tantaliz

by Isaac Asimov ed.

  Mannix, eavesdropping himself, found that they were discussing French royalty rates, and ceased to listen. It was true that the official motto of the organization was Crime Does Not Pay-Enough, but he sometimes felt that the discussions of royalty rates and contracts which ensued whenever two or more mystery writers met were overdone. This feeling had been growing on him more particularly of late, as his own earnings dwindled.

  Abandoning any pretense of giving attention to the speaker of the evening, he slumped in his chair and sipped his drink. He did not bother with such minutiae of mystery writing as ballistics, or even fingerprints. Primarily, he wrote tales of chase and violence, based upon a recipe of rapid action which made clues and explanations not only unnecessary but frequently impossible.

  However, he had had a considerable success with a couple of locked-room plots some years before, and as he waited for the meeting to be over he moodily pondered his failure to get Gordon Waggoner to confide in him. He owed his publisher a book, and perhaps, with a little changing around—

  He was still brooding when the speaker finally finished and the meeting broke up. The suburbanites hurried homeward. Most of the remainder transferred themselves to a nearby hotel suite where Brett Halliday and Helen McCloy, a husband and wife team who were not collaborators but individually turned out completely different types of mysteries, presided over an auxiliary party that usually lasted until dawn. By the time it broke up, Mannix had forgotten his conversation with Gordon Waggoner.

  Some weeks later, in Hollywood, it was violently recalled to him by headlines shouting Waggoner's death.

  The writer's body had been found in his Connecticut cottage, seated at his desk, one hand resting on the keys of his typewriter, the other apparently in the very act of moving the spacer arm.

  The body had no head.

  Gordon Waggoner's head, silvery hair carefully combed, had been found perched on a large beer stein, on top of the bookcase which held a complete set of first editions of his own books.

  The room itself had been tightly sealed by having both doors and all three windows nailed shut on the inside by heavy boards.

  The world's foremost writer of locked-room mysteries had been rather gaudily murdered—in a locked room.

  Mannix pushed his car recklessly along the country road which was the shortest route to Waggoner's cottage. It was silly to be in such a hurry. After all, Waggoner had been killed five weeks before —Mannix had had to finish his Hollywood job before returning East —and the macabre mystery of the writer's death was still unsolved. But now that he was back, Mannix's impatience overcame his logic.

  For he knew one fact of which the police were obviously ignorant—the murderer had plainly used Waggoner's own device in sealing the cottage and making good his escape. With that advantage, Mannix felt sure he could find a clue that would unlock the secret for him. And his publisher was pressing him unpleasantly for a new book. If he could puzzle out the escape method, base a mystery on it, and rush it to the publisher, he could cash in on the endless reams of publicity which Waggoner's death had produced.

  In his pockets were the notes he had made from the many lurid stories in the papers. Also, and probably more valuable, was a concise report on the murder which he had received from Ed Radin, a fellow MWA member and one of the country's foremost crime reporters.

  Discovery of the murder (Ed had written) was made by rural mail-carrier Jody Pine, who notified owner of the cottage, local farmer named Briscoe. He phoned State Police. Through cracks between boards that covered windows from the inside, police were able to see Waggoner's body. They broke in with axes to find Waggoner's headless corpse seated before his typewriter. Body was held in place by string, and hands were tied to the typewriter to simulate a man typing. On sheet in typewriter were typed three words: My Last Mystery. Experts say they were typed hunt-and-peck, therefore not by Waggoner, and presumably by the murderer.

  Waggoner's severed head was sitting on a beer stein on the bookcase, eyes closed. The youngest trooper of the group fainted when a trick of rigor mortis made one eye open and wink at him as he was lifting head down.

  Death was apparently caused by strangulation. The head was removed about two hours later, with an old saw. Very little flow of blood. Saw was hanging from a nail over the fireplace.

  Newspaper reports of the manner in which the room was sealed from the inside—one-inch boards nailed closely together over both doors and all three windows—were accurate. Killer must have spent several hours preparing the place. When he had finished, a man trapped on the inside without tools would have starved to death before he could get out.

