The Black Door

by Collin Wilcox

  “Well, you’d better go over there. Didn’t he hire a firm of private detectives to investigate his daughter’s murder?”

  I nodded.

  “Then maybe they’ve got something,” he said. “Who knows? Besides, there’s nothing doing on your beat anyhow.”

  “Right.” I took my hat from his desk and rose to my feet. But he held up a hand.

  “Just a minute, Steve. There’s, ah, something I want to talk to you about.”

  I sat down, observing the strange, oblique expression in his eyes. For one terrible moment I thought I was going to get fired, it was that kind of expression. But the city editor was cast in a classic editorial mold. He only fired a man in hot blood. Now, however, he seemed to be avoiding my eyes as he framed his opening sentence.

  “I was, ah, talking to the managing editor yesterday. And he asked me, ah—” He frowned and began tapping irritably on his desk with the side of a fretful thumb.

  I replaced my hat on the corner of his desk and sat up straighter, now more curious than concerned. And, finally, the message came out in a confused, almost sheepish rush of words:

  “He—the managing editor—he and the brass upstairs—they, ah, they want to start another, ah, promotion on you.”

  “On me?” I asked the question only as a matter of technique. I knew the answer.

  “Yeah. Or, rather, on your, ah, clairvoyance, or whatever you call it. They think it’s about time you got something going.”

  I decided not to reply, but only nod. For one thing, I didn’t know what to say.

  Neither did the city editor. After giving the desk a last impatient thump, he finally looked at me directly.

  “Anyhow,” he said, “I told him I’d talk it over with you. See what we could work out. But on second thought, I think I’ll have you deal with him yourself. I—this stuff is a little out of my line—this promotion stuff.” He seemed on the point of abruptly dismissing me. Then, frowning, he studied me critically.

  “What is the lowdown on this business, anyhow?”

  “How do you mean?”

  The reply displeased him. He was back on familiar ground, dealing with one of the countless vagaries of a recalcitrant reporter.

  “I mean,” he said sardonically, “just what’s the pitch, anyhow? You know, the angle. The gimmick.”

  I felt irritation’s quick beginning prickle. “The only gimmick,” I replied, “is in the publicity department, and the only thing it’s accomplished, so far, is to make me look silly to every cop on the police force, which, incidentally, makes my job a lot tougher. So—”

  “What about this business in San Jose, though? You apparently delivered the goods down there.” He looked at me with a sudden, careful appraisal. “Didn’t you? Or do they have a publicity department down there, too?”

  I shrugged. “A little girl was murdered. I found her and the murderer. The publicity came afterwards. And, in a sense, it was accidental. I didn’t tell my paper until the A.P. got it; then I had no choice.”

  The city editor nodded. Then a look of unaccustomed, transparent guile crept into his usually candid eyes. He frowned, picked up a pencil, and began examining the point minutely. It was a mannerism that seemed to afflict him whenever he was about to craftily trap one of his reporters into admitting a transgression. But, since the city editor was among the most direct of men, and therefore the least crafty, he always telegraphed his punch. So I watched him almost with amusement as he spoke.

  “This Grinnel murder—did you, ah, ever try to figure out who did it? Using your own, ah, methods, I mean.”

  The situation was somehow so ludicrous that I answered with complete honesty.

  “The day of the girl’s funeral—last Monday, I think it was—I gave it a try. And the next night, too. On my own time,” I added, with what I hoped was sufficient sarcasm. Apparently it wasn’t; he was still examining the pencil point.

  “And?” he said.

  I spread my hands, and in the same gesture retrieved my hat from the corner of his desk.

  “And nothing. No jingle, no tingle. Nobody at home.” I decided not to mention the fleeting vision of the Grinnel children, one dead and one alive, staring into each other’s eyes. Neither did I mention that I felt the mystery’s solution would begin with Bobby Grinnel, whom I’d been unable to see.

  The city editor cleared his throat, eying me with both suspicion and a reluctant interest.

