He whistled, and asked, “Do you yourself think she’s guilty, either as a principal or as an accomplice?”
I answered that she had had good reason to hate Wyck, but that I could not bring myself to believe in her actual guilt. Knowing her impulsive nature, I admitted it was possible that she would have aided Charlie as an accessory after the fact. However, I told the lawyer that I did not believe Charlie was guilty either.
After more study of the record he looked up abruptly and said, “Listen, Saunders, had the coroner any possible way of knowing that Biddy had been out that night, and lacked an alibi? It’s damned funny that any suspect, even an accessory, should go unquestioned on that point.”
The query put me in a jam. I did not want to reveal anything to the lawyer except phases of the case having to do with Biddy alone. Long before Wyck’s body was discovered, my chief had told me that he and Kent were investigating the disappearance because they thought the sheriff a fool. It was by no means impossible that Alling had cautioned the coroner against asking too much at the initial hearing. Alling and I were the ones who knew about Biddy’s walk on the fateful night. Kent, if he had learned about it from Alling, might be deliberately holding it to disrupt the defense later on.
“What about it?” the lawyer persisted.
“Search me,” I said with a shrug.
He then began to question me about Kent, asking presently, “What do you make of this fact, in the testimony, that the coroner himself, who was admittedly present when the vault was sealed, was willing to defer in judgment to this fellow Charlie, on the basis of betting a box of stogies, and at the risk of letting loose a lot of dangerous gas? The coroner let it stand unopposed in the record that it was he himself who proposed the bet.”
A wild, new thought arose in my mind. The trend of the lawyer’s own thoughts was revealed when he added, “Where was Kent that night, does anybody know?”
“He was at the faculty meeting till nearly half past nine. I don’t know where eh was between then and eight next morning,” I said, realizing that one conflict of opinion between Daisy and myself could be completely explained on this new premise. All my reasons for defending Alling were personal, and still held good. All Daisy’s reasons for suspecting him were concerned with a kind of duplicity that might well be the result of his having worked in good faith with a double-dealer.
“We’d better start finding out where he was,” I added, excitedly; but the lawyer said, “No, no. When the criminal action comes up, Kent will be a witness for the prosecution, and I as defense lawyer will, of course, have a chance to cross-examine him. That’s the time to find out about his alibi.”
Craig left town, I was quite sure, with rosy visions of the state’s most sensational trial, in which an aggressive young defense attorney would earn everlasting fame by proving that the murderer was the very coroner who had inquired into the nature of the crime.
It was not until Thursday, September 8th, that Dr. Alling drove back to Altonville. The fall term would commence on the 20th, and there were innumerable clerical jobs to dispose of. The first was his dictation of a letter to Prendergast’s father, with a copy to his uncle the Honorable Mr. Tolland, announcing that the boy had been officially readmitted.
Prendergast’s family, well off financially, had sent him to travel in Europe for the summer, accompanied by a young psychoanalyst.
“Just as I started negotiating with his uncle,” Prexy confided, “a radiogram came in from mid-Atlantic saying the boy wanted to enter Harvard to study psychiatry. This notification in effect merely lets him enter there with advanced credits.”
I was therefore thoroughly surprised when Dick appeared on the 10th, at the door of Dr. Alling’s laboratory. At a glance from my chief I went out for lunch. When I returned they were still talking. Dr. Alling told me he would not need me until three o’clock. I had a good view of the prodigal, looking florid and very much discomfited.
It turned out that haughty Harvard would give him no credit for courses taken at our humble institution in which he had received a grade of less than A—so he had insolently decided to come back to Altonville and chisel the degree which no one would dare refuse him now. Prexy must have risked giving him something of a tongue-lashing, however, for he emerged from the conference thoroughly subdued.
I was about to walk down to see him when he anticipated the call by coming to see me.
“I guess I acted pretty much like a bloody fool with you, Dave,” he said.
“Pretty much,” I agreed.
“Sure. Let’s shake that,” he suggested, which we did.
I went to bed late on Friday evening, the 16th, and felt resentful when an insistent knocking awakened me at half past seven. Hos Creel was visible through the glass pane of the door, waving a special delivery letter. “What’s it worth t’ ye fer me not to tell Daisy Towers? He, he, hee!”
The message, on a sheet of paper with a spray of violets printed in one corner, lies before me as I write. It reads:
625 E. 22 St.
New York City
Sept. 15, 1932
Dear David:
I have just mailed a letter that I wish I hadnt. But I cant stand it any longer. A fellow named Ted promised me he would take care of me in Boston. But he acted terrible to me I cant tell you how in a letter, or I guess any other way either. But he kept saying he would kill me if I was to run away from him. One day he took a boat to Nantukitt to get some things and he said if I did not stay where I was he would surely find me. Well I did not have a cent but I sold some of my cloths and got a train to New York because I wouldnt of dared go back to Main. I tried to get a nursing job but they looked funny at my card and said wait please so I ran out while they were looking it up and never came back. A woman I met said she would help me but I wont tell you in a letter what kind of help it turned out to be. Well I got started that way and could not get a chanct to stop. I was in jail 30 days and the same woman got me out and I had to start all over again. And today I decided it would be much better to be back with Ted than going on like I am. So I wrote him to come and get me and now I am afraid and you are the only one I can call my friend so for God’s sake come quick because I have got to tell first about the terrible things I know about Dr. Wick. They are too awful to write in a letter so please come quick because it will take longer I guess for a letter to get to Nantukitt, but not much longer so please hurry. I’m sick and I haven’t got a cent.
