The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  The evidence of those three people was, to my mind, conclusive. One person might make a mistake, but not three. Therefore, since there was no sign of any sort of a struggle, it seemed probable to me that for some inexplicable reason the girl had left the hotel of her own accord. The only thing I couldn’t explain was the scream.

  If Miss Wilson wanted to get away unnoticed, why did she scream? What was the cause of that scream? Horton, Wilson, and the chambermaid all described it as unquestionably a scream of terror. What was the meaning of it?

  I finished my article and walked uptown toward Gramercy Park. Though I was very tired, I wanted some fresh air.

  It was after midnight when I got to our apartment and I found that Bellamy had already turned in. I went quietly to bed, but it was not to be for long. I was awakened about three by the frantic ring of the phone. It was the editor of the Republican.

  “Run over to the Nathan,” he ordered. “They’ve found that girl—murdered,” he added after a pause.

  “Good God,” I cried. “Where did they find her?”

  “The body was hidden behind some ash barrels in the basement, said the editor. “The hotel porter discovered it accidentally. Shake a leg and get over there. I’m holding up the presses of the next edition for your story.”

  I began to dress hurriedly, without making any attempt to be quiet. Bellamy came out of his room, wrapped in his long bath robe.

  “Devil of a thing to wake up a fellow at this hour,” he grumbled. “Never can get to sleep again after I awaken. What’s up?”

  I told him briefly.

  “What are the facts of the case?” he asked, stretching himself out on the couch.

  I told him, finishing the narrative as I was putting on my hat to go out.

  “Are all the police reporters such fools as you?” he asked.

  It was his way of asking a question, like the old legal trick of inquiring of the defendant if he has “given up beating his wife.” An answer either way is an indictment.

  There was little to learn at the Nathan besides what the night editor had told me. William Graham, a porter at the Nathan, had made a cache of a bottle of Scotch behind some ash barrels in the cellar. When he reached behind the barrels for his forbidden treasure his hand touched the corpse.

  He speedily notified the police and when I reached the Nathan I found that a special officer had been sent down to question Graham.

  This officer was a rather intelligent fellow named Milliken. He got the porter’s story from him and was about to dismiss him when Graham, with a puzzled frown, asked if he might add something to the evidence.

  “There’s something I’d like to tell, sir,” he said, “but in telling you I have to confess to a crime myself. If you’ll agree not to prosecute me I can tell you something valuable.”

  Milliken looked at him shrewdly.

  “What sort of a crime have you committed?” he asked.

  “You won’t pull me in?”

  “No. Spill it,” demanded the officer shortly.

  “Well, sir,” began Graham, and he actually blushed, “I’m a bootlegger!” Milliken scowled blackly at some of us who laughed. Graham went on, somewhat hesitantly: “I was in the habit, sir, of keeping a case of liquor back of them barrels. The night that the young girl disappeared, last night, I had some customers.

  “They came into the cellar for a case of gin I had for them. What I’m getting at is, that I had that case of gin back of them barrels, right where I found the young girl. She wasn’t there, sir, yesterday at this time. What’s more she wasn’t there this afternoon, that is, yesterday afternoon, strictly speaking.

  “I put a bottle of Scotch there about five o’clock when I came on duty. She wasn’t there then, sir. That girl was put there, sir, some time between five last night and half-past two this morning.”

  Milliken smoked a cigarette thoughtfully.

  “You’d swear to that, Graham? You’d swear she wasn’t there last night at five o’clock? That means that the body was put there at least twenty-four hours after she disappeared.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Could anyone get into the basement without you seeing him?” asked the detective.

  “Oh, yes, sir. The basement’s a big place. I wasn’t near them barrels after five o’clock until I found the young girl.”

  That was all the porter’s evidence. But it made the case more difficult than ever. The police now switched their opinion about Miss Wilson’s having gone to her room. There never had been any doubt in my mind. She had gone to her room, some one hiding in the room had struck her down, and had escaped himself, with the body!

  Miss Wilson must have seen her assailant before he struck her, for she had screamed. But how, by all that’s wonderful, had they got out of that room? There simply wasn’t any way to get out except by the door, and there hadn’t been any escape that way.

  The chambermaid had been watching, and Horton and young Wilson had come out of their rooms almost immediately as they heard the scream. There had been less than three minutes before they broke in the door. Three minutes in which the murderer escaped with the body. Then, a day later, this murderer had come from wherever he had been hiding and put the body back of those ash barrels.

  “The queer part of it is,” said Milliken, “that he couldn’t have been hiding in the hotel. Mr. Horton and I searched every square inch of it the day after the disappearance. He must have hidden outside somewhere and brought the body back to the hotel last night.”

  The whole problem was getting too deep for me, and I hurried back to the Republican to get an article into the breakfast-table edition. As I reassembled the facts I became more puzzled. A girl is waylaid, probably in an attempt to rob her of the jewels which she didn’t have. She screams, and the robber strikes her down. The cause of her death had been a shattering blow on the head.

  Then, in three minutes’ time, the murderer escapes with his victim from a room from which escape is impossible. He drags the body somewhere outside the hotel, and then, a day later, brings it back and hides it in the basement.

