who would have you cease to lust, at least while you are young, would destroy the essential humanity of you, would take away your emotional life and leave you dry and sterile.”

  Dr. Millard regretted, now, his decision to attend the lecture. He had yielded to ladies of his congregation, who had pressed him to hear Durgeon in order to prepare a reply from the pulpit. It occurred to him now that by persuading him to go, they had provided themselves with an excuse. He could understand their curiosity. The publicity for the lecture had been relentless and effective. Durgeon’s publishers and the bookstores of the city had advertised the author’s books and his impending visit for weeks past. He was a fashionable subject at every woman’s club and sewing circle. The newspapers had carried flamboyant accounts of his stormy lecture tour across the country, and only that morning a first page story had been headed, Famed Author Will Defy Heavenly Wrath.

  “Isn’t it a joke, friends, that people should still crowd into church on Sundays, to hear sin denounced by some dear, good man who knows nothing about it? The only people qualified to give advice about sin are the sinners—like myself. When your clergyman talks to you about sin, if he really is a holy man, he can only give you secondhand opinions. If, however, he has led a sinful life, if he knows about sin from personal experience, then he has no right to be up there in the pulpit, scolding you. Why, I once knew a minister—a sweet old soul—whose children were juvenile delinquents practically from the cradle, but he never—”

  Dr. Millard had an impulse to get up and leave, but he considered that to do so would make him unpleasantly conspicuous, and doubtless add grist to Durgeon’s sardonic mill. He wondered how effective his reply to Durgeon next Sunday would be for the patently enthralled women in the audience? So far as charm and magnetism went, there could be no contest. He smiled wryly as he confessed to his heart that between a primrose path described by Durgeon, and a strait-and-narrow path described by Millard, the primroses would probably win, petals down.

  “According to the dear, good men who talk to you on Sundays, I have been uttering blasphemies. On the basis of what I have said to you this afternoon, God—if there is a God—ought to have no hesitation at all about destroying me. It would be a great thing for religion if He were to send down a well-aimed thunderbolt about now, and put an end to me. Don’t you think so? In fact, if He fails to hurl a bolt or two, I think it will be decided negligence on His part, don’t you? Let’s see if we can’t persuade Him.”

  A quiver of anticipation made the audience seem for an instant to be physically responding to the satirical voice, as if this was the moment they had been waiting for. Dreamily, Dr. Millard thought, how wonderful it would be if a miracle did now occur—a flaming hand—a voice of thunder. He thrust the fantasy aside, as unworthy of his calling. The aware mind needed no spectacular proofs of God’s existence. His attention returned to the stage. Cheap and hackneyed through Durgeon’s performance was in its conception—and, after all, publicity-seeking atheists had been using the same trick for generations—yet the author managed to invest it with a certain dramatic suspense. With devastating mockery he was addressing the roof of the auditorium.

  “All right, God, I invite You to destroy me. I urge You to do it. I ask You to send down Your lightning as proof that You really exist. I’m quite willing to be the sacrifice. Why permit a voice like mine to go on challenging Your existence? Here are all these good people, sitting here expectantly. Don’t disappoint them, God. I’m putting my watch out here on the table. How long does it take to work up a good thunderbolt and hurl it? Five minutes ought to be plenty of time. Now, while the audience sits quietly waiting, God, give proof, if You can, that You are up there, listening.”

  There were a few boos from the audience, but they died away. Some of the faces which Dr. Millard could see wore frowns; others were amused, but all were entirely interested. Rumpling his hair and cocking one eyebrow in a deliberately Satanic twist, Durgeon began to pantomime his role—stifling a yawn, taking a drink of water, sitting on the corner of the table, glancing at his watch.

  “One minute has gone by, friends, God still has four minutes to make Himself heard. Don’t give up hope.”

  He had barely finished the sentence, when the dull crack of a gunshot filled th
e auditorium. Shocked and staring, the audience saw Durgeon clutch his chest with an expression of surprise. A strange noise, resembling the word, “No,” escaped him, and he slid slowly to the floor, carrying the carafe of water with him in a wet heap.