Yours truly,
M. Finch.
The evil that men do certainly was proved to live after them, in this case. Muriel had been no saint but there was a world of difference between having lovers and being a prostitute; and it was Wyck’s doing that she had been driven to that.
I fairly jumped into my clothes. Daisy was already at the switchboard. No one else was in the office, so I shoved the letter at her.
“Wait a minute, Davy boy,” she said, going to a file and taking out a bunch of printed forms. “Sure enough, it’s Muriel’s writing,” she said. “Here’s her application.”
“Daisy, you’re a jewel,” I said. “I might have gone racing down to New York into some kind of a trap.”
“You still may,” she said. “Got any money?”
“About seven dollars. I guess I can write an advance check and get somebody to cash it.”
“Make me out one for twenty. I’ll cash it for you and chuck in twenty as my share.”
“I can’t let you—”
“Then you don’t get anything from my cashbox,’ she said. “We’re divvying up, Dave, and that includes operating expenses. If this solves the problem, somebody’ll pay us back. Besides, you haven’t been able to save anything, and I’ve got half a new Ford in the bank.”
She gave me the money in an envelope.
“Use your head down there, Dave,” she whispered, “and just in case—well, never mind—but, kiss me.”
I glanced quickly around and obeyed orders.
“It’s about time,”
she said. “Now scram. I’ll tell your box you’re away sitting up with a sick uncle.”
I bought a ticket to Boston, where I arrived a few minutes past noon, just in time to miss the fast train for New York.
The next one left a 2:00 P.M. As it drew into Providence, an hour later, I scanned the platform curiously. A youth was lifting his bag and starting toward the foremost car’s front entrance. My breath rushed inward as I recognized Ted Gideon. He had probably received Muriel’s letter in time to catch the crack-of-dawn boat from Nantucket.
He entered the next car ahead, and I was nervously relieved that he stayed in it until we reached Grand Central Station.
Twenty-Two
I was not ignoring the fact that we were both in for a race. Rather, I was counting on the supposition that Ted would not know it. So I drifted up the ramp from the train platform at the same speed as everyone else, keeping a sharp watch, but feeling fairly sure that he was well ahead of me. Then, in the station proper, I grabbed a porter by the arm, pushed half a dollar in his fist and said, “Get me into the nearest taxi, as fast as you can move.”
We went dashing to a platform where my porter swung me into a cab which was just being vacated by someone else, and said, “Where y’ goin’, boss?”
“625 East 22nd Street,” I replied. “Tell him there’s an extra dollar for speed.”
The fellow never stopped without a yowl of brakes. He went slicing magically through holes in the traffic that just weren’t there. After twenty minutes the car squeaked to the curb. I gave him two dollars, and he was off again as he had come. A quick look up and down the street disclosed no figure that might be Ted’s within at least a block. I hastily rang. A sharp-faced man in a tuxedo opened the inner door and inspected me through the grille. I decided that she must be in a fancier establishment than I had imagined from her letter.
“I want to see Muriel Finch,” I said.
“Hey, Joe,” he called, “is there a Miss Finch here?”
“No. Nobody namea Finch, Tony.”
“You been here before?” the man in the dinner jacket asked, and I shook my head. “Can’t let you in then. Have to wait for her outside. Do we know her?”
“You ought to. She lives here,” I said angrily.
“Hey, what are you gettin’ at, buddy?” he asked. “Nobody of that name lives here.”
The man made it known to me with considerable hauteur that they had no hostesses at this speakeasy. I got out her letter again and scanned it. Even then, it took me another precious minute to discover that I Was at 625 West (instead of East) 22nd Street. Either the porter had mistaken my words, or the taxi driver had mistaken the porter’s.
“How far is it to the other number?” I asked, as the man stood grinning at my mistake.
“Far as it could be. ’Bout ten blocks.”
Then a voice bawled “Taxi?” and I climbed in, giving the number saying, “There’s a two-dollar tip if you make it in five minutes.”
“I’ll try, buddy,” he said dubiously. My watch soon told me that the crosstown traffic was held two or three minutes at every intersection. Finally, with fifteen minutes gone and less than half the distance covered, I paid my fare and ran the rest of the way on foot.
A huge woman, sprawled out on the entry step of No. 625, grinned unpleasantly and said, “Yeah, top floor back, but she’s got another guy there now. Why don’t you t’row him out?”
The first two flights I took three stairs at a bound, and then went on tiptoe.
I heard a labored breathing and a scraping sound as of feet shifted on a bare floor. Suddenly the breathing changed to a horrible gurgling. I turned the knob, and banged my shoulder with all its force against the door. It proved to be unlocked. The effort landed me in the middle of the room.
