A Puzzle for fools

by Patrick Quentin

  His lips moved in a brief, professional smile, then he said he would expect me at the same time the next day.

  When I was out in the passage, I saw John Clarke again. The new attendant was standing with his back to me, taking towels from a closet. Although he wore the official white coat of the institution, he did not seem to wear it as to the manner born. I noticed, too, that he was dealing very inefficiently with the towels. It was that which gave me the clue. Suddenly everything came flooding back to me.

  It had been two years since I had last seen John Clarke. But now that the link had been forged in my mind, I could remember him distinctly. We had met in those ghastly days after the theatre had burned down during rehearsals for my Romeo and Juliet production—those days when my mind was still dazed by the memory of Magdalene in her Juliet robes, trapped and helpless in that sudden, inexplicable blaze.

  They had suspected pyromania and the police had been brought in. Clarke had been one of those policemen. And I remembered him because there had been something solid and real about him. At that time he was one of the few human beings I could bear to have around me. I strolled up to him and said: "It was pretty dumb of me not to recognize you, wasn't it? "

  He glanced at me blankly over the pile of towels and then, seeing who I was, grinned cheerfully.

  "I thought you wouldn't forget, Mr. Duluth, but I was told not to let on. Incidentally I was talking to Dr. Lenz about you. He said you'd be out in a couple of weeks. That's swell."

  "Meanwhile you've been put in here to keep an eye on us nuts, I suppose."

  He gave me a broad wink. "I'm just the new attendant."

  "I get you," I said. "Who else is in on it?"

  "Only Moreno and Dr. Lenz. It was Captain Green's idea."

  "If you feel like talking out of school," I suggested, "I'd be very much interested."

  "I'm afraid I'm only a dumb cop," he replied cagily. "There's not much to tell except that they're working high-pressure and we expect something to break soon."

  "You expect something to break?" I echoed.

  "That's what we always tell the press, Mr. Duluth."

  He took a firmer grip on the towels and moved away, grinning over his shoulder.

  That grin gave me a slight sense of reassurance. Clarke was one of those dependable people who manage to make the ground feel firmer beneath your feet. And it might be useful to have a friend at court. Even so, I thought, it was going to take more than a John Clarke to straighten out this muddle.

  And a muddle it undoubtedly was. With every moment I seemed to be becoming more and more involved while I had less and less idea of what it was all about. But, through the most divergent channels, I seemed to have acquired a great amount of information which for the most divergent reasons I was compelled to keep to myself. It seemed only logical that I should try and do something about it. As I have already said, the detective instinct is a very fundamental one, even in ex-drunks. And, after all, I was still in possession of my faculties.

  With this resolve fresh in my mind, I seized the opportunity of cross-examining Miss Brush when we were out in the snow for our morning walk.

  Although she wasn't a nut, I felt that she would be the hardest of them to crack. She had completely lost yesterday's pallor and uneasiness. The blond brightness was as polished and hygienic as ever. Nothing, I felt, short of shock tactics could have any chance of success with her.

  We were a little behind the others when I began my attack.

  "Can I ask you an indelicate question, Miss Brush?" I said.

  "Certainly, Mr. Duluth." She tightened the blue scarf around her neck and switched on the famous smile. "That " 1 is, if you don't mind an indelicate answer."

  "There's a rumor floating around that you're engaged to Laribee. Is that true?"

  The smile vanished automatically, but I could detect no other change in her expression.

  "Because if it is true," I went on, "I want to be the first to offer official congratulations."

  Miss Brush paused in the snow. With her white nurse's cap and blond hair she looked the picture of exuberant health. She also looked as though she wanted to slap me.

  "Since I've been here, Mr. Duluth, I've been engaged to three authors, one bishop, several senators and a couple of charming young alcoholics like you. Unfortunately I'm still—er—Miss Brush."

  "So this is your first experiment with a millionaire," I said, smiling.