  How killer got out, therefore, is driving the authorities nuts. Technical crews found the cottage normal in every respect Solid floors, solid walls, solid roof, chimney flue only a few inches across, etc.

  The saw, boards, nails, and hammer came from the garage, a former barn, where they'd been lying for several years. They were left there after Briscoe, the owner, and a former hired man named Jake built the cottage. Briscoe is noteworthy in the community for lade of energy.

  There were no exterior clues such as footprints, and no interior clues as fingerprints, cigarette stubs, or the like.

  The murderer's motive is just as baffling as how he got out. Waggoner had no close friends, no enemies, no relatives, and owned nothing of special value. Thus, no imaginable motive exists. And no reason for the elaborate hocus-pocus of the severed head, the sealed cottage, and so on.

  The police are reduced to the theory that Waggoner was killed by some screwball, perhaps somebody who had read his books and decided to try his hand at a locked room murder. This theory doesn't satisfy anybody, but it's the only one that makes even halfway sense.

  There's no record of any stranger having been seen in the vicinity or of anyone having visited Waggoner. However, the cottage is almost hidden from the road and death occurred at least thirty-six hours before discovery, so half an army might have been around the place by the time State Police arrived.

  One odd detail I almost left out: Waggoner's agent reports Waggoner expected to deliver a finished book to him inside of a week. But no sign of any ms. was found. Evidence of a lot of paper burned in the fireplace, but ashes had been stirred and could not be reconstructed.

  That's it, Harry, that's all there is, there isn't any more.

  But there was more, Harrison Mannix reflected. A great deal more. Waggoner had had something of value—the almost finished manuscript of his fifty-first locked-room mystery. The fact that the manuscript was missing could only mean one thing: he had been killed by another mystery writer.

  Mannix brought his car to a stop in a tree-lined lane which ran past the cottage. There was a short cut through the trees, which he took at a trot. He emerged from the trees and hurried around the squat stone cottage with its flattish roof and low, overhanging eaves. Then he stopped, cursing.

  A large wooden sign was propped up on the lawn:

  SEE THE MURDER COTTAGE!

  Everything Just As It was Found!

  MOST BAFFLING MYSTERY OF THE CENTURY!

  Adults $.50

  Children $.25

  Four cars were parked in a field across the main road, and a fat family of father (blue beret), mother (green sun visor), and daughter (12, lollypop) were just filing in the front door.

  Standing outside was lanky Willy Briscoe, the farmer who owned the cottage. His features split in a grin.

  "Back, eh, Mr. Mannix?" he said. "Come to have a look at th' scene of th' crime?"

  Trust a Yankee to turn a dollar, even out of a murder, Mannix thought vexedly. But aloud he said:

  "Just thought I'd stop by. After all, I was Waggoner's friend-almost his only friend."

  "Eyup," Willy agreed solemnly. "Kept mighty close to himself, he did. But come in, Mr. Mannix—won't cost you nothin', seein' you're a neighbor."

  "No," Mannix shook his head. "You're busy now, Willy, and I wanted to talk to you. I'll come by later."
/>
  "Okay, Mr. Mannix, got to give my lecture now." Willy Briscoe grinned again. "Goes over mighty well, it does, and I've got th' inside fixed up to give th' folks a real thrill."

  Mannix hardly heard him. He was retreating before his deep annoyance made itself visible. These country people were easy to offend, and Willy Briscoe took offense more easily than most. A wrong word and it would have given the shiftless farmer malicious pleasure to bar him from the cottage indefinitely.

  The rest of the day he waited impatiently for evening, knowing Willy would not leave the cottage while there was any hope of garnering a last half dollar from the curious. He did not go back on the chance of finding Willy there alone, for he wanted to have the place entirely to himself when he did enter it. He hoped that his first impression of the cottage might tell him something and he did not want to be distracted by Willy Briscoe's gangling presence.

  As soon as it was decently dark and he had allowed Willy time enough to eat supper, he drove the two miles to the farmer's rundown establishment, which lay a quarter of a mile from the cottage. Willy's wife directed him to the sagging barn behind the house. He found Willy there, invisible under a jacked-up truck that was so rickety it should have adorned the town dump-heap. After a few moments, Willy crawled out and stood up.