What I saw nearly drove me out of my mind. Ted Gideon was seated on the edge of the bed, with Muriel’s shoulders resting upon his knees. His left hand was over her mouth and chin, which he had bent completely around behind her own left shoulder.
As he leaped to his feat, her head dangled over the edge of the bed, swaying a little on its broken neck. Ted came toward me, staring with dilated pupils. The lids of his eyes were contracted, the white eyeballs seemed to be staring from his head. Again I recalled Mike Connell’s description of his devil—“White eyes wit’ black pinpoints in the middle.”
I decided that a kick in the stomach would be the safest way to stop him. But like lightening he seized my heel in air and tipped me over backward. Then I was struggling in a frenzy against his pulsing strength. My hands were around his wrists, keeping his fingers from my throat. But I had the awful sensation of trying to hold some gyrating part of an engine. It was this irresistible quality of his strength that made me realize that his arms were merely moving in rhythm with the spasms of epilepsy. Froth dripped from his mouth on my cheek. I let of my useless grip on his arms and crawled shuddering from beneath him, leaving him jerkin on the floor.
Getting a grip on my first impulse to dash out of the room, I went quickly to Muriel. There was no pulse or respiration. She was quite dead. My glance swept the room, and rested on a cheap tablet of notepaper on the floor near-by. Pieces of a smashed pencil lay near it. The sheet of notepaper started in the middle of a sentence. I noticed something about Dr. Wyck. With jittery haste I ransacked the room for the other page or pages which she must have written.
The rhythm of Ted’s movement altered, and I knew that he might be passing into a third stage which, like the first, could be homicidal. Quickly I knelt to look in his coat pockets and found a crumpled ball of paper in one of them. I thrust it and the other sheet in my own pocket, closed the door, and hastened down the stairs. The fat harridan greeted me with a guffaw.
“Wouldn’t give you no time, eh? Well, try 627. There’s a couple doin’ business there.”
I walked by without answering and on to the end of the block, turning up the avenue. If a policeman had been in view, I would have given myself up then and there. The horrible memory of Muriel, with her head hanging limp and twisted like that of a dead bird, filled my thoughts.
A taxi came along. I hailed it. But no sooner had I climbed in than the realization struck me in a rush that if the body was discovered promptly, the fat woman on the steps, and the taxi driver would be able to identify me, and provide means of tracing me to the station, from which notification could be sent again to have outgoing trains searched for someone of my description.
“What’s a good hotel?” I asked, sparring for time.
“What part o’ town?”
“Middle.”
“How ’bout de Roosevelt?”
“O.K.,” I said.
During the ride I realized that I did not dare stay in New York. As soon as the body was discovered, a description of me would be broadcast throughout the city. Therefore, when the taxi left me at the Roosevelt, I walked through and out the rear door. There the thought struck me that my best defense might be to inform the police by telephone, as Ted might still be sleeping in the room. I stepped into a cigar store and there had the additional bright idea of putting a call in roundabout, in case the police should have a way of sending someone quickly to the booth from which the warning came. So I called the lost-and-found bureau at the Pennsylvania Station, and said that I had information that a suitcase containing bonds stolen in that station could be found at 625 East 22nd Street, in the top floor rear, if the police would hurry. Then I walked out, went two blocks westward, hailed another taxi, and was driven to Grand Central, where I got a sleeper for Boston.
It was not until I was lying in my berth, with the curtains fastened, that I dared open out the messy sheet of paper taken from Ted Gideon’s pocket.
Twenty-Three
The crumpled piece of paper read as follows:
Dear David:
I am going to write those things down any way because I am scared you maynt come and I have decided to kill myself. How it all started was two years ago almost when Dr. Wick sai
d he was going to fire me because I was too—you know, Dave, good natured with the students. And I asked him if it was such a terible thing and he said he wouldnt let them fire me if I would be nice to him too, and he was good looking then you know and he gave me a new coat and so like a fool I said yes. Well I helped him in his laboratory you know and he was doing some experiments that had to be secrets from the other doctors. There was a place up a hill where we went. Ill tell you how to get to it at the end of this letter.
He had a two headed calf there and a chicken that was alive with four legs. There were a lot of jars with pollywogs that grew funny shapes like two tails on all of them in one jar and three eyes on all of them in another jar. Well then he began to act crazy and say he wanted to hipnotize me and I wouldn’t let him but I think he did sometimes anyway. And then he began bringing other women out there and doing the crasiest things, like hipnotising them and making them sit to their waists in cold water for hours in a tank that water ran through in front of a fire so the tops of them were hot and the rest cold. And he would paint waxy stuff on them from the waist down and give them things to drink that made them act perfectly crazy, Dave.
Well all that went on till it was too cold—November I guess. And I told him I would not do it any more and he said he would have me fired so I went on. And he scared Mike some other way about keeping quiet about the blood transfusion. And then there began to be a lot of dead children born at the hospital and he told me I was partly to blame and would get put in prison for life or maybe hung if anybody knew. So I was scared not to do just what he said. And the in the spring a boy named Ted came to camp there all the time and he was Dr. Wyck’s son, you know, and he—
The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck Page 15