  “How did you, ah, go about it? Trying to find the murderer, I mean?” He shifted uncomfortably, as if the effort of asking one of his reporters a civil question was costing him dearly.

  Feeling that I had our awesome city editor at a disadvantage for the first time within living memory, I answered airily.

  “First, I talked to John Randall, the boy Roberta Grinnel apparently made out with from time to time. I discovered he was just what I figured he’d be—a good-looking, average, overprivileged member of the upper class, without much on his mind but girls, skiing, and cashmere sweaters. Then I spent some time retracing the girl’s route on the night of the murder.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing.” I began fiddling with my hat.

  “Is that how you do it—just hang around the scene of the crime and wait for something to register?”

  “That’s what happened in San Jose. But, as I tried to tell the—” I felt my mouth twist derisively—“the publicity department, the whole thing down there could’ve been an accident: something that might never happen again. They wouldn’t listen, though. It would’ve been bad for circulation.”

  For a long moment we stared at each other, exchanging a mute confession of mutual contempt for the Sentinel’s management. Then the city editor said brusquely, “I’ll talk to them again, upstairs. It’s twenty to ten. You’d better get going. Let me know.”

  He swung around to a huge spindle of galley proofs, tightly gripping the pencil and frowning fiercely.

  I left, whistling.

  9

  AS I WALKED DOWN the richly carpeted hallway toward Robert Grinnel’s hotel suite, I was thinking of the two nights I’d spent in my desultory efforts to find the murderer of Roberta Grinnel. It was the kind of undertaking that seems silly and frivolous in the light of day, yet with the return of darkness came the returning fantasies: fame and fortune, of which I’d already had a small but fatal sampling. I was thinking that I might be someone easily corrupted by fame. During the cold, dark nights of retracing Roberta Grinnel’s path, I’d indulged myself in the most extravagant fantasies. I saw myself as a TV personality, as a consulting clairvoyant in the Holmsian tradition, as a syndicated crime columnist, as a famous, sought-after personality dealing with famous people during the day and exciting girls at night.

  However, after my two dark, cold, profitless nights, I realized that I must somehow talk with Bobby Grinnel. Although certainly Bobby hadn’t killed her, yet, certainly, he could tell me something I needed to know. Initially, I’d hoped to interview him at Bransten, ostensibly for a follow-up story on his sister’s murder. Then I discovered that he’d dropped his studies for the rest of the semester.

  I pressed the buzzer to the Governor’s suite. Almost immediately the door was opened by Grinnel’s bodyguard, the thick, stolid man in the blue suit.

  “Yes?” His deep, guttural voice was polite enough.

  “I’m Stephen Drake. I have an appointment with Mr. Grinnel.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He nodded and stepped back. “Come in, please.”

  “Thank you.”

  I walked into the suite’s living room. Across the room the beautifully groomed secretary rose to her feet and approached me, smiling. She still wore pearls and basic black. I remembered her expressively inflected voice.

  “Mr. Drake?”

  “Yes.”

  She motioned toward a damask lounge chair. “Won’t you take a seat, Mr. Drake? Mr. Grinnel will be with you in just a moment.”

  “Thank you.” I sank down into the deep chair, crossin
g my legs. I watched her as she moved across the room. There was in the rhythm of her movements the mature woman’s quiet, assured awareness of her own sensuality, accepted and controlled. In profile, moving toward an opposite door, her figure was superb. Then, with a smile, she opened the door and was gone.

  Almost as if responding to the same cue, another door opened, and Robert Grinnel appeared. He raised a hand, signaling me not to rise. Then, with long, lithe strides he crossed the room and sat on the sofa opposite me. Although his clear, brilliant eyes never left my face, he did not speak, but instead deliberately selected a cigarette from a marble cigarette box and used a matching marble lighter. He crossed his legs and held the cigarette lighter in his hand, absently hefting it as he continued to stare at me. I felt myself flushing.

  “They tell me you’re a clairvoyant, Mr. Drake.” The curt remark came bluntly, almost certainly calculated for its disconcerting effect on me.