  After writing my article I returned once more to Gramercy Park to freshen up. I found Bellamy still stretched out on the couch. He had been smoking a great deal, for the carpet was littered with ashes.

  He looked a little pale from his sleepless night. The coffee percolator was bubbling on the table, and the smell of it made me realize that I was ravishingly hungry.

  “I was just about to throw together some bacon and eggs,” said Bellamy. “You’re just in time. What happened?”

  I told him between gasps, as I drenched my face and head with cold water from the basin. He lay there, smoking, a queer smile on his face.

  “Look here,” I said when I had dried my face and hands, “I didn’t have time to take up your parting jab this morning. What the devil do you mean by insinuating that I was a fool?”

  “Did I insinuate that?” he drawled.

  “Yes,” I said. “You asked me if all police reporters were such fools as I.”

  “Did I? Well, perhaps they are. Crime is usually so elemental, the kindergarten of emotions, and you fellows make such a hullabaloo about it. It’s ridiculous.”

  “If you have some brilliant solution to this Wilson business,” I said dryly, “explode it. Every poet thinks he knows a devil of a lot about humanity. Suppose you explain this puzzle.”

  “It looks so simple to me,” said Bellamy, “but of course I can’t be sure. However, answer these questions if you can.”

  “Shoot,” I said.

  “First,” said Bellamy, tapping down the ashes in his pipe, “Let us get the scene straight. Miss Wilson has a very valuable lot of jewels. They are obviously worth an attempted robbery. But did Miss Wilson publish the fact in the papers that she had them?”

  “What are you driving at?” I asked.

  “Just this, old bean. Either it was a coincidence, and some common burglar, a sneak thief hanging about the hotel corridors, chanc
ed into Miss Wilson’s room and, being surprised, killed her, or it was not a coincidence, and someone who knew about those jewels was the murderer.

  “Now, the people who knew about those jewels were comparatively few. They were her brother and Horton, who were with her, the lawyer who gave them to her, and perhaps one or two of his office force. Now, my dear Renshaw, what do you say? Was it one of these, or was it just a chance burglar?”

  “Most likely a chance burglar,” I said.

  “Very well. Question number two: the police and the reporters have been able to find no exit from that room but the door. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is another exit, which I hasten to assure you that I don’t believe, do you think that, with Horton and Wilson banging on that door with a fire ax, he would stop to drag off the lifeless body of his victim?

  “Remember, we are presuming that it was a chance burglar who knew nothing of the jewels. Someone who knew about the jewels might have thought Miss Wilson had them on her person and made the effort to get the body out with him for further search. But do you think even this is probable?”

  I admitted that I didn’t.

  “Question number three,” drawled Bellamy. “Presuming that we are wrong about this and that the murderer did drag the body out with him—out of the hotel, mind you, for the police searched every nook and cranny the day after the disappearance, and she wasn’t in the hotel—presuming, I say, that he did drag the body out of the hotel, and concealed it in safety somewhere, which is presuming a great deal, can you by any stretch of imagination conceive of his returning the next day with the body and concealing it in the hotel?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “The fourth question is very simple, but to my mind quite pertinent. Presuming that all this happened, can you imagine that in the struggle which took place in Room Twenty-Three, the falling body, the dragging of that body out of the room through the unknown exit—which doesn’t exist—nothing would have been disturbed—no chair misplaced, no rumpled carpet—nothing?”

  “Frankly, I can’t,” I admitted.

  “Now one more point,” he said. “We have been imagining that all this was done by a chance burglar. Is it any more likely that one who knew about the jewels would do these things?”

  “No,” I said, “it isn’t.”

  Bellamy rose from the couch and pulled the plug out of the coffee percolater.

  “Me for some breakfast,” he said.

  “But the solution?” I cried. “All you’ve done is to make it seem more difficult than ever.”

  Bellamy smiled. “You’ll admit,” he said, “that none of these suppositions we have made are possible. Therefore an entirely different set of circumstances must have attended the crime. Use your head, old bean, use your head. I’m for a little bacon and eggs, and then I’m going to write a sonnet about the mayor.”

  “But you can’t leave me in the air this way,” I complained.

  Bellamy wandered toward the kitchenette to cook his eggs.

  “Look up the Wilsons’ family history,” he suggested. “Family histories are always interesting at a time like this.”

  And Bellamy would say no more, though I pestered him all through breakfast. I went back to the office then and wrote another article in which I embodied all of Bellamy’s questions.

  My chief was much pleased and wanted me to continue with a theory as to what actually happened. I couldn’t do that, as I hadn’t the vaguest notion about it.

  I did follow Bellamy’s advice, however, and found out what I could about the Wilsons. When I got home that night I told Bellamy what I had discovered.

  “They are a family who once had means,” I told him. “The father died about three years ago and left nothing but a mass of debts. The girl took a position as private secretary to some man, and Robert Wilson went on the stage. From what I could find out at his club, he is a man of good habits, though usually rather badly in debt.”

  Bellamy nodded. “Just as I thought,” he said cryptically.

  “And you have solved the riddle?”