  She did not seem to think it funny. For a moment she positively glared at me. Then, with an effort, she became once more the radiant day nurse, the patients' delight. She laid a hand on my arm and said with formidable sprightliness:

  "Don't you think you're being rather stupid, Mr. Duluth?"

  "Frightfully stupid," I agreed. "If I hadn't been, I wouldn't be here and I'd never have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance."

  We hurried to catch up with the others.

  When we reached them, Laribee joined us. His face was wreathed in smiles and he offered me a mysterious "you're-in-it-too" look. Feeling in his breast pocket, he produced the fountain pen with which we had signed the will the night before.

  "I had meant to give this back to you earlier, Isabel,'* he said. "Thank you very much. And everything is settled."

  Once again he glanced knowingly at me. But Miss Brush seemed very careful not to catch my eye. With a casualness which seemed a trifle ostentatious, she took the pen and slipped it into the pocket of her coat.

  "Thank you, Mr. Laribee," she said coolly. "I'm sorry the pens in the library didn't suit you. I'm not in the habit of lending mine to everyone who wants to write letters, you know. But, you said you hadn't written to your daughter for several weeks."

  And that was all I got out of Miss Brush.

  It was possible, I supposed, that Laribee had faked up some excuse for borrowing that pen, and that Miss Brush was as innocent as she appeared. But one thing was certain. Our extremely efficient young day nurse was very definitely giving me no change.

  16

  THE WEATHER HAD STARTED to act up. By the time we returned from our walk, there were ugly clouds creeping up from the east and it looked as though we were in for a storm.

  The patients always reacted to bad weather. That afternoon we were all jumpy and on edge, even more on edge than we had been the day before. I could have blessed Geddes when he suggested a game of squash.

  We obtained permission from Miss Brush, changed, and had John Clarke unlock the court for us. It was a small independent building, standing in a corner of the yard. When we entered a musty smell of disuse invaded our nostrils. Lenz' male patients obviously were not keen on voluntary exercise. In fact, I myself had not been there before, and in my pre-drinking days I had thought I was a pretty good squash player.

  As soon as Clarke had left us, we started in. Geddes had said he was very rusty, but I might have known he was just pulling the old British line of modesty. He trimmed me badly and then grudgingly admitted that he had been Fives champion at the Calcutta Rackets Club in '26.

  "But this damn disease of mine mucks up everything, Duluth. Exercise seems to bring it on, too. It's a wonder I didn't drop off after playing just this one set." He leaned against the wall, wiping invisible perspiration from his forehead. "It's bally awful, Duluth. Half the time I'm living in a daze. Muzzy, just like a sheep."

  "Or a drunk," I added consolingly.

  Somehow I had a lot of admiration for that man's grit. He was the only one of us who never let down in public. I suppose that's what King Edward and the British Empire do for you.

  I suggested another set, but he wanted a rest. I had the impression that he was worried somewhere behind that veneer of his. Suddenly he said:

  "Did you come into my room last night, Duluth? Or was I just dreaming?"

  "I came all right."

  "And was it some business about witnessing that fellow Laribee's will?"

  "That's right."

  He started slightly as though he were surpr
ised, as though he had been half hoping I would deny it.

  "So it all happened," he murmured.

  His voice echoed around the walls of the squash court, sounding rather eerie, as though some of Fenwick's spirits were answering him. I remarked on it and, instantly, he said:

  "I've got to get away from this place, Duluth."

  He spoke with curious desperation. When an unemotional man like Geddes talks that way, it worries you.

  "You mean they're not curing you?" I asked.

  "Oh, it's not that particularly. I didn't really expect them to make me well." He laid his head with its perfectly combed hair against the wall and stared straight in front of him. "Of course, it may be my nerves. I thought it was until you told me about that business in your room really happening. You see, it all seemed like a dream. But if that part of it wasn't a dream, the other part can't be a dream either."

  I nodded, feeling a strange uneasy sensation.