  Again, infuriatingly, I felt myself flush.

  “Well, I—I helped find—I mean, I did help the police in San Jose a few months ago, yes.”

  “And before that?”

  “I—I beg your pardon?”

  “Did you have any other—successes—before that?”

  “Well, not successes, exactly. A few experiences would be more accurate, I’d say.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  I shifted sharply in the chair. Somehow, I was suddenly determined not to tell this aloof, supercilious, clothing-ad megalomaniac anything more than the newspaper-reading public already knew.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Grinnel. That’s—I mean—my previous experiences aren’t, ah, in the public domain.”

  “Oh?” He raised a studied eyebrow. “Why not?”

  “Well, it’s just that—”

  “Did you ever read a book called Doctor Hudson’s Secret Journal, by any chance? By A. J. Cronin?”

  I shook my head.

  “It was an interesting thesis, I’ve always thought. I remember reading the book when I was in my teens. It influenced my life substantially.”

  “What was the thesis?”

  “Put simply, Cronin’s point was that a man can profit by acts of altruism, provided he keeps them secret and swears the recipients to secrecy.”

  “He profits? How?”

  “By enhancing the riches of his own personality as his acts of secret charity diminish the material poverty of others. The key word, you see, is secret. I perform an act of seemingly spontaneous charity, unsolicited and unexpected. The only proviso is that neither myself nor the recipient can ever speak of what’s happened. The recipient has his necessary boon, whatever it might be, and I’ve drawn strength from the secret knowledge of what I’ve done. In other words, I’ve drawn strength from his corresponding inner weakening of the spirit, as must necessarily happen when he becomes an object of charity. Both parties, you see, get value received.”

  I looked at him, conscious of a gathering revulsion. My reply slipped out, unintentionally. “The vampire principle, in other words.”

  He readily nodded and smiled, as if to encourage a precocious student. “Very good, well put. That’s exactly it: the vampire principle. Charity enslaves the soul, as everyone knows. That’s the real evil of socialism, you see. It dries up the individual’s will to achieve. Cronin realized that. He saw that an individual surrenders a certain portion of himself every time he’s given something. So in his book, Cronin equates Doctor Hudson with the socialist society. Of course, as a boy, I wasn’t interested in politics. But I was interested in the personal aspects of Cronin’s thesis: the proposition that it was possible to draw strength from another. Or rather, draw substance—essence. It’s a much subtler theory than, say, enslaving a person’s physical being. It’s mystical, I admit. But I submit that it’s practical.” He paused, and for a long moment appraised me, his handsome face inscrutable.

  “I was just wondering,” he said, “whether your refusal to tell me about previous ESP experiences had anything to do with Cronin’s theory. I was wondering whether, by refusing to divulge them, you drew strength from these experiences—secret, necessary strength.”

  I didn’t know what to reply. I shifted in my chair and looked away. I was trying to decide why he’d invited me. Certainly not to discuss the vampire theory of human relationships. And certainly he wasn’t interested in me, not really interested. So far, I had been merely an attentive listener to a monologue.

  “You know, of course, that I’m having the murder of my daughter privately investigated,” he said abruptly.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I’ve had no satisfaction from the investigation, no satisfaction whatever. I’m dissatisfied with the arrangements I’ve made.”

  “Well, it takes a long while, of course. I mean, if the police haven’t solved the crime, with all their facilities and their information, it’s difficult to see how private investigators can do much better.”

  He seemed to think this a curious statement.

  “The police,” he said impatiently, “are bureaucrats. Their I.Q.’s probably don’t average above one hundred, if that. Further, they’re corrupted by the very fact of their civil service. No one really cares whether they do their job properly. They have a thousand things on their mind, not to mention the fact that they depend on the existence of crime for their jobs, as I mentioned to the press previously. My investigators, on the other hand, are being paid to concentrate on only one matter—the murder of my child.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “However,” he continued briskly, “the facts would seem to bear out your position. I’ve had two firms of private investigators working for a week now, and nothing’s come of it. Absolutely nothing, except a stack of reports.”