  “Been working on the mayor all day,” he said. “I knew the solution this morning.”

  “Good Heavens,” I cried, “if you really have any idea of what happened, you ought to tell me. The murderer may be making good his escape.”

  Bellamy thought for a moment.

  “There is just one fact which might scatter my theory to the four winds,” he said, “but I’m inclined to think that fact doesn’t exist.”

  “What is that fact?” I asked.

  “Were the rooms of Herbert Horton and Robert Wilson searched when the police were looking through the hotel for the body?”

  “I see what you are driving at,” I said excitedly. “You think the murderer might actually have concealed the body in one of those rooms while Wilson, Horton, and the police were searching the premises!

  “Of course the police didn’t bother to search those rooms because they knew that they had been occupied by the girl’s brother and their own detective when the murder was committed. I think you’ve hit it,” I concluded jubilantly.

  “I didn’t mean that at all,” said Bellamy, “or at least not the way you think I did.”

  He sat smoking a minute, and then turned to me; and I saw his eyes were unusually bright.

  “Renshaw,” he said, “you know how absolutely worthless evidence of the visual sort is. I mean one can’t count on the eye of a witness. It’s been tried over and over again. A whole roomful of men will be asked to describe a pantomime which has been enacted before them, and no two of them will give the same answer.

  “You know that a witness may swear to having seen something, swear honestly, that never happened at all.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Bear in mind, then, old bean, that the chambermaid’s testimony was absolutely false, although she thinks she has told the truth.”

  “What do you mean?” I cried.

  “Wait—tell me, Renshaw, why do the police never believe their own conclusions? They say in this case that there is no possible means of escape from Room Twenty-Three except the door, yet they are trying to find out how Miss Wilson’s murderer got out of that room. Renshaw, if there is no way out of that room but the door, then the murderer never got out.”

  “What do you mean, he was hidden in there? That’s impossible, they searched the room immediately when they got in.”

  “I mean,” said Bellamy slowly, “that he never was in that room.”

  “Look here,” I said, laughing, “I thought you were being serious.”

  “That’s the trouble with you duffers,” said Bellamy with unwonted sharpness, “you haven’t the brains to accept the truth. You sit by, in this instance, and solemnly assert that the murderer couldn’t have escaped from Room Twenty-Three, and when I tell you he didn’t, you scoff at it. Work out your own solution! You’ll never find the truth, if you spend all your time contradicting yourself.”

  “Oh, come, Bellamy, don’t be offended,” I said. “I thought you were joking. You must admit it sounds ridiculous to say that the murderer didn’t escape from the room in which the murder was committed and then that he never was in that room!”

  Bellamy smiled.

  “Sorry, old bean. I get awfully bored with pigheadedness at moments. But, see here, I said that the murderer wasn’t in Room Twenty-Three. The reason he wasn’t there was because the murder wasn’t committed in Room Twenty-Three.”

  “Bellamy!” I ejaculated.

  Bellamy paused and filled his pipe.

  “Thanks for not laughing at that one,” he said dryly as he lit his pipe. “Let me get down to what actually happened,” he continued, and I detected an unusual enthusiasm in his tone. His eyes were glowing and he twined and untwined his long fingers nervously.

  “Look at the scene, Renshaw. Three rooms stand next to each other in the corridor. A chambermaid is cleaning up in the hall. A young girl gets off the elevator and goes to her room. The m
aid only casually notices this. But when a loud scream is heard the maid looks up, panic-stricken. For a moment she doubts which room the girl entered.

  “There are a dozen similar doors in the corridor. However, she is soon made certain that it was Number Twenty-Three since the gentlemen who have the rooms on either side of Twenty-Three rush out and bang on that door. Then comes the excitement of breaking into the room. It was found empty. Horton turns to the maid and asks her if she saw Miss Wilson go into Room Twenty-Three.

  “She swears that she did. But she didn’t, Renshaw! She didn’t! The thing that made her certain that Miss Wilson had entered Twenty-Three was that Horton and Wilson came out and banged on that door. Could anything be more natural?”

  “It still isn’t quite clear,” I said.

  Bellamy smiled tolerantly. “Listen, old bean, Miss Wilson never went into Twenty-Three. She went either into Horton’s room or her brother’s. One of those two men attacked her for some reason and killed her. Just before the attack Miss Wilson screamed.

  “The murderer had great presence of mind, a presence of mind bordering on genius. Instead of trying to escape he rushes out into the hall—after pushing the body under the bed, say—and bangs on the door that Miss Wilson ought to have entered.

  “The guiltless man, I won’t say which he is for the moment, naturally supposed that the other fellow was acting on the same impulse as himself. He had heard the scream which he suspected came from Miss Wilson. The guiltless man was completely disarmed, never suspected for a moment.

  “The chambermaid might have given the whole game away had she carefully noticed which room the girl entered, but she hadn’t noticed carefully. When the two men came out and banged on the door of Twenty-Three she thought she was certain, only thought she was certain.”

  “But, Bellamy,” I cried, “which one is it?”

  Bellamy leaned forward. He seemed to be thrilled by his own reasoning. He was as excited as a schoolboy.