  "I remember all that in your room very vaguely," he went on. "But I know Warren got me back to bed. For some reason I was frightened. I lay there for a long time in a kind of daze."

  He passed a finger along his mustache. There was something rather pathetic about the way he was keeping his hand from trembling.

  "It was sometime then that it happened, Duluth. It's so deuced impossible, I know you won't believe it"

  "Go on," I said.

  "I was lying there, half asleep when I heard that damn voice calling my name."

  "Good heavens."

  "But that's not all. At first I thought it was my own voice just like I did the first time. But then I knew it wasn't because—because I could tell there was someone else in the room."

  I realized that he did not know about all the other people who had heard the voice. He did not even know I had heard it. I could imagine what that visitation must have done to his nerves.

  "You'd scared me quite a bit when you came in, Duluth. But this is far worse. I could feel someone there in the darkness but they didn't speak—not after they had called my name." He shrugged his shoulders slightly. "I know this sounds like a kid's ghost story but at last it came right up to my bed—that figure. I could see it quite plainly."

  "A man or woman?" I cut in sharply.

  "I couldn't say. To tell the truth I was trembling all over like an idiot. But I did hear what it said. Very quiet and penetrating— 'There will be another thing on the slab, Martin Geddes. Fogarty was the first. You, Laribee and Duluth will be the next.' "

  The squash court was very quiet when he stopped speaking.

  "Of course," he murmured at length, "it might just have been Fenwick acting up again, but, well, it seemed somehow horrible and—and serious as though, whatever it was, it meant what it said. I could have called Warren on the house telephone, but ..."

  "I know exactly how you felt," I broke in quickly, feeling a cold tingling up my spine.

  "I thought I had to tell you, Duluth," said the Englishman slowly, "because it mentioned you and used that queer phrase of yours—the thing on the slab. What does it all mean?"

  He gazed at me intently. I could only stare back at him. I was at a loss for words.

  "And then there's Fogarty," he persisted. "It said Fogarty was the first. He's not here anymore. Do you think something happened to him?"

  I was glad in a way that Geddes did not know about what I had discovered in the physio-therapy room, glad that I did not have to tell him.

  "I expect he's sick," I answered guardedly.

  "Sick? Perhaps he is sick." Geddes twisted the racket fiercely between his hands. "But it's not good enough, Duluth. Moreno was talking to me yesterday when he took me to the surgery for some of that new drug they're experimenting with. He said something awfully queer about Fogarty. I got the impression he was trying to find out whether any of us had seen him. Perhaps Fogarty was scared like we were and left without warning. From what I know of him, he's not the sort of fellow to think twice about leaving his wife. Anyway, something's going on here and for some reason you and I are mixed up in it. I'm not a coward. I don't mind facing danger when I know what that danger is. But this is so senseless, so intangible. You don't have a chance to fight. That's why I feel I've just got to clear out."

  I could sympathize with him. Having received this second, indirect warning, I almost wanted to leave, too, and go back to the peace and safety of alcoholism. But I had a real reason to stay. I was not going to leave Iris with no one to look after her. I suppose it was conceited of me to think I could do anything to help. But somehow there was no one in that place I could trust. And Iris was hearing the voice, too. She was in danger.

  Geddes was speaking again, his tone strangely low. 'There was that crazy spirit warning of Fenwick's. And then the piece of paper in Laribee's book. It's Laribee they're after, I'm sure. But how does that affect us?"

  Suddenly a thought struck me, a confused, rather stupid thought. "Maybe it's got something to do with that will. After all, you and I witnessed it. I'm frightfully sorry if I've been the one to drag you into this.'*

  Geddes considered a moment. "It can't be the will. I first heard that voice two days before there was any question of the will. No, there's something else— something they've got against us."

  Neither of us spoke for a moment. You noticed the silence when you stopped talking in that squash court. The vague echoing whispers faded so quickly. I had a crazy feeling that they were real voices, voices that stopped when we stopped—to listen.