  “You’ve got two firms?”

  He nodded. “Each one of them knows about it. In fact, I called their representatives in together and gave them my terms: double fees and expenses to the firm that solves the crime, and nothing to the other.”

  “And they agreed to it?”

  “Certainly they agreed to it. These men are in business. They’re competitors. They understand the nature of the free enterprise system, that the best prevails, and the inferior is eliminated. It’s one of the basic laws of capitalism, the theory of natural selection, to borrow from philosophy. It’s something bureaucrats will never realize until it’s too late. We’ve got to begin eliminating the unfit in our society. We’re in a life-and-death struggle with a society that’s doing exactly that: applying the theory of natural selection to sociological and economic laws. So—” He interrupted himself to look at me, his expression a mixture of light irony and mild contempt. “You don’t agree with me, do you?” he asked.

  “Well, not—” I swallowed, giving myself time for a moment’s thought—“not wholly. Everyone’s against bureaucracy, the way everyone’s against sin. But then there’s the question of alternatives. I mean, while one system’s not perfect, there’s no guarantee that—”

  “Essentially you’re a dreamer, Mr. Drake. A Utopian. In your case, this can be forgiven. It’s probably essential to your profession. Or your avocation, I should say.” The judgment was delivered firmly and decisively, with complete assurance.

  Irrationally, I felt relieved—as if the judge had just dismissed an indictment against me.

  “You are also,” he continued, “something of a mystic. But, like myself, I would say that you’re a practical mystic. You have been successful in organizing the tremendous wastefulness of human consciousness into a useful tool. This we have in common—and this we share with most of the world’s great men. Most great men don’t talk about it, but they’re mystics. Practical, working mystics. Which is to say that they have developed the power to see deep within themselves, and therefore deep into others.” He shrugged, as if deprecating a cheap parlor trick. “That’s all there is to it, the simple, incredibly elementary secret of one man’s power over another: know thyself to know another. Then, when you know him, you
can predict his responses. And that is power. The source of all political, intellectual and economic power is the ability to predict another’s responses, and therefore control him. And, of course, it’s no secret. It’s preached from every pulpit every Sunday. It’s written in—” Impatiently, he interrupted himself. “But never mind. Do you know why I’m telling you all this?”

  Slowly, incredulously, I nodded. Because suddenly I did know.

  “Why, then?” he asked.

  I felt almost as if I were one of his followers, responding to cue. “You want me to try and solve the mystery of your daughter’s murder.”

  He nodded, almost casually. “Correct. You’ve restored my confidence in you, at least in part. Your next logical step, if I may suggest, is to conduct yourself with a little more assurance. In fact, a lot more assurance. You’re a national figure, a minor national figure, but nevertheless you have your foot in the door. Yet you inspire no confidence. You have no presence. You’re waiting for the world to come to you, Mr. Drake. And it doesn’t happen that way, believe me.”

  I was irritated. “It got me here,” I answered.

  He thought about that, and then smiled. “Yes, that’s true. It got you here.” He seemed to take the point scored against him with good humor.

  “Maybe,” he said musingly, “maybe it’s different with mystics than it is with businessmen or politicians. Maybe the rules are different.”

  “It’s very much the same, I’d think. You’re judged on results, and not much else.”

  He smiled, an unpleasant, condescending smile. “You don’t know much about politics, do you, Mr. Drake?”

  “No,” I admitted. “No, I don’t.”

  “Perhaps it’s just as well. Probably you’re more effective with your mind completely free. I can imagine that, in your profession, you need a completely free interchange between your conscious and your unconscious. Perhaps that’s why many mediums are essentially simple people, even childlike.”

  The statement shook me, for its truth and for its heedless barb. But he wasn’t even watching my reaction. He was reaching into his inner coat pocket and withdrawing a checkbook and fountain pen. He uncapped the pen and opened the checkbook on the coffee table before him.