“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Logan said. “The man who killed poor Mr. Rolt must be caught and put to death.”
“The authorities are investigating,” Dr. Montaign said soothingly.
“Like they investigated my case?” Logan said in a raised and angry voice. “They won’t bring the criminal to justice! And I tell you we must not have a murderer here in Compound D!”
“Cottage D,” Dr. Montaign corrected him.
“Perhaps Mr. Rolt was killed by something from the sea,” William Sloan said thoughtfully.
“No,” Brandon said, “I heard the police say there was only a single set of footprints near the body and it led from and to the cottage. It’s obviously the work of an inside subversive.”
“But what size footprints?” Logan asked.
“They weren’t clear enough to determine the size,” Dr. Montaign said. “They led to and from near the wooden stairs that come up to the rear yard, then the ground was too hard for footprints.”
“Perhaps they were Mr. Rolt’s own footprints,” Sloan said.
Kneehoff grunted. “Stupid! Mr. Rolt went to the beach, but he did not come back.”
“Well—” Dr. Montaign rose slowly and walked to the door. “I must be going to some of the other cottages now.” He smiled at Logan. “It’s interesting that you’re so concerned with justice,” he said. A gull screamed as the doctor went out.
The five remaining patients of Cottage D sat quietly after Dr. Montaign’s exit. Logan watched Kneehoff gather up his letters and give their edges a neat sharp tap on the table top before slipping them into his shirt pocket. Brandon and Mr. Heimer seemed to be in deep thought, while Sloan was peering over Kneehoff’s shoulder through the open window out to the rolling sea.
“It could be that none of us is safe,” Logan said suddenly. “We must get to the bottom of this ourselves.”
“But we are at the bottom,” Mr. Heimer said pleasantly, “all of us.”
Kneehoff snorted. “Speak for yourself, old man.”
“It’s the crime against the poor people that should be investigated,” Brandon said. “If my bomb in the Statue of Liberty had gone off . . . And I used my whole week’s vacation that year going to New York.”
“We’ll conduct our own investigation,” Logan insisted, “and we might as well start now. Everyone tell me what he knows about Mr. Rolt’s murder.”
“Who put you in charge?” Kneehoff asked. “And why should we investigate Rolt’s murder?”
“Mr. Rolt was our friend,” Sloan said.
“Anyway,” Logan said, “we must have an orderly investigation. Somebody has to be in charge.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Kneehoff said. “Yes, an orderly investigation.”
Information was exchanged, and it was determined that Mr. Rolt had said he was going to bed at nine-fifteen, saying good night to Ollie, the attendant, in the TV lounge. Sloan and Brandon, the two other men in the lounge, remembered the time because the halfway commercial for “Monsters of Main Street” was on, the one where the box of detergent soars through the air and snatches everyone’s shirt. Then at ten o’clock, just when the news was coming on, Ollie had gone to check the beach and discovered Mr. Rolt’s body.
“So,” Logan said, “the approximate time of death has been established. And I was in my room with the door open. I doubt if Mr. Rolt could have passed in the hall to go outdoors without my noticing him, so we must hypothesize that he did go to his room at nine-fifteen, and sometime between nine-fifteen and ten he left through his window.”
“He knew the rules,” Kneehoff said. “He wouldn’t have just walked outside for everyone to see him.”
“True,” Logan conceded, “but it’s best not to take anything for granted.”
“True, true,” Mr. Heimer chuckled, “take nothing for granted.”
“And where were you between nine and ten?” Logan asked.
“I was in Dr. Montaign’s office,” Mr. Heimer said with a grin, “talking to the doctor about something I’d heard in the steel utility pole. I almost made him understand that all things metal are receivers, tuned to different frequencies, different worlds and vibrations.”
Kneehoff, who had once held two of his accountants prisoner for five days without food, laughed.
“And where were you?” Logan asked.
“In my office, going over my leather-goods vouchers,” Kneehoff said. Kneehoff’s “office” was his room, toward the opposite end of the hall from Logan’s room.
“Now,” Logan said, “we get to the matter of motive. Which of us had reason to kill Mr. Rolt?”
