A Puzzle for fools

by Patrick Quentin

  There was no one on duty in Wing Two. But that didn't surprise me. I was surprised, however, when I found Laribee's will lying under the mat, exactly where I had left it. By now the normal and expected seemed more startling than the unexpected and abnormal.

  As I slipped the paper into my pocket, I remembered my interrupted conversation with Geddes just before the movies. He had wanted to tell me something about Fogarty's death, something that explained why he had received those strange warnings.

  I hurried to his room to find him stretched out on his bed, where the attendants must have left him. He was still asleep, and despite my eagerness, I didn't like to wake him. It would probably have been impossible anyway, for his face muscles were still stiff, even though the rigidity had loosened slightly in his body.

  Leaving him, I wandered down to the smoking room. Some of the others were there, and Billy Trent was excited at the discovery of a box of matches. He was striking one after another and proudly offering to light cigarettes for all comers. The scene was almost ludicrously reminiscent of an illicit school-boy smoking party.

  I found a fairly remote corner and sat down, tormenting myself about Iris. The police couldn't consider her a serious suspect, I told myself. They might learn of her feelings about Laribee and the part he played in causing her father's suicide. But no one could be stupid enough not to connect this recent death with that of Fogarty. And surely she wouldn't be suspected of trussing up and murdering the day attendant.

  But whatever happened, there would be questions, probings. It was for her sanity as much as for her safety that I worried. I knew how she would dread the inevitable police grilling, and she would be helpless to defend herself. I thought of that sad, delicate face, like the petals of a flower crushed beneath the heavy boots of policemen.

  I was wracking my brains for some course of action, when David Fenwick glided toward me. His dark, ethereal face was alight with some hidden excitement.

  "You heard that voice calling fire, Duluth?"

  I nodded impatiently, but he drew up a chair and sat down, carefully arranging the meticulous creases of his trousers.

  "That's bad," he whispered, shaking his head. "When a manifestation of that type occurs, things are in a very difficult condition."

  I didn't feel up to arguing with him. If he thought some malicious phantom had given a fire-alarm, I wasn't going to bother to contradict him. In my anxiety, it was an effort even to have to speak.

  "I'm going to tell you something," he was murmuring. "This sanitarium has a very unfavorable atmosphere. Between you and me, I'm leaving tomorrow. My bro—I mean, Dr. Stevens is going to arrange it for me." A sensitive hand fingered his pastel tie. "I suggest you leave, too, Duluth. I don't think it's safe here—not safe at all."

  I looked into his large, shining eyes, trying to read what, if anything, lay behind this unexpected admonition.

  "I'm okay here," I said shortly.

  "You are?" Fenwick smiled mechanically. "Well, I have warned you. And if you have any particular friends here, I think you should pass the warning on."

  At that moment there was a confused, scuffling sound. I looked up to see Billy Trent stuffing the matches into his pocket and the others hastily stubbing their cigarettes. The door had opened and Warren was stepping into the room.

  He glanced darkly around him and moved to my side.

  "They want you, Mr. Duluth," he muttered. "Right away in Dr. Lenz' office."

  As I hurried out into the corridor, I heard his voice exclaiming sharply:

  "Which of you took those matches?"

  Except for the addition of Clarke and the absence of Stevens, the group in the director's office was the same as it had been after Fogarty's death. But that time I had been invited more or less as an honored aid. Now, from the cold, official glances of the police, I gathered that Captain Green regarded me as a potential accessory before, if not after, the fact.

  It seemed that Lenz had just been telling the captain of my visit to Moreno the previous evening.

  "And after Mr. Duluth left, Doctor," snapped Green, "did you make a check-up in the surgery?"

  "Yes, captain." Moreno's handsome, Latin face was masklike. "I did not altogether believe Mr. Duluth's story. But I got in touch with Dr. Stevens immediately and we went to the surgery together."

  "And a knife was missing?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you do anything about it?"

