The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  “You’d better call them anyway, Mr. DeGrasse,” the day clerk put in. “I’ve run into this mental type before. He’ll only come back in again the very minute your back’s turned.”

  “No, I’d rather not, unless he forces me to. It’s bad for the hotel. Look at the crowd collecting down here on the main floor already. Tchk! Tchk!”

  He tried to reason with me. “Now listen, give me a break, will you? You don’t look like the kind of a man who—Won’t you please go quietly? If I have you turned loose outside, will you go away and promise not to come in here again?”

  “Ali-i-i-i-ice!” I sent it baying harrowingly down the long vista of lobby, lounges, foyers. I’d been gathering it in me the last few seconds while he was speaking to me. I put my heart and soul into it. It should have shaken down the big old-fashioned chandeliers by the vibration it caused alone. My voice broke under the strain. A woman onlooker somewhere in the background bleated at the very intensity of it.

  The manager hit himself between the eyes in consternation. “Oh, this is fierce! Hurry up, call an officer quick, get him out of here.”

  “See, what did I tell you?” the clerk said knowingly.

  I got another chestful of air in, tore loose with it. “Somebody help me! You people standing around looking, isn’t there one of you will help me? I brought my wife here last night; now she’s gone and they’re trying to tell me I never—”

  A brown hand suddenly sealed my mouth, was as quickly withdrawn again at the manager’s panic-stricken admonition. “George! Archer! Don’t lay a hand on him. No rough stuff. Make us liable for damages afterwards, y’know.”

  Then I heard him and the desk man both give a deep breath of relief. “At last!” And I knew a cop must have come in behind me.

  The grip on my arms behind my back changed, became single instead of double, one arm instead of two. But I didn’t fight against it.

  Suddenly I was very passive, unresistant. Because suddenly I had a dread of arrest, confinement. I wanted to preserve my freedom of movement more than all else, to try to find her again. If they threw me in a cell, or put me in a straitjacket, how could I look for her, how could I ever hope to get at the bottom of this mystery?

  The police would never believe me. If the very people who had seen her denied her existence, how could I expect those who hadn’t to believe in it?

  Docile, I let him lead me out to the sidewalk in front of the hotel. The manager came out after us, mopping his forehead, and the desk clerk, and a few of the bolder among the guests who had been watching.

  They held a three-cornered consultation in which I took no part. I even let the manager’s version of what the trouble was pass unchallenged. Not that he distorted what had actually happened just now, but he made it seem as if I were mistaken about having brought her there last night.

  Finally the harness cop asked, “Well, do you want to press charges against him for creating a disturbance in your lobby?”

  The manager held his hands palms out, horrified. “I should say not. We’re having our biggest rush of the year right now; I can’t take time off to run down there and go through all that tommyrot. Just see that he doesn’t come in again and create any more scenes.”

  “I’ll see to that, all right,” the cop promised truculently.

  They went inside again, the manager and the clerk and the gallery that had watched us from the front steps. Inside to the hotel that had swallowed her alive.

  The cop read me a lecture, to which I listened in stony silence. Then he gave me a shove that sent me floundering, said, “Keep moving now, hear me?”

  I pointed, and said, “That’s my car standing there. May I get in it?” He checked first to make sure it was, then he opened the door, said, “Yeah, get in it and get out of here.”

  He’d made no slightest attempt to find out what was behind the whole thing, whether there was some truth to my story or not, or whether it was drink, drugs, or mental aberration. But then he was only a harness cop. That’s why I hadn’t wanted to tangle with him.

  This strangeness that had risen up around me was nothing to be fought by an ordinary patrolman. I was going to them—the police—but I was going of my own free will and in my own way, not to be dragged in by the scruff of the neck and then put under observation for the next twenty-four hours.

  Ten minutes or so later I got out in front of the first precinct house I came upon, and went in, and said to the desk sergeant, “I want to talk to the lieutenant in charge.”

  He stared at me coldly.

  “What about?”

  “About my wife.”