“I don’t know,” Sloan said distantly. “Who’d do such a thing—fill Mr. Rolt’s mouth with sand?”
“You were his closest acquaintance,” Brandon said to Logan. “You always played chess with him. Who knows what you and he were plotting?”
“What about you?” Kneehoff said to Brandon. “You tried to choke Mr. Rolt just last week.”
Brandon stood up angrily, his mustache bristling. “That was the week before last!” He turned to Logan. “And Rolt always beat Logan at chess—that’s why Logan hated him.”
“He didn’t always beat me at chess,” Logan said. “And I didn’t hate him. The only reason he beat me at chess sometimes was because he’d upset the board if he was losing.”
“You don’t like to get beat at anything,” Brandon said, sitting down again. “That’s why you killed your wife, because she beat you at things. How middle class, to kill someone because of that.”
“I didn’t kill my wife,” Logan said patiently. “And she didn’t beat me at things. Though she was a pretty good businesswoman,” he added slowly, “and a good tennis player.”
“What about Kneehoff?” Sloan asked. “He was always threatening to kill Mr. Rolt.”
“Because he laughed at me!” Kneehoff spat out. “Rolt was a braggart and a fool, always laughing at me because I have ambition and he didn’t. He thought he was better at everything than anybody else—and you, Sloan—Rolt used to ridicule you and Heimer. There isn’t one of us who didn’t have a motive to eliminate a piece of scum like Rolt.”
Logan was on his feet, almost screaming. “I won’t have you talk about the dead like that!”
“All I was saying,” Kneehoff said, smiling his superior smile at having upset Logan, “was that it won’t be easy for you to discover Rolt’s murderer. He was a clever man, that murderer, cleverer than you.”
Logan refused to be baited. “We’ll see about that when I check the alibis,” he muttered, and he left the room to walk barefoot in the surf.
On the beach the next day Sloan asked the question they had all been wondering.
“What are we going to do with the murderer if we do catch him?” he asked, his eyes fixed on a distant ship that was just an irregularity on the horizon.
“We’ll extract justice,” Logan said. “We’ll convict and execute him—eliminate him from our society!”
“Do you think we should?” Sloan asked.
“Of course we should!” Logan snapped. “The authorities don’t care who killed Mr. Rolt. The authorities are probably glad he’s dead.”
“I don’t agree that it’s a sound move,” Kneehoff said, “to execute the man. I move that we don’t do that.”
“I don’t hear anyone seconding you,” Logan said. “It has to be the way I say if we are to maintain order here.”
Kneehoff thought a moment, then smiled. “I agree we must maintain order at all costs,” he said. “I withdraw my motion.”
“Motion, hell!” Brandon said. He spat into the sand. “We ought to just find out who the killer is and liquidate him. No time for a motion—time for action!”
“Mr. Rolt would approve of that,” Sloan said, letting a handful of sand run through his fingers.
Ollie the attendant came down to the beach and stood there smiling, the sea breeze rippling his white uniform. The group on the beach broke up slowly and casuall
y, each man idling away in a different direction.
Kicking the sun-warmed sand with his bare toes, Logan approached Ollie.
“Game of chess, Mr. Logan?” Ollie asked.
“Thanks, no,” Logan said. “You found Mr. Rolt’s body, didn’t you, Ollie?”
“Right, Mr. Logan.”
“Mr. Rolt was probably killed while you and Sloan and Brandon were watching TV.”
“Probably,” Ollie agreed, his big face impassive.
“How come you left at ten o’clock to go down to the beach?”
Ollie turned to stare blankly at Logan with his flat eyes. “You know I always check the beach at night, Mr. Logan. Sometimes the patients lose things.”
“Mr. Rolt sure lost something,” Logan said. “Did the police ask you if Brandon and Sloan were in the TV room with you the whole time before the murder?”
“They did and I told them yes.” Ollie lit a cigarette with one of those transparent lighters that had a fishing fly in the fluid. “You studying to be a detective, Mr. Logan?”