  "Naturally. We realized the potential danger and spent half the night hunting for it. Stevens told me that Miss Powell had complained of sinus trouble in the morning and had gone to the surgery. I thought that she must have taken it then."

  "You seem pretty careless about your knives around here," grunted the captain.

  "On the contrary. But Miss Powell is a kleptomaniac and they are unbelievably cunning. She hides things under cushions as a rule. We looked in her usual places, on the divan in the lounge and the large arm chair in the women's library. Miss Brush and Mrs. Dell even searched the patients' clothes this morning while they were asleep. But we found nothing."

  Green turned sharply to me. "Well, Dr. Moreno says you had that knife in your pocket at one stage, Mr. Duluth. Who took it from you?"

  "I haven't the slightest idea," I said lamely. "Practically everyone had a chance."

  "Could Miss Pattison have taken it, for example?"

  "It's hardly likely, seeing she gave it to me in the first place."

  After I had spoken, I cursed myself for a fool. Obviously, Green had set a trap for me and I had walked into it, both feet at once.

  "So you got it from Miss Pattison!" Green's voice was almost too gentle and considerate. "And then Miss Brush saw the same girl throw it away after the lights went up at the movies."

  There was a smugness in his tone as though the case were already solved and forgotten. As usual, I lost my temper.

  "Don't you see it's just a frame-up?" I cried. "Anyone with an atom of sense would realize that Iris Pattison's as innocent as—as Dr. Lenz here. Someone's been working on her—using her as a cat's paw."

  Rather incoherently I went on to tell them how Iris had heard voices urging her to kill Laribee. I got dramatic, semi-hysterical, and the more ardently I championed Iris, the more damning a case I was making against her. If Green had doubted it before, he must have been certain now that she was dangerously insane.

  To my relief it was Lenz who finally came to my rescue. His voice sounded tired and rather dejected. "I agree with Mr. Duluth," he said quietly. "I cannot believe that Miss Pattison is responsible for this second tragedy. Of course, I find Mr. Duluth's theory of deliberate persecution rather hard to credit, but Miss Pattison is suffering from a mild form of persecution complex and it was unquestionably aggravated by the presence of Mr. Laribee here in this institution. As I see it, Miss Powell must have stolen the knife and secreted it in Miss Pattison's bag, either accidentally or deliberately. Miss Pattison saw it. She is very suggestible and she imagined the rest, the compelling voices and the external force willing her to murder."

  "But that doesn't explain how she got the knife back," persisted Green, "or why she had it in her hand after the lights went up. And I understand that she more or less confessed to Dr. Moreno."

  "That is only natural, too," broke in Lenz again. "Miss Pattison had thought and worried so much about Laribee, that when the tragedy actually occurred, she would have had a moment of believing that perhaps she herself had been willed in some way into performing it."

  "Strikes me there's going to be a lot of psychological bunkum in this case," growled the captain. "Of course, it may all be a plant, but I've got to see that girl, Dr. Lenz. I've got to find out what she was doing the night Fogarty was killed. It's obvious now that we were all wrong about that first business. Fogarty was murdered just as sure as Laribee."

  "I agree with you," said Lenz slowly. "And I admit that I myself was completely mistaken when I supposed him to have died by accident."

  "Then let's ha
ve that girl in here."

  "Don't let him see her, Lenz," I exclaimed imploringly. "She's only a kid and she's scared to death. They'll drive her mad if—"

  I broke off as I saw the stern expression on the director's face. "You can rely on me, Mr. Duluth, to protect the patients under my care."

  He turned to the police officer. "I cannot allow anyone but an alienist to see Miss Pattison at the present time."

  "Very well," snapped Green. "I'll get Dr. Eismann here. He's working on a case at the moment but I can have him here by ten tonight. He's the State alienist and if he finds anything—"

  "If he finds anything unexpected in her condition," put in Lenz quietly, "or if he finds that I have misrepresented the true facts, I am willing to close my sanitarium."