  I didn’t talk to him alone. Three of his men were present. They were just shapes in the background as far as I was concerned, sitting there very quietly, listening.

  I told it simply, hoping against hope I could get them to believe me, feeling somehow I couldn’t even before I had started.

  “I’m Jimmy Cannon, I’m twenty-five years old, and I’m from Lake City. Last evening after dark my girl and I—her name was Alice Brown—we left there in my car, and at 1:15 this morning we were married by a justice of the peace.

  “I think his name was Hulskamp—anyway it’s a white house with morning glories all over the porch, about fifty miles this side of Lake City.

  “We got in here at three, and they gave her a little room at the Royal Hotel. They couldn’t put me up, but they put her up alone. The number was 1006. I know that as well as I know I’m sitting here. This morning when I went over there, they were painting the room and I haven’t been able to find a trace of her since.

  “I saw her sign the register, but her name isn’t on it anymore. The night clerk says he never saw her. The bellboy says he never saw her. Now they’ve got me so I’m scared and shaky, like a little kid is of the dark. I want you men to help me. Won’t you men help me?”

  “We’ll help you”—said the lieutenant in charge. Slowly, awfully slowly; I didn’t like that slowness—“if we’re able to.” And I knew what he meant; if we find any evidence that your story is true.

  He turned his head toward one of the three shadowy listeners in the background, at random. The one nearest him. Then he changed his mind, shifted his gaze further along, to the one in the middle. “Ainslie, suppose you take a whack at this. Go over to this hotel and see what you can find out. Take him with you.”

  So, as he stood up, I separated him from the blurred background for the first time. I was disappointed. He was just another man like me, maybe five years older, maybe an inch or two shorter. He could feel cold and hungry and tired, just as I could. He could believe a lie, just as I could. He couldn’t see around corners or through walls, or into hearts any more than I could. What good was he going to be?

  He looked as if he’d seen every rotten thing there was in the world. He looked as if he’d once expected to see other things beside that, but didn’t anymore. He said, “Yes, sir,” and you couldn’t tell whether he was bored or interested, or liked the detail or resented it, or gave a rap.

  On the way over I said, “You’ve got to find out what became of her. You’ve got to make them—”

  “I’ll do what I can.” He couldn’t seem to get any emotion into his voice. After all, from his point of view, why should he?

  “You’ll do what you can!” I gasped. “Didn’t you ever have a wife?”

  He gave me a look, but you couldn’t tell what was in it.

  We went straight back to the Royal. He was very businesslike, did a streamlined, competent job. Didn’t waste a question or a motion, but didn’t leave out a single relevant thing either.

  I took back what I’d been worried about at first; he was good.

  But he wasn’t good enough for this, whatever it was.

  It went like this: “Let me see your register.” He took out a glass, went over the place I pointed out to him where she had signed. Evidently couldn’t find any marks of erasure any more than I had with my naked eye.

  Then we went up to the room,
1006. The painter was working on the wood trim by now, had all four walls and the ceiling done. It was such a small cubbyhole it wasn’t even a half-day’s work. He said, “Where was the furniture when you came in here to work this morning? Still in the room, or had the room been cleared?”

  “Still in the room; I cleared it myself. There wasn’t much; a chair, a scatter rug, a cot.”

  “Was the cot made or unmade?”

  “Made up.”

  “Was the window opened or closed when you came in?”

  “Closed tight.”

  “Was the air in the room noticeably stale, as if it had been closed up that way all night, or not noticeably so, as if it had only been closed up shortly before?”

  “Turrible, like it hadn’t been aired for a week. And believe me, when I notice a place is stuffy, you can bet it’s stuffy all right.”

  “Were there any marks on the walls or floor or anywhere around the room that didn’t belong there?”

  I knew he meant blood, and gnawed the lining of my cheek fearfully.

  “Nothing except plain grime, that needed painting bad.”