  Through a sense of horror, as he looked at the trickle of red blood which appeared on Durgeon’s white shirt, Dr. Millard became aware of a feeling of elation, as if suddenly his whole life had been vindicated. Instantly he was contrite at harboring so callous an emotion, but it was there, deep in him. A phrase from the Psalmist came unbidden to his lips: “Yea, He did swoop down upon the wings of the wind.” In the same moment he realized that all around him elation and awe and guilt and terror were rampant in the breasts of people who had been challenging or encouraging Durgeon in their secret thoughts. Some were pale and silent, others cried out inarticulately. A man muttered, “God has spoken.” Several women fainted, creating little eddies of movement in the mounting confusion. Bewildered voices asked what had happened, and other voices demanded, contrapuntally, “Who did it?” “Who shot him?”

  Dr. Millard dismissed from his mind a feeble notion that Durgeon might be faking, to lend excitement to his act; there was a hideous and convincing realism about the limp posture of the body on the stage. Men rushed from the wings to where the author lay, and above the strident babble a voice roared from the balcony, “I’ve got him!” Another yelled, “Get his gun!” Muted shrieks rose from the audience, died away and rose again. As in a violent and oppressive dream Dr. Millard watched the efforts of the management to keep order, the arrival of a doctor on the stage, a subsequent invasion of police, ambulance interns, newspaper reporters, and photographers, and the removal of Durgeon’s body. Presently a police officer announced that Durgeon was dead, that the man who had fired the shot had been apprehended in the balcony, and was giving no trouble; the audience would please leave quietly. On the way out Dr. Millard caught a glimpse of the prisoner being led quietly away by police—a small, ragged man, with sunken eyes in a heavily unshaven face of waxlike pallor, and a scarred and twisted jaw.

  * * *

  —

  “Thank you, Doctor,” said Mr. Levatt. “I know that this excellent jury felt the essential truth in every word you have spoken.”

  The lawyer noted the tense whiteness of Dr. Millard’s face, and the tight grip of his hands on the arms of the chair in which he was sitting. Automatically, he expressed his concern in a way calculated to win yet greater sympathy for his witness from the jury.

  “You look tired, Doctor,” he said in an audible murmur. “I know this must be a great strain for you. You’re sure you feel well enough to go on?”

  “Yes, I’m all right. Let’s proceed,” Dr. Millard replied, with a touch of impatience.

  “Well, then, Doctor, after witnessing the remarkable scene you have described, you became interested in the arrested man, John Nobody?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think it will save time if you describe for the court in your own way just how that happened, and just what your relation to John Nobody has been.”

  Again Dr. Millard glanced at the prisoner, who was watching him with almost breathless intensity; and he brought to his mind the circumstances under which they had first met, face to face…

  * * *

  —

  It was a newspaper reporter who first called the nameless slayer “John Nobody,” and the name had caught on. From the first, he was the darling of the press. All except two of the numerous psychiatrists who examined him refused to credit his protestations of lost memory; but it was the two exceptions whom the press preferred to quote, and the public to believe. The prevailing opinion was that the amnesia was genuine, but of “some unknown type.”

  Certainly John Nobody never wavered in denying knowledge of who he was, and where he came from. To all questions about his past, he replied with a slow, regretful, “I cannot remember.” Photographs of his face and fingerprints circulated by the police and press all over the country brought no identification. People close to Durgeon—family, friends, publisher, agent, manager—were sure they had never seen John Nobody, sure that Durgeon had not known him.

  As the only clergyman who had witnessed the slaying, Dr. Millard was promptly besieged by newsmen. Did he consider Durgeon’s death an act of God? Was John Nobody an agent of divine wrath? Publicly he refused to make a statement; privately he wrestled with his own feelings. He had always preferred to keep his religious concepts on a high and rather abstract plane, and had never encouraged belief in the intervention of the Deity in personal affairs. He was not a credulous man, superstitious, or inclined to easy belief in miracles. But his vivid memory of his own emotions in the auditorium made him unwilling to regard the slaying of Durgeon as mere mundane murder. Besides, no motive had been found for murder.