  I could not bear it when they talked about Iris that way, when they referred to her as just another mental case. I loathed the thought of a State alienist prying into her mind. Somehow, I told myself, somehow I would have to do something, think out some way of bringing the real solution to light before that alienist arrived.

  I was shaken out of my thoughts by Clarke's voice.

  "Dr. Lenz," he was asking deferentially, "would it be possible for someone who wasn't really—er—mad to get into a place like this? I mean, sort of fake it up without you knowing?"

  "It would be possible." Dr. Lenz passed a hand over his beard and his eyes were kindly. "Just as you policemen can never tell how criminal a man is, so we doctors cannot tell exactly how mentally sick a person may be. Sanity is a relative term. We cannot put the living brain under a microscope. Our first rule is to believe everything the patient says. Then we observe his actions carefully. With time and experience we reach a true diagnosis."

  "To put it in plain English," said Green, taking up the point, "if Miss Pattison had wanted to kill Laribee and not get blamed for it, she could have come here and strung that line about someone trying to drive her crazy. Even if she was as sane as a sentry, she could have put on an act which would have fooled you doctors. She—"

  "She'd have to be a very clever actress," cut in Moreno, surprisingly. "She's been here six months."

  It was the word "actress" which gave me my first constructive theory. I had been wracking my brains to find something, however tenuous, to work on. And here was a perfectly good idea absolutely thrown at my head.

  "Talking of actresses," I broke in excitedly, "Mr. Laribee had a daughter who was an actress in Hollywood. Has anyone got in touch with her?"

  "My office has phoned the Los Angeles police," replied Green shortly. "I've no doubt she'll come East for the funeral."

  "She'll come East for over a million dollars," I said with growing enthusiasm. Then a second idea came tumbling on the heels of the first. I turned to the director. "Would you let me use your phone, Dr. Lenz?"

  He shot a questioning glance at Green.

  "We can't have anything said about this on the outside," said the captain. "I promised Dr. Lenz, and I don’t want it to get into the papers until we've got something definite."

  "But," I urged, "I swear I won't mention the case. You can listen to every word I say."

  "Who do you want to talk to?"

  "Prince Warberg, the producer. I want to find out more about that daughter of Laribee's. Warberg can give you the dope on anyone who's stood five minutes behind the footlights."

  "Why waste time?" asked Moreno with a shrug. "After all, presumably she is in California, and the murder was committed here."

  "And the motive is here," I persisted. "I can imagine there are quite a few people who'd consider murdering their father for a million dollars, or their father-in-law for that matter. The daughter's husband was an actor, too; and no one's seen him, not even Laribee. He either is, or has been, a doctor. That makes him a very logical person to be in a sanitarium."

  I must have been a most insufferable nuisance and my suggestion was the merest shot in the dark, but for some reason of his own Green capitulated. Perhaps it was the hope of saving himself some work; perhaps it was the name of Prince Warberg, the best-known producer in New York; or perhaps he was just humoring a nut's hunch.

  "Okay," he said, "call this Warberg fellow but don't mention anything about the case, see?"

  I sprang avidly to the telephone.

  "Listen, operator. This is a personal call to New York ... I want Prince Warberg … yes the Prince Warberg ... I haven't the slightest idea where he is. Try his apartment, the Actor's Club; and then start working through the theatres and bars …. yes, you know what bars. ... What? ... no, I'm not trying to be funny. Only find him for God's sake."

  Knowing Warberg's elusiveness, I didn't envy the operator her task, but I consoled myself by marshalling supreme faith in the telephone company.

  The others had listened intently while I called, but as soon as the receiver was back on its hook, they started to talk again. Green announced glumly that Miss Brush would have erased all other fingerprints from the knife. He went on to argue about the seating arrangements in the movies and, from Moreno's account, sketched a plan of Laribee's chair and those of the patients and staff who had been nearest to him. It seemed that Stroubel had been sitting in the seat directly behind the financier, but Lenz pointed out rather coldly that deduction along those lines would be more than useless. In the confusion, anyone could easily have left his seat and stabbed Laribee without being observed.