  We visited the housekeeper next. She took us to the linen room and showed us. “If there’re any dark blue quilts in use in this house, it’s the first I know about it. The bellboy could have come in here at that hour—but all he would have gotten are maroon ones. And here’s my supply list, every quilt accounted for. So it didn’t come from here.”

  We visited the baggage room next. “Look around and see if there’s anything in here that resembles that bag of your wife’s.” I did, and there wasn’t. Wherever she had gone, whatever had become of her, her bag had gone with her.

  About fifty minutes after we’d first gone in, we were back in my car outside the hotel again. He’d done a good, thorough job; and if I was willing to admit that, it must have been.

  We sat there without moving a couple of minutes, me under the wheel. He kept looking at me steadily, sizing me up. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I threw my head back and started to look up the face of the building, story by story. I counted as my eyes rose, and when they’d come to the tenth floor I stopped them there, swung them around the corner of the building to the third window from the end, stopped them there for good. It was a skinnier window than the others. So small, so high up, to hold so much mystery. “Alice,” I whispered up to it, and it didn’t answer, didn’t hear.

  His voice brought my gaze down from there again. “The burden of the proof has now fallen on you. It’s up to you to give me some evidence that she actually went in there. That she actually was with you. That she actually was. I wasn’t able to find a single person in that building who actually saw her.”

  I just looked at him, the kind of a look you get from someone right after you stick a knife in his heart. Finally I said with quiet bitterness, “So now I have to prove I had a wife.”

  The instant, remorseless way he answered that was brutal in itself. “Yes, you do. Can you?”

  I pushed my hat off, raked my fingers through my hair, with one and the same gesture. “Could you, if someone asked you in the middle of the street? Could you?”

  He peeled out a wallet, flipped it open. A tiny snapshot of a woman’s head and shoulders danced in front of my eyes for a split second. He folded it and put it away again. He briefly touched a gold band on his finger, token of that old custom that is starting to revive again, of husbands wearing marriage rings as well as wives.

  “And a dozen other ways. You could call Tremont 4102. Or you could call the marriage clerk at the City Hall—”

  “But we were just beginning,” I said bleakly. “I have no pictures. She was wearing the only ring we had. The certificate was to be mailed to us at Lake City in a few days. You could call this justice of the peace, Hulskamp, out near U.S. 9; he’ll tell you—”

  “Okay, Cannon, I’ll do that. We’ll go back to headquarters, I’ll tell the lieutenant what I’ve gotten so far, and I’ll do it from there.”

  Now at last it would be over, now at last it would be straightened out. He left me sitting in the room outside the lieutenant’s office, while he was in there reporting to him. He seemed to take a long time, so I knew he must be doing more than just reporting; they must be talking it over.

  Finally Ainslie looked out at me, but only to say, “What was the name of that justice you say married you, again?”

  “Hulskamp.”

  He closed the door again. I had another long wait. Finally it opened a second time, he hitched his head at me to come in. The atmosphere, when I got in there, was one of hard, brittle curiosity, without any feeling to it. As when you look at somebody afflicted in a way you never heard of before, and wonder how he got that way.

  I got that distinctly. Even from Ainslie, and it was fairly oozing from his lieutenant and the other men in the room. They looked and looked and looked at me.

  The lieutenant did the talking. “You say a Justice Hulskamp married you. You still say that?”

  “A white house sitting off the road, this side of Lake City, just before you get to U.S. 9—”

  “Well, there is a Justice Hulskamp, and he does live out there. We just had him on the phone. He says he never married anyone named James Cannon to anyone named Alice Brown, last night or any other night. He hasn’t married anyone who looks like you, recently, to anyone who looks as you say she did. He didn’t marry anyone at all at any time last night—”

  He was going off someplace while he talked to me, and his voice was going away after him. Ainslie filled a paper cup with water at the cooler in the corner, strewed it deftly across my face, once each way, as if I were some kind of a potted plant, and one of the other guys picked me up from the floor and put me back on the chair again.

  The lieutenant’s voice came back again stronger, as if he hadn’t gone away after all. “Who were her people in Lake City?”