“No, no,” Logan laughed. “I’m just interested in how the police work, after the way they messed up my case. Once they thought I was guilty I didn’t have a chance.”
But Ollie was no longer listening. He had turned to look out at the ocean. “Don’t go out too far, Mr. Kneehoff!” he called, but Kneehoff pretended not to hear and began moving in the water parallel with the beach.
Logan walked away to join Mr. Heimer who was standing in the surf with his pants rolled above his knees.
“Find out anything from Ollie?” Mr. Heimer asked, his body balancing slightly as the retreating sea pulled the sand and shells from beneath him.
“Some things,” Logan said, crossing his arms and enjoying the play of the cool surf about his legs. The two men—rather than the ocean—seemed to be moving as the tide swept in and out and shifted the sand beneath the sensitive soles of their bare feet. “It’s like the ocean,” Logan said, “finding out who killed Mr. Rolt. The ocean works and works on the shore, washing in and out until only the sand and rock remain—the real shape of the coast. Wash the soil away and you have bare rock; wash the lies away and you have bare truth.”
“Not many can endure the truth,” Mr. Heimer said, stooping to let his hand drag in an incoming wave, “even in other worlds.”
Logan raised his shoulders. “Not many ever learn the truth,” he said, turning and walking through the wet sand toward the beach. Amid the on-wash of the wide shallow wave he seemed to be moving backward, out to sea. . .
Two days later Logan talked to Dr. Montaign, catching him alone in the TV lounge when the doctor dropped by for one of his midday visits. The room was very quiet; even the ticking of the clock seemed slow, lazy, and out of rhythm.
“I was wondering, doctor,” Logan said, “about the night of Mr. Rolt’s murder. Did Mr. Heimer stay very late in your office?”
“The police asked me that,” Dr. Montaign said with a smile. “Mr. Heimer was in my office until ten o’clock, then I saw him come into this room and join Brandon and Sloan to watch the news.”
“Was Kneehoff with them?”
“Yes, Kneehoff was in his room.”
“I was in my room,” Logan said, “with my door open to the hall, and I didn’t see Mr. Rolt pass to go outdoors. So he must have gone out through his window. Maybe the police would like to know that.”
“I’ll tell them for you,” Dr. Montaign said, “but they know Mr. Rolt went out through his window because his only door was locked from the inside.” The doctor cocked his head at Logan, as was his habit. “I wouldn’t try to be a detective,” he said gently. He placed a smoothly manicured hand on Logan’s shoulder. “My advice is to forget about Mr. Rolt.”
“Like the police?” Logan said.
The hand patted Logan’s shoulder soothingly.
After the doctor had left, Logan sat on the cool vinyl sofa and thought. Brandon, Sloan and Heimer were accounted for, and Kneehoff couldn’t have left the building without Logan seeing him pass in the hall. The two men, murderer and victim, might have left together through Mr. Rolt’s window—only that wouldn’t explain the single set of fresh footprints to and from the body. And the police had found Mr. Rolt’s footprints where he’d gone down to the beach farther from the cottage and then apparently walked up the beach through the surf to where his path and the path of the murderer crossed.
And then Logan saw the only remaining possibility—the only possible answer.
Ollie, the man who had discovered the body—Ollie alone had had the opportunity to kill! And after doing away with Mr. Rolt he must have noticed his footprints leading to and from the body; so at the wooden stairs he simply turned and walked back to the sea in another direction, then walked up the beach to make his “discovery” and alert the doctor.
Motive? Logan smiled. Anyone could have had motive enough to kill the bragging and offensive Mr. Rolt. He had been an easy man to hate.
Logan left the TV room to join the other patients on the beach, careful not to glance at the distant white-uniformed figure of Ollie painting some deck chairs at the other end of the building.
“Tonight,” Logan told them dramatically, “we’ll meet in the conference room after Dr. Montaign leaves and I promise to tell you who the murderer is. Then we’ll decide how best to remove him from our midst.”
“Only if he’s guilty,” Kneehoff said. “You must present convincing, positive evidence.”
“I have proof,” Logan said.