  "Evenin, Mr. Mannix." He showed snaggly teeth. "Got to do my fixin' up after dark now. Eyup, keeps me busy showin' folks through th' cottage. You'd be s'prised how much cash money I'm takin' in. Last Sunday forty people come by for a look."

  "Willy," said Mannix, "Waggoner was my friend. It was I who persuaded him to come up here to live. I'd like to spend a little time in the cottage, to see if I can discover anything the police missed."

  "Figurin' on findin' th' murderer?" The farmer's eyes half-closed in a shrewd grin. "Kind of thought you'd try your hand at it, seein' you write mysteries too."

  "I want to see the killer punished," Mannix answered, untruthfully. "But tell me, Willy, you and your hired man built that cottage. If anybody can figure how the murderer got out—"

  "Nope." Willy shook his head. "The police asked me that, too, and all I can tell you is what I told them. That there cottage is just a plain, ordinary cottage. More'n that I can't say. If you ask me, th' mystery ain't ever goin' to be solved."

  "Just the same, I'd like to spend a couple of days in the cottage," Mannix told him. "I'll just sit there and try to figure out the answer. Maybe if I go at it as if I were working out a plot, I'll get the answer."

  "I'd like to say yes," Willy answered insincerely, "but right now there's forty, fifty people a day wanting to go through that cottage an— Well, money's money, especially since farming don't pay so good."

  Mannix restrained the retort that sprang to his lips. He had anticipated the objection and brought his checkbook. They finally settled that he could have the cottage completely to himself for three days for seventy-five dollars. He made out the check and left

  Mannix's impatience was too great to wait until morning. He drove directly to the cottage. Stumbling along the path to the front door after parking his car, he cursed his lack of foresight in failing to bring a flashlight

  In the darkness he bumped against the blatant sign Willy had erected. Then he found the new door that had been fitted and let himself in with the key the farmer had given him.

  The unheated interior was damp and cold. Mannix shivered as he felt for the light switch. He found it clicked it—and started violently. In the blaze of the light, a man's headless body, the neck-stump crimson, was seated at a desk bending over a typewriter. The missing head, eyes staring at him, rested on a beer stein atop a bookcase.

  It took Mannix a moment to realize they were wax, and this was what Willy had meant by saying he had fixed up the interior to give the folks a thrill. Even then his heartbeat returned to normal only slowly, and a feeling of cold repugnance refused to leave the pit of his stomach.

  Conquering his revulsion, he picked up the dummy body and flung it onto a sofa. Then he took the trouble to stand on a chair and lift down the head, which he put beside the body, covering both with a small rug from the floor. After that he sat down at the desk and examined the room with a long, careful scrutiny.

  Presently he was certain that no detail differed from his memory of the room as he had seen it on his occasional visits in the past. He had hoped something would obtrude upon his attention and give him a clue to the murderer's mode of exit, but he was disappointed.

  Discarding the hope, he turned his attention to Waggoner's desk and began going through the papers in the drawers. The police had disturbed them, but seemingly not removed any, and finally he found the dead author's file of plot notes. This he leafed through eagerly.

  Once again he was disappointed. There was not a phrase in it anywhere which could have referred to the locked-room plot Waggoner had mentioned at the MWA meeting.

  Next he turned his attention to Waggoner's correspondence file. There was just a possibility the little man might have mentioned the plot in a letter—his correspondence had been voluminous, though he had said very little in person.

  In the file beginning the first of September—the date Waggoner had mentioned on which the initial idea had come to him—were copies of half a dozen letters, and these Mannix read carefully. One was to Anthony Boucher, in Berkeley, California, and apparently carried on a previous dispute about the 1908 debut of a long-forgotten opera star. The next, to Lillian de la Torre, in Colorado Springs, caustically corrected a mistake in the diameter of a hangman's rope in the days of Dr. Sam: Johnson. A third was a bitter note to Lawrence Blochman, castigating him for having his detective, Dr. Daniel Webster Coffee, find a specimen of the murderer's blood in the abdomen of a mosquito killed at the scene of the crime. Waggoner claimed to have conceived this idea first, and to have prior rights to it.