  “She was an orphan.”

  “Well, where did she work there?”

  “At the house of a family named Beresford, at 20 New Hampshire Avenue. She was in service there, a maid; she lived with them—”

  “Give me long distance. Give me Lake City. This is Michianopolis police headquarters. I want to talk to a party named Beresford, 20 New Hampshire Avenue.”

  The ring came back fast. “We’re holding a man here who claims he married a maid working for you. A girl by the name of Alice Brown.”

  He’d hung up before I even knew it was over. “There’s no maid employed there. They don’t know anything about any Alice Brown, never heard of her.”

  I stayed on the chair this time. I just didn’t hear so clearly for a while, everything sort of fuzzy.

  “… Hallucinations … And he’s in a semi-hysterical condition right now. Notice how jerky his reflexes are?” Someone was chopping the edge of his hand at my kneecaps. “Seems harmless. Let him go. It’ll probably wear off. I’ll give him a sedative.” Someone snapped a bag shut, left the room.

  The lieutenant’s voice was as flat as it was deadly, and it brooked no argument. “You never had a wife, Cannon!”

  I could see only Ainslie’s face in the welter before me. “You have, though, haven’t you?” I said, so low none of the others could catch it.

  The lieutenant was still talking to me. “Now get out of here before we change our minds and call an ambulance to take you away. And don’t go back into any more hotels raising a row.”

  I hung around outside; I wouldn’t go away. Where was there to go? One of the others came out, looked at me fleetingly in passing, said with humorous tolerance, “You better get out of here before the lieutenant catches you,” and went on about his business.

  I waited until I saw Ainslie come out. Then I went up to him. “I’ve got to talk to you; you’ve got to listen to me—”

  “Why? The matter’s closed. You heard the lieutenant.”

  He went back to some sort of a locker room. I went after him.

  “You’re not supposed to come back he
re. Now look, Cannon, I’m telling you for your own good, you’re looking for trouble if you keep this up.”

  “Don’t turn me down,” I said hoarsely, tugging away at the seam of his sleeve. “Can’t you see the state I’m in? I’m like someone in a dark room, crying for a match. I’m like someone drowning, crying for a helping hand. I can’t make it alone anymore.”

  There wasn’t anyone in the place but just the two of us. My pawing grip slipped down his sleeve to the hem of his coat, and I was looking up at him from my knees. What did I care? There was no such thing as pride or dignity anymore. I would have crawled flat along the floor on my belly, just to get a word of relief out of anyone.

  “Forget you’re a detective, and I’m a case. I’m appealing to you as one human being to another. I’m appealing to you as one husband to another. Don’t turn your back on me like that, don’t pull my hands away from your coat. I don’t ask you to do anything for me anymore; you don’t have to lift a finger. Just say, ‘Yes, you had a wife, Cannon.’ Just give me that one glimmer of light in the dark. Say it even if you don’t mean it, even if you don’t believe it, say it anyway. Oh, say it, will you—”

  He drew the back of his hand slowly across his mouth, either in disgust at my abasement or in a sudden access of pity. Maybe a little of both. His voice was hoarse, as if he were sore at the spot I was putting him on.

  “Give me anything,” he said, shaking me a little and jogging me to my feet, “the slightest thing, to show that she ever existed, to show that there ever was such a person outside of your own mind, and I’ll be with you to the bitter end. Give me a pin that she used to fasten her dress with. Give me a grain of powder, a stray hair; but prove that it was hers. But I can’t do it unless you do.”

  “And I have nothing to show you. Not a pin, not a grain of powder.”

  I took a few dragging steps toward the locker room door. “You’re doing something to me that I wouldn’t do to a dog,” I mumbled. “What you’re doing to me is worse than if you were to kill me. You’re locking me up in shadows for the rest of my life. You’re taking my mind away from me. You’re condemning me slowly but surely to madness, to being without a mind. It won’t happen right away, but sooner or later, in six months or in a year—Well, I guess that’s that.”