  Meanwhile, from the press, from other clergymen, from his congregation, from the public, increasing pressure came on him to speak out. Finally, the president of a Wicheka businessmen’s club, conscious of economic aspects of the case which had never occurred to Dr. Millard, made an inspired suggestion: would the minister, esteemed by everyone in the city, head a public Committee of Investigation? Not without misgivings, Dr. Millard consented, and a committee of six was organized, consisting of reputable citizens with church affiliations, three of them women.

  On orders from the Mayor, the police permitted the committee to have a private interview with the prisoner. John Nobody was brought into the room where the committee awaited him, and having been given a chair, quietly submitted to their scrutiny and questions.

  Studying him carefully, Dr. Millard saw a face of sharply formed, firm features, with small but intelligent brown eyes. The heavy scar which deformed the lower jaw gave an odd, stern twist to the mouth; but the face could not be called mean, or humorless. John Nobody, the minister estimated, was well over forty years old. His dark hair, heavily peppered with gray, was thin at temples and crown. Most noticeable was his complexion, of a dead pallor that could not be accounted for by his short stay in prison, and his breathing, which was somewhat labored. The man was obviously under a strain, but his manner was composed. His only pronounced sign of nervousness was an occasional curious gesture of his hand around the collar of his shirt—a fluttering of the fingers, which he repeated unconsciously from time to time in the hour that followed.

  His slow speech was direct and grammatical, and his voice too suggested a better-than-average education. Dr. Millard found he could not give his accent a regional origin; it could have passed without notice almost anywhere in the United States.

  Replying to the committee’s questions, John Nobody said, in deliberate sentences, and with a direct gaze, that he had tried hard to remember who he was, but that nothing came to him. Perhaps he sensed a certain good will in the attitude of his inquisitors, for he spoke with more freedom and fluency than in his responses to the police. Particularly, he seemed drawn to Dr. Millard, at whom he looked continually when speaking, and to whom, some members of the committee felt, he was making an unspoken plea.

  “The first thing I remember,” John Nobody said, “was sitting on a stone fence, alongside a country road just outside Wicheka. I had on an old suit and an old overcoat that I never saw before, so far as I know. My head ached a lot. I was cold, particularly my feet, and for a little while I felt kind of sick. Then I noticed that I had this gun on my lap. A .30–30 repeating rifle it was. I knew that. I must have known something about guns. I pulled back the breech and saw that the gun was loaded. But I didn’t have any idea how I got it. That was when I found I didn’t know my name—or anything about myself.”

  “And then?” asked Dr. Millard.

  “I sat there, for a while, trying to think. Then it seemed to me I heard someone speak, and I looked around. There wasn’t anybody. It was kind of windy, and raw, and I couldn’t see a soul any place. Then I heard somebody speak again. It wasn’
t exactly a voice. It was more a kind of a whisper, a rustling sound. It said, ‘You have been chosen. You have been chosen.’ Over and over. I thought I was crazy. Then the wind blew a piece of newspaper along. It caught on a bush near me, and I reached over and got it.

  “The first thing I saw was the name of this Durgeon. I couldn’t remember ever having heard of him before, but somehow I knew right away that he was important to me. I read about how he was going to speak. Then I heard the voice again. And it said, ‘A faithless generation looks for a sign.’ ”

  The man called John Nobody paused, and sat frowning, his eyes obscure, like a man trying to understand something that puzzled him endlessly.

  “Do you have any recollection at all of having attended church in the past?” a woman committee member asked gently.

  He shook his head. “No, I can’t remember anything like that.” He took a deep breath, and resumed his narrative. “I was sitting on that fence, telling myself I was crazy, but I knew right then this wasn’t my imagination. I just—knew. I knew I had to do this thing right away. I read the newspaper again, and put the sheet in my pocket. The police have it now. It told where this man Durgeon was speaking.”

  “Did you have any feeling about Durgeon? Did you hate him—or anything?” the same woman inquired.

  “Nothing like that. I didn’t feel anything about Durgeon. But I knew what I had to do. There just wasn’t any doubt about it in my mind. I started to walk along the road. It was a long way, but I never even knew it. All the time my head was kind of buzzing. I remember I carried the rifle under my overcoat, and it was awkward. Maybe you’ll think I’m making this up, like the police did, but I knew in advance just where I was going and what was going to happen, and yet everything was new to me.”