  To Hugh Pentecost, Waggoner had written a five-page letter correcting a Pentecostal interpretation in modern psychiatry. Then Mannix found a scrawled note which raised his hopes. It said, Write Ellery Queen about story. Eagerly he turned to the letter pinned to it, which began, Dear E. Q.: I understand that your Sixth Annual Contest for the best detective short story of the year, sponsored jointly by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Little, Brown b- Company of Boston, is closing soon. I very much hope . . .

  Mannix put the letter back and continued going through the file. He found a note to Howard Haycraft, suggesting a revised edition of Murder for Pleasure, in which Gordon Waggoner would be acknowledged the dean of the locked-room mystery. A long letter to Bill Roos, half of the husband and wife team that signed itself Kelley Roos, suggested that they collaborate on a mystery musical comedy—Roos to supply the humor, Waggoner the mystery. There was also a complaint to Veronica Parker Johns, of the New York chapter of the MWA, pointing out that the name Gordon Waggoner had been spelled with only one g in the last issue of The Third Degree—was it too much to hope, Waggoner had written on the very day of his death, that after forty years and fifty volumes, fellow writers would know his name well enough to spell it correctly?

  That was all for September. Mannix put the file away and, momentarily at a dead end, stood up and tugged at the boards which still covered all three windows, as well as the door that led to the bedroom. The boards were tightly nailed, so he abandoned further tests—they had been made more skillfully and exhaustively by experts.

  The murderer had been in this room. He had got out of it. How he had accomplished this feat had been known only to him and to Gordon Waggoner. Waggoner was now dead. That left the killer in sole possession of the secret which Mannix was determined to uncover.

  He could visualize the excitement, six months hence, when his book was published, revealing in fiction form the true story of Waggoner's murder. The publisher's publicity release—the apprehension of the guilty man (Mannix had no intention of having him caught before publication day, if he could prevent it). . . .It was a pleasant daydream and he put it away reluctantly, recognizing the bitter
fact that so far the killer's secret was perfectly safe.

  No, wait a minute! Waggoner had said the idea had come from a chance conversation. He had even specified the day—Friday, September i. If it were possible to discover with whom Waggoner had talked that day—and if it were possible to reconstruct the conversations—Mannix might still be able to evolve the whole escape method, just as Waggoner had originally.

  But was it possible to check back to the people with whom Waggoner had spoken so many weeks before? Mannix's active mind began to gnaw at the problem. Waggoner had been here in the country at the time. Mentally, Mannix listed the men Waggoner might conceivably have chatted with that day: Jody Pine, the rural mail-carrier; Miss Rorick, the postmistress; Miss Bunce, the librarian; Nahum Brown, manager of the gas station which serviced Waggoner's car; Myron Stuart, the bank manager; McCready, the manager of the grocery. Waggoner came in contact with these people about once a week, and had a chatting acquaintance with them. He saw no one else more than once or twice a month, not even Briscoe, his landlord.

  Mannix determined to question all the individuals he had mentally listed. Even if they had talked to Waggoner that Friday, it was unlikely they would remember what had been said. But it was worth a try.

  Abandoning temporarily the problem of the killer s escape from the sealed room, Mannix next considered his identity.

  He had already decided the murderer must be a mystery writer— probably a fellow MWA member. Only another detective-story writer could have had a motive—the new locked-room plot. Though Waggoner had insisted to Mannix that he hadn't mentioned the plot to anyone else, he must have let it slip out at the meeting. Someone else had learned of it, had surreptitiously visited Waggoner, killed him, read the manuscript and burned it, then-

  No, he must proceed more slowly, more logically.

  First, would another writer kill for a plot, however brilliant? It was farfetched, but not impossible. A good plot was money in the bank, and there were several members who might go to great lengths to refurbish their waning reputations. Perhaps one, more desperate than anyone realized—