  "We're both in this," said Geddes slowly, "and I think that between us we ought to do our best to find out what's the matter with this place. I'm going to give it two days, and if I don't succeed, I'm leaving."

  He broke off and we looked at each other.

  "I said we were two orphans in the storm," I murmured, smiling. "It seems as though I was only too right As for the partnership, it's okay with me."

  It was only after I had spoken that I remembered how the powers-that-be had pledged me to silence on certain aspects of the affair. A moral problem arose which seemed at the moment too complicated to cope with. For the time being, at least, it might be wiser to keep Geddes in the dark as to what I knew rather than to run the risk of displeasing the authorities and having one of the main channels of information dry up. Anyway after my embarrassing experience in psycho-analysis the day before, I hardly felt myself in a position to take any more unauthorized risks with the mental health of my fellow patients.

  It seemed impossible to start playing squash again. We both appeared to realize it at the same time, for Geddes had moved to the door and was stepping out into the courtyard.

  I followed a little behind him. The clouds were banking up overhead, bringing a premature evening.

  Geddes had disappeared into the building before the two other figures emerged. I recognized them at once as Daniel Laribee and Clarke. I was surprised to see that Laribee was changed for squash.

  Clarke nodded to me pleasantly, murmured something about Miss Brush wanting the financier to take some exercise and went in to clean up the court. Laribee did not follow him. He stood tensely at my side, waiting till the attendant had disappeared.

  "There's one thing I forgot to tell you last night," he whispered. "You mustn't say anything about those matches. No one knew I took them, not even Isabel. I took them when she was lending me her pen. And she would be angry if ever she knew."

  Rather bewildered, I gave him my promise. His eyes were still on the open door of the squash court some fifteen feet away.

  "I don't trust that new attendant," he said nervously. "He's always hanging around me. I think he suspects something about the will."

  Before I had time to say anything, he thrust a hand into the pocket of his overcoat and produced a paper.

  "I carry it about me wherever I go," he muttered. "But it's too dangerous now. I want you to look after it, Duluth." He slipped the paper between my fingers. "They may kill me. They may do anything to get it away from me "

&nb
sp; "All set, Mr. Laribee." Clarke's voice rang out from the court.

  "Keep it safe, Duluth," breathed the old man, pleadingly. "You've got to keep it. You're the only one I can trust."

  17

  ON MY WAY BACK from the squash court, I had to pass near the main entrance of the sanitarium. I was still rather distracted by Laribee's sudden action in giving me his will. More and more I was becoming convinced that this peculiar document had some vital significance in the tangle of mystery and danger which was involving us all.

  My conscience told me that it should be shown to Lenz. And my instincts for self-preservation made me more than eager to get the wretched thing out of my own keeping. But, crazy as he was, Laribee seemed to trust me implicitly and he had begged me to be secret. For him, all other men, not excluding Dr. Lenz, were enemies. I did not feel that I could betray him.

  The restricted atmosphere of a sanitarium has a remarkable effect upon one's ethical standards. After a few weeks of it, one feels oneself reverting to the ineluctable codes of one's prep-school days. The staff assume in one's mind the impersonal aloofness of martinet school teachers and the patients become schoolmates and fellow conspirators. Relationships take on a juvenile intensity and the breaking of a confidence seems as dire and irremediable a sin as does gratuitous tale-bearing to the normal boy.

  And so in the case of Laribee's will, there seemed nothing for it but that I should hold the bag, the baby, or what have you.

  I had just made this Horatio Alger resolution when Lenz himself appeared in the passageway. He was dressed for going out and carried a black, portentous brief case under his arm.

  Although a great deal of my information had been told me in confidence, there was still a lot more to which no strings were attached. I gladly snatched this opportunity of shouldering them off onto the director.

  His large, bearded figure was progressing with professional dignity to the front door. I hurried after him and forced him to notice me.

  "Good afternoon, Dr. Lenz," I said pleasantly.