“Power to the people!” Brandon cried, leaping to his feet.
Laughing and shouting, they all ran like schoolboys into the waves.
The patients sat through their evening session with Dr. Montaign, answering questions mechanically and chattering irrelevantly, and Dr. Montaign sensed a certain tenseness and expectancy in them. Why were they anxious? Was it fear? Had Logan been harping to them about the murder? Why was Kneehoff not looking at his letters, and Sloan not gazing out the window?
“I told the police,” Dr. Montaign mentioned, “that I didn’t expect to walk up on any more bodies on the beach.”
“You?” Logan stiffened in his chair. “I thought it was Ollie who found Mr. Rolt.”
“He did, really,” Dr. Montaign said, cocking his head. “After Mr. Heimer left me I accompanied Ollie to check the beach so I could talk to him about some things. He was the one who saw the body first and ran ahead to find out what it was.”
“And it was Mr. Rolt, his mouth stuffed with sand,” Sloan murmured.
Logan’s head seemed to be whirling. He had been so sure! Process of elimination. It had to be Ollie! Or were the two men, Ollie and Dr. Montaign, in it together? They had to be! But that was impossible! There had been only one set of footprints.
Kneehoff! It must have been Kneehoff all along! He must have made a secret appointment with Rolt on the beach and killed him. But Rolt had been walking alone until he met the killer, who was also alone! And someone had left the fresh footprints, the single set of footprints, to and from the body.
Kneehoff must have seen Rolt, slipped out through his window, intercepted him, and killed him. But Kneehoff’s room didn’t have a window! Only the two end rooms had windows, Rolt’s room and Logan’s room!
A single set of footprints—they could only be his own! His own!
Through a haze Logan saw Dr. Montaign glance at his watch, smile, say his good-byes and leave. The night breeze wafted through the wide open windows of the conference room with the hushing of the surf, the surf wearing away the land to bare rock.
“Now,” Kneehoff said to Logan, and the moon seemed to light his eyes, “who exactly is our man? Who killed Mr. Rolt? And what is your evidence?”
Ollie found Logan’s body the next morning, face down on the beach, the gentle lapping surf trying to claim him. Logan’s head was turned and half buried and his broken limbs were twisted at strange angles, and around him the damp sand was beaten with, in addition to his own, f
our different sets of footprints.
EVAN HUNTER
There are careers and then there are careers.
Consider these facts: Evan Hunter (1926– ), the same man who wrote The Blackboard Jungle, a serious novel about juvenile delinquency that had a seminal effect on the popular culture of the 1950s, also wrote the screenplay for The Birds, which of course was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. Under the name Ed McBain, he also wrote (and is still writing) one of the most popular detective series of all time, the police procedurals known as the 87th Precinct books.
Whether you read him as Evan Hunter or Ed McBain, you are reading one of the most skilled storytellers of our time. And that time, in Hunter-McBain years, now spans better than fifty years of not only writing, but staying on the cutting edge.
With all this activity, you might not think that he’d have time to develop his talents as a short story writer. But he’s one of the best with the shorter form, too, his range of style, mood, and form showing him to be every bit the virtuoso that he is with novels.
Here is “Curt Cannon” (the byline he used on this story when it first appeared) at his cleverest and most hard-boiled. There were two Cannon books, if you care to read more: a collection of short stories called I Like ’Em Tough, and a novel about the same gumshoe, I’m Cannon—for Hire. This tale of Hunter’s down-and-out dick was adapted for the 1958 Mike Hammer TV series starring McGavin.
Dead Men Don’t Dream
The old neighborhood hadn’t changed much. I was standing near the window in Charlie Dagerra’s bedroom looking out at the tenements stretched across the cold winter sky like a gray smear. There was no sun. The day was cold and gloomy and somehow forbidding, and that was as it should be because Charlie Dagerra lay in a casket in the living room.
The undertaker had skillfully adjusted Charlie’s collar so that most of the knife slash across his neck was covered. He’d disguised the rest with heavy make-up and soft lights, but everyone knew what lay under the make-up. Everyone knew, and no one was talking about it.
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