  "But that fire-alarm?" asked Green. "Surely one of you must have noticed where it came from?"

  Lenz shook his head. "Opinions seem to differ. I think several people must have taken up the cry."

  "And the lights weren't put on for quite a few minutes," continued Green. "I don't understand that, either."

  Moreno explained the nature of the sound-proof projection room and, when Green plied him for further details, sent John Clarke to find Warren.

  The night attendant looked particularly grim when he entered. His dark, deep-set eyes flicked to the captain's and then settled their gaze on the floor.

  "I'm told that all the lights in the movies are controlled from the projection room," began Green.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Why didn't you turn them on as soon as you heard the fire-alarm?"

  "I didn't hear the alarm," muttered Warren. "That room's sound proof."

  "Well, what did you do?"

  "There's a small window, sir, looking into the auditorium. I happened to glance through and saw people milling around. The film runs without being watched. I went down to the theatre to see if anything was wrong."

  "Without switching on the lights?"

  Warren shrugged. "Of course. How was I to know what had happened?"

  "And did you actually go into the auditorium?"

  "A few steps. Then Dr. Moreno told me to go back to the projection room and turn on the lights."

  "So that's all there is about it?"

  "That's all." Warren turned his sour gaze on Dr. Lenz. "If you're through, sir, I'd better be getting back to the patients. They're being rather difficult."

  "Okay." Green nodded curtly to the door.

  The night attendant had only just left when the telephone rang. I thanked heaven when I heard Prince Warberg's voice from the other end of the wire.

  "For God's sake what do you want?" he asked pleasantly. "I thought you had been painlessly put away."

  I couldn't stop him kidding me for a while. He said I would break jail that instant if I could smell his breath over the wire. He said that since my official demise he had had Broadway sewed up—him and a few other fellows. At last I managed to cut him short.

  "Know a movie actress called Sylvia Dawn?" I asked hurriedly.

  "Vaguely."

  "Well, find out everything about her. What parts she's had, how good she is, what she looks like—everything. And as you're so damn prosperous, you can call Hollywood long distance. If she's actually there, I don't want to know anything about her. She's got a husband. Some sort of a hoofer. Find out all the dope on him
, too. And when I say find out I mean find out."

  "My poor dear Pete," muttered Warberg calmly, "are you as bad as all that?"

  "And while you're about it, check up on whether the husband's a doctor and if so, where he graduated and where he is now."

  "Listen, I'm a hard-working man."

  "Do it," I threatened, "or I'll die and haunt you."

  "For the love of Pete ... !"

  "Well, do it for the love of Pete. And for God's sake, wire me the whole set-up before nine-thirty tonight."

  He started to swear, which was an infallible sign that he had capitulated. Then he started in about a new play and I hung up.

  This short talk with Warberg had stirred in me again the old longing for the theatre: for Broadway, grease paint and the glamour of first nights. With sudden satisfaction I realized that this day with all its incredible and horrible incidents had done something to me. I no longer felt weak and flabby. It was as though the vital necessity for action had restored to me the ability to act

  Dr. Lenz' office seemed gloomy in the darkening March afternoon. The director's face was gloomy, too, and pale as he rose to his feet. The others had risen, also, and we all stood there a minute, motionless, like actors holding a pose just before the curtain drops.

  At length Lenz spoke solemnly, magisterially. “One point I must insist on. And this applies to you all. As far as possible, things must go on as usual for the patients, There will be the same routine this evening, the customary social gathering. In spite of the extreme seriousness of the situation I will not have the inmates disturbed any more than they have been already. Moreno, will you ask the staff to see that everything is carried on just as though nothing had happened?"

  Jupiter had spoken. There was nothing more for mortals to say.

  On my way back to the men's ward, I felt an overwhelming urge for a cigarette. As my hand went into my pocket, it touched a piece of paper and brought out Laribee's midnight will. I had forgotten all about it!