Suddenly he tensed more than he was already, if that was possible, and missed a breath. Missed two—forgot all about timing them. Something—what was it?—something was in the air; his nose was warning him, twitching, crinkling, almost like a retriever’s. Sweet, foreign, subtle, something that didn’t belong. He took a deep sniff, held it, while he tried to test the thing, analyze it, differentiate it, like a chemist without apparatus.
Then he got it. If he hadn’t been so worked up in the first place, he would have got it even sooner. Sandalwood. Sandalwood incense. That meant the Chinese couple, the Youngs, the apartment below. They’d been burning it last night when he was in there, a stick of it in front of that joss of theirs. But how could it get up here? And how could it be harmful, if they were right in the same room with it and it didn’t do anything to them?
How did he know they were in the same room with it? A fantastic picture flashed before his mind of the two of them down there right now, wearing gauze masks of filters over their faces, like operating surgeons. Aw, that was ridiculous! They’d been in the room a full five minutes with the stuff—he and Perry and Courlander—without masks and nothing had happened to them.
But he wasn’t forgetting how Young’s head had swung around a little to scan the reversed register when they came in tonight—nor how their dog had whined, like it had whined when Dillberry’s body fell past their window, when—Bob had said—it never whined at other times.
He sat up, pulled off his shoes, and started to move noiselessly around, sniffing like a bloodhound, trying to find out just how and where that odor was getting into the room. It must be at some particular point more than another. It wasn’t just soaking up through the floor. Maybe it was nothing, then again maybe it was something. It didn’t seem to be doing anything to him so far. He could breathe all right, he could think all right. But there was always the possibility that it was simply a sort of smoke-screen or carrier, used to conceal or transport some other gas that was to follow. The sugar-coating for the poison!
He sniffed at the radiator, at the bathroom drains, at the closet door, and in each of the four corners of the room. It was faint, almost unnoticeable in all those places. Then he stopped before the open window. It was much stronger here; it was coming in here!
He edged warily forward, leaned out a little above the low guard-rail, but careful not to shift his balance out of normal, for this very posture of curiosity might be the crux of the whole thing, the incense a decoy to get them to lean out the window. Sure, it was coming out of their open window, traveling up the face of the building, and—some of it—drifting in through his. That was fairly natural, on a warm, still night like this, without much circulation to the air.
Nothing happened. The window didn’t suddenly fold up and throw him or tilt him and pull him after it by sheer optical illusion (for he wasn’t touching it in any way). He waited a little longer, tested it a little longer. No other result. It was, then, incense and nothing more.
He went back into the room again, stretched out on the bed once more, conscious for the first time of cold moisture on his brow, which he now wiped off. The aroma became less noticeable presently, as though the stick had burned down. Then finally it was gone. And he was just the way he’d been before.
“So it wasn’t that,” he dismissed it, and reasoned, “It’s because they’re Chinese that I was so ready to suspect them. They always seen sinister to the Occidental mind.”
There was nothing else after that, just darkness and waiting. Then presently there was a gray line around the window enclosure, and next he could see his hands when he held them out before his face, and then the night bloomed into day and the death watch was over.
He didn’t come down to the lobby for another hour, until the sun was up and there was not the slimmest possibility of anything happening any more—this time. He came out of the elevator looking haggard, and yet almost disappointed at the same time.
Maxon eyed him as though he’d never expected to see him again. “Anything?” he asked, unnecessarily.
“Nothing,” Striker answered.
Maxon turned without another word, went back to the safe, brought a bottle out to him.
“Yeah, I could use some of that,” was all the dick said.
“So I guess this shows,” Maxon suggested hopefully, “that there’s nothing to it after all. I mean about the room being—”
Striker took his time about answering. “It shows,” he said finally, “that whoever it is, is smarter than we gave ‘em credit for. Knew enough not to tip their mitts. Nothing happened because someone knew I was in there, knew who I was, and knew why I was in there. And that shows it’s somebody in this hotel who’s at the bottom of it.”
“You mean you’re not through yet?”
“Through yet? I haven’t even begun!”
“Well, what’re you going to do next?”
“I’m going to catch up on a night’s sleep, first off,” Striker let him know. “And after that. I’m going to do a little clerical work. Then when that’s through, I’m going to keep my own counsel. No offense, but”—he tapped himself on the forehead—”only this little fellow in here is going to be in on it, not you nor the manager nor anyone else.”
He started his “clerical work” that very evening. Took the old ledgers for March, 1933, and October, 1934, out of the safe, and copied out the full roster of guests from the current one (July, 1935). Then he took the two bulky volumes and the list of present guests up to his room with him and went to work.
First he canceled out all the names on the current list that didn’t appear on either of the former two rosters. That left him with exactly three guests who were residing in the building now and who also had been in it at the time of one of the first two “suicides.” The three were Mr. and Mrs. Young, Atkinson (Peter the Hermit), and Miss Flobelle Heilbron (the cantankerous vixen in 911). Then he canceled those of the above that didn’t appear on both of the former lists. There was only one name left uncanceled now. There was only one guest who had been in occupancy during each and every one of the three times that a “suicide” had taken place in 913. Atkinson and Miss Heilbron had been living in the hotel in March, 1933. The Youngs and Miss Heilbron had been living in the building in October, 1934. Atkinson (who must have been away the time before on one of his nomadic “prospecting trips”), the Youngs, and Miss Heilbron were all here now. The one name that recurred triply was Miss Flobelle Heilbron.
So much for his “clerical work.” Now came a little research work.
She didn’t hug her room quite as continuously and tenaciously as Peter the Hermit, but she never strayed very far from it nor stayed away very long at a time—was constantly popping in and out a dozen times a day to feed a cat she kept.
He had a word with Perry the following morning, and soon after lunch the manager, who received complimentary passes to a number of movie theaters in the vicinity, in return for giving them advertising space about his premises, presented her with a matinee pass for that afternoon. She was delighted at this unaccustomed mark of attention, and fell for it like a ton of bricks.
Striker saw her start out at two, and that gave him two full hours. He made a bee-line up there and passkeyed himself in. The cat was out in the middle of the room nibbling at a plate of liver which she’d thoughtfully left behind for it. He started going over the place. He didn’t need two hours. He hit it within ten minutes after he’d come into the room, in one of her bureau drawers, all swathed up in intimate wearing apparel, as though she didn’t want anyone to know she had it.
It was well worn, as though it had been used plenty—kept by her at nights and studied for years. It was entitled Mesmerism, Self-Taught; How to Impose Your Will on Others.
But something even more of a giveaway happened while he was standing there holding it in his hand. The cat raised its head from the saucer of liver, looked up at the book, evidently recognized it, and whisked under the bed, ears flat.
“So she
’s been practicing on you, has she?” Striker murmured. “And you don’t like it. Well, I don’t either. I wonder who else she’s been trying it on?”
He opened the book and thumbed through it. One chapter heading, appropriately enough was, “Experiments at a Distance.” He narrowed his eyes, read a few words. “In cases where the subject is out of sight, behind a door or on the other side of a wall, it is better to begin with simple commands, easily transferable. 1—Open the door. 2—Turn around,” etc.
Well, “jump out of the window” was a simple enough command. Beautifully simple—and final. Was it possible that old crackpot was capable of—? She was domineering enough to be good at it, heaven knows. Perry’d wanted her out of the building years ago, but she was still in it today.
Striker had never believed in such balderdash, but suppose—through some fluke or other—it had worked out with ghastly effect in just this one case?
He summoned the chambermaid and questioned her. She was a lumpy, work-worn old woman, and had as little use for the guest in question as anyone else, so she wasn’t inclined to be reticent. “Boss me?” she answered, “Man, she sure do!”
“I don’t mean boss you out loud. Did she ever try to get you to do her bidding without, uh, talking?”
She eyed him shrewdly, nodded. “Sure nuff. All the time. How you fine out about it?” She cackled uproariously. “She dippy, Mr. Striker, suh. I mean! She stand still like this, look at me hard, like this.” She placed one hand flat across her forehead as if she had a headache. “So nothing happen’, I just mine my business. Then she say: “Whuffo you don’t do what I just tole you?” I say, ‘You ain’t tole me nothing yet.’ She say, ‘Ain’t you got my message? My sum-conscious done tole you, “Clean up good underneath that chair.”‘
“I say, ‘Yo sum-conscious better talk a little louder, den, cause I ain’t heard a thing—and I got good ears!”
He looked at her thoughtfully. “Did you ever feel anything when she tried that stunt? Feel like doing the things she wanted?”
“Yeah man!” she vigorously asserted. “But not what she wanted! I feel like busting dis yere mop-handle on her haid, dass what I feel!”
He went ahead investigating after he’d dismissed her, but nothing else turned up. He was far from satisfied with what he’d got on Miss Heilbron, incriminating as the book was. It didn’t prove anything. It wasn’t strong enough evidence to base an accusation on.
He cased the Youngs’ apartment that same evening, while they were at the wife’s broadcasting studio. This, over Perry’s almost apoplectic protests. And there, as if to confuse the issue still further, he turned up something that was at least as suspicious in its way as the mesmerism handbook. It was a terrifying grotesque mask of a demon, presumably a prop from the Chinese theater down on Doyer Street. It was hanging at the back of the clothes closet, along with an embroidered Chinese ceremonial robe. It was limned in some kind of luminous or phosphorescent paint that made it visible in the gloom in all its bestiality and horror. He nearly jumped out of his shoes himself at first sight of it. And that only went to show what conceivable effect it could have seeming to swim through the darkness in the middle of the night, for instance, toward the bed of a sleeper in the room above. That the victim would jump out of the window in frenzy would be distinctly possible.
Against this could be stacked the absolute lack of motive, the conclusive proof (two out of three times) that no one had been in the room with the victim, and the equally conclusive proof that the Youngs hadn’t been in the building at all the first time, mask or no mask. In itself, of course, the object had as much right to be in their apartment as the mesmerism book had in Miss Heilbron’s room. The wife was in theatrical business, liable to be interested in stage curios of that kind.
Boiled down, it amounted to this: that the Youngs were still very much in the running.
It was a good deal harder to gain access to Peter the Hermit’s room without tipping his hand, since the eccentric lived up to his nickname to the fullest. However, he finally managed to work it two days later, with the help of Perry, the hotel exterminator, and a paperful of red ants. He emptied the contents of the latter outside the doorsill, then Perry and the exterminator forced their way in on the pretext of combating the invasion. It took all of Perry’s cajolery and persuasiveness to draw the Hermit out of his habitat for even half an hour, but a professed eagerness to hear all about his “gold mines” finally turned the trick, and the old man was led around the turn of the hall. Striker jumped in as soon as the coast was clear and got busy.
It was certainly fuller of unaccountable things than either of the other two had been, but on the other hand there was nothing as glaringly suspicious as the mask or the hypnotism book. Pyramids of hoarded canned goods stacked in the closet, and quantities of tools and utensils used in mining operations: sieves, pans, short-handled picks, a hooded miner’s lamp with a reflector, three fishing rods and an assortment of hooks ranging from the smallest to big triple-toothed monsters, plenty of tackle, hip boots, a shotgun, a pair of scales (for assaying the gold that he had never found), little sacks of worthless ore, a mallet for breaking up the ore specimens, and the pair of heavy knapsacks that he took with him each time he set out on his heartbreaking expeditions. It all seemed legitimate enough. Striker wasn’t enough of a mining expert to know for sure. But he was enough of a detective to know there wasn’t anything there that could in itself cause the death of anyone two rooms over and at right angles to this.
He had, of necessity, to be rather hasty about it, for the old man could be heard regaling Perry with the story of his mines just out of sight around the turn of the hall the whole time Striker was in there. He cleared out just as the exterminator finally got through killing the last of the “planted” ants.
To sum up: Flobelle Heilbron still had the edge on the other two as chief suspect, both because of the mesmerism handbook and because of her occupancy record. The Chinese couple came next, because of the possibilities inherent in that mask, as well as the penetrative powers of their incense and the whining of their dog. Peter the Hermit ran the others a poor third. Had it not been for his personal eccentricity and the location of his room, Striker would have eliminated him altogether.
On the other hand, he had turned up no real proof yet, and the motive remained as unfathomable as ever. In short, he was really no further than before he’d started. He had tried to solve it circumstantially, by deduction, and that hadn’t worked. He had tried to solve it first hand, by personal observation, and that hadn’t worked. Only one possible way remained, to try to solve it at second hand, through the eyes of the next potential victim, who would at the same time be a material witness—if he survived. To do this it was necessary to anticipate it, time it, try to see if it had some sort of spacing or rhythm to it or was just hit-or-miss, in order to know more or less when to expect it to recur. The only way to do this was to take the three dates he had and average them.
Striker took the early part of that evening off. He didn’t ask permission for it, just walked out without saying anything to anyone about it. He was determined not to take anyone into his confidence this time.
He hadn’t been off the premises a night since he’d first been hired by the hotel, and this wasn’t a night off. This was strictly business. He had seventy-five dollars with him that he’d taken out of his hard-earned savings at the bank that afternoon. He didn’t go where the lights were bright. He went down to the Bowery.
He strolled around a while looking into various barrooms and “smoke houses” from the outside. Finally he saw something in one that seemed to suit his purpose, went in and ordered two beers.
“Two?” said the barman in surprise. “You mean one after the other?”
“I mean two right together at one time,” Striker told him.
He carried them over to the table at the rear, at which he noticed a man slumped with his head in his arms. He wasn’t asleep or in a drunken stupor. Striker had alread
y seen him push a despairing hand through his hair once.
He sat down opposite the motionless figure, clinked the glasses together to attract the man’s attention.
“This is for you,” Striker said, pushing one toward him.
The man just nodded dazedly, as though incapable of thanks any more. Gratitude had rusted on him from lack of use.
“What’re your prospects?” Striker asked him bluntly.
“None. Nowhere to go. Not a cent to my name. I’ve only got one friend left, and I was figgerin’ on looking him up long about midnight. If I don’t tonight, maybe I will tomorrow night. I surely will one of these nights, soon. His name is the East River.”
“I’ve got a proposition for you. Want to hear it?”
“You’re the boss.”
“How would you like to have a good suit, a clean shirt on your back for a change? How would you like to sleep in a comfortable bed tonight? In a three dollar room, all to yourself, in a good hotel uptown?”
“Mister,” said the man in a choked voice, “if I could do that once again, just once again, I wouldn’t care if it was my last night on earth! What’s the catch?”
“What you just said. It’s liable to be.” He talked for a while, told the man what there was to know, the little that he himself knew. “It’s not certain, you understand. Maybe nothing’ll happen at all. The odds are about fifty-fifty. If nothing does happen, you keep the clothes, the dough, and I’ll even dig up a porter’s job for you. You’ll be that much ahead. Now I’ve given it to you straight from the shoulder. I’m not concealing anything from you, you know what to expect.”
The man wet his lips reflectively. “Fifty-fifty—that’s not so bad. Those are good enough odds. I used to be a gambler when I was young. And it can’t hurt more than the river filling up your lungs. I’m weary of dragging out my days. What’ve I got to lose? Mister, you’re on.” He held out an unclean hand hesitantly. “I don’t suppose you’d want to—” Striker shook it as he stood up. “I never refuse to shake hands with a brave man. Come on, we’ve got a lot to do. We’ve got to find a barber shop, a men’s clothing store if there are any still open, a luggage shop, and a restaurant.”
Death Locked